Summer Snapshot Redux / PDX

And this is Wilson Archibald, age 6. Never really enjoys having his photograph taken, but today he was showing me some new swimming techniques and we made this shot over and over 'til we got this one.

I think I like it better.



Summer Snapshot / PDX

Eli and I don't make photographs with any degree of seriousness these days. All the work of ECHOLILIA really started and ended in a bubble, but the kind of learned communication still exists. It is like he learned how to be in front of my camera and I learned how to bring whatever he gives me to life...or at least interpret it.

On a family vacation in Portland and made this image. In person I don't know if Eli would really catch your eye at all. He appears like a messey nine year old wearing a baseball hat like a trillion other kids. But in front of the camera, or my camera...he is just striking. Long hair catches the light and thick lips and curious eyes and it's really like...breathtaking. Or maybe it just is to his Dad? I dunno. The project may be over but images of him will always surface and always be stirring.

So Many Things All At Once: Some Related, Some Not

One day in 2010 I was driving across the Bay Bridge during some day of career turmoil: a shoot had gone bad, the client was angry, I was losing the client and the friendly vibes I previously shared with them...the easy breezy nature of our relationship was fading. People were getting fired. New regimes were taking over and they were no longer enjoying what I had to offer.

At that moment my car's rear view mirror snapped off and fell on the dash. Wow...a moment of clarity. Everything looked clear ahead. No looking back. No chance to linger on the past. Just look out into the wide open space before you...no mirror to distract the view. What did it mean? Maybe nothing? But maybe a sign to just keep moving forward.

I was walking on the sidewalk to Dogpatch Studios in SF for the lecture on Social Networking. I feel a pull of rubber and glue and feel the strange disorientation that occurs when your heel breaks off of your shoe. Uh oh. What does it mean? Is it a sign? Should I go home? Is there just too much going on right now...too many lives being lead? Is this telling me something? Most likely no. I loved the shoes but they were $20 dollars...sometimes things fall apart.

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Heather Elder, Miki Johnson, Josh Bob and Christian Peacock all worked to put together this event. Originally I feared this event would rub me the wrong way. I was afraid the vibe of greed and capitalism would taint the creative medium that this social networking thing has always seemed to me to be. Sitting there listening to Miki introduce the concepts of the event and of her philosophy, you realize that this Social Networking thing isn't very new at all. It is deep and rooted in what makes us human. These ideas and concepts it is based on are universal...and touch on things that are universally satisfying. Miki and Heather were on the same page here and seemed to echo these points in various forms. Me? I just tried to talk about what I knew. Here are some points that stuck in my brain and still resonated in the days following:

Humans have a need to communicate that never goes away.
Everything of value in your life has grown from a conversation...whether that was via a phone or cave writing or a note passed in class.
The hunger for the "story" is a constant over time and nothing is more powerful.
There are as many stories as there are people, and all of our stories are uniquely important.

As I'm taking this all in Brooke Embry of Tidepool sends me a snapshot via text of the ECHOLILIA event she is hosting in LA. Here is a gallery, filled with people, thinking and looking and discussing the images my son and I put together for our project. Here in the gallery it isn't the whole installation, but a short sentence of 7 big and bold images, melancholy and fleshy all at once. I can't be there..neither can he...but someone can, and we can now peek into their experience. Our life can be shared there in LA, shared here in SF, and really you never run out of things to share. A real time real life status update. Please share!

I take in this moment and swallow it, cherish it. It is not epic and it's not mundane either. But it'll never really happen just like this again.

Top: APA Social Getworking Panel, Miki Johnson, Josh Bobb, Heather Elder and TA.
Bottom: Hazelle Withers at the ECHOLILIA show, 728 Alley in Santa Monica.

Dear Madison Bumgarner

I haven't had the yearning to grab something Eli has done and put it under a scanner in years really...not since the seeking evidence days of ECHOLILIA. Even now the stark form and tone of the scanner image doesn't seem appropriate because so much has changed. But I read the note and wanted to share it so I just used what I had to get it out there. Included in the envelope was a photograph of the ball on our kitchen table that Eli shot and printed out.

Enjoy.

In LA : A Shot Of Echolilia

In LA on Thursday evening: Watch the sunset, stroll along Montana Avenue. Stop by 728 Alley. Drink in the art and do a shot of ECHOLILIA. In the north alley off Montana Avenue Between 11th and 12th St., Santa Monica, California. Also showing prints by Kerri Parker. Come join us for food, drinks and conversation. Nourishing snacks compliments of holistic dietitian & yoga teacher Beth R. Sobel.

The Social Network / Thursday, July 21st at Dogpatch

Heather Elder, Miki Johnson and I are featured in Thursday's APA event unfortunately titled "Social Getworking". The name implies that this blogging, Facebooking, Twittering thing is not just fun...but is a serious tool used to leverage your business, stand out in the market place and somehow "get working"? Is it or is it not? Oh...it is different things for different people and that is really what I'm trying to figure out how to express as I'm preparing for my part of the talk.

Friday afternoon I posted a call out to FB essentially wondering what people were interested in hearing about. Generating buzz, creating an identity, getting followers, finding topics, separting personal stuff from business stuff...all of these thoughts came to the surface and all of these things made me realize just how I am so not the one to handle this lecture....I really have the answers to none of these things. But I better make something up quick.

But...it has helped me answer a few things by pushing me. Like the obvious question...what is your blog about? For me it is about the mix of things that make up my life: the creative path, parenthood, commercial photography, and the work of other great photographers I discover.

Why do people tune in? They most likely like the other photographers I celebrate and they are on a creative path themselves.

What price do they pay? Oh...well they have to endure me promoting my commercial work and art work and my various forms of self celebration.

What is the end goal? Build a community, get hired more, and share my creative path.

Is it working? I think so.

But more work to be done so I do not blow it at this event. More to come, I'll share it all here...as well as these two shots of my kids. Cuz with this social networking world, I'm nothing notable without those kids.

Buy tickets / more info on the event HERE.

The Wear Twins / UCLA

 

Working for a living in the most wonderful way.

The great team of photographer Paul Bennett, art directors Charlie Hess, Alicia Patel and Mallory Guillemette. We all got together with The Wear Twins in the splendor of Royce Hall at UCLA.

More on this to come...

Daniel Lee / Tablo

Daniel Lee was an honest and true sweetheart of a human being on this shoot we put together back in early June. He showed up with a posse...as did we: Art director Amy Shroads, writer Joshua Davis, makeup artist Veronica Sjoen, and The Sz.

A great day of image making, made all the better by this inspired spread.

Read the story The Persecution Of Daniel Lee HERE.