Posts in category "Random"

Rockstar Jeff

Thumbnail: Muted colours
Thumbnail: Sun shot
Thumbnail: Soft focus
Thumbnail: The chest tattoo
Thumbnail: Two star tattoos
Thumbnail: Blackness

I asked Rockstar Jeff, an old source of envy, if I could take a few por­traits of him.

Jeff’s very pho­to­genic, but he does­n’t agree. I’m 75% prep and 25% bad-ass, where­as he’s 75% bad-ass and 25% prep. Sometimes we joke about trad­ing styles because there’s a mix in each of us, and we always like where the oth­er ones goes with it. The truth of the mat­ter is that I could nev­er pull off his style. Anyone can do prep, but he’s got the right face, the right clothes, the right atti­tude for hard­core.

This was his hit sin­gle.

He’s the gui­tarist and scream­er. The band broke up, but he’s cur­rent­ly explor­ing oth­er musi­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties. It’s inter­est­ing to hear his oth­er projects; he’s always the front­man, but he adjusts his singing style to the band while adding his own edge.

Tattoos:

Stars on wrist

This was a mutu­al tat­too done with a friend (his “right hand” per­son), which is why there are two of them. His friend has the same tat­toos on her wrist.

Crows on right arm

As the crow is the uni­ver­sal sym­bol of bad luck, Jeff got each crow to remind him of a hard time in his life. Each one of them sig­ni­fy a moment. There’s one red one with a nail going through it, as a sym­bol that his bad luck is hope­ful­ly behind him (but he says it isn’t yet).

Daisy on right arm

The daisy is his mom’s flower. It’s not real­ly wilt­ed or bro­ken (which is what I thought at first), it’s sim­ply miss­ing petals. He got this at a time when he was real­ly angry at her, which is why it’s red. He had drawn two years ear­li­er, but only decid­ed to get it inked when she kicked him out of the house, to remind him of the hard love of fam­i­ly.

Stars on elbows

There’s actu­al­ly one larg­er star on each elbow, with the ini­tials of peo­ple com­ing out of them. They’re the first tat­toos he ever got, to remind him of the tough lessons that he’s gone through with or from these peo­ple.

Heart on chest

This one was inspired by his mom. He was mak­ing mak­ing some fool­ish deci­sions around 18, and his mom remind­ed him that he should be hap­py with him­self when he looks in the mir­ror, that there should be no hid­ing from the truth, and he should always be true to him­self.

The word “truth” is sur­round­ed by peri­ods to empha­size that it’s a strong fact in itself. The word “self” does­n’t start with a peri­od because the heart is a part of the sen­tence.

The only change he would make is to have it drawn back­wards, so he could read it when he looks in the mir­ror.

Letting Go of Bronwen

Bronwen start­ed dat­ing anoth­er guy.

It’s fun­ny, my first reac­tion is to think anoth­er guy, as if we’re still dat­ing our­selves. I sup­pose our rela­tion­ship has nev­er been con­ven­tion­al, but that’s what makes it so spe­cial. We still spend our week­ends togeth­er. We still talk on the phone for hours with­out actu­al­ly talk­ing. We’re close enough that I’m com­plete­ly com­fort­able around her, enough for me to let my guard to go down.

It’s made me real­ize how pro­tec­tive I still am of her, how upset I’ll be if she gets hurt. I think of all the things I could have done bet­ter, and hope this guy can treat her bet­ter than I did.

I have all these mixed feel­ings about it though. I’m wor­ried that I may lose my friend, but I’m glad there’s some­one to make her hap­py. In the end, I know I can’t be self­ish. Letting go of her the first time was hard enough.

Doing it again does­n’t make it any eas­i­er.

At the Bike Park with Tyler

Thumbnail: Classic Tyler
Thumbnail: Park rule signboard
Thumbnail: Ramp
Thumbnail: Shadows
Thumbnail: Concrete island
Thumbnail: Meeting the kids
Thumbnail: Talking
Thumbnail: On one wheel
Thumbnail: Wide shot

Tyler and I decid­ed to com­bine our hob­bies (bik­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy respec­tive­ly), so we head­ed to the local skate and bike park after work. It’s amaz­ing to see him on his bike. It’s a part of him, an exten­sion of his body. I got a ride home while he rode his bike, and even though we left at the same time he beat me there. He was pret­ty burned out that day, due to it being his first time out this year, he still man­aged the ener­gy for some great shots.

At the park, we met these 15-years-old kids. As Tyler noticed, you can tell a lot from some­one from the bike they ride. The kid with the most skills (black shirt and jeans) had a used bike, some­thing he put togeth­er him­self. The oth­er two kids had shiny new bikes with hel­mets. Tyler said it revealed how their par­ents were sup­port­ive of their hob­by, but weren’t as hard­core in their hearts.

The great thing about Tyler is that he had no qualms about ask­ing these kids, ten years his junior, how to do cer­tain tricks. He has such a con­fi­dence that he was­n’t embar­rassed about it at all.

Thumbnail: To the dirt
Thumbnail: Private property
Thumbnail: The dirt park
Thumbnail: The starting grill
Thumbnail: On the hill
Thumbnail: The 360 Kid
Thumbnail: More image than substance
Thumbnail: Tyler with tongue out
Thumbnail: Comparing bikes

The ses­sion was an exer­cise in motion pho­tog­ra­phy. It’s very dif­fer­ent from dif­fer­ent what my usu­al por­traits and still shots. Being placed in such a sit­u­a­tion forced me to learn how to use AF Servo, which turned out to be more use­ful than I could have imag­ined.

The con­cept of motion is so sub­tle. You stop a frame in motion, and from look­ing at the bike you can’t tell which direc­tion they’re going. It’s the mus­cles, the expres­sions on their faces, the direc­tion of con­cen­tra­tion that tell you what a bik­er is try­ing to do.

Embracing My Emotional Reactions

I laugh when I’m ner­vous. Especially around girls I’m attract­ed to — total gig­gle­fest. I also laugh uncon­trol­lably around peo­ple I meet for the first time. People low­er their guard when there’s laugh­ter, and I sus­pect my mind sub­con­scious­ly finds humour in every­thing to put peo­ple at ease around me.

Around peo­ple I hate, I’m dead silent. That’s how you know I don’t like you: if I don’t talk. The mere pres­ence of one of these peo­ple forces me to ful­ly con­cen­trate on not drilling a 4‑inch hole in my tem­ple with a cord­less DeWalt.

Pat’s dif­fer­ent. He told me once that if you ever see him shake his head and shrug his shoul­ders, you’re in his black­list. In an act of faith, he’ll give every­one respect and will even go so far as to stab you in the front, but he gives up if you cross his line of ethics. He’ll nev­er be involved with any­thing relat­ed to you after that. It’s not that he hates these peo­ple, like me, he los­es all inter­est. This is prob­a­bly even worse than my reac­tion which, because his is cold. You mean noth­ing to him. I try to let go as well, but I can’t. In the back of my head I cling to the hope that these peo­ple can change. Sometimes I also won­der if these peo­ple ever lis­ten to them­selves and can under­stand exact­ly why I hate them, because it’s so obvi­ous to me.

I also cry in emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions. It does­n’t have to be any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly sad or hap­py, just a time when emo­tions are high. Intense sports games, Tim Horton’s com­mer­cials, some­times just because some­one else is cry­ing. I can hide it pret­ty well though; peo­ple don’t under­stand if you start cry­ing in a seem­ing­ly innocu­ous sit­u­a­tion.

As frus­trat­ing as these emo­tion­al reac­tions can be, I know they make me who I am.

I used to try des­per­ate­ly to remain cere­bral and log­i­cal — like Pat — but my emo­tions would always get the bet­ter of me. Now I’ve learned to embrace them. I could only do this after accept­ing myself and becom­ing con­tent with who I am. They give me some­thing Pat does­n’t have: intense inspi­ra­tion. That rush, when your stom­ach churns, when your head is burns, when you heart flut­ters.

They’re a part of me, and they make me who I am.