BmoreBedell

I'm Moving!

2011-02-01T21:26:00.000-08:00

The blog is moving! You will now be able to get see my blog at www.bmorebedell.com

Not only does the page contain all the old blog posts and all the posts to come, but the first ever BmoreBedell podcast is there and will soon be on iTunes. So come over and check it out, add it on facebook, tell your friends, tell your children, tell your wives, tell your husbands...just tell someone!

Daniel

Life and Stuff

2011-01-25T20:30:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-21T10:16:00.000-08:00

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!

2011-01-18T12:53:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-15T10:31:00.000-08:00

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!!!

2011-01-13T14:33:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

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.

Ambushed

2010-12-10T07:09:00.000-08:00

I often get asked about the pretty models I get to shoot. Truth is, I rarely shoot any models. I much more often shoot nerdy authors, middle aged store owners, camera shy teachers and now...now people dressed as bushes.

After doing several jobs associated with the Nana Projects I got asked by Annie who often works with Nana to do a shoot with her side project Ambush Theater. I said yes and we set out to Lake Montebello in Baltimore to get some laughs, creep some people out and see how smart dogs are.

P.S. you should also check out Annie's amazing papercuts at her blog, they were just featured on the cover of City Paper in Baltimore.

Claire Appleseed

2010-10-25T16:50:00.000-07:00

Got to shoot with my favorite model Claire a couple weeks ago. Arranged to shoot the shoot up at a Pennsylvania u-pick apple orchard. Such a beautiful farm up there in Amish country. Everyone should do some u-picking! I'm sure Claire won't want to eat any apples for a while, but oh well I liked what I got.

Cleaning Out The Summer Files

2010-10-15T16:59:00.000-07:00

Going through some files I hadn't got around to editing from early this summer. I was out shooting a musician friend of mine in the city when we a drum core passed by us. It's hard to NOT follow a drum core. So off we went into the projects and this is what we found.

Afternoons In The Park

2010-10-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

A little Holga action in Patterson Park.

Istanbul NOT Constantinople

2010-10-06T20:34:00.000-07:00

I got the wonderful opportunity to piggy back off Jenny's airline miles and visit Europe this past month. One of our stops, Istanbul...not Constantinople. We stayed in the old part of the city, which also sort of doubled as an Aladdin amusement park. EVERYTHING was touristy. The same shirts, paintings, rugs, lamps and jewelry were sold everywhere. Everyone seemed to be a tourist from somewhere. As a photographer this was a little nightmarish. But, on the last day I ventured down to the sea surprise, surprise there were locals. Apparently Sunday is the day for men to be boys and go play down at the water. They were fishing, sun bathing, swimming, diving, riding bikes and occasionally wooing a lady.

The ladies though were sparse though and when we asked where they were we were told they were cleaning and cooking and taking care of the house of course. We were also told by a man we met that in Turkey it's a man's world. Apparently, he was a James Brown fan.

Fight Club

2010-09-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

This past weekend my friend Angela entered a jiujitsu tournament. Being in full support of girl on girl violence I made my way down to watch and take some pictures.

It was certainly different than about any other sporting event I'd ever been to. The most friendly violence I think I've beheld. Never seen snake skin swords given away as trophies, sure does beat all the plastic trophies of shrimpy golden runners that I have gathering dust. Actually, I think my mom gave them to the ARC, I'll have no evidence to prove to my grandkids that at one time I could have kicked there tiny grandkid asses at about any distance from a quarter mile up.

I also didn't realize that girl and boys would compete with each other up to about age 13. This led to two very odd things. If the guy was dominant (usually the case) the whole fight looked VERY rapey (a word I have decided to invent if no one has called dibs on it). If the girl was dominant (the most fun to root for) you had to wonder about the boys self-confidence from here on out in life. One little girl in particular managed to be both super cute and a killer as she trounced all the boys in her division two win two snake skin swords. We saw some boys come over to one of her recently vanquished little boy foes to sympathize in his plight, one boy offered up the best consoling he could, "Well at least she didn't guillotine you!"

Not the rapiest picture, but by far the rapiest fight I saw.

Most of these agonized looks were shot at there fathers who were siting on the sidelines cheering them on and shouting instructions that made no sense at all to me.

This girl turned into our hero of the day. Cute and lethal.

She'll be an interesting one to date in a few years.

As you can see in this picture, those lousy medals were little consolation for not getting a snake skin sword.

This little guy became one of my favorites too as the tournament went on as he one by one quietly destroyed all his opponents.

It was amazing how small some of the kids were. The brutal 50 lb and under matches were something to behold.

This kid also was a killer. But, he looked like a future accountant. I wanted him to be announced as, Standing at 4 foot 7 and three quarters, he's equal parts naughty and nice, from Washington D.C. he's THE TAX MAN! It's audit time punks!

Somewhere inside it's always April 15th

I had to include this girl who fought in her weight class and then turned around to fight in the class above. When I left she'd won three swords and was getting ready to fight in yet another division. The 16 year old in me was kind of in love.

This image will haunt me for a long, long time.

My friend Angela going against...the women of Baltimore.

In the end the women of Baltimore didn't seem so scary after all. And Angela won all her matches!!

Michigan Messing Around

2010-09-28T07:11:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I shot a friend's wedding in Chicago and on the way back stopped and visited my grandparents and the rest of my dad's family. One day Jenny and I met up with my aunt to go blueberry picking. We managed to pick about 15 pounds of blueberries...just a weee bit more than we probably needed.

The last few pictures are in my grandpa's garden. The light was coming down so beautifully that I ran and got Jenny and made her go run into the corn. It's the price you pay to be with me.

It's been too, too long

2010-09-27T20:41:00.000-07:00

My apologies to all 14 of my followers. So sorry Mom. Sorry Megan. Sorry Nathan, Julie and Lucy. Sorry Tiffany. Sorry Kristen. Sorry Nairobi, by the way who are you? Sorry Jenn with two n's. Sorry Brittnie with no y. Sorry Rob. Sorry Matthew. Sorry Sean. Sorry Tawn. Sorry Kaylene. Sorry it's been over a month since I've posted.

Posts are on there way though, starting with this one from Birdsboro PA. A old quarry converted into a little climbing nook.

I went with ole Ben, Ann, Angela and Brian and we got our sport climbing on. Fun times, some smores and lots of manly grunting.

Zofie Forgive ME!

2010-08-20T10:20:00.000-07:00

It's been several weeks now since I took pictures of my friend Zofie. I'm sure she hoped to see these pictures weeks ago and has long since given up hope. But trips to Florida and Kentucky got in the way. Please reserve hate Zofie, here they are.

Zofie has a hobby of buying vintage clothing and she looks a bit vintage herself I think, so I took her to a local diner and a tiny fireman's fair at a church to shoot some pictures. My girlfriend Jenny met up with us and I got a great picture of her right before a carney kicked her and Zofie off the merry-go-round for riding side saddle. Surprising that a carney was both concerned about safety and against the indecent exposure that was bound to ensue.

Where The Blue Grass Grows

2010-08-02T18:35:00.000-07:00

Went down yonder to Kentucky this past week for climbing and hanging with the girlfriend's friends. Got to go to a bluegrass festival up near Moorehead KY and too pictures at the festival and a few around town.

I always enjoy going to Kentucky for some reason. Going to rural Kentucky is something akin to going back in time a little bit. Things are simpler, slower, grittier and less pretentious. I always feel like an outsider there and I don't think that's a mistake. People look at you, speak to you and think of you as an outsider. That being said there is a refreshing hospitality that is usually given to you. People give you the time of day, they want to talk, they want to know if you're enjoying yourself.

Not sure whether or not I'll ever do a large series of work in Kentucky, I kind of doubt it. It seems like the sort of place where you'd really need to "be from around here" to be able to take photos that would do the place justice. Even if I don't ever get to photograph the "REAL" Kentucky, I'll enjoy these in the meantime.

Nana Nana

2010-07-22T07:28:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you combine over priced fair food, 98 degree weather, thousands of hot sweaty humans, tons of varying degrees of art and Baltimore?

ARTSCAPE!

This past Sunday I trooped on down to Artscape to shoot a parade for the Nana Projects. I had no idea what this would involve really. I must admit I didn't have the highest hopes, but was very happily surprised with a clever mix of New Orleans marching band street and costume parade. What caught my eye is what follows. And yes it's probably way too many pictures, but I couldn't help myself!

Hail Thee Midwest

2010-07-01T14:48:00.000-07:00

Keeping the fair theme going I was looking through old pictures and realized there was a batch of work I'd never really fully gone through. It was from the county fair where my dad's family lives in Michigan. I'd never got around to doing anything with the pictures and as I started going through them I really fell in love!

These are some of my favorites, but actually these are the ones that didn't make the final cut for my portfolio. To see the ones that did make the cut go to http://www.danielbedell.com/lifestyle2/

So in the name of all that is deep fried, ENJOY!

GOOD MORNING BALTIMORE!

2010-06-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

Hon Fest 2010. What makes Baltimore great...ish.

My friend Katie pointed out to me the fact that they weren't claiming to be the world's greatest crabcakes. No, Baltimoreans are comfortable with there limitations, world's greatest CONCESSION crabcakes is good enough. Much as I claim to be the World's Greatest Curly Haired Miler From Baltimore Who Takes Pictures At Hon Fest.

Billboard!

2010-06-01T11:34:00.000-07:00

Was coming back from Florida and walking out of the airport when I saw one of my pictures!

Snake Pit

2010-06-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

Everyday I walk around and see people I would love to take pictures of. Most times it doesn't happen. Sometimes I don't feel like asking, sometimes I ask and get shutdown, sometimes I ask and they seem like they like the idea but never get back to me. Every once in a while though everything comes together.

I saw Danny at the Ottobar at a Madonna vs. Gaga. vs. Brittany dance party. It was people watching at it's best and Danny was one of the most fun to watch. I decided his name should be Snake Pit. I managed to talk to him quickly before I left and give him my card and tell him I'd love to shoot with him sometime. To my surprise the very next morning I got a call...from Snake Pit!

Snake Pit turned out to be Danny, and Danny turned out to be super nice. He's in school studying journalism after doing 4 years in the Navy. Not exactly the back story I had made up for him, but that's what's great about taking pictures of people, you get all kinds of surprises.

Danny and I shot in several locations and were able to get some images I really like.

Climbing

2010-06-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since the last blog post. But, I have good reasons all 11 followers of mine! First I had my sisters graduation in Florida. Then I got sick down there and since have been trying to heal myself. It's been over a week though and still not ALL better. Soooo lame. Memorial Day though I just couldn't take it anymore and got some friends together and went climbing. Here are some pictures I took there. Sorry Alina I think you stopped climbing before I started taking pictures! And sorry to all 11 of you who were hoping upon hope to see pictures of me. I'm not that multi skilled with the self portrait yet. And now I present to you Baltimore's finest: Ben, Carl and Katie.

Superman Flash Back

2010-05-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had the sad experience of making my only venture outside my dwelling be to watch the Orlando Magic lose their first playoff game to the Boston Celtics. Ughh and it was sooo close! They dug themselves a 20 point hole and then just couldn't quite make the comeback and lost by four. UGGGHHHH still maddening!!!

The Magic's star player is Dwight Howard, a physical freak who has muscle that previously were reserved only for action figures. Back in 2005 I got the chance to interview and photograph Dwight for Listen Magazine. At that time I think he had just turned 19 and I was 20. He turned out to be just a genuinely nice guy, one of the few professional athletes I've ever met where I left thinking they would be fun to be friends with regardless of their fame.

For the piece I went to a game in Orlando and interviewed Howard and shot game photos. The next day I went to a practice and did the portraits. For the portraits I had my mom assist me. As you can see from her picture she was out of her mind excited to do it. Although, when I introduced her to Dwight he called her Mom and that won her over. She doesn't know a thing about him otherwise I don't think, but if we're watching him on TV she always points out, "He called me Mom!"

I did the portraits in about 5 minutes with my mom holding up white foam core as the backdrop. Natural light and a basketball from my school's old P.E. closet. I ended up really liking the bottom one and at the time think it was one of the best pictures that had been taken of him for publication. Since then he has blown up nationally as a sports star and tons of great pictures have been taken. But, I can always say I knew him when...well when he was only the size of a truck...now he's more like a semi.

Project Coffee; Firehouse Coffee Co.

2010-05-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is specific to a certain type of person or not, but I've noticed that more and more I miss words in signage. Or even better I add in imaginary words. I made the choice for this Project Coffee location and told Sean it was Coffee Co. Not sure how I missed the giant FIREHOUSE part above Coffee Co., or the smalled seemingly unneeded extra Firehouse above the giant FIREHOUSE, above Coffee Co.. (Do you end that with a double period? Tricky)

Somehow I assume this place at onetime had some relationship with a firehouse. Either that or the owners found a bunch of firehouse memorabilia at rock bottom prices somewhere. The Firehouse Coffee Co. is located in Canton square, a cool little place that somehow I didn't stumble upon until this past month. The FCC...ooooohhh how great are those initials, maybe they should have just gone with that, anyway the FCC has actually a pretty good website for a coffee shop. Got to say most of them suck expresso beans. They even have a blog, complete with three entries since January of 2009.

The inside of the place is actually pretty cool, complete with a lamp with feathers, Blues Brother's statues, a barista who Sean decided was Daria and of course fire fighter paraphernalia.

Sean and I both had some sort of peanut butter frappe. It was quite excellent. Oh and this marked the beginning of a new trend, biking to Project Coffee. Somehow I had gotten out of the habit of biking anywhere, but I have resurrected this. Things in Baltimore are surprisingly close by bike. And all my emissions are green...although hopefully not literally that would be a little too comic bookish.

Random On The Way To The Beach Photos

2010-05-14T17:58:00.000-07:00

I found these photos I took almost exactly a year ago and decided I liked them and should actually process them and share them with my cyber family.

Project Coffee; One World Cafe

2010-05-14T17:33:00.000-07:00

Project coffee still lives!

I've been a little derelict in my duties to Project Coffee. Please forgive me coffee gods. We drank at the coffee temple known as One World Cafe which is in Charles Village right next to Johns Hopkins University. The place is part cafe, part bar and part veggie restaurant and ALLLLLL good. Turns out too that it's the rare cafe open on a Sunday morning. I went to two others and found them closed before going to OWC. You got to love a place that you can give initials like that.

Met up with Sean there, actually after a few hours before meeting up with some friends from Silver Spring for breakfast. Still hungry though I got Chai Latte, which is becoming my staple, and a giant slab of coffee cake. Then I proceeded to eat Sean's nachos. As you can see from the pictures he was pretty upset.

I've gone to the OWC quite a few times now and it's always fun. A cool group of people work there including the American version of Russel Brand. I also once met there Mackenzie Astin, the star of one of my favorite movies as a kid, Iron Will, which come to found out pretty much no one else ever saw.

So hooray for One World Cafe.

The Kings of DRU HILL

2010-05-04T12:47:00.000-07:00

Well my Dru Hill shoot has finally run so thought I'd let you see some photos. You can see the article here at Baltimore Magazine's website. It was quite the fun shoot, the guys were actually a lot of fun to work with. I had been expecting the worse and was very pleasantly surprised and got nearly 5 hours from them.

Lot's of props go out to Nunz, Jonathan Hanson, Kristin Putchinski and Michelle Johnson for all the help! Also to Wrightway Studios for being so kind to let us shoot at your beautiful facility!

We shot this shot in Wrightway Studios here in Baltimore. From left to right we have Tao (who I unfortunately kept pronouncing like Tao of Buddhism, but is actually pronounced "tay-o"...I think I never felt confident on that) Nokio, Jazz and Sisqo.

I think this has become my favorite shot, I just love the studio and I think the lighting turned out really well thanks to Johnny H on the lights.

Shot this at an abandon row house right down from Druid Hill Park in the neighborhood that most of the guy grew up in. Nokio gave one of my favorite quotes, "Just give me a paper bag and I'd feel right at home here, don't even need to have booze...just the bag."

I didn't notice it until editing but I love the sign in the top left of the picture here.

This was shot in Druid Hill park, the namesake of the band. Sisqo told me this was the first time the band had ever been photographed in the park. He said they did however film the Thong Song Remix video here...I appreciated that little factoid.

The magazine used this as you can see from above as the features cover shot.

We shot in Frederick Douglass High School where Jazz and Nokio went to school and first started performing and started forming the group. Dru Hill was actually a very organically started group...so Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, 98 Degree and all the rest of you can suck it.

It was really fun to shoot a group of guys who were so comfortable in front of the camera. Told them I needed photos that looked like they were telling stories about high school and that's what I got!

The Crew

This photo of me also doubles as my application for whitest man alive.

Bob Hieronimus

2010-05-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

A little over a week ago I got to shoot one of the nicest guys I have met in Baltimore! Bob Hieronimus is a local renaissance man. He has a radio show about conspiracies and signs, kind of Da Vinci Code stuff. He is a painter, painting murals, art cars, canvas and seemingly whatever other surface he wants. He has written several books. Back in the day he was a musician and friend of musicians like Jimi Hendrix, The Lovin Spoonful, Bob Marley and his sons and many others.

What mostly struck me about Bob and his wife Zoh was just how nice they were. I shot with Bob for

two days for Baltimore Magazine. The first day at his house where he does his radio show. We did the

photos of Bob and Zoh in the radio studio. It was a very small space and it was difficult to light but they were extremely patient and we spent much of the time laughing while I got all the lights right.

After I was done Bob wanted to know what kind of music I was into. I named a few current bands that I was really liking and then told him I really loved Bob Dylan. As soon as I said that de asked me if I wanted a T-Shirt, I kind of thought it was a joke. Bob then disappeared and came back with a Dylan, Carlos Santana concert shirt from the early 90s. That wasn't enough though and he disappeared again and came back with a book on Dylan that he said he really loved and gave it to me. Somehow the Lovin Spoonful came up and I mention that I really liked their music too. Off went Bob again and this time came back

with a photo he'd taken of the band and it was autographed by all the members!

Day 2 we met up at one of the murals he's done and took pictures of him in front of it. He drove there

with his art car and afterwards we went up into Druid Hill Park and shot him with his car in the woods.

It is rare that I get this kind of time with anyone, but Bob was so patient and nice through it all and

willing to do whatever I wanted. I figured I'd see if he wanted to grab lunch so off we went to Bob's

favorite hang the James Joycee Pub down in Harbor East where EVERYONE knew him. After a long

lunch of chewing the fat we finally had to get on with our days, but not before Bob gave me a big hug

and told me to keep in touch.

Shoots like that make it impossible to not love my job!

Project Coffee; Teavolve

2010-04-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-13T13:26:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-12T08:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-02T08:18:00.000-07:00

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.

VJ Kapur

2010-03-24T18:42:00.000-07:00

Last week I got to do portraits with D.C. singer/song writer VJ Kapur. We had met at a friend, Jacob Gemmell's show. After a long time of talking about hooking up to do pictures we finally got it done. The first image was shot near John's Hopkins University on a trail I used to run on when I lived nearby. The second image was shot in the Hampden area of Baltimore.

Both locations epitomize the grittiness of Baltimore which I've really come to love. There's something so real and tactile about places around town. I think Baltimore gets a bad rap, with most people only thinking of the Inner Harbor, The Wire and murders when Baltimore is mentioned. To me though it's been a wonderful city to start a career in. It's a place full of realness and little pretentiousness. There are beautiful old places all around the city. And to me, a photographer, even the dilapidated and abandoned places are like gardens of photographic opportunity each hidden with unnoticed or forgotten treasures.

It was fun to explore some of the little hideaways of Baltimore with VJ and then to se how well they translated to photos when we were done.

I guess this is my man crush on Baltimore entry. And looking at it now I think I made VJ into an Indian Springsteen. There are worse things.

2010-03-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

So birthday cookie cake taught me a valuable lesson...I have no dessert self control. If it's in my place it will die a gruesome death.

Behold, three days with birthday cake.

I will never weigh 175 lbs ever again.

When Children Attack

2010-03-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

Occasionally, I come up with photo ideas that I can't quite explain in a way that makes them seem sane. Fortunately, society seems to give a little wiggle room to an artist in the sane department. How's that for an intro for one of my latest shoots.

I think my thought process started with this shoot after seeing a little kid eating some candy or jam or something. Their hands and all around there mouth was stained red. It made me think how if you saw an adult with red liquid oozing down their face you would think something totally different. Red stains on a kid is Kool Aid and cute, on an adult it's Hannibal Lecter and disturbing.

This led me to think of my family dog Luna. My parents love to buy her stuffed animal squeaker toys. Luna then will not rest until she has totally destroyed the animal, ripped out all it's stuffing and gotten to it's squeaker and killed it with a righteous and holy vengeance. She's always so proud of herself after this act, parading the stuffed animal carcass around the house and plopping it on your lap in an attempt to get you to play tug-of-war with it.

Blend all this together in my sort of sane mind and this is what you get.

Often photo ideas take on a life of their own. Sometimes what you are left with is quite a bit different than what you originally dreamed up. In this case, what I dreamed up came to life almost too well. I got a white teddy-bear at a Goodwill and then bought some red syrup for the blood. But, as soon as I started pouring the blood on the decapitated bear I realized wow...this looks really realistic. Perhaps TOO realistic. Perhaps years of therapy after this trauma realistic.

I cut back a bit on the original carnage that I had planned for ole teddy. Still when I brought in the little girl she refused to look at the bear, much less touch it. My original idea had her holding part of it. That was not happening. In fact she didn't even want anything to do with the syrup. Eventually, with her mom bribing her with M&Ms and her sister and babysitter dancing behind me to distract her and make her laugh I got what I needed and compromised by letting the bear stay on the floor.

The girl's mom told me later that her older sister who is four told her after watching the shoot that there "Mommy there was something REALLY wrong with that bear!" Boy the fun I'll have when I have kids...poor kids.

Made My Day

2010-03-17T13:29:00.000-07:00

As if Red Emma's wasn't enough good vibes for a day, when I got home from there I had a package on my doorstep. I thought maybe it was some shorts that I had left at my grandparents that they had sent back. I took it upstairs and opened it up. There was a bunch of packaging. I slowly pulled it all away, thinking this is kind of ridiculous for a pair of shorts. And then low and behold I pulled out this:

A birthday cake from my homiesieta Nunz's mommy and daddy!! How sweet was that? Well, I'll tell you how sweet, super sweet, cause it was the best tasting thing I can remember putting in my mouth for sometime. It's a good thing I'm not a diabetic...yet...because this would be like a one way ticket to a diabetic coma it's so good.

Because it looked so good, I decided to take another picture of it posing on my couch as well.

I would suggest everyone go make friends with Martha and Rudy and then have yourself a birthday!

Project Coffee; Red Emma's

2010-03-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

Part four of Project Coffee (I still need to put up part one, for anyone who is counting) was most excellent! Met up with partner in coffee crime Sean Scheidt at Red Emma's a place on St. Paul in the Mount Vernon neighborhood. It's actually an archaist group owned collective, and although I asked I won't even pretend to try to explain how that works.

Sean and I both got a chai latte which tasted faintly of some sort of spice cookie my mom used to make a lot. Whatever it was, it was good.

The great food and drink was hardly the best part of the place though, the atmosphere put it all to shame. I don't know if we went there on a good day or what, but it was one of those places I imagined used to exist before "The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry." (Anyone know what that quote is from? huh huh huh??)

It was one of those places where everyone was sort of in on the conversation. You heard a lot of, "I couldn't help, but overhear what you said." Which was code for let us partake in discussion. Not exactly what happens in Starbucks where the only discussion usually seems to be could you please move, shut up, or stop doing that.

Not exactly sure what anarchists got going down, but it seemed like good stuff. There was a chess game going on between and old white dude and a young black dude behind us. We got to watch Bohemian Rhapsody done by the Muppets on the cashiers computer while listening to it over the cafe's speakers. And our server who's name was Sine ended up being a really cool girl who is two bands, Mr. Moccasin and has just started a solo project called Bean, which I took a listen of and is really good. She's the one below with the mustache tattoo on her finger. You got to respect a tattoo that is only for comedic purposes.

Sean and I agreed Red Emma's was by far the best place we'd hit up so far. But, really how can you go wrong with a place that stands behind a Stolen Sharpie Revolution? You can't! That's how.

The Sorted Lives of AK Slaughter

2010-03-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

In an attempt to try something new I have started trying to do a little more story telling with my shoots. So when I got the chance to shoot with the rap duo AK Slaughter and they told me they were up for anything I figured I should take advantage of this little situation (Thanks to The Jersey Shore I can't say the word "situation" without thinking of THE Situation).

After talking a little I found out two things:

1. Aran was into a sort of retro kick with his wardrobe.

2. Emily and Aran are constantly getting asked if they are a couple, which they are not.

So I figured let's shoot them as a retro couple! When Aran showed up to the shoot first I told him my plan. He liked the idea, but had me look at their previous album AK Slaughter a personal matter. For their album art they had done a sort of 50/60s theme of a couple apparently in love.

This gave me an even better idea though...shoot them as a 70s couple with all kinds of dysfunction. A couple where Emily is still madly in love and trying to win Aran's heart. Unfortunately, Aran is a jerk to say the least and Emily's advances are ignored at best and despised at worst.

A lovely story right?

Well, perhaps depressing, but thanks to some great acting by both Emily and Aran it was hilarious. They really nailed the emotions I wanted and my retro decorated house worked as a perfect set for their disharmony.

Hello World!!!

2010-03-16T19:23:00.000-07:00

It's finally happened, I own America! I was messing around on my Google analytics and saw that I have finally had my photo website www.danielbedell.com visited by every state in America. Wyoming I believe was the final state to bow to me.

I still have a way to go with world domination, but I'm about a quarter of the way there. I do have some pretty crazy ones like Uganda and Kyrgyzstan. Honestly, how many people knew Kyrgyzstan was even a country?

The countries I still really want are Kazakhstan, Greenland and the Vatican. Also I'd like to collect all the communist countries. I've already got China so I need North Korea, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam. Gotta collect 'em all!

Project Coffee; City Cafe

2010-03-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

Project Coffee continues. Friday Sean Scheidt and I met up at City Cafe in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore. It is quite the chic place. Half of the space is set up as as a coffee house and the other half is a restaurant. Turned out Sean was friends with the head chef Chad Gauss and had even shot his wedding a while back. We met Chad who was very nice and was telling us how he's really pushed to buy a lot more locally grown vegetables and now meats to serve. Apparently, hitting up the local farmer's markets is a large part of his job. I think I might see if I can tag along sometime and do a little documentary on some food from start to finish.

I've decided on Project Coffee missions I am going to order based on the barista's favorite thing or the most popular. The barista this time said she just liked coffee, so I went with what she said was most popular. Apparently, City Cafe isn't the most macho hang cause I ended up getting a Blueberry Hazelnut Mocha...it pretty much tasted like blueberry pancakes in liquid form. Apparently, the I am making a slow, slow transition to "actual" coffee.

Sean ended up getting an omelet with sweat potato fries that was delightful way to clog one's arteries. I'd recommend it if you're into all that clogging biz.

Unfortunately, there were no couches for me to leave my ass groove in. I know the world is a sadder place now.

Recycling 17.5 Peanuts

2010-03-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I had a weekly column in a couple newspapers. Originally, I started in sports writing and column writing before getting into photography. Anyway, I thought I would revise and recycle some of the columns I have written on here. Perhaps, eventually I will even write some new ones. Although I warn you, without an editor the fact that I am a horrible speller and have the grammar skills of a 12 year old may become painfully obvious.

This goes out to everyone looking to waste some time at work!

I HATE AIR TRAVEL! Can I get a witness?!

A few weeks ago saw kid who was wearing a T-shirt that said "Friends don't let friends fly Southwest." I had just flown Southwest about two days earlier and I couldn't have agreed more. In fairness though, it isn't just Southwest, it is all the airlines. You don't get anything anymore. Food for instance. You don't get meals, you get snacks. Which even as snacks go are a joke.

On one flight I counted the peanuts I was given as my snack. My package contained seventeen and a half peanuts. From Chicago to Reno I was supposed to subsist on SEVENTEEN AND A HALF PEANUTS!

It doesn't stop just at the food, airlines no longer provide movies, TV reruns, music, or space. That would be bad enough right? But noooo, airlines are missing the charming intangibles of old and have replaced charm with the following:

1. Virtually, no hot stewardesses (I would even settle for stewardesses who don’t hit me with the drink cart, bash me in the head with a seat buckle while demonstrating to people the subtle nuances of those rare locking devices, jam their asses in my face while adjusting things in overhead bins, or apologize for ANY of the following),

2. Cushions that give me horrible butt-ache.

3. Anxiety attacks from wondering if you will be unpatriotic by going to the forward lavatory at the same time as someone else therefore engaging in illegal congregating activities.

Am I wrong here or is it un-American for us to now be charged a minimum of twenty-five dollars to super-size our luggage? Hell, you have to pay just to have luggage most of the time. My mom used to pack luggage that require pallbearers to carry. If she did that now it would require pallbearers to carry off my dad off after he got billed. Over all, flying just seems to have lost any charm it may have once had.

Maybe I was just young and stupid, but it used to be exciting. Now it has morphed into bus travel gone wild, minus any nudity or beads. Though, I don't think nudity would help the experience, I have sat next to very few people I would ever want to see in any form of nude.

ONE TIME have I got a seat next to a really hot girl. I have flown probably close to a hundred times and all I get is one time out of a hundred?! Lucky for me, that hot girl sat next to her boyfriend and the two of them proceeded to make out the whole flight. Can't say the flight wasn't memorable, just not for the reasons that I had hoped for when I spotted her in my row as I was walked down the isle.

Several times lately I have had the distinct feeling in an airport that I am livestock. You get herded in and out of lines, through gates and prodded with metal detecting wands in your rear and crotch. Besides being shot in the head No Country For Old Men style and being turned into an Omaha Steak once you get to the plane what is missing?

Of course the people running the cattle drive are rarely friendly. I was running late for a flight recently after getting stuck in traffic and I went to a airline employee and asked if there was any way I could get rushed through so I could be sure to make my flight. She looked at me like I had asked for a back rub and said, "Yeah. You can rush on to the back of the line!"

I hate those moments because I am always surprised by them. When I am surprised I never have a good comeback. So for the next half hour while I wait in line I think of all the clever things I should have said. "Oh yeah well your jobs sucks more than mine! And I don't even have a job!" Or, "I bet all your friends really aren't your friends...they uhh...only like you because you are so pathetic you make them feel better about themselves!" Yeah…so take that…I am full of a lot of snappy comebacks like that, maybe even better ones…maybe.

I guess in some ways it isn't fair get angry at the airlines. They are just trying to find ways to appease our demand for lower prices. They basically said here are your low prices, hope you enjoy your butt-ache and seventeen and a half peanuts losers!

The real people we should blame are scientists. Why haven't they invented personal, affordable, safe teleporting. I mean even the OLD Star-Trek had it! And that was like fifty years ago! What's the deal? Didn't we get telegraph and phone close to a hundred and fifty years ago? You are telling me that the best we can do in a hundred and fifty years is give me a phone without wires that plays movies the size of a postage stamp?

Shoot, if we spent as much time and money figuring out how to teleport as we do on how to wage wars and kill people we could be faxing me to Yemen right now. And how much more peace would there be in the world if no one had to fly Southwest?

Then again what would happen to that feeling of excitement you get as a young single man boarding a plane with the hope that you will get to sit next to an attractive member of the opposite sex...who of course is making out with her boyfriend for five nonstop hours, uninterrupted by movies, TV reruns, food or music.

Excuse me while I go see what happens when you congregate next to the forward lavatory.

Publishing Genius

2010-03-11T21:22:00.000-08:00

I shot a job for Baltimore Magazine on Adam Robinson. He turned out to be a pretty cool guy with some unique interests. One of his interests was poetry. Robinson is basically a poetry outlaw who goes around cities and puts his poems up on lamp posts, signs and other random places he thinks they will get noticed. The idea has caught on in other cities now and taken on a life of it's own as other people now have turned urban areas into notebooks. He even has a book of pictures of the poems hung gorilla style around cities. You can see them here at IsReads

Adam also started a publishing company, Publishing Genius and has published the works of nearly a dozen authors. Even cooler the first novel his company ever publish, Light Boxes by Shane Jones was bought for republication by Penguin, sold out and then the film rights were bought for it by Spike Jonze.

You can also read Adams blog here.

We took these pictures in Baltimore City at Patterson Park on the South East side of town. The building behind Adam in the first shot is the Pagoda. For some reason there are cannons and statue of kids surrounding an asian style building in the middle of Baltimore. Yeah, I don't totally get city planning. Of course I had the idea to basically defile the statue of children with some poetry. Adam was game, so away we went.

The last picture I believe is the one that ended up running for the article, POETRY MAN (man man man man)!! I like it. Nothing like a hipster professor by day and English language super hero by night. Fighting against the evils of bad punctuation, spelling and dull prose!

Madness!

2010-03-10T21:26:00.000-08:00

College basketball is officially heating up and two guys that I got shoot last year for SLAM Magazine are right in the middle of it. Mouphtaou Yarou and Isaiah Armwood, shown in that order below, now play for the tenth ranked Villanova Wildcats.

Both guys attended Montrose Christian School which is just North of D.C. and has produced several NBA players most notably Kevin Durant.

Isaiah, who is originally from Baltimore grabbed a bit of highlight time early on by getting a number one play of the day on ESPN with a dunk over 7 guys at a contest you can see here. We tried to recreate it with Mouphtaou, but as you can see below it didn't quite work. After doing it like two times Isaiah kind of pulled up lame with his leg. I of course immediately put an end to that shot idea, the last thing I needed was to end some kids career over a photo shoot!

So as a second idea I had Isaiah dunk while Mouphtaou threw the ball off the backboard, spun around in the air with the ball over his head like he was looking to pass down the court while still in the air. Yeah...sometimes the ideas you get in your head probably need to be run by a czar of common sense. In the end I think we actually got a decent shot, you can see it in the last set of pictures.

That being said trying to time two people jumping in the air is fairly hard. Trying to time two people jumping in the air doing different things is harder. Trying to time two people doing two different basketball skills in the air at the same time is really hard. Trying to time two people doing two different basketball skills in the air (one of those skills being the rebound outlet pass combo being pretty hard) and not have some weird face or shorts bunching up or an elbow covering up there face is just STUPID HARD! But sometimes you just got to figure out the hard way that what's in your head is not the easiest thing to recreate. In the meantime you still might get some sweet images.

Mouphtaou, who goes by Mouph is actually from Benin, Africa. He came to the U.S. in 2007 after only playing basketball since 2004. Apparently being 6'10" and 250 lbs translates well to basketball. Of course before basketball his thing was soccer...I think he made the right choice. And to just make you feel a little more humbled Mouph speaks five languages.

In a cool move, after both playing at Montrose where I shot them, the two decided to both go to the save college. It's always exciting for me to turn on ESPN and catch a Nova game and see them. They were both very nice to work with and it's harder to imagine a nicer Goliath than Mouph. Oh and before I left they introduced me to a teammate of theirs who was also from Benin. He was seven feet tall and in the tenth grade. I got the shaft being born in Avon Park, Florida for sure!

All the best to the guys in the tournament! I'm sure they'll be thinking of me every time they have to simultaneously dunk a ball and rebound another basketball, spin around in the air and look to make an outlet pass down court.

A Guide To Getting FAT!

2010-03-09T08:42:00.000-08:00

Kiddy Crack. HBO rejected a follow up series to The Wire that was based around the confectionary trade between a gang of 5 year olds and their Mennonites suppliers.

What about lemonade milk? If life gives you sour milk make it into milk lemonade.

This is marketed to Amish wives looking to throw a wild cocktail party, but just don't have the time to make 15 different kinds cubed cheese and cheese dip. The Real Housewives of Lancaster Pennsylvania.

Contains your daily value of Red Dye #40

Just by reading this caption your BMI rose 2%....sorry.

I didn't actually order a NEW chicken and swiss log, but this is what I kind of imagined the finished product should look like. Did I mention I was a vegetarian for 17 years before now? My meat imagination is pretty wild.

When Grandma does drugs.

So many jokes....so inappropriate.

My family came to visit me last week and we decided to go to the Pennsylvania Dutch Market in Hunt Valley. It had been a while since I had been to a place such as this where I could feel my heart slowly clogging just from visual stimuli. I was strong though! I only ate samples...and a milkshake my mom bought...and a pretzel my sister bought...and a bison burger I bought...and the strawberry rhubarb pie my dad bought...and the carmel apple walnut pie my dad bought for me...and the cranberry glazed bread my family bought as a family. THAT WAS IT!!

To save myself from type 2 diabetes I instead got my nerdy photographer thing on and busted out my iPhone and the ShakeItPhoto app and started snapping away. The one great thing that I wasn't able to capture well that really deserved to be captured well was Awesome Albert the three foot high, $100 dollar chocolate Easter Bunny. We will meet again Awesome Albert...we will meet again.

Ellen Cherry

2010-03-08T07:56:00.000-08:00

One of the first people I met in Baltimore was Kristin. We met in the way most people meet...on a Chinatown bus smelling of urine and that strange industrial blue liquid that is supposed to make us think it doesn't smell like urine. She was coming back from doing a show in NYC and I was coming back from wandering the streets of York by day and sleeping on an old girlfriend's studio basement apartment by night. A studio apartment she lived in with her current boyfriend by the way. You got to love starting out being poor!

Turned out Kristin was a singer/songwriter who went by the stage name of ellen cherry. We talked all the way back and then her and man gave me a ride back to my place. As they say, the rest is history. Now who "they" be that says that, and why they were to lazy to actually tell anymore of the story I don't know.

Kristin has since become one of my close friends and also a quality test model often humoring me while I try out new lighting or ideas. These photos are from one such "just kind of messing around" shoot from almost exactly a year ago. We also collaborated on her newest ellen cherry cd (New) Years, doing the album art. Check out the music and cd at her site here or at iTunes.

Oh, and ellen cherry also landed the local FOX news theme song. So half a dozen times a day I can turn on the TV and think, "I knew her when..."

Project Coffee

2010-03-05T09:28:00.000-08:00

I have begun a new tradition in the life of Daniel, in an attempt to BmoreBedell. This is the tradition of man dates. Fellow photographer Sean Scheidt and I decided to meet up last week at a cafe to talk shop, gossip and try to figure out the best way to take the photo world by storm.

It went so well that I thought to myself, "Daniel BmoreBedell, you should make this into a tradition." Brilliant idea number one. Then, wait for it....wait for it...brilliant idea number TWO, we should meet up once a week at a different cafe around Baltimore. The city has a ton of cafes so what a great way to get to know the city a little better and for me figure out the difference between bad caffeinated concoctions and good ones.

I know I'm a late bloomer. I really have no idea what is good or bad. I still feel the need to ask for clarification on what is the difference between coffee, mocha, chai, latte, and whatever else there is, coffee snobs please forgive me my ignorance.

First up on Project Coffee was the Patterson Perk. Located on the SW corner of Patterson Park on 2501 Eastern Ave. The barista recommended the vanilla mocha, which I got to admit was quite good. Which is saying something from someone who 99% of the time goes with the edgy choice of hot chocolate. I decided to up my game to coffee though after one too many times ordering the same thing as a 4 year old in line with me.

The Perk is a cute little place. Yikes, I just used the word cute...so be it, it fits. Not much room, but quaint. (Why did the Mushroom go to the party? He's a fungi! Why did he leave? There wasn't mushroom. Why is this one of the jokes I can always remember? Reference the end of this paragraph.)Topics of the day were photo shoots gone horrible wrong, investing in plastics, lack of rich benefactors and women/or the lack thereof. I feel the latter will be a pretty consistent theme considering both of us are single for now.

In the tradition of eco friendly camping I took only pictures and left only an ass groove.

Patterson Perk grand entrance.

Shinny object

Vanilla Mocha with a shot of fire extinguishing agent. It's the best!

Ass Groove

More Horses

2010-03-04T09:16:00.000-08:00

These are a couple more photos from the piece on Maryland horse racing. You can actually read the whole article here.

This is Tom Bowman a vet and horse breeder who lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore. He was a beautiful little horse farm out in Chestertown. I drove out to shoot with him and a cold overcast day which turned out to be fairly appropriate considering the article basically turned into a tale of the slow demise of horse racing.

Tom, though was extremely nice and answered all the horse breeding questions I peppered him with. The colt in the photo I believe was only about four days old...but don't quote me on that. As you can see in the photo that accompanies the article the colt didn't at all fit even the smallest harness they had.

Seeing a horse farm like Tom's really makes you hope that we really don't turn all of America into suburbia. There needs to be places with picket fences, rolling green hills, dirt roads and creeks cutting little veins into it all. You lose track of time a little out there. Lost time is far too hard to find as it is.

To the tree house general!

2010-03-03T11:35:00.000-08:00

Just had a piece on tree houses published in Urbanite Magazine which you can see here.

When I was probably in fourth grade or so my mom and I built a tree house. I think we did it for under $40 dollars. Compared to these tree houses it probably looked like a under $40 tree house. I loved it though. It had three levels, a rope swing, fireman's pole, pull-up slash trapeze bar, one of those disk swings and a screened in sandbox...which I think mostly turned into a cage to lock my sister in.

That tree house was great. I learned that cologne was very flammable in that tree house. I learned that you can fall ten feet in the dark onto your arm and not break it. I learned that if you Tarzan swing into one of those kiddy pools with whales and dolphins on the side you can recreate a tsunami. I learned how to hunt lizards. I learned how to escape.

Escaping is kind of what tree houses are about right? Adults should have tree houses. I got to admit I envied the kids I was photographing a little bit. A piece of me wanted to yell at them "YOU DON'T KNOW HOW GOOD YOU HAVE IT!!!!"

You have no bills to pay. People will still wrestle with you. You don't have to make your own snacks. You get free food. You don't have to worry about your professional reputation when fake shooting all your friends with your fake guns. The opposite sex is a mystery you feel no need to solve. You have to put effort into getting fat. No one looks at you in a disgusted manner if you want to take a nap.

Unfortunately, if you yell these things at a child, you immediately have to admit in writing to the world that you are old and bitter. I am not ready for that quite yet, so I just took some pictures and went and bought some fruit snacks.

I'm a joker, I'm a smoker

2010-02-28T08:05:00.000-08:00

As a part of the series I shot on the Maryland horse racing industry I shot Mike. Mike was a better. NOT a gambler as he told me. He was playing odds, and playing odds is not gambling.

You couldn't have come up with a better character for the shot though. He wore a leather jacket that had a big rip in it and a leather hat that he wore turned back with a tear on the left side. His daily intake of tobacco included both dip and cigs. He walked around with a curled up notebook that he jotted down notes on the bets he made.

Mike was studying to be a nurse, but he also did standup (although I don't remember him saying a thing that made me laugh), he was working on some screenplays and he seemed to have a couple other odd jobs that were getting him by. He fit right in with the crowd at the Laurel track that included the young, the old, the working class, the business class, the retired and the tired. If you ever want to see a strange slice of life hit up a horse track on a weekday.

Throughout the entire shoot Mike talked. He talked about the industry going down the drain. He talked about his standup. He talked. He explained odds and betting to me, although I admit I left with only a hazy understanding of how it goes down. He almost had me convinced that it was more skill than luck as he showed how he studies up on who the jockeys and breeders are. He tracks how different horses do on different surfaces and distances. I was nearly convinced...then he placed a bet who would come in first, second and third in three consecutive races. No way that is anything but luck!

We shot these images in the huge grandstand area that sits empty nearly all the time. Partly because of how small the crowds are and partly because what crowds are there mainly watch from inside on TVs. These shots were some of the few moments that I caught Mike not talking. The horizontal one remains one of my favorite shots. I grabbed the betting slips out of the trash. Turns out there are people called stoopers who's whole thing is looking through trash cans trying to find winning slips that people have accidentally thrown out.

Mario Pino

2010-02-25T19:54:00.000-08:00

One of the most interesting jobs I have got to do since moving to Baltimore was shooting portraits of people involved in the Maryland horse racing industry. In recent years the industry has struggled and then the owner of Pimlico, the crown jewel or Maryland racing filed for chapter 11.

I shot a breeder, trainer, assistant trainer, gambler, activist and a jockey. These are some photos of the jockey Mario Pino. Mario came in second in the Kentucky Derby in 2007 riding Hard Spun. Turns out he's pretty legendary in the area as a jokey. Amazingly too he turns 50 next year!

My knowledge of horse racing before this was nonexistent so it was so interesting to get such an intimate and wide ranging peak into the sport of kings. And you quickly see why it is the sport of kings and why it probably struggles now financially. I was told it can cost in the area of 40 grand a year to train a horse. So of course if you have 10 or more horses that adds up fast!

Mario turned out to be very nice. We took these shots a little before and after his races. The original idea was to have a horse in the shot but amazingly this turned out to be nearly impossible. Due to track edict and the fact that race horses apparently basically will not stand still for much time we ended up shooting these instead which I thought came out wonderfully.

Army of Me

2010-02-24T08:34:00.000-08:00

Got the chance to shoot portraits with Vince from Army of Me. Eventually the photos we shot turned into the album cover and art for his latest acoustic ep Make Yourself Naked. Which is a very good album. I even bought a copy myself...which is saying something. But, when one of his songs is a response to a Bob Dylan song I couldn't help myself. It's a great raw album, very much stripped down from the normal electric work Vince normally does with the band.

For this shoot Vince and I wandered around Fells Point in Baltimore on a Sunday morning. As usual I made sure I got my personal concert out of it. In this case it was even better because there was a bunch of random people around thinking we were crazy. At one point we were shooting in a tunnel and Vince was singing me Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 and he forget the words. Two women were out walking and coming through the tunnel and one picked up where he forgot the words and started singing and she was actually REALLY good! I love when stuff like that happens.

We hit up a diner for some breakfast and headed over to North Ave section of Baltimore and shot in this really cool alley that has been set up so people can do graffiti art. Finished up the last of my personal concert and then went and helped Vince's brother move. All in a day's work of shooting.

Be sure to check out Army of Me's music either at there website by clicking here or going to iTunes.

Seasick Steve

2010-02-23T09:45:00.000-08:00

My cousin introduced me to Seasick Steve and I must state the obvious...he's pretty sick. He plays a 3 string guitar in a lot of his stuff. Why wasn't this an option in fourth grade beginners band? I wouldn't have wasted nearly a decade dedicating myself to being bad at playing the french horn that's for sure!

I didn't take this picture, but I think Seasick Steve is going on my list of people I want to photograph.

Check him out here on YouTube

Eddie Adams Workshop

2010-02-23T06:41:00.000-08:00

This was a photo booth type thing done by Howard Schatz at the Eddie Adam Workshop. I of course am not in it, I was out being offered oral sex by my subject. No joke. Despite not being in this, I actually really like this piece. Hmmm, somehow that sounded crazy conceded. I actually like many people hate 90% of the pictures taken of me, so I probably like this MORE because I am not in it.

Howard does some really amazing underwater stuff. Makes me want an underwater camera bad! The work is very elegant with more than a dose of trippyness to it. If trippyness isn't a word I now deem it one. He also is a regular contributor to Vanity Fair. He usually shoots an actor and gives them a few different things to act out. Here's an example:

Left:You're an eight-year-old boy whose friend convinced you to shoplift the latestGrand Theft Auto.Now you're sitting in the security office at the mall, waiting for your father to arrive.

Center: You've just excused yourself from the table at a dinner party where you've been placed between the two most boring people on the planet, and you're in the bathroom, wondering how you'll survive two more hours.

Right: You're the idealistic young teacher of an out-of-control fourth-grade class, exploding after 20 minutes of complete chaos.

Anyway, yet another awesome product of going to Eddie Adams Workshop, go check it out Ladies and Gentleman, Boys and Girls!

Victoria Vox

2010-02-22T19:33:00.000-08:00

Baltimore uke specialist Victoria Vox and I got together to do portraits. The original plan was to have her out hawking here "Uke Can't Touch This" undies in the street. Of course it started raining as soon as we were supposed to start. So we headed to a parking garage to creep out all the people who had parked there.

I got a personal concert and Victoria willingly got into the trunk of her car...pretty much an ideal shoot!

Check out her music at www.victoriavox.com it's some pretty great stuff. She does a mouth trumpet that is to die for. I'm trying to convince her to do Ring of Fire with the uke and mouth trumpet!