Life and Stuff

Every once in a while it's good to jump into the Chevy with grandpa and go see where I'm from. You quickly realize though that the joke old people tell about knowing more people in the ground than on top of it isn't really a joke. We visit some old houses, the one where he was born, the one where he grew up in, but soon enough we end up where a lot of the people he knows are, the cemetery. It's a strange trip and a strange trip to try to photograph. I tried though, and this is what I got. 

The growing up house. In my grandpa's 80 plus years he managed to end up a quarter mile from the house he grew up in. Two hundred yards from the school house he went to where he met my grandma.
 The building on the right was a gas station and grocery when he was growing up. I've heard about the guys playing cards in there while smoking till the Wheaties tasted like cigarettes. I've heard about the local guys Luke, Wook and Pook all walking through the door right after each other. Actually, I hear that stupid story every time I see my grandpa. I've heard about my aunt gaining ten pounds as a kid when she got to stay at her grandma's and got to get a treat from the station every night. 

I didn't know Uncle Bob that well. I mostly remembered him coming over sometime during the holidays and bringing my grandpa a bottle of something or other and they would drink a few glasses on the porch and talk. Years later I found all those bottles in my grandpa's closet, all with just a few glasses drunk out of them. 

His big brother died though a little over a year ago and no matter how much he saw it coming in the end it was he was still his big brother.

Grandpa being grandpa, always hates his photo being taken, always tries to get the hand in front of the face. 

This is the house my grandpa was born in. 

Shiawassee Township...this be my roots. 

Still driving. Left turn signal on. Scaring the kids. 

Funny how much time, effort and work you can put in on earth and for a lot of us this is about all that's left besides the memories. This is my great great grandparents grave. 

Eat your heart out John Wayne. 

My grandpa was diagnosed with cancer after this trip down cemetery lane. He probably doesn't have all that much time left. 

It's funny I grew up kind of fearing that my grandparents would be gone soon and they never were. All four are still around. Of all of them though it was my Grandpa Bedell here that always seemed the most frustrated at getting old. He had his own sheet metal business for most of his life. His physicality was his livelihood. Whether it was forming metal with his strong, scraped up hands or scaling ladders to lean out and hammer spikes into dusty eaves. He used to scale his 30 foot flagpole to put up a new flag when the rope would bust. 

Slowly though his body has failed him. Now, maybe for the last time. 

I've found it hard to enjoy my last moments with my grandpa when I feel sure that there is officially a cap put on my time with him. It's too sad, too awkward, too ominous to enjoy. I never want to see someone go slowly, selfishly I don't want it to taint my memory of who they were. I want to remember him stronger than me, arguing politics at the table after dinner with mustard on his chin and a clint in his eye. 

I'm thankful I do have the memories though. A lot of people don't get that chance. I also have pictures to remind me. It may be the best reason I know to keep taking pictures.

Baltimore Nightlife

Back in November I got an assignment to shoot a piece on nightlife in Baltimore. It was an interesting assignment for me because I'm certainly not a nightlife guy, my idea of nightlife is staying at the climbing gym late and getting frozen yogurt afterwards...you know wild stuff like that. So I got to see a whole new side of Baltimore. 

The assignment ran as the cover and main spread in Baltimore Magazine. You can see the online version here.

Milan Lounge

I ended up going here on a Wednesday night, which apparently is the deadest night possible. These were about the only people there. On one hand it made shooting easy cause you could move around without a problem. Unfortunately, there were no people for the photos and the magazine wanted people. But, I lucked out with this group who was there for a birthday and let me shoot them all around the lounge. 

 Tapas Adela

This was actually where we shot the cover, and then this image ran as one of the main shots on the opener inside the magazine. It was a really pretty place down in Fells Point. It was the only shot that I tried to light and one of the few shot during the day and was a little tricky to do that and get the same feel as the other natural light photos shot at night. 

Looney’s Pub 

This shot ended up being a bit of a trick. Wanted to get a Ravens game, but two problems. First the only Ravens game was an afternoon game and it had to look like nighttime. Second the entire time I was there the Ravens were getting beat by the Patriots. Nothing like depressed fans for a shoot. Fortunately, the power of a camera is strong with the young mildly intoxicated and at halftime I just yelled out that I needed some pictures of Ravens fans going wild and the one Patriots fan looking depressed...and this is what we got. 

 Dougherty's Pub

This was probably the most fun of all the shoots for me. Ironic since it's probably the most low key of all the places. This was featured in there neighborhood bars section. It turned out to be the perfect place for that, most of the people there knew each other and were friends. These women here on the end let me shoot them for a while and then we just ended up talking for about an hour. 

The Get Down

This was a dance club down in Fell's Point. Visually it was quite the cool place. Each room was designed with a different light display capped off with a three story led light wall. 

Pure Wine Café

A cool little place in Ellicott City. My fun here was making the waitress in the bottom right corner walk back and forth in front of the camera with food. As you can see getting her to not look at the camera was a bit of trick. 

Rocket to Venus

For this shoot I got all my hipster friends together to shoot at this quirky cool kids restaurant in Hampden. We shot for about an hour and then I walked around taking a few other shots. Of course in the end the magazine decided that this shot worked best for them and my poor hipster friends were left with crushed dreams of editorial magazine stardom. 

B&O American Brasserie

This turned out to be a classy place afterwork happy hour type place down town. I must admit though I spent most of my time confused about how bra's and trains go together. A quick google search after though I learned that "brasserie"and "brassiere" are totally different words and that I'm an ignorant middle-of-nowhere-raised Florida peasant. 

Woodberry Kitchen

One of the cool new fancy places in Baltimore it was built in a renovated district called Clipper Mill. They have really gone and run with the sort of quaint farm feel with both the ambiance and decoration and also with the food as they have made a menu that really draws from local seasonal produce. 

The Windup Space

This was the one other joint I actually ended up staying a while and hanging out. It's part gallery, part bar, part concert space. The owner was super nice and it was just talking with people. And really, how can you go wrong with a place where the owner will play Jenga with you.  

 The 8x10 Club

A concert venue in Federal Hill turned out to have surprisingly good music that night with the singer Rachel Platten and then below Fat Daddy Has Been. Rachel did was a singer/songwriter pianist, sort of a more pop Regina Spektor and Fat Daddy was a little funk a little reggae and a little rock. 

Jack's Bistro

A hip little bar in Canton and the only place that I know of where you can get macaroni with chocolate and cheese. It was quite the hopping place, but thankfully with help from friends and artisits Lindsay Petrick and Crisanto Cimatu

Update! Update! Read all about it!

All new work from the last few months now up on my website, www.danielbedell.com

There is brand spanking new (why does spanking go with new? Probably something to do with slapping babies)  in every section...except my bio, because I've remained the same. More beard chin hair though. Maybe I should have included that in the updates.

Shoot at Johns Hopkins University for Ayers Saint Gross, an architectural firm based in Baltimore. This picture comprises pretty much the entire Hopkins medical robotics engineering department. Oddly, in Baltimore I have photographer friends, musician friends, climbing friends, and some form of engineering doctoral student friends. 

Shot this photo of the R&B singer Mario. He's from Baltimore and was profiled by Baltimore Magazine. We did these photos on the SW side of Baltimore in a cemetery near an elementary school he has been trying to help. 

This photo is from a shoot in Florida at Rocks Springs State Park. I was shooting some portfolio materials and came across this young man sitting in beautiful light. 

This was shot in Budapest, Hungary while doing travel photography at an outdoor art show that was on display. 

California Dreaming

It's a dangerous thing sending a Baltimoron to California in the middle of December. You're just begging them to defect! Sunny, 80 degrees, no snow...it just isn't fair. Then again days after I left they had floods, mud slides and never ending rain, soooo maybe the grass is not always warm, sunny and gorgeous on the other side. 

It was fun times though, got to hang out with one of my best friends Tawny while there. I dragged her here, to Vasquez Rocks, a state park North of L.A. I used to beg to go here when I was a kid visiting my grandparents in Lancaster CA and we'd drive by it on the way to L.A. Got to admit it was a whole lot smaller than I remembered, and a lot less scary. I'm getting old. 

Buy Buy Buy!!!

This past year I worked with friend, graphic designer and Baltimore deserter Katie Rosenberg on a calendar for 2011. I was supposed to post this on my blog in...well sometime before 2011, but better late than never! 

aka FORGIVE ME KATIE FOR I HATH FAILED!

But really you should check it out and buy one of the Spills Calendar. The concept was to get off the computer and make something organic using scenes with spills. I did about half the months with Katie shooting at different locations around Baltimore. The rest were shot in Katie's new resting spot Colorado. 

You can see and buy the calendar at http://www.etsy.com/shop/DesignersHigh

And no I don't think no, Katie isn't on drugs despite her ETSY name...I think she's referring to the altitude, but then again I could be wrong. 

By the way that's the rotting corpse of Halloween ballerina Katie in the photo.

Family Portraits

Hello and a happy 2011 to everyone! Been a long time gone, but back and with some new things on the horizon. Most notably a podcast. I've been wanting to start a podcast for a while interviewing the people that photography has let me meet. Look for that very soon as well as a new rash of blog posts!

Hope you had a great holiday, my family mostly debated whether Country Strong with Gwyneth Paltrow was going to be the best movie ever or the biggest disgrace to the human kind in the last 100 years.