i have looked like this for two thousand, eight hundred and one days. after thursday, i’ll look different than i ever have before.

bill foreman, “san diego”, march 7th, 2010 from Max S. Gerber on Vimeo.

bill foreman writes some of the best songs you’ll ever hear. heartbreaking, complex, layered and soulful songs. i was lucky enough to get the chance to record one of them when he was in town a few months back, crashing on my couch for the night while attending a teaching conference.

click the video above to hear bill sing his tune, “san diego”.

visit bill here. he deserves your time, your money and your respect.

thanks, bill.

last week kim and tashena visited me. tashena lives in san diego now, where she takes amazingly lovely, ethereal and poetic pictures. kim was visiting from tucson.

kim is micah’s father. tashena is micah’s sister.

it’s hard to believe it’s been almost ten years since the last time i saw micah, almost ten years since he died. it suddenly struck me that micah would’ve been twenty-one years old this past summer. somehow this realization hit me kind of hard. maybe it’s the fact that we’re passing into a new decade in a couple of weeks, maybe just a realization that all these kids don’t stay kids for very long. in my head micah will forever be 11 years old, the only age at which i knew him. i wonder what he’s like in the memories of tashena and kim?

photographing micah was one of the first times i remember thinking to myself that a picture i took could actually be good for something, could actually mean more than it seemed. in the picture that kim is holding above i remember being especially struck by this. micah was home from school that day with a respiratory infection. at the time this photo was taken it was just micah and me in the house. he was sleeping most of the time, and i remember listening to the sound of his breathing, which was more deliberate and more labored than anything i had ever heard before. every so often he’d wake up and we’d talk for a bit, or take a few pictures, and then he would doze off again.

micah passed away on april 16th of 2000. he was always the coolest guy in the room.

since you’re reading a photographer’s blog there’s a good chance you already know who jonathan saunders is. if you don’t, look here. jonathan is in town for a rare LA visit, crashing on my couch a couple nights. jonathan being in LA means shooting shotguns (well, at least for him and bennett, not for me. i just watch and say things like, “yup, you hit that one, too”).

being freelance used to be kind of isolating. i think i went ten years without knowing another photographer. that’s what i get for not going to photo school. before we all got so digital you used to just go to the magazine’s offices to drop off your film or your portfolio, you’d see the photo editor or the art director or maybe just the receptionist and that’s it. i can’t remember hardly ever running into another photographer at a magazine office. now it seems the network of photo blogs have changed that a bit and fostered some sort of community. sure, we’re all likely still paranoid and competitive and neurotic, but at least we’re more aware of each other than we used to be. i think that’s a good thing.

i became aware of jonathan through bigshotstock and through archibald and eventually through some commiseration and the acknowledgement of mutual miseries we became friendly. friendly enough for him to crash on my couch and for me to feel reasonably secure being around him and a loaded weapon. maybe i should rethink that last part? anyway, it’s good to have him in town, marveling at what life is like outside of new york city. (“you have a yard and a garage!”, “square footage!” – mostly he’s impressed that i seem to be within easy driving distance of two shooting ranges, though i never really considered that a particular benefit.)

even more importantly, we’re going to the price is right on tuesday, because it’s the silliest most frivolous thing either of us has done in months. and we want to play plinko. jonathan saunders, come on down!

do yourself a favor and take a look at jonathan’s pictures. the guy is a true artist, someone who’s continually making pictures just because he can’t imagine not doing so. thanks for stopping by, jonathan.

i met dana in the summer of 2001, at a party at peter gilstrap’s house. it was a fluke that i was even at this party, i really try to avoid parties as much as i can. when i do have to go to a party i generally stand in the corner and read the person’s books, or stand in the kitchen and try to help cook something. anything to avoid talking to the inebriated. anyway, dana was standing in the kitchen, too. at the time dana worked as the associate art director of the LA weekly. i gave him my card, and he passed it along to debra, the photo editor. through debra, i met bill, and through bill i met dave. so, peter, dana, debra, bill and dave. five good, solid, talented, smart people. from one party. i guess it sometimes pays to go to parties.

dana then became the art director of LA citybeat, which just went belly up a couple weeks ago, sadly. they paid horribly and  had a bad habit of assigning things at 5pm on a friday that were due on the following monday. honestly, sometimes we’d just avoid answering the phone late on a friday afternoon so our weekend wouldn’t be ruined. all that being said, i really enjoyed working for citybeat – the subjects were often great, and dana’s layouts were always stellar. i started my career working for alt-newsweeklies, they’ve always been good to me, and i’ve always appreciated the experience.

dana was kind enough to make me a groomsman at his wedding a couple years ago, and it wasn’t even a trick to get me to take pictures. that’s the mark of a decent guy, right there. dana also used to live with a possum. or, near a possum. he also, at one point, had a pot bellied pig named “bacon”, but sadly that was in a different state.

dana was smart and got out of citybeat before the publishing trouble really hit. he decided he wanted to really learn how to draw, even though by anyone’s estimation he was already a tremendous illustrator. so he enrolled in art center, and now he’s working his ass off, beating the pants off the young kids there who think they’re hot shit. shhh, dana. don’t tell anyone you’re an art director.

dana was over at my house printing his final project for school on my printer. despite what the picture below looks like, he and milo really got along famously. no milo was injured in the making of these photographs.

see dana’s stuff here.

dana’s good people. you should all hire him to illustrate and design things. except when you should be hiring a photographer, that is. then you should call me.

corporal bennett has the misfortune of living in orange county, which means last weekend in between obligations in the real southern california (i.e., LA county) he stopped by my place to kill time. he was coming from a marine wedding (not his own) and going to shoot an event later in the evening in beverly hills. the result: a snazzy suit. i voted for the black tie, paul decided a “splash of color” was necessary and went with red. paul was right. the glasses belong to milton sobel, wherever he may be.

my mother hates nearly every picture i take of her, but through some maternal grace still allows me to take them. i think if tommy wasn’t here at the same time she never would’ve gone for it. it’s hard to refuse when you have an audience, even for the camera shy.

i first met tommy almost fifteen years ago. i used to do sound for the bands that came to play at the school (yes, i was that geek), and geggy tah was a staple in town. tommy lived nearby in pomona. he was one of the first people to give me any credit as a photographer, before i even really knew i was one myself. i took some awful publicity photos for them, not really knowing how to do anything at all. one day in november of 1995 tommy showed up at the school’s darkroom with gina, the band’s boston terrier mascot, and we managed to take a picture that was probably my first real successful image. it got put on t-shirts, stickers and greeting cards. every six months for the past 13 years i’ve gotten a (small) residual check from sales of the greeting card, though i’ve only seen it in a store one time.

tommy has more energy and enthusiasm and optimism than any other ten people i know. i’ve always been glad for this influence in my life, since these sorts of impulses are not something i generally have when left to my own devices. tommy dances the night away. he takes spontaneous trips to strange places. he walks up and down stairs on his hands. he can do a standing backflip. he breaks into hotel swimming pools, getting stopped by security guards even though he’s a full grown man. from his porch in pomona you can see fireworks at the LA county fair. he can play any instrument without thinking much. he’s just one of those naturally musical sorts of people. there are those who are virtuosos on a particular instrument, and then there are those people who almost are music themselves, and anything around them becomes an instrument. that’s tommy.

tommy must be mellowing because for a long time it was very difficult to take a picture of him. he had so much energy, so many ideas, moved so fast, that any still frame didn’t seem to really look like him. and it was infuriating because his ideas would go so fast that by the time i set up for one of them he’d already be on to the next one. at one point the only thing that made any sense was to have him be a blur. he seems somewhat more comfortable being static now than before, and i take that as a good sign. we’re all growing up, i guess.

mark’s been one of my dearest friends since we lived in the same suite in college, nearly fifteen years ago. true, it took a while to warm up to the guy as the first thing he ever said to me wasn’t “hello”, but rather “i heard you’re loud. you better not make too much noise.” i think the 300 watt bass amp made him nervous at that point, but i’m much quieter now. tonight at chipotle the employees asked if we were brothers, despite my inability to grow as professorial a beard. i rely on mark to give me the advice i don’t really want, and i know he eventually forgives me for ignoring a lot of it. mark occasionally has the good sense to point out that the photo business is ridiculous. i couldn’t agree more. mark has also not signed a model release for this and is related directly to lawyers. i take chances here. hopefully the exposure here will help get him his ideal job as an “idea man”. no one is better qualified.