One day, while Stark and I were walking back to the apartment, we cut through an alley that is the dumping ground for all the discarded furniture, old bathroom fixtures, and rejected home furnishings from the many surrounding bulidings. Placed right on top of a pile of broken dresser drawers was a pair of old electric typewriters. They were missing the plastic shells that should have been covering their inner workings, and Stark and I found ourselves engrossed by the tiny gears and springs. We took some photos and then absonded with the golf ball type elements.
Last year I found a group on Flickr that was called 365 Days. The idea was to sign up and post a self-portrait of yourself to the group every day for a year. I tried to complete the challenge, but I only made it a few months before I started feeling guilty of rampant narcissism. I also ran out of ideas for photos. After self-portraits at the dentist, on the train, at work, and watching TV, I decided to move on. These are a few examples from the project.
After finding a disintegrating paper bag full of hundreds of old photos in my parents’ basement, I felt inspired to try my hand at digital photo restoration. My grandfather had taken to creating photo albums by haphazardly stapling decades worth of photos into spiral notebooks. I resolved to undo some of the damage he had done. My original goal was to restore a photo of my grandmother as a teenager as a gift to my mother, but the process became addictive.
All photos were scanned and then edited in Photoshop. I was using my father’s scanner at the time, and it couldn’t handle higher resolutions, so I didn’t get the detail I would have liked. I would love to get a new scanner and try again.
Recently I received a Holga camera as a gift. I had grown so accustomed to shooting digital photos that it was almost disorienting to return to film. The photographs of sheep were on the very first roll of film I shot with the Holga. I accidentally advanced the film too far, leading to the strange dividing lines on the photos. The second set of photos were shot from my balcony at night, using a tripod.
During the summer of 2007, my friend and I took a road trip across North America. She was going to be going to the University of British Columbia in the Fall and needed to move her stuff to Canada. I volunteered to help her drive there. We left Brooklyn, drove across the States on I-80, put her stuff into storage in Vancouver, and then drove down the West Coast, ending in Oakland, California.
I shot a huge number of videos and photographs on our trip. This was my first attempt to pare that massive amount of material down into one short movie. It was shot using a Canon Powershot SD-800, edited in iMovie HD 6, and compressed for YouTube using Final Cut Studio’s Compressor.
Higher resolution file available for download upon request.
Music: “Roadrunner,” performed by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
A selection of photographs I took in the Annex, Toronto. A friend was working on a proposal for a movie about the gentrification of the neighborhood. He wanted to focus on an old church that was being converted into condominiums and asked me to accompany him on a walk around the neighborhood, taking photos to use as visual aids in his presentation. These are some of the photos I took of the condo showroom inside the church. All photos were shot with a Canon Digital Rebel XT.
This is a movie I made of saints, angels, and various lawn ornamentation that can be found on lawns in Marine Park, Brooklyn. I love religious iconography and so I always found the Catholic lawn statues that litter the grass in yards all across New York City to be wonderful. I grew quite spoiled by New York and thus am always a bit surprised when I arrive in a city where everyone hasn’t bought their own personal Virgin Mary and built increasingly ornate shrines for her. I took these photos with my Digital Rebel and made them into a slide show with iMovie ‘08.
Higher resolution file available for download upon request.
Music: “Plastic Jesus,” performed by Jello Biafra And Mojo Nixon
A selection of photographs I’ve taken in Europe. I studied abroad in Florence during a semester of my Junior year at NYU. After the semester was over, I spent an additional three weeks backpacking across Eastern Europe with a friend. It was during this time in Europe that I first became passionate about photography. My parents had gotten me a 4 megapixel point and shoot that came with a copy of Photoshop Elements, and I ended up shooting thousands of photos. Now I wish I had been in Europe with a better camera and more experience, but there are still some photos from the trip that I love to this day.
All photos shot with a Konica Digital Revio KD-400Z.
A selection of photographs I’ve taken at Coney Island, Brooklyn. Coney Island is one of my favorite places in the world. I have so many memories from there - working at the New York Aquarium, riding the Cyclone, trying to grab a ring from the carousel playing “Shoot the Freak.” Ever since I heard the redevelopment plans for the amusement area, I’ve tried to make as many trips there to document my memories of Coney Island as well as I can.
All photos shot with a Digital Rebel XT and edited in Photoshop. “Sideshows by the Seashore” and “Eric and MIchael” were captured using a LensBaby 2.0.
This was the very first movie I made. I had just gotten a new camera that I planned to use to document my upcoming road trip. I wanted to practice making a movie to get the idea of the kinds of shots I would need and how it would come together in iMovie. My friends were planning a trip to Coney Island as a birthday party, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to make a short movie.
The footage was shot with a Canon Powershot SD-800 and edited with iMovie HD 6. Unfortunately, the master was lost in a hard drive crash, so the compressed version for YouTube is less than fantastic.
Higher resolution file available for download upon request.
Music: “Cumbia En Do Menor” by Lito Barrientos y Su Orquesta
