Project Coffee; Teavolve

The first rule of Project Coffee is: you do not talk about Project Coffee. The second rule of Project Coffee is: you DO NOT talk about Project Coffee! Third rule of Project Coffee: if someone yells "stop!", goes limp, or taps out, coffee time is over.

Well I broke rules one and two. I invited two people along to Project Coffee. Photographers and friends Jonathan Hanson and Adriana Monsalve joined Sean and I at Teavolve down in Harbor East. Sean then beat the crap out of me for breaking the first two rules, but I managed to not go limp or tap out so it was ok. 

We talked business, advertising and Jonathan and I got feedback on portfolios we were working on. Good times. 

It was a hot day so I went with a smoothie for my drink of choice, breaking my streak of only getting coffee at these meet ups. Oh well. 

Teavolve is a pretty cool place, they walk the line of being high brow and yet still friendly very well. You can get a meal there or just drinks and the place seems to always have a pretty full crowd. It always seems to by very mom approved. Lots of moms. 

I think we may turn Project Coffee into a group affair once a month, there is something to be said for not ALWAYS looking like a gay couple with Sean. 

Popular Mechanics

A piece I did last fall just came out in Popular Mechanics! You can see the article here.   Show it in Nevada on a friend who was born arthrogryposis. Despite that though he has gotten into racing cars and is actually pretty damn good at it! It's really amazing.


I will write more about the experience later but for now here is the write up by Jennifer Bogo. 


On saturday morning in Fallon, Nevada, the casinos that populate the town's main drag offer eggs over easy and slot machines, depending on one's preference. But by late afternoon, the draw shifts to a dusty knob of earth just east of town, and the intersections fill with a steady procession of Dodge Rams and Ford F-150s hauling trailers. They're all wending their way to a quarter-mile banked dirt track called Rattlesnake Raceway, where the spray of mud and the thrill of competition far eclipse the $100 purse.

The 22-year-old champion of the 2007 and 2008 Gen X class--which consists mainly of four-cylinder stock sedans--drives fast, both on and off the track. "I love racing. I love competitions. I love speed," Chris Neal says. "Anything over 100 mph is very good." He also talks fast and walks fast, which at first glance seems unlikely. Chris stands in a permanent plié, his knees deeply bent and turned out, his feet pointing backward. When he moves, it's like a sand crab, sideways, his legs scissoring past each other. He throws the rest of his body after them.

At his dad's auto repair shop, 4 miles from the raceway, Chris leans through the window of a '76 Pontiac Firebird to point out the hand controls. Attached to the steering column is a lever, connected to the foot pedals, that he pushes down to accelerate and forward to brake. Because he has very little dexterity in his fingers, he uses the back of his left hand to manipulate the lever and steers with his right hand at 12 o'clock.

Maneuvering around a Lincoln Town Car and GMC pickup, Chris heads out the back door. He's wearing a royal blue fireproof suit, half-zipped with the arms tied around his waist, and a black-and-white T-shirt that says, "I didn't come here to lose." Glued to his right hip is a nine-month-old chocolate Lab named Sadie, who wears a pink rhinestone Harley-Davidson collar and a serious expression. She watches him intently. "She's as loyal as all get-out," Chris says. "I don't fall as much as I used to, but when I do, if I say 'brace,' she'll jump in front of me so I'll fall on her. I'm always dropping my phones and stuff like that because I don't have a strong grip. She can pick stuff up for me."

Behind the shop is a battered yellow quad that Chris rides around the desert--he uses a metal bar welded onto the shifter to push it into first. He also snow skis with a sit-ski and hunts elk and mule deer, propping up a .243 rifle and pulling the trigger with his thumb. When it comes to the limits imposed by his disability, Chris follows one maxim: "If someone says I can't do it, you might as well count on me trying." 


That Chris can walk at all, let alone drive, ski and hunt, is an impressive accomplishment. He was born with arthrogryposis, a congenital disorder that affects one in 3000 children and results in curved joints and contracted muscles. Chris's particular condition, distal arthrogryposis, severely affects his hands and feet. When he was born, his legs were folded up like a pretzel, his dad Larry says. Doctors warned he'd never walk; as a baby, he didn't crawl. "He rolled everywhere he wanted to go," Larry says. "He could go from one room to another 90 mph." As a toddler he chased other kids around on his knees, which developed thick calluses.

Chris was sent to Shriners Hospitals for Children in Northern California, where doctors pinned an Ilizarov frame to his leg bones when he was four. It enveloped Chris like an Erector Set, and his mom Jana adjusted it a little every day until his legs unfolded. When surgeons removed the frame, he was sent to Sonny Alcairo, an orthotist at Shriners, to be fitted for braces that would stretch from the tops of his legs to his toes. "He's one of the kids I loved working with because he was a challenge each time you made a brace for him," Alcairo says. As Chris got older, his hips and leg bones continued to rotate out. "When they get to that point, [most kids] actually just give up on walking," Alcairo says. Not Chris: "We call him the miracle kid. I've never seen anyone as determined as he is."

Chris grew up around cars, first in a playpen in the middle of his dad's Texaco station, then in the pit at drag races, where both of his parents competed. But when, at age 16, he announced he wanted to race cars himself, his parents were skeptical. "I thought, how's he going to do it?" Jana says. "At the time, most everybody, when they raced, had standard transmissions." It turned out that racing an automatic was more common than she thought. But Larry still resisted. "The thing that scared me was that if he caught on fire, he couldn't get out of the car," Larry says. "I was just worried to death that he would get burned up."

Larry installed a grenade pin to Chris's hand controls instead of a bolt, so they would quickly detach from the steering column to get out of his way. Then Chris practiced unlatching his safety belts and hauling himself through the open window. "I can get everything undone and out in 35 or 40 seconds," Chris says. "That's not real fast," Larry says, "but fast enough." So in 2007, Chris began racing at Rattlesnake as a rookie--and raced well. "I don't know how he does it," Larry says. "He's unreal. The first two years they'd start him at the back of the pack, and within one lap he was in the lead and would just walk away from them."

Still anxious about a fire, Larry practically lived at the track. Then, when it happened, he was over in the pit helping Jana, who was also racing in the Gen X class. On the wall in the office of Larry's shop is a color photo of Chris's car at the time, a yellow '00 Mitsubishi Galant, just after T-boning the Honda Prelude of a friend who'd spun out--flames are leaping from the hood. The other driver is halfway out his window, frozen in the motion of going to pull Chris from the burning vehicle. After raising himself up to the window, Chris escaped unharmed. He also won the points championship that year. His trophy, which sits on a shelf near the photo, is a good foot taller than Jana's--she tied for third place. 


For the 2009 season, Chris moved up two classes to Hobby Stock, which meant a V8 engine and rear-wheel drive, and more experienced competitors. "Gen X was getting ... not easy, but boring," Chris says. But the Firebird proved trickier to steer with hand controls, and he'd spin out coming into the corners. That tendency, combined with the carsflying around the track at 100 mph, made him a little bit "chicken-y," Chris says. "I didn't want to spin out in front of the whole pack and have everybody plow into me."

By September, he still hadn't won any races, but he felt like his car was finally set up properly. There was just one lingering problem. When steering, it typically takes two-and-a-half turns of the wheel to move the tires from full right lock to full left. Chris's right arm is stronger than his left, but it doesn't have enough muscle to do that easily. Hours before the evening race, the last one of the regular season, Larry and Jana installed a steering quickener--a reverse-mounted reduction gearbox that changes the ratio of the turns between the steering wheel and the steering box. Now it takes Chris only half a turn to move the tires from lock to lock.

At the raceway, Jana hoists Chris up and through the open window of his car, Dukes of Hazzard style. He settles into the stripped-out interior, ankles crossed, and locks the hand controls in place. Then he flips a switch to turn on the engine and shifts it into gear with his wrist. Jana climbs a small hill to watch the qualifying heat through a chain-link fence, since she's the pit crew. "One thing about Chris: He's good at the start," she says. "As soon as they drop the flag, he's gone. A lot of guys are sleeping."

Chris's blue Firebird, No. 12, launches into the race, but the track has just been watered down. One car spins out and Chris slides a little on the corner. He finishes third out of five. After the heat, Chris and his parents debate whether his car is tight or loose--whether the front or rear wheels slide first--then adjust his tire pressure. He gets back in the car and queues up in the middle of the pack for the feature race.

When the green flag is dropped, Chris takes off again, his Firebird standing out against a blur of Monte Carlos, Novas and Camaros. On successive laps, Chris passes three cars, then creeps up on another. "It looks like it's handling good for him," Jana says. Chris passes two more cars and a cheer goes up--he appears to be just three cars from the lead.

Then, as Chris is coming around the corner, hugging close to the inside, a white Monte Carlo nudges his left rear fender. Chris veers through the mud in the center of the oval track and out the other side, ending up near the back of the pack. With just a few laps to go, that's where he finishes.

After the race, the Monte Carlo's driver walks up to the pit and begins to apologize--to a 25-year-old photographer, who is wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Chris is leaning against his car, and he's wearing the blue fireproof suit. "Hey," Chris says, waving. "I'm the driver." The guy starts his apology over, to Chris now, but when he leaves, Chris looks frustrated. "I'm wearing the race suit, but I'm short and crippled," he says. "They always come up and apologize to someone else."

It's a rare moment of deflation, and it doesn't last long. "Now it's just getting used to the quick steer," he says. "I was just kind of squirrelly out of the corner, so it wasn't bad. It didn't hurt me in the race." Eventually, Chris wants to move to North or South Carolina, where there are a lot more dirt tracksand big-money races. His parents think he can do it. "As far as I'm concerned, there's people who can race and people who can't," Jana says. "I think my son is one of those people it just comes natural to." For tonight, his race is over. Chris scissor-walks up the hill to watch the next class.

Public Humiliation/Love

My little sister is about three weeks away from her high school graduation. As one of her last school projects she needed someone to write a biography about her. She made the mistake of asking me. I wrote the following, and even worse am now posting it on here. Oh, and I shot the above photo of my sister in Charleston...doing the Beatles southern style! 

Biography of Megan

In the course of human history there occasionally comes a voice so great calling above the masses that it demands the attention of all who are not deaf or dead. Megan Elizabeth Bedell is that really loud voice.

As chronicler of her journey for this one to two page biography for the narcissistic sounding “Book of Me” I do identify myself as her brother, the lowly peasant Daniel Mark Bedell. The burden has been cast upon me tell the story of her ENTIRE life in less space than I would use to tell the story of the Oklahoma Thunder defeating the Los Angeles Lakers.

Let me start at the beginning. And by the beginning I mean start at a place that maybe uncomfortably early in the story.

Once upon a time there was a tumor type growth somewhere in my mommy’s baby making system. Mommy had surgery to remove this. References were made to this tumor thing being the size of a grapefruit. Looking back at the tale, I am disgusted. After this was removed mommy and daddy tried to make a baby. At the time I think I believed this involved a catalog and lots of stamps. It did not. A Megan was born. Place: Columbia, Maryland. The year of our lord, 1991…I think. End of part 1.

Part 2.

The family moved to Florida, in part because that bundle of joy called Megan was sucking up all the family resources. In Florida she grew hair. It was very light in color. End of part 2.

Part 3.

The Megan thing began to talk, the great voice was born. The voice projected from every corner of the hamlet of Avon Park, Florida. It decreed that it wanted to watch Barney, it declared that it should be given the same rights as the much older and wiser prince of the house Daniel. It declared A LOT of things, much of which centered around entering the castle of the prince and consuming sugar in any and every form.

The Megan decided she liked cooking. She was given an Easy Bake oven. Family members died, it was tragic. She never cleaned up, that was also tragic. The Megan was naked a lot. The Megan made car rides of over 30 minutes a little sliver of hell. End of part 3.

Part 4, Megan develops a heart.

Eventually, the Megan thing became a Megan. She found the joys of finding shared humor in the follies and quirks of her parents and moments of laughing were shared with the prince of the house. She continued to never eat an entire plate of food. And by never I mean, never, ever, ever and forever. But, on the upside her cooking began to taste lovely and lost it’s deadly killing power. Her cleaning skills still lacked.

Megan began playing basketball, piano, clarinet, liking boys, clothing herself after bathing and reading copious amounts of Baby Sitters Club books. She started being interested in her Hungarian ancestry, she decided she wanted to run, and then that she didn’t want to run. She developed a disturbing love of Johnny Depp and Michelle Kwan. She learned how to drive. She started wearing makeup that wasn’t made in conjunction with a cartoon character. In short, she became less of a girl and more of a woman.

Now she sits on the cusp of making the full transition. High school graduation is a breath away and it won’t be long before college is come and gone and a career or sugar daddy will have to be found. But, this Megan has shown herself to be strong in spirit, in will and in body and will come out fighting loud and proud.

Much of her story I’ve left out. How she’s become a caring person to those around her. How she has more talent than she knows inside and only needs to find the determination and persistence to extract it. How she is about to make one of the worst weather decisions ever by spending winters in Michigan and summers in Florida. But, truth is I think this is by far the most creative bio that will be written for The Book of Narcissism” and it’s my lunchtime. 

Project Coffee; Spoons

Running a bit behind in my Project Coffee updates. Not in the excursions mind you, Sean and I have been faithful in meeting up once a week to jabber for longer and longer periods of time. This time we headed over to Federal Hill and hit up Spoons a cafe on E. Cross Street. It's a really nice place that serves food and coffee. 

I went back to the Chai Latte again this time. I feel like I am starting to max out on different kinds of coffee. Somehow I was under the impression that there was an endless variety of flavors, but more and more those appear to just be the gay flavors like, berry extravaganza walnut latte...which I must admit I have reservations ordering in public when meeting another dude. 

Sean and I had a fun time putting on the Sean and Daniel talk show for the one female patron who had the misfortune of sitting next to us. She stayed by and listened and laughed for an hour though while pretending to read a paper. Then got up, said goodbye to us as if we'd all been talking together despite the fact she hadn't uttered a word up until that point, and left. I'm not going to lie, I was trying to make Sean AND her laugh the whole time. So to whoever you were miss lady I hope you enjoyed the show! 

I did get back into my car afterwards and think..."In hindsight I was probably pretty loud. Hmmm...how much would I have been annoyed by me?" Of course the answer as usual is probably a lot, but so be it. 

Baltimore Gothic

One of my favorite photo shoots I've done to date is my Baltimore American Gothic shoot. Not only did I love the way the final image came out, but it was also one of those shoots where you spend half of your time laughing. 

I used to live in the Charles Village area of Baltimore and one of the big things there is to paint your house all funky colors. Something about that got me thinking about doing a Baltimore version of American Gothic. I wanted to do a humorous play on it and somehow this led me into getting a kid involved. 

One of my favorite models to have ever worked with is Claire Wright who is the wife in this picture. We hit it off from the very first time we shot together and continued doing shoots together. She was able to  introduce me to Jack, the boy in the picture who turned out to be great. Jack I think was not quite 4 when we took these photos. I really love shooting with kids, if for nothing else than the hilarious things they say and do and Jack didn't disappoint. He called me Mr. Daniel for the whole shoot, which every time he said it made me laugh.  

I was able to get Claire's dress and pin from Charlotte Elliott's, an antique store in Hampden. My stylist ended up not showing up and Jack's mom and I ended up getting Jack's shirt from Wal-Mart and his jacket from Marshall's along with Claire's sweater. The "pitchfork" was a Target special. Makeup was done by Michelle Johnson. 

The image above and to the right is the unedited version of what I did. I ended up re-shooting the house after the construction was done and to get the right angle. I got some much needed editing guidance from fellow photographers Jacqueline Schlossman and Howard Ehrenfeld

. 

I think this little collage does a pretty good job of showing why I love working with kids. Jack's mom had told him that for the photos he needed to look angry. Well as soon as I got ready to shoot he gave me his angry face and it was adorable, but WAY too much. I asked him if he could give me a half angry face. He thought about it for a moment and then gave me the face in the first picture...with one side of his face angry and one not...half angry. It was pretty hilarious.

In fact Jack was pretty hilarious all around and much of the time was spent trying to get Claire to not crack up. Claire had informed me that Jack had told people that she was his girlfriend. I think it's pretty clear in the last picture Jack is well aware that he's the man and Claire is going to be his girl.

Oh, forgot to mention it was the power of Skittles that got me 20 plus minutes of modeling out of Jack...well that and the power of his love for Claire.

Project Coffee; Cafe Mocha

What time is it?! Cafe Mocha time! Project coffee continued at Kader's Cafe Mocha which is at 501 St. Paul St, right across from Penn Station. It is tucked away in the Post Office building, a hidden little gem. It really was nice though, everything from the chalk colored menus to the delicious curry sandwich! It's really too bad more people don't know about it, it's such a nice space that would be a good place to hang out. 

Sean Scheidt and I met up and talked about advertising, photo shoots, love, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Basically our normal conversation material. 

K'Naan

This weekend I got dragged along to a concert featuring a D.C. rapper Wale. Got to admit I wasn't that into Wale, but I ended up really loving his opening act K'Naan. K'Naan is from Canada...that great bastion of hip hop and rap music. Originally though he is from Somolia, coming over with his mother and two siblings when he was 13 on what turned out to be the last commercial flight ever out of Mogadishu. 

He was really great in live and I bought his CD Troubadour on LaLa and am really digging it. A lot of his lyrics reference how being gangster over here is just ridiculous when compared to growing up in what is considered about the most dangerous place on earth. And you got to admit there isn't much you can say to that, especially when your country has basically no functional government, or police and is the go to destination if you want to be a pirate. 

You can check out more of his story and music in a piece on NPR here. 

Romania

In my search for musicians to shoot I came across The Oranges Band.  One of the members of the Baltimore band is Roman Kuebler who has started his own solo project Romania. As one of his ventures he started the Romania website where you can subscribe for 12 dollars a year and each month you get some sort media from Roman. Pretty cool concept. 

Shot Roman in my house and he brought the all white outfit that he had been kind of playing around for a performance piece. I really like how it kind of worked with both a look and the concept of insanity. You can see in the last picture how the concept kind of evolved. 

It was fun talking with Roman. I learned a lot more about  the Baltimore music scene which Roman has been involved with for over a decade. Then got the chance to check out his concert later in the week at the Ottobar. 

Dru Hill

Last weekend got to shoot the Baltimore original Dru Hill. This was from our first location at a school that two of the members went to. The suits went from little, Sisqo, to big, Jazz. All of us on the crew when we saw this had to take a picture for some reason. 

The shoot was for Baltimore Magazine, and in the end we got some really sweet images. Not to mention, Sisqo told me no one had ever shot the group in Druid Hill Park, what they are named after. So on some level I was breaking new ground. And to prove it we shot in the park next to the Christopher Columbus statue. 

Look for the pictures from the shoot in a few weeks! 

Project Coffee; Gerry's Goods

Project Coffee continued at Gerry's Goods, recommended to Sean and I by our friend Joel Kurz who had come into contact with the place through his work as a pastor in the area. Gerry's was certainly the least pretentious of all the places we've visited. It was simple and new. You could get drinks, packaged good and chicken noodle soup. Which between the two of us we partook in all of the above. 

Of all the places we've gone I would have to say this was where we were greeted the most. I am not sure if it was just because we stuck out as two white guys in a place where two white guys weren't the most common sight. But, I got the impression we were greeted simply because people were nice and were glad to see a place like Gerry's Goods come into the neighborhood and wanted to see it succeed. The sight of Sean and I was a sign that it could succeed. 

I had a cup of Americana, which apparently is nothing more than expresso and water. A far cry from the homo erotic blueberry hazelnut latte or whatever I had a few weeks before, but it was good. Excellent sipping over a long talk. 

On my way back to my place from Gerry's I saw this beautiful mural seemingly in the middle of nowhere. I drove by it once and couldn't resist and turned around and came back to take some pictures. I was told by Sean later this is some sort of monument to children who have been killed in the area from violence. Whatever it is, I found it mesmorizingly beautiful, especially when placed in the contract of the ghetto part of town that surrounded it.