home from the conference in florida – a success, i think – and scrambling through a busy week. another busy week to follow after this one. there’s much to update here but i’ve been distracted by offline things, scheduling shoots and logistical matters. soon, though, i promise. in the meantime, this was the view in the aisle across from my seat flying back to orlando. in a layover in the phoenix airport i got to partake of the pleasures of a tamale burrito (a tamale inside of a burrito? mexico’s answer to the turducken) which, aside from being rather starchy, wasn’t half bad. there are certainly worse things to eat in airports.

anyway, my sincerest thanks to everyone at the children’s hospital of philadelphia who made my experience at the conference so pleasant. i gave the final plenary talk on the final night of the conference to a really big room. kinda nerve wracking, but it seemed well received. (thanks gil, tina and natasha! and thanks to the good folks at it’s my heart for letting me commandeer the table next to them to sell and sign books.)

i was in san francisco a couple months back for amy mac’s wedding, and made sure to get there a couple days early to hang out. russ and i went to high school together, he’s the brains behind wangston’s law, and he’s always got a bead on the good eats in any place you can think of. on this day it was a moveable feast, meaning the food was moving and so were we. first stop was a taco truck that served not tacos but french food. russ is braver than i am and he ate frogs legs and an escargot “popsicle” (essentially a snail covered in puff pastry, on a stick). next was the knockout bar (pictured above, with the greatest out-of-context use of neon i’ve ever seen) where two guys had set up a slow cooker and griddle and were serving a damn good pulled pork sandwich. apparently they show up in different places every day, and twitter their locations (a la kogi). lastly we tried to chase down the rumor of another truck serving – of all things – creme brulee. it was supposed to be in some park, and we were following it on twitter but found that it had left just moments before we arrived. ah well. next it was over to oakland for korean fried chicken. a new one for me.

i can never really complain about any days where shredded pork and BBQ sauce are involved. they make lipitor for a reason.

thanks for the tour, russ. and the free t-shirt.

at the end of march i went to san francisco to be a speaker at the CASE editor’s conference. i hadn’t been to san francisco for a long while, except for a couple times where i’d have a shoot there, fly up to oakland in the morning, drive straight to the location, do the job, and drive straight back to the airport. that hardly qualifies as a visit.

this time it was nice to take a few days for myself in the city after my speaking duties were done. i got to have dinner at chez panisse, which satisfied my deep-rooted inner food nerd. i was gratified to see that chez panisse is built like a california craftsman house, so it felt very much like home to me. i live in pasadena, where you can’t throw a rock without hitting a craftsman house. on top of that i got to finally meet pam fogg and matt jennings from middlebury. they’ve been hiring me for a long time now, and have been great supporters over the years. i rarely get to actually meet the people i work for in person. usually they find that i’m much shorter in real life.

in addition to all that i got to hang out with amy macwilliamson, who i’ve long maintained is one of the best people on earth. this is backed up by hard evidence and the testimony of countless others, and the plain fact that she’s simply a kick ass photographer. amy takes better pictures in bright sun than anyone i know. try it. grab yourself a camera, go outside in the middle of the day and try to take some portraits. then go inside and look at them. notice how utterly crappy they are. then go look at amy’s pictures. then feel bad for yourself.

amy has a nice house in a neighborhood in san francisco i forget the name of. she has a cool funky office (see above), and a garden where edible things grow and are cultivated. i can never seem to keep plants alive, though i really like the idea of having fruit trees. peaches maybe, or avocados. amy’s also got a fiance named scott, who i got to meet for the first time. i’ve heard so much about scott over the years, i can’t believe i hadn’t met him before. they’re getting married in less than a month, so i have another excuse to go visit.

in a two-for-one special, amy happens to live over the fence from my old buddy matt. matt was the first person i met at college, actually. i haven’t seen matt in ages, either, since he’s a bigtime rockstar and never home. luckily, though, the 28th of march was matt’s birthday and he happened to get back from tour the night before, so when i was poking around in amy’s garden admiring the foliage i looked up to find matt yelling at me from over the fence. we didn’t have much time to visit but we all hung out in matt’s kitchen for a few minutes before i had to fly home. as usual with matt, the conversation was about dissatisfaction and 80s hair bands. though not about dissatisfaction with 80s hair bands, because we all have a deep and abiding appreciation of such things.

happy birthday, mattie. try to get some rest.

i met vic one day by accident. i was taking pictures at the research lab where she works, it was the summer, it was hot, and i was lugging my gear around by myself. she was standing outside smoking a cigarette. i had a long list of subjects i was supposed to shoot that week, but i forgot all about them. she wasn’t on my list. i started moving equipment slower, hoping to strike up a conversation. she said hello, and i said hello, and then – as i have many times since – i found myself speechless. so i did what dumb guys do, and smiled and tried not to trip over my own feet.

i’m glad to say that since then we’ve gotten past the initial awkwardness, and i’ve been lucky enough to get to know her quite well. she tells me about ordinary things in ways that makes them seem foreign and exciting and magical. she tells me about strange and incredible things in ways that make them seem comfortable and familiar and knowable. in one of the first conversations we had she told me about skinny dipping in bio-luminescent algae, and it took my brain 20 minutes to reset enough to form a coherent thought.

she does breast cancer research but prefers the word “tits”. she worked her ass off and suffered through the pettiness and discrimination of smaller minded people to earn a PhD. she cares deeply about her work, about the process of science and not only has great love for the grand discoveries of life but also for the small, microscopic daily trials and victories. she finds beauty on the cellular level. she shows me very small things i never knew existed, pictures that glow green and purple and bright. she explains technical things in a way that makes me want to know more and be smarter. she’s merciful to mice, patient with students, good to her friends, true to her family.

she puts words together in ways i’ve never thought of, gives magic to simple notions, lends simplicity and understanding to complexity, and makes me want to reread everything. vic kicks my ass so consistently at scrabble (in her non-native tongue, no less) that she’s sure i’m losing on purpose. sadly, i’m not.

she bakes fifty muffins at once, all different kinds. makes bread and truffles and exotic savory things. she’s undaunted. in baking, and in life, she measures carefully, kneads well, mixes thoroughly and licks the bowl clean when she’s done.

when kenny maestas was in his early twenties he was riding shotgun in a truck driven by a buddy of his. this buddy was agitated. he had just had a fight with his girlfriend. kenny was only trying to get a ride to work, but his buddy was driving erratically. the truck crashed. the friend walked away, mostly uninjured. kenny wasn’t so lucky. he was paralyzed, a quadriplegic. he can move his arms somewhat, enough to grip a pencil, and drive his (highly modified) van, where he controls the gas and brake with levers coming off the steering wheel.

now kenny manages the walmart in the small town of la junta, colorado. he works sixteen, seventeen hour days sometimes. he’s married and supports his wife and kid. he takes tremendous pride in being able to manage the store, and it’s a big operation, with several hundred people to oversee. wheeling around his house he points out things, saying “that’s from walmart.” and “that too, got that at walmart”. he remains remarkably calm when talking to his hyperactive two year old son, kristopher. kristopher begrudgingly sits for a couple pictures, mostly making silly faces and sticking his tongue out at his mom. like most shoots involving kids, kristopher’s parents obtain his minimal cooperation by promising to get him a toy at walmart when we’re done. “he’s a walmart baby”, says kenny.

when kristopher gets too rowdy cpl. bennett attempts to calm him down by playing with giant squirt guns. when paul sits kristopher down and starts teaching him how to disassemble an automatic weapon i have to stop and ask kenny “is this okay?” kristopher seems riveted. at least he stays quiet for a few minutes. thanks paul, for corrupting one more kid.

maggie produced the shoot, and she’s worth her weight in just about anything in the world. she also provided me with an opportunity to watch someone actually get out of getting a speeding ticket. i’m still not sure how she did it. it didn’t even seem like she was trying. i’m pretty sure hypnosis was involved.

everything was smooth except for the fact that we had the misfortune of being on US airways. never again. just before we left i noticed US airways was #1 on some list of the worst airlines to fly. they’ve started charging for everything. no beverage service. no free checked bags. paul and i spent a lot of time juggling things around to get all our bags under the 50 lb weight limit. we bought a 5-pack of t-shirts at kenny’s walmart and wrapped lenses in them. i had to trick them into checking a bag at the gate (which was free). i did this three times.

we raced to make the last flight out of colorado springs after the shoot, but our plane was coming from denver and apparently US airways can’t fly in the rain at all. things were delayed. then delayed further. it got to a point where we had no chance of making our connecting flight, but we opted anyway to go to phoenix for the night, just to get a little closer to home. however once in flight it seems there were thunderstorms in phoenix and we were rerouted to flagstaff. i mean, really, since when does it rain in phoenix in august? in flagstaff we sat on the tarmac for two and a half hours.

the flagstaff airport had already closed for the night and since there were no TSA agents there they couldn’t let anyone off the plane. this became problematic when people in the back of the plane started having trouble with the bathroom. there was no water in it, no soap, and the flush wasn’t working. the poor harried flight attendant tried to help a little bit by putting his own personal travel size bottle of purell in the bathroom, but it was an uphill battle. a girl sitting in the back of the plane threw up from the smell of the bathroom, and they let her sit on the steps of the plane. they wouldn’t let her down to the tarmac or let her use a bathroom inside the terminal. she was on her way to vegas to get married.

at one point the flight attendant was actually reading the employee manual to figure out what to do, and i even saw the pilots looking at a map trying to figure out where to go. luckily we were in the front of the plane so we got some air from the open door and the bathroom didn’t affect us.

the flight attendant kept getting on the PA and half-heartedly saying “we apologize for the inconvenience.”

as pissed as we were at the airline, i couldn’t help but think of kenny. i couldn’t help but think of kenny lying in the hospital after being in a car crash he had no responsibility for, and probably felt he shouldn’t even have been anywhere near. i thought of his buddy just walking away. i thought of how kenny told me that the first few years after the accident “drinking helped”. i wondered if anyone had apologized to kenny for the inconvenience he has to live with every single day of his life, just because of circumstance. just because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

i guess the moral of the story, like most morals, is to try your damnedest not to take little things for granted. that, and don’t fly US airways.

i just got back from a very stressful week in new york. stressful because of random scheduling difficulties, family pressures and the general feeling of unrest and unease that new york city causes me. i’m the only person i know who hates traveling. i’ve recently given up thinking that everyone else is wrong and i openly – if begrudgingly – acknowledge that i’m probably the odd man out here. but as a freelance photographer, never really knowing where the next job is coming from, or more importantly, when it’d be coming, my life is based largely around being available for my clients. all the time. at any time. one way i can do this is by staying put and not agreeing to be absent from my desk for any longer than absolutely necessary.

but some important things needed to be attended to out of town, and i’m all right with that. i kicked my cold just in time for my trip.  (just as a side note, the worst thing about having a heart problem at this stage in my life is that when i get sick i’m not supposed to take decongestants. that can make anyone miserable. i cheat and take half doses of nyquil. don’t tell my cardiologist. so far i’m okay. but for everyone else out there, don’t listen to me, do what the box says.)

amidst the general chaos of new york city i was able to finally meet jonathan saunders. i was stoked about this, as i’m a big fan of jonathan’s. jonathan lives in #1RN in hell’s kitchen, in an apartment that tim archibald accurately describes as something that should be “preserved in the smithsonian as the home of the undiluted photographer.” really, it’s an awesome apartment. kind of like a museum of photographic genius/obsessiveness. i’m jealous of the artfulness of the whole thing, and the dedication, but i’m happy with my nice house in pasadena. jonathan wants to escape new york, which i wholeheartedly support, and i hope he can figure out a way to do it happily.

jonathan happened to live around the corner from lucky’s famous burgers. i’ve determined that lucky’s is the only place in new york city that offers fountain sodas and free refills. he doesn’t drink coffee, i don’t drink alcohol, and i’m a big believer in the free-refill. that’s something that exists everywhere in los angeles, but for some reason (the general awfulness of the place) the only way to get a coke in NYC is in an 8 ounce bottle for $3. anyway, jonathan was nice enough to take time to meet up with me, and it was the least i could do to buy the guy a cheeseburger. i mean, hell, #1RN doesn’t even have a stove.

this was on april 1st, and i was hoping jonathan would decide to take my picture. unfortunately, before that happened i got whisked away by the cyclone that is my big sister. the next day, though, i was able to go back and become a part of jonathan’s series on people who visit him, with out you. i’m rarely happy to get my picture taken. i don’t think any photographer ever likes it. i’ve always said that those people who actually like having their picture taken often have other serious character flaws as well. but in this case it was an honor. even though i look weird. and jonathan was nice enough to let me turn the tables on him, albeit briefly. (see above and below).

briefly because april 2nd was a busy day. just a few hours later i taped a segment for the charlie rose show, promoting my book.  it was my first time on TV. it was a short segment, and i’m not sure when (or if) it will air. more on that later, as i find out. being on TV is a weird thing. i’m lucky in that i’m not the kind of person who gets nervous. i don’t have stage fright. i’m not nervous talking in front of groups of people, i don’t have a problem talking to strangers, or pretty girls, or pretty girls who are strangers. i guess i just figured a long time ago that however i am i’m just kind of stuck with it so i might as well not worry.

i’m also never particularly starstruck. i grew up in a showbiz family so i learned a long time ago that celebrities are just like normal people, except that nobody ever tells them that their neuroses are annoying everyone else in the room.

the charlie rose show is filmed in the bloomberg building next to bloomingdale’s. it’s a big glass and steel sort of place, and for a small potato such as me there didn’t seem to be a dressing room. i changed into my shirt and tie in a bathroom stall, and then was quickly whisked off to a makeup chair where a very nice woman named gina spray painted my face with an air compressor.  it’s a weird feeling. i’ve never worn makeup, partly because i’d like to think that nobody’s looking at me and partly because i’m a male. after the makeup they moved me quickly down a hallway and then into a big black room where all of a sudden i found myself sitting at a table across from charlie rose. that would’ve been a good time to get nervous, but instead i remember thinking “gee, i hope he doesn’t ask me any technical medical questions”. he kind of did, but i have no idea what i said. the whole unedited segment lasted just under seven minutes. it’ll probably be two or three minutes once they edit it, and hopefully i won’t still sound like an idiot. if there’s one thing i hate more than looking at my own face, it’d be listening to my own voice. TV seems like the worst of the worst. . . i’d have to look at my own face and listen to my own voice all at the same time. horrible. i remember sitting in the chair in the studio and thinking to myself,  “goddamn, i wish i wasn’t so short and so scrawny. oh well.”

it’s an odd thing to make something – this book – as a photographer and then all of a sudden be a spokesman for something entirely different when it comes out. my book mostly appeals to families dealing with their own CHD kids, and as a result i’m now finding myself in a position of being a voice for these kids in some way. i don’t mind this position, i’m kind of flattered and grateful, but i also hope i don’t screw it up or get any of the information wrong. just keeping my fingers crossed over here.

anyway, thanks again, jonathan, for the hospitality. and happy birthday, cadence.

last weekend i rode the LA subways for an afternoon. i rode from eastern pasadena (the gold line) to union station and then up to north hollywood (red line) and back. i’d never been on the subway in any city but new york before, so it was an interesting experience. the trains were (mostly) clean and spacious, certainly in comparison to NYC. i bought a day pass ($5), hopped on the train just down the street from my house, and then marveled at the fact that there were no turnstiles, and all day long nobody checked my ticket. apparently the LA subway works on the honor system. who knew there was any honor left in the world (of transit) anymore?

the assignment was just to photograph random people who were riding the trains/in the stations, and in doing these kinds of things i’m always amazed at just how gracious and agreeable people can be when confronted by a weird skinny dude with a camera. i ran into a lot of couples, parents with their kids, one buddhist monk, and a couple guys taking the train to visit their girlfriends in faraway places. also, i got to shoot with available light which i’m really getting more into these days.

still, part of the point of this blog (for me, not necessarily for you) is to inspire myself towards taking more pictures of things. that is, inanimate objects. from the first moment i started taking pictures there was never really any thought to what i would point the camera at. it was always people. or sometimes animals. things with eyes. i was only ever really interested in photographing things that could talk back to me. or get impatient, or vain, or shy, or angry, or say witty things, or could share some experience. and still, the best part of my job is being able to get small slices of the lives and experiences of a great many different kinds of people. i don’t think still-life shooters get that so much. but i could be wrong.

anyway. . . here are a couple shots from some of the miles traveled.

and while we’re on the subject of it. . i have one big gripe with las vegas. on my first trip to las vegas last month i specifically brought one quarter that i intended to use in a slot machine. i’m not much of a gambler, you can tell. i like the games, but not particularly the losing money part. slot machines were appealing only insofar as there was a tactile sort of quality to it – it’s satisfying to feed coins into a machine and to see moving parts whir around and hear the clink of the reward, should you actually win. also, winning at a slot machine has weight – coins are supposed to spill out, and you fill up a cheesy plastic cup with them, and it’s heavy and it’s noisy and you feel like you’ve done something.

imagine my surprise now, when i find that, carrying my quarter around the new york, new york casino, none of the machines actually accept coins anymore. it’s all paper money or special cards. there’s no more tactile feeling of dropping coins into a machine. there’s hardly any machine feeling at all – just electronic buttons and displays. i left without losing my quarter.

on my second trip to las vegas that week i spent exactly $2 on gambling. i put one dollar into a slot machine, and one dollar into a video poker machine, only to have my suspicions confirmed. this isn’t fun. now, i don’t have any problem with gambling. i have self-control, and i don’t have an addictive personality of any sort. so gambling isn’t ever going to get me in trouble. my gripe is this: these are supposed to be games and the truth is that they aren’t actually the least bit entertaining. i don’t mind losing my $2, but i’d like some entertainment value for that money. however, there wasn’t any.