Jim Joe Has A Posse

I've always been fascinated with bits of graffiti left around the city by street artists, and recently I've been seeing a lot of pieces by Jim Joe downtown. A lot of people see things like this and just see something illegal and defacing, both of which are true.

It is illegal, at least most of the time; I'm not sure on the legality of writing on a junky air conditioner (pretty sure it falls somewhere between "who the fuck cares?" and "waste of resources!" in the grand scheme of things). Jim Prigoff, who writes a lot about graffiti, doesn't like using the terms 'legal' and 'illegal', instead preferring 'with permission' and 'without permission'. That's an interesting way of looking at it, that there is some art which exists because other people want it there, and some that exists because only the author wants it there. Some of it is collaborative between owners of space and creators; but the vast majority of it is a statement solely by the artist, they are forcing the change to the space themselves.

Jim Joe's stuff is definitely a forceful statement; he prefers very public and visible places to place his work. The works presence in a space is as important as the statement that might be written.

The second argument, that it defaces spaces, is also true. It removes the image that was put forth by architects, designers and other original creators and replaces it with one altered by the artist. Sometimes it's a complex illustration put on an otherwise blank and featureless wall. Other times it's simply a name or a phrase placed obviously on something we see everyday, as in the case of "Jim Joe" on a postbox.

Because a lot of Jim Joe tags are in such public/temporary spaces (like scaffolding), they quickly get cleaned up or painted over. This means that a lot of his work exists for maybe a few days, maybe weeks if it's in a hard to get to spot. Most of his work will exist directly in the minds of people who see it, and in pictures taken during the window where it still exists. Something about the impermanence of it is attractive, especially in an age where we like to catalog and document everything. The idea of graffiti art as 'an event' is interesting.

Will be photographing downtown tomorrow, mostly people for an up-coming post but I'll definitely be keeping my eyes peeled for Jim Joe.

The House of the Setting Sun

Took shots yesterday of probably the most peculiar sun-related phenomena in Manhattan, where the setting sun lines up perpendicularly with the street grid. Sunsets are always pretty gorgeous times to take pictures, but this event in particular is pretty special because you can view it setting over Jersey and it's framed perfectly by tall buildings.

Our little group set up around Herald Square looking down 33rd St., which gave a pretty cool perspective because of the pedestrian walkway that took over that section of Broadway this past year. Theres a little island that looks straight down the grid that makes it look like you're in the middle of the street, even though you're perfectly safe from cars.

As 8 o'clock rolled around a big group of photographers, amateur and pro alike, started to congregate around us. Mike had already set up by this point as you can see in the above picture (taken by my indispensable assistant Alia). He took an eight minute long exposure of the whole event with his neutral density filter on, which looked pretty sweet in camera when it finished processing. I'm sure he'll make it look even sweeter in post and put it up somewhere soon.

My favorite pictures from the actual moment of the sunset don't seem to be of the sun itself setting, they're more the ones where pedestrians blocked the sun itself and got this very cool silhouette and rim light on them. One guy in particular stopped during a light right in the middle of the street and began dancing in front of the sun, which yielded some really nice frames.

All in all it was a great day. Great shooting, great company, and later great artichoke pizza. Can't wait to get another crack at shooting this on July 11th as well. Because the street grid isn't oriented perfectly East-West, it happens twice in periods roughly equal in time from the solstice. Should be fun!

35mm Cooking Theater: Fig and Ginger Ribs

Earlier in the week aomeone pointed me over to a lovely food blog called The Hungry Mouse, which is full of wonderful things to do to meat (and some nice cakes I'm gonna try to). I decided to take advantage of a weekend my mom was away to cook up something nice for my dad and I.

I took this recipe for these fig and ginger ribs and decided to have a go. It's really simple; slather some pork in a disgusting-looking-but-wonderful-smelling mixture of fig preserves, ginger, salt and cider and apply heat!

They were really good on top of a parsnip and potato mash, which was also inspired by Ms. Mouse. The succulent pork flavors were really balanced with the caramelized fig-ness, and the ginger provided a nice contrast-y hot note. This was my first time cooking any really big meat dish and there was a bit of pressure because I was cooking for just my dad, who's a guy that knows a lot of things about cooking meat. But it all turned out really great! This might be the start of a series of posts about ribs and roasts and other protein-themed things.

I think this recipe could also work well with beef ribs, but with a stronger marinade; maybe something with a soy base for the liquid, so the fig is almost a back note. And then you could reduce the marinating liquid with the drippings and make a pretty kickin' sauce.

Magnolia

After the trip to the park on Saturday I met up with the lovely Magnolia Song to do a shoot at St. John's University. It was a pretty overcast day, so we decided to use the fourth floor of D'Angelo as our location. It has a very long hallway, a newly painted white wall and rows of GIGANTIC windows. It's basically a dream location for doing headshots outside of a studio, and it's never busy except if there are school functions going on.

This was what the ambient looked like when we got there. Really a great quality to the light coming in through the big windows on the left, so all we wanted to do was even out the exposure by placing a big light source to the right. Chose to go with the big softbox since it's pretty soft while still having a specular quality, which gives some subtle contrast to the light on her face.

Magnolia was completely natural in front of the camera, varying her pose just a little bit but enough to make each shot feel unique. The big light sources we were using allowed us to play around with poses and positioning really freely. By just moving to the window, we shifted from having the softbox filling in shadows to having it provide a rim light which made the shots have a fashion-y feel.

Great shoot. Great model. Great day!

Green With Envy

It has been a while, hasn't it? Very busy two weeks producing pictures for the Torch and writing very long and complicated papers. I've still got quite a bit of work to finish before the year ends, but I really can't complain. It's all been pretty exciting!

I got a little reprieve from all the hurry of deadlines and citations last Saturday though. Spent the first half of the day traipsing around Central Park with Dr. Frank Cantelmo, his daughter and the one other person from my class who was willing and able to come on a weekend morning. Our little group was lucky to have Sgt. Sunny Corrao showing us around all the various areas of the park. We also picked up two other people along the way: a young couple from Pittsburgh that were in town for just the day.

In spite of the lackluster showing we had a blast and got to cover a pretty large swath of the park including some bits that are usually off limits, like the Hallett Nature Sanctuary. It was a pretty small part of the trip, but I think I got some of the best pictures there just because it's so different from the surrounding area of the park. Nestled right at the bottom of the park near the Pond, you'd never guess that such a beautiful little glade was just a few yards away.

The cool bit about the Hallett Sanctuary is that it's mostly undisturbed; the only time any fauna are removed is when it interrupts a small path that runs through the area. The entire place feels much more real than the other highly preened parts of Central Park, with fallen trees around the place in various states of decay and wild flowers blooming in patches.

As we moved up north through the rest of the park we began rambling through what is appropriately called The Ramble! A criss-crossing maze of rough paths, it's really easy to get lost there - and we likely would have had we not had Sunny guiding us. On our trip down the maze we happened upon a few trees that were totally covered in these very small white mushrooms. Sunny told us they were called turkey-tails, and that if we were ever lost and hungry in the forest they were actually quite edible (as long as they had a porous underside).

Dr. Cantelmo was pretty elated at this discovery and proceeded to eat a couple before we finished up our tour at Belvedere Castle. The whole trip was a lot of fun, and gave me an opportunity to take pictures of things I normally wouldn't think to like pine trees and rock formations.

Graaaaaaaaa-ckle

A lots happened in the past few weeks. Became Assistant Photo Editor at the Torch (St. John's Uni newspaper), which basically means I get to think of picture ideas to match stories. Sorta like an art director kind of deal mixed in with some actual editing. It's a blast, and it's really pretty challenging. Working parts of the brain that I've worked before personally, but now with the pressure of a deadline and the knowledge that what I do will be published.

Also, there is the whole 'working for an hour on layouts/ideas that will never be seen by anyone' side of it, which is pretty deflating. But I'm getting off topic; this post is supposed to be about a bird!

The above picture was taken at Central Park last Thursday after three long days of rain. Hundreds of birds were out and about, happy to be able to eat and enjoying the warmth. This bird was following Jaclyn, Pauline and I around the path, looking curiously at us while still keeping his distance. I tried to get low and stay small as I inched closer but as soon as I did he would get skittish and trot away. Some of the ground shots came out alright, but it's this one on the branch that I really like; you can see his eye really clearly and that lovely iridescence on his wing.

Also shot a few frames of Pauline as the sun was setting. We were wandering through the park and came to a bridge with these lovely yellow vine flowers that had just bloomed. They were really pretty with the sunset light hitting them, so I decided to use them as a backdrop by just lowering myself a few inches and looking up at Pauline. This picture confirms my theory that this girl just can't look bad during a sunset.

Till next time.

Mathemagician

Took pictures of the lovely and extremely smart Sarah Nelson for a story on women in mathematics that ran last week in the Torch (full article here). I already knew Sarah pretty well and we'd talked about taking pictures before, so it was pretty easy to approach her for this series.

Had an absolute blast setting up and doing the shooting, too. I had a clear image in my head beforehand of her lit by a big key and the blackboard with writing on it being her background. Easy to understand and pretty easy to execute, and gets the idea across. Total shooting time was maybe 40 minutes to an hour from setup to packing up.

In hindsight I'd like to have had a reflector to fill in some of the shadows on Sarah a little bit and separate her a little. But that's a minor complaint on what was a really fun shoot to do.