Posts tagged with "food"

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

Happiness condensed

The weath­er’s been so hot late­ly that I’ve been eat­ing a tub of ice cream every three days. This is prob­a­bly why I’ve been try­ing to come up with new ways of con­sum­ing it. At one point, I added some choco­late wafer rolls, and real­ized you don’t even need a spoon because you can use the rolls to scoop up the ice cream.

It’s best to do this with a pre­mi­um brand like Häagen-Dazs, because they’re real­ly dense (less air is mixed in), so they stay firm for longer. That means you don’t have to eat the ice cream quick­ly before it melts…but if you lived alone and had no one to mind the slurp­ing, a wafer roll dou­bles as a straw too.

ice cream

 

This one is Caramel Cone Explosion, my favourite Häagen-Dazs flavour: caramel swirls and sug­ar cone cov­ered in Belgian milk choco­late with roast­ed almost pieces, in caramel ice cream.

I also recent­ly tried If I Had A Million Flavors by Ben & Jerry’s, which is described on the tub, “A Collision of Chocolate & Vanilla Ice Creams mixed with Chocolate-cov­ered tof­fee, White Chocolate Chunks, Peanut Butter Cups & Chocolate-Covered almonds”. Which is pure hedo­nism, real­ly.

Goodbye, St. Louis

Working hard and play­ing hard. It felt like vaca­tion even though I was down there for busi­ness, just because I end­ed up doing so much stuff packed into four nights. I did­n’t stop mov­ing once I touched down and end­ed up learn­ing so much, sim­ply by con­stant­ly being around the right peo­ple.

Goodbye, St. Louis. We’ll see each oth­er again soon enough.

Many, many, many more pic­tures under the cut.

Kissing on the pier

I’m not sure what the nature of their rela­tion­ship was. Both African-American girls, one clear­ly old­er than the oth­er, kiss­ing for sev­er­al moments.

Across the riv­er is Illinois.

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Please make me feel alive, again, again, again

Thumbnail: Jairus and Audra

It’s been an emo­tion­al time. I’m in anti-social mode, but I force myself to get out when the oppor­tu­ni­ty comes along.

One day, we hit up a din­er around noon. I wore my flip-flops, and cruised west with the wind numb­ing my skin. My stereo gets loud­er as I accel­er­ate, and it only made me dri­ve as fast as I could to see how loud I could push Wild Gardens. For a moment, it filled me with serene bliss, and that was enough, among the steel and pave­ment and sum­mer heat in spring, to give me hope.

It’s that feel­ing I’ve been crav­ing. To be the only liv­ing boy in New York.

Thumbnail: Avocado chicken sandwich

Audra tells me I smell nice when I haven’t left the house for days. Gives me the breath-steal­ing hugs. And the fact that she’s so sen­si­tive about cross­ing my bound­aries makes her the sweet­est red­head I know. It’s hard not to believe in myself when she believes in me so well.

Continue read­ing “Please make me feel alive, again, again, again”…