I’ll have some more after-thoughts from Florida soon, but in the meantime here is a little session with a great lady…All clad in polkadots and yellow stripes.

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Of course, it took ten feet for me to run into my roommate Shawn braving the sidewalk with a teenie canon dslr strapped unusually close to his chin like a bib.  That little thing. That bib thing. That’s all it took.  I found it so charming that I turned on my heel and followed him on his way.  Maybe he was following me too, but at that point it didn’t matter because we were officially thrust into the traffic of impatient pedestrians and had to move simply to avoid profanity. Why the setup? Why all this talk? I know you want to know…well, I’m practicing being a writer. All this time you thought I was just telling you an interesting story about white noise, but I’m actually practicing writing.  Of all things to happen this last week, the most profound has to be my friend Tommy giving me Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird”, a book on writing and other life advice. That was four months ago and I finally gave the book a chance, only to find myself transformed with every page turned and with every clever, honest, funny, brutal piece of insight this woman has to share.  Do yourself a favor and pickup a copy if you haven’t yet.

Anywayyys.  Shawn and I walked in perfect cynical unison until we hit the Spring Arcade.  We live on Spring, just a block away from this sometime historic, but now mostly banal shopping experience and it often feels like we’ve seen it all.  So when a vendor at the entrance was frantically shoving boxes around and we realized they were filled with old photographs there was a great deal of reservation in our enthusiasm. Just remember the first time you had sushi. Or any other ethnic food you were convinced would move when you took a bite.  But photograph after photograph we found ourselves hooked.  The first ten minutes we would share a lot.  Well, not so much share as we would compete a lot for who found the best shot. The most grotesque. The most vulgar. The most provocative. The most tender. The saddest. The loneliest. The most pathetic. And then we totally lost track of each other. At one point I though he had left only to find him behind three other diggers all head in the bucket deep with old images of people they didn’t know. There is so much more I want to tell you about this moment, but I’ll just cut it short because I feel the white noise of my skull slowly taking me into dreamland. Six out of ten people upon approaching the bins would pronounce some sort of disapproval over the selling of someone else’s private moments. They would ask the salesman if (the twenty thousand photographs diplayed) were of his family.  Then they would exchange a terrified observation about finding their own family in the stash. Sometimes they would just walk away appalled. White trash came to mind a couple of times.

You see, I love old photographs. The ones that no one else wants. The ones someone donated, gave up, tossed away. Whatever. There was a reason their owners just couldn’t handle them anymore and had to let them go. And I’ve done that too.  But some images are timeless, and they resonate with us at different times of our lives.  Like this one below of a girl standing on a beach in what seems to be her school day best. The inscription on the back says 1968, over a decade before I was born and the only thing that came to mind when I saw it was that I KNOW her. Initially I set the image back in the bin. I guess I do that. Sometimes I give up on exactly the things that are most familiar, most precious to me. It’s a bad habit and I’m working on it.  So imagine how frantically I looked for the image half an hour later when after paying for six different pictures the salesman whispered in my ear: “you can have one more for free.”  I was sure this would be my ruin. Only one image came to mind, and it was somewhere 45 minutes back in time reverse-shuffled by countless hands and a last minute conflict over bin positions imposed by the fire code police.  I was sure this is why I should have blocked the white noise out completely, put that new song from The Rapture I just discovered on repeat way up loud in the earbuds and stayed the fuck  home.  But I didn’t, and so for the next five minutes I held my breath. And I dug, and I asked the other diggers in the way of an owner looking for a lost puppy: “have you seen a little black and white photo of a girl dressed in skirt at the beach? wearing shoes like bowling shoes? not sure if they were? did you?”.  And then I found her, way down in the corner. Aaaah.

The girl at the beach reminds me of Hanna.  Hanna is a fairly new friend, but just as timeless.  She’s a beautiful singer, songwriter, artist and person.  I asked her to come play with me a few weeks back and take some portraits in a particularly perfect spot in my studio.  I swear the light was brilliant. White and not noisy at all.  My other roommate Georgia says that’s God’s light.  She also says that there is a grey area. She likes to pronounce these grand things when you least expect to hear them. She also likes to place little objects around the house and play mirror tricks and furniture tricks and I think she has a thing for Jesus, because one time I walked into the kitchen to get morning coffee and he hung, was tucked, nestled into every nook and cranny.  He was a picture, he was a spoon, he was a pamphlet and an old button.  So I think Georgia is onto something when she talks about the grey area and says : “well, the grey area, Evi…well, the grey area is love.” I should ask her now about white noise.

The real Hanna…or maybe just how I saw her in the brilliant light…

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And I couldn’t have done it without my beautiful assistant Raquel Rodriguez, who slipped so naturally into the role although it was our first time together!

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, only adding that I was really touched by the energy and love between the copuple.  I had a small opportunity to meet the family at a wedding shower I shot earlier in August, and by the time my camera came off and Raquel and I hit the dance floor at the end of a busy wedding day we were shimmying to the electric slide right alongside all the other guest.  Just wonderful. <3

You can see the full slideshow by clicking on image link below or here.

I had a unique opportunity yesterday to photograph the experience that is a private Louis XII De Rémy Martin tasting. Set in an exclusive location at the foothills above Sunset Blvd. I enjoyed every bit of this delicate affair, preceded by an intimate presentation by one of the company’s ambassadors.

I must admit that I acquired an entirely new appreciation for what it takes to commit to the vision behind cognac.  The master winemaker who cultivated and nurtured what’s in the bottle today is not around to enjoy it.  The length of time it takes for the spirit to fully mature makes it virtually impossible for them to be around when it’s finally ready for its final journey down your palate.

On hand were a number of rare “artifacts”…if I may call them that.  The French Oak barrels above have been used and re-used a number of times now and the someone would surely loose a head if it went missing.  The writing is all secret code and yes…I smelled it. It imparts an ancient aroma that simply gave me goose bumps.

There is something very special about cognac.  It remains to be seen at which points in my life Louis XIII graces me with its presence again.  It’s a wonderful romance…

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“Love Child”

And here is a link to a quick gallery!

In fact, I was on such a roll today, I also made a slide show from a little session with Ania and her beautiful horse, Tough.  If I have the story right, Ania adopted him from a horse rescue organization when Tough’s career on the track ended.  His name makes perfect sense when you consider these circumstances.  His relationship with people and animals has been strained at best.  His natural personality is already full of mischief.  Put that together with some bad habits he picked up in the competitive world and you’re dealing with 1200lbs of temper tantrum.  I quickly found out how pesky he can get when he charged at my lens during our shoot. Just you know…in case I wanted his carrots.  The shot is in the slideshow, but his chomps went out of frame before I pressed the shutter.

All this is but a fun challenge for Ania, who is an unstoppable force with the equine beast.  Her passion for horsemanship is uncanny. She rides on the track and has a growing list of private clients that she teaches by taking a natural approach like the Parelli method.  Hopefully, I’ll have a little time before I leave FL to try it out myself!