New Year’s Day is a good time for baby photos so here is my friend Lara Trale and her daughter Io. Io is very popular right now. There are aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins and friends who are all competing for her time. I’ve had some good stretches recently of getting to hold her so here are my tips. Tip #1 At the party, follow the baby. If mom and dad move into to the kitchen, you’ve got to follow. At some time their arms are going to get tired and that’s when you can scoop up the baby. Tip #2 Be there when mom or dad is opening presents, they will need both hands and you can hold the baby and make cooing noises or if you’re like me explain to her basic scientific concepts such as how electricity is made or why the sky is blue, all in a sing song voice. Tip #3 Have a photo shoot that needs a baby and a mother. If you’re not a photographer think about your skill set. I’m sure there’s someway you can create a project that needs infant participation. Just make sure that in the end you pass her off to the other people who want some cute baby action because remember, no one likes a baby hog. (Continued)
Ceinwyn and Heather made Donuts this weekend. They were delicious. I don’t know how hard they were to make but I can say it was easy to eat them. Here’s the recipe for those who are interested. (Continued)
This is some concept art that a friend of mine, J.B. Lowe, sketched and colored for a project that I just finished. I wanted to take the time to thank him for his creative support on this project. Thanks J.B.! For those of you in the Bay Area, you can catch the opening of a show J.B. curated at Periscope Cellars this Friday from 6 to 9pm.
I also wanted to thank Laura Johnston for her creative input and digital artistry that made the final image come out so well.
While American designer Adam Harvey theorized ways an anti-photography A-bomb could be designed, leave it to the Russkies to actually build it. Roman Abramovich; Russian investment banker, Chelsea Football Club owner and potential super-villain, has equipped his secret aquatic lair yacht with a laser aided anti-photo defense shield. Evidently his sci-fi privacy bubble is enabled by infrared lasers which lock onto the energy signature of the CCD in a digital camera and fire an interrupting bolt of light to negate the camera’s ability to record images. I for one want to see it work. I want to try to take a digital photo of his floating hidout yacht and see a blank image on my LCD in review and then I want to see the smug look on his face disappear when I pull out my Hasselblad 501cm which is completely invisible to his 21st century photo defense shield. Nice try Abramovich. If you need any convincing that Abramovich is anything but a James Bond Super Villain here’s a few more amenities that his yacht, The Eclipse, has included on it: two helipads, an aquarium (probably filled with sharks) and a two person escape submarine.
The neighboring apartment building caught on fire last night. I woke up hearing some oscillating beeping sounds and was trying to figure out if they were car alarms or just ringing in my ears. Then I heard a woman yell “Oh my god!” which was enough for me to wake up and take a look outside. I could see from my window flames were pouring out of a window from an apartment building that faced the back of our house. After waking up Cein and making sure the dog was okay. I grabbed a ladder so I could be on top of our garage and get close enough to spray water in with our garden hose. The water from the garden hose caused things inside the apartment to crack and pop but the flames inside were too big to be affected. Standing there in my underwear and feeling the heat of the fire, I was the one that neighbors in the building started talking to. A pair of women with a child told me they were trapped in their apartment. I told them “The Fire Department has been called. They are on their way. You’re going to be okay.” The fire was in the apartment next to theirs and I could see black smoke billowing out of the room that separated their apartments. I switched the hose to that room, thinking it might be more important to delay the fire’s spread since I couldn’t expect to stop what was already burning. Another resident of the apartment building brought the fire hose from his hall out to his balcony underneath and to the side of the building on fire but didn’t have time to turn it on before the Fire Department showed. As the fire department worked I gave Cein a hug and waited until the fire was more contained to snap a few pictures from our dining room window.
I’m quite certain that my sheepishness at exploiting the pain of others for my own artistic gain kept me from taking better photos that these.
Here’s the final Tea Party photos. I’m pleased with how it came out. A big thanks to everyone who helped to make these images work out.
