Posts in category "Photos"

new kitten

Leonard has died. :( I made a short film about his life.

Adopted anoth­er kit­ten from the Humane Society (and I was­n’t able to wait until the new year). When I went to go see him at the shel­ter, he jumped into my arms, start­ed purring, and would­n’t stop nuz­zling my face. Even if he was any less cute, there’s no way I could have left him there.

He’s exact­ly what I was look­ing for: four months old, neutered, male, with a stub­by tail. Cats with stub tails from shel­ters usu­al­ly have their tails cut short because they’ve been run over by a bike, or caught frost­bite, but on him there’s no sign of scar­ring so he was prob­a­bly born with it.

I’ve yet to name him cause I want to see what kind of per­son­al­i­ty he devel­ops first.

new kitten

At this point, his res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion led to sores and he was bleed­ing from him nose. That’s why he looks sort of sad and grog­gy.

When I got him, he had an upper res­pi­ra­to­ry infec­tion and was infest­ed with fleas. I kept him sep­a­rat­ed from Dolly for more than a week, but she still man­aged to catch both. Now she’s real­ly grumpy and sick, and he’s com­plete­ly over it. She also feels huge, because the lit­tle guy is so small right now.

He likes to sleep by rest­ing his chin on my cheek, or lying right across my neck. I’m cur­rent­ly try­ing to change his sleep­ing pat­terns because he’s still a noc­tur­nal cat and gets up in the mid­dle of the night to lick my face. And because he’s a kit­ten who does­n’t know any bet­ter, he thinks Dolly is play­ing with him when she gives him a swipe in annoy­ance. There haven’t been any real scraps between them yet. More of a play­ful fight­ing, where Dolly gives as good as she gets.

new kitten

He tries to sleep with her all the time, and Dolly is usu­al­ly just too lazy to move away. I’m pret­ty sure this has helped her get used to hav­ing him around.

His tail isn’t buried under Dolly’s fat — that’s how long it is.

I won­der if I can be as good as Tiana and only write about him once a month the way she does with her son. But cats grow up so fast; they reach adult­hood in one year instead of 18, so I’m more tempt­ed to record him as much as pos­si­ble when he’s so small and cute. I just don’t want to be a mom­my blog­ger.

France: Day 18, Paris

The detour took a week off my time in France, and soon I was on a mis­sion to do the most impor­tant things with the two days I had left. I decid­ed to vis­it places that meant some­thing to me, instead of tourist attrac­tions like the Louvre and Eiffel Tower that did­n’t have as much of an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion.

Four Graves, Four Songs

Pere Lachaise Cemetery road

 

I’d only found out about ceme­ter­ies Montparnasse and Père Lachaise — both of which are notable for hav­ing many famous peo­ple buried there — after my arrival. They’re both huge (nav­i­gat­ing them requires look­ing up the prop­er street name), but Père Lachaise in par­tic­u­lar has the rep­u­ta­tion of being the world’s most vis­it­ed cemetary. I made no plans to vis­it them until I found out that Serge Ganisbourg is in Montparnasse, and Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, and Chopin are in Père Lachaise. So I made a trip to some­what oppo­site ends of Paris to find the graves of each of these musi­cians. For each one that I vis­it­ed, I put on my head­phones and lis­tened to one of their songs, imag­in­ing they were singing or play­ing to me at that moment.

Serge Gainsbourg (La Chanson de Prévert)

It was­n’t hard to tell that Serge is one of France’s most beloved artists; the tomb was lit­tered with var­i­ous baubles, plants, and even por­traits left for him. As I was lis­ten­ing to this song (co-inci­den­tal­ly, ref­er­enc­ing songs sung to Jacques Prévert’s poems, such as the one by Edith Piaf below), a tall, sandy-haired young man walked up to the grave, lit a cig­a­rette, and left his lighter stand­ing upright on the tomb before walk­ing away.

The French youth seem to have an healthy obses­sion with the genius that was Serge. I’d just like to know where these peo­ple are, because I don’t know a sin­gle per­son who loves Gainsbourg as much as I do. I need to find them so we can smoke cig­a­rettes, mock pop cul­ture, and talk about want­i­ng to fuck Whitney Houston.

Serge Gainsbourg's grave

 

Serge Gainsbourg's grave - details 1

The small white strips are metro tick­ets (they get spit out from the machine as a receipt when enter­ing the sub­way).

Continue read­ing “France: Day 18, Paris”…

UK Detour: Day 16, Ullapool

We suc­cess­ful­ly wrapped up prin­ci­ple pho­tog­ra­phy the pre­vi­ous day, which freed up the next for get­ting b‑roll footage. This was also the day we had to make the 12 hour dri­ve back to London, and after all was said and done, this jour­ney began at 4pm.

It was just me and Mike on the way back, shar­ing more and more our­selves, as we dis­cov­ered that exhaus­tion makes the best inter­ro­ga­tion tool. We kept each oth­er awake for the entire dri­ve, though I start­ed hal­lu­ci­nat­ing by the last hour. By the end, I think we knew each oth­er bet­ter than some of our own friends.

baby crab

Found this baby crab on the beach, hid­ing in an oys­ter shell, and small enough to fit on the tip of my fin­ger.

Continue read­ing “UK Detour: Day 16, Ullapool”…

UK Detour: Day 15, Ullapool

When Mike asked me what my dream job is, I told him that I’d be a direc­tor. So he asked me to direct the next seg­ment of his doc­u­men­tary because I tend to have a good sense of the larg­er scope when it comes to sto­ry­telling, and that would let him focus on the cin­e­matog­ra­phy and the inter­view.

Our roles over­lapped more often than not since this was his cre­ative vision, but that only meant we made a great team. I could bounce an idea off him, and he’d imme­di­ate­ly under­stand what I was talk­ing about. And if he saw a tech­nique I could do bet­ter, he’d tell me how to work dif­fer­ent­ly and I’d under­stand with­out need­ing an expla­na­tion.

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to get a glimpse into some­one else’s pho­to­graph­ic process. I’d love to include more in this video because there were a lot of bril­liant, touch­ing, inti­mate moments dur­ing the inter­view, but it’s Mike’s project and it would­n’t be right to reveal the con­cept to the world before he did.

When the shoot­ing was done for the day, some­thing which took sev­er­al hours and left us thor­ough­ly exhaust­ed, we took the night off for food and more pho­tog­ra­phy.

Cockburns haggis

Cockburns hag­gis with clap­shot (pota­toes mashed with swede turnips and chives) and onion gravy. I could­n’t pos­si­bly resist order­ing hag­gis while in Scotland. It has a taste sim­i­lar to ground beef, only with a much rich­er taste. Eating this gave me the meat sweats.

moon

We rent­ed Canon’s EF 400mm f/2.8 L IS lens to film parts of the doc­u­men­tary, which meant we could also get some nice moon shots too at such a focal length. This lens is so big, the case has wheels.

100% crop.

fireworks

I want­ed to see if I could get a few shots of a tiny vil­lage across the water, and it turns out they hap­pened to be set­ting off fire­works at that exact moment. I did­n’t even real­ize this until I looked back on the pho­tos on my dis­play. It was much too dark to see with the naked eye, and only showed up when I left the shut­ter open for 25 sec­onds.

Europe 2010 travel diaries