love that man.

on a grand lookout for inspiration. i have a big old graduation project coming up... a project they imply is very important. and i'm in search for photographs that will not only 1) motivate me creatively but 2) make me feel good about dedicating my life to something as silly as photography and 3) make me feel calm.

bob willoughby's photographs do all of that for me.

and in just 5 minutes of re-familiarizing myself with his images, i think i got the idea i was hoping for. more on that later.

mr. willoughby is now retired from printing and lives with his wife in the south of france. back in the 50s and 60s, though, he could be found in hollywood on the sets of movies with the likes of Audrey Hepburn and John Wayne. he was dubbed "The man who virtually invented the photojournalistic motion picture still". this talent crossed over into many other performing arts. he photographed actors and musicians and dancers just as naturally as he captured people on the street. no matter who they were, his main goal seemed to be saving beauty, and that's all.

Audrey napping with her deer, LP

young girl in Udine, Italy

Chet Baker

ballet dancers in London

Saturday School

i have another saturday class this semester. this time it's Alternative Processes and we'll be fooling around with different things like new cyanotype, argyrotype and platinum palladium. this was the first week though so we just did syllabus things and then got out a little early. so a few of us went downtown, had some sunshine, had some coffee.....

[cellphonecamera]

that's sacramento for ya

Kid picking wildflowers

Boris and cranberry tea. also, cherry muffin.

Puppy in a window, look hardly

this was supposed to be a picture of the guy playing guitar on the porch with his dog, but it's mostly just Adalto heh

Alicia and a calico friend :)

drive home

cityluv

in hindsight, i wish i could say it was i who was on the stage with the Broadway stars last night-- instead of sitting in the audience. and that i was the one to lean out the window and paint these bluebirds on the wall--not just the girl who woke up in the downtown hotel and took a photograph of it. but, not all is lost. because i was the one to find our way across the city. and it was i who rushed downstairs to kiss him goodmorning.

rest in peace, J.D.

i only got my heart broken once in high school...i was in classroom B-4 when it happened...when we read this...

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around — nobody big, I mean — except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff — I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

-Catcher in The Rye, J.D. Salinger

love that girl.

one of my favorite people on the dot-com. the world-wide-web. Amy Belk, aka TitianSleuth. have i told you about her before? i've been following her work for a couple of years and in this time she's gone from Paris, France to a small country town here in Northern California called Winters, and now she's living in New York, but not for the first time. she posts elegantly, one photo every few days, tiny insights into her radiant existence. always profound. and her image/word combos can change the whole direction of your day. i encourage you to look at her work often.

here are some of my favorite excerpts from Amy's work:

Qui fait quoi ?

The corners of this school are lousy with glue sticks. I picked one up this afternoon, because you never know. Maybe I'll be in the mood to get some paper real close to other paper and leave it that way. My students wrote a song about me today. It was sweet as the dickens. The chorus went, "We will we will miss you!" They performed it with fake guitar solos and drumming on desks and everything. They were fantastic. Later, when I read the lyrics they'd penned, I discovered some crossed out earlier, dirtier drafts. Oh, la. I decided to take it as a healthy, if unsubtle, mixture of love, enthusiasm and language barrier. Also, mental note about good old-fashioned teenage lust. They're French, anyway. These are people who, when greeting each other on the playground, offer their faces in a gesture that is both pout and caress. Children with bottles of rosé in their coat pockets, cigarettes behind their ears, young men who are comfortable in silk scarves. But why are they already talking about missing? Pas encore, les enfants ! Not yet!

The upstairs neighbor has geraniums. I know it because when it rains red petals fall onto my sills.

Je fait beacoup de bêtises, moi. I read an entire chapter of Colette thinking the word for shadow was the word for promise. It was quite a meditation on promises slipping past each other and whatnot, until I realized that the word for shadow is nothing at all like the word for promise, not even close.

It is easier to understand this one: is that a comb, or is it sorrow she is running through her long, dark hair?

First fruits

By noon it was 98 degrees inside the house, even a cold shower was too warm, so we did what we knew how to do. Went down to the creek, picked fresh figs from tree branches hanging over the freezing water, went into town wet, picked up the CSA box at the hardware store, came home, hung a tablecloth to shield the door from the afternoon light.

If the camera had been handy, I would give you J. still in the tree, bending branches toward me underneath, a bikini full of figs, but here is the tablecloth, the afternoon light.

withdrawls

sometimes, i find a place where, when i'm there, there's no place i'd rather be.

see you thursday, sf.

island of iceland

I really really like these photos of Jónsi made by his sisters, Lilja & Inga Birgisdóttir. I am taking an Artificial Lighting class this semester and I think I've found my inspiration.

time

created this in North Beach with the Yashicamat which I hope to do a whole lot more of this semester. this semester which starts tomorrow. this semester which is my very last.

and lastly, the reception~

over the last couple weeks you've witnessed Gabriela & Paul's wedding in little bits & pieces. and here is the last [but not least] bit .... the reception heyhey!

ca.luv.

California by Jay Farrar

Walked the sidewalks of San Francisco.
Spent the night in a town called Weed.
Soaked up the sun on Mission Street.
Filled up the day in Chinatown.

It's been said before,
But it's worth saying,
No one could dream a place like California.
It's written before,
But it's worth repeating,
No one could dream a place like California.

Walking along downtown L.A. streets.
Sidewalk homes of makeshift shanties.
Recall the sight of the old growth.
Standing, thinking of a dark Encinitas morning.

It's been said before,
But it's worth saying,
No one could dream a place like California.
It's been written before,
But it's worth repeating,
No one could dream a place like California.

Conjunto Station stranded on the freeway.
The road sign, schoolbus, cultural landscape.
Making way through mountains and desert.
Eastbound daybreak carrying it all back home.

It's been said before,
But it's worth saying,
No one could dream a place like California.
It's been written before,
But it's worth repeating,
No one could dream a place like California.

P.S. while we're on the subject, here's the new California portfolio on my site

a question

I was asked a senseless hypothetical question. and regardless of it's credence, i really kind of liked the question and it pops back into my head from time to time.

so, he asked, if every human on this planet but yourself !POOF! suddenly vanished what would you do?

i thought about it a second, behind the counter, red apron tied around my waist.

ideas along the lines of Noah's Ark meets Homer's "The Odyssey" began to form and the answer began to pour out. wink.

FIRST! i would hop on a vespa in California and start making my rounds to every zoo in the nation, setting all the animals free. eventually i'd make it to New York, maybe wander around Central Park a little bit and then make my way across the city, over to the Atlantic. there I would find an (obviously) abandoned cruise ship. i'd load it up with a few of my favorite new animal friends (i.e. elephants, giraffes, elephants, zebras, giant tortoises, lions and tigers and bears oh my) and cruise on down to Greece. once in Greece I would find a small house by the sea. then i would plant things there: roses, olives, coffee beans, avocados, cherries, peaches, pears, pine-nuts... everything. for the rest of my life i would hang out there with my awesome animals and my pretty plants. the end.

oh yea, and i'd take some pictures of my life in Greece and post it on the blog so that everyone would be jealous. oh... wait...

so good

updated website

made some updates to the website. been meaning to do it for a while. i think there's even a few never-seen-before photographs up there. anyway, graduation is fast approaching and my thought is to market myself to different companies, newspapers and magazines as a freelance travel & lifestyle photographer. i guess you could say it's a dream job. a seemingly far-fetched ideal. but a girl ought to try. with this in mind, let me know if you think there are any other portfolios i should maybe add. i'm also thinking of incorporating some writing tid-bits into the website as well, to accompany each set of photos. what do you think guys?

vanguard.

by now you may know that I tend to spend a lot of time in cafes. it's a freaky little habit i picked up my first year of college... all those many years ago ;]. i had discovered this big, yellow, barn-like coffee-shop, just right there on highway 101 in Leucadia. at this point, i lived at least a half hour drive away but every morning i sprung out of bed before the sun, gathered up school books and cruised out west to this spot on the coast. eventually i moved right down the street and roller-bladed there religiously every morning to sit, to drink lattes, to study, to learn, to observe, to feel like i was a part of something.

now, any city i spend time in it's custom for me to seek out some little refuge like the above described. and, if the place is the right fit, i'll make it a point to go back time and time again. i can't quite explain what the draw is. i suppose there are a lot of appealing aspects but one of the major ones is the arbitrary encounters that tend to be abundant in these kinds of places. for example, in half-a-day at a cafe in San Francisco I happened to meet all of the following artist who appeared out of thin air, sat down at my table or a table nearby and started to chat...

Kenneth McGough :: Photographer/Novelist

Marina Perez-Wong :: Portraitist/Muralist

Beverly Mann :: Travel Writer

Dennis Hearne :: Photographer

by the way, the man in the last photo is Vranas, who I met at the same cafe a week before. these people, they run in circles. and this sort of thing... the cafe thing... it's not a new phenomenon. it's been going on for centuries. i'm just another hopeless romantic to add to the restless heaps.

one of my more favorite things... is to find quiet in a place that is usually overflowing with pandemonium.

usually we have the weather to thank for creating these occurrences :)

lorrin, awesome.

my good friend Lorrin just gave birth to a very very good photography website. she's been collecting up some great shots for years and i'm glad to see she's finally sharing them with the world wide web:).

check it out: www.lorrinalexisphotography.com

cheers, lowwin!