This last month, a fantastic surprise happened. An old friend of mine from Madrid was going to be in detroit and let me know he’d be flying in to Chicago for a few days. Since leaving Madrid, Marcus Hurst started a fantastic blog called Yorokobu and started making the beautifully designed Ling inflight magazine for Vueling, a Spanish airline. He asked if there was anything in Chicago he should do a piece on and one of the first things that came to mind was Specimen in Humboldt Park. They make amazing hand made guitars, tube amplifiers and have been making grammaphone-esque cone speakers for Andrew Bird for the last ten years or so. They’re so interesting they recently put up a huge installation of their pieces in the MCA in Chicago. One of the “inventions” of the owner Ian Schneller is a massive amp with a set of 2 rotating cone speakers that make the most lush sounding stereo chorus effect when a guitar is run through it. It filled the whole space with this gorgeous tone and made me want to just sit and listen for days. It reminded me of why I love my job. I get to meet interesting people making gorgeous things with varied stories. I’ve always been curious and photography gives me this pass to access so many things I’d never get to see or maybe never put the energy in to see. Being a tourist in my own city is fantastic.

This guy’s about to blow up. He’s been working all year on an album, swinging mics above his head to create stereo effects, banging out jangly strat tones and singing sweet, sweet melodies. He takes americana, adds a bit of sweetness to it all, but never forgets to be honest. He’s only 22 but has already done a stint in Italy and written some great music. I had a great time shooting with him, and we ended the shoot with an hour long jam session in the studio, playing musical guitar where we used a loop pedal and traded back and forth, creating layers. I love my job.

I shoot regularly for Gilt City here in Chicago. It’s a bit of a challenge as normally I get an email 24-48 hrs before I need to schedule and shoot the images, and occasionally have another day to get the edit to the photo editors off in NYC. The process is difficult but I like having the obstacle of almost zero planning, and telling a story about a place I may have never visited before. I like it because I go somewhere and imagine I’m a customer, walking in for the first time and shoot what strikes me as special about the location.

This week’s great shoot happened at Tesa Cigar shop in the west loop – BYOB and stocked to gills with classics like macanudo and their own brand of cigars made in Nicaragua, its a cigar smoker’s heaven. The humidor was massive and at one point I even saw what looked like an erupting volcano of humid air puffing out of the humidifier. It turns out the owners and their friends built the whole walk in humidifier themselves. I love when people take their spaces into their own hands. But enough talking, here’s the images.

Unreal.
This piece is showing in Paris at Galerie BSL. I love when artist work with light, especially when it’s not that cheezy, hey here’s a tilted florescent bulb kind of way. The way this reflects the color spectrum is pretty fantastic and adds so much dimension to the room with the colored lines.
Thanks mocoloco.

I don’t really keep in touch with too many people from college, but this guy Jordan was always playing out in school and writing solid bits of pop and this new EP is a good representation of a classic american pop album (pop as in melodic, not as in Kesha). The arrangements are really well done, and the melodies an easy listen. It’s good not because it’s some challenging artistic endeavor as much as it’s just well crafted and quite a bit of fun. A bit of The Beatles, a bit of Elliot Smith, and a whole lot of personal touches make this album worth the listen. It’s free for download still, so feel free to check it out.

Download it here.

Lomo , the company that helped bring the Holga to its throne, pusher of all cameras russian and smelly (open up a fed 5 and tell me it doesn’t smell bad) has done it again, but this time its a movie camera that shoots 35mm film. Now I want to make movies with 35mm film reels. This looks like a fun way to blow tons of film. It would really be great to make a music video with this or shoot it at a friends wedding and make a nice creative short of the day. Now I just need to look and see how much developing and scanning this stuff costs, because even though its a $100 camera a roll of film is probably $40 and the developing probably the same, plus scan fees if you want to share it. So yeah, $120 for a family vid might not be worth it but for a gig or a special occasion I might be tempted…

Check out this sexy footage…I LOVE the wide aspect ratio.

The Lomography LomoKino from Lomography on Vimeo.

Donald Weber talks about the changes in documentary photography in recent years in this video I found via The Photo Editor blog and it raises some interesting questions. He talks about how now there are so many outlets for your work, not just magazines, galleries and books, but the question is how to monatize the online/alternative outlets for the work because we all need to make a living.

Money is important, but what I love about right now is that more people see your work, that there is a more democratic access to work.  People don’t hide their pictures away without a price of entry.  Things are more communal and in a strange way, the internet has become a community, and has strengthened the conversations photographers have.  People are more aware of what is happening and that is truly the goal of many documentarians.  The whole reason to take the pictures is to share them, to show people what is happening, to share the stories of our fellow human beings.  The fact that I can post pictures on my facebook page for example and that at least 100 people will look at the photographs and that they will then share them with all of their friends is a pretty powerful thing.  I like this model and it’s actually been really good for my business and my art, so I see this time as maybe a struggle for those who have lived by a different set of rules more than an issue for the whole photographic community.  The rules have changed, the modes of communication have changed, and that is what keeps it interesting.  Donald Weber stated that if we kept working the same way we always had and if nothing had changed he would have been concerned.  Amen to that.

Donald Weber from PhotoQ on Vimeo.

Sepalcure’s new Bass single “Pencil Pimp”  came to save the day today.  Thanks to a quick visit to XLR8r.com I’ve found something really fantastic.  The video is visually so amazing, with an interesting storyline, and importantly the track is off the charts.  I love how they added in audio from what was actually happening in the film, like the sound of the fire burning.  It has the feel that it was just all shot in one day, as there is this linear sequence of events that end at almost darkness and even though I need to watch again to really understand what’s going on, I’m into it.  And it’s not just eye candy, so I want to watch it more than just once.

That’s really what we’re all going for here, as artists and creators, right?  Get people to see our work and compel them to watch or look for more than just a few seconds at a time.  The flash in the pan these days is shorter by the day it seems.  Nothing lasts for long and that’s bad for creating community and bigger discussions so I think now more than ever we need to work to get people drawn in to something worth while.

So I’ve been MIA for the week, and it’s mostly due to my new camera, the Fuji X-100. It’s amazing little beast that looks like an old school film camera, functions mostly like a point and shoot but has the quality of an SLR. I’ve been wanting something to carry around and take “snaps” with for ages, and I really don’t like the quality of most point and shoot digital cameras. Either the lenses are subpar or the sensors are crappy.

There are tons of people talking about what they like or don’t like about this camera, so I’m not going to do a massive tech review on the x-100 but I will say a few things about it in general. The manual focus is basically worthless, but the autofocus works most of the time like a charm so it’s not really an issue. The battery seems to last pretty long unless you leave the quick wake up setting on and leave the camera turned to ON, while you sleep at night (found that out the hard way when I woke up and wanted to shoot). The camera is a touch slow to respond at times, but it’s a fancy point and shoot in many ways, so you learn to deal with that, and its a bit of a compromise to get something small, light and inobtrusive. Also, since it has a great sensor and shoots raw I found myself being able to rescue underexposed shots in ways you’d normally not be able to do. And the dynamic range of fuji’s sensors is pretty impressive.

What I love is that the camera gets a great response when I carry it around and people don’t act like they do when I pull out my 5dmkii at a party. I feel like I got more honest interactions with the camera and had more fun shooting than I’d had in a long time, so really the camera is doing it’s job. You feel ok taking photos for the sake of photos with it, in a relaxed manner and it’s just so fun to touch that you almost forget you’re holding a new camera. I’d highly recommend also getting the thin leather strap that nikon sells to complete the classic package. The faux leather one that comes with the camera is pretty gross to the touch.

OK. So enough babble, here are some shots from the first week. Sorry, no lush landscapes but lots of wandering urban shots and snaps of neighbors…

john maus @ the empty bottle

In these days we live in of spammy email coupon sites that remind you daily that you can buy something you don’t want or about a carwash in the neighboring city suburb for $5 (I’m talking to you, Groupon) or super luxury sites that just sell super posh suits (you’re Gilty of this and you know it), I’ve found one that frequently inspires me to pull out my credit card (or just my drool bib) on their items/sales…FAB.com. Painstakingly curated but people with more than an ounce of good taste (although I’ve yet to see a print that I like), you can pick up cool shelving, furniture, glasswear, pet clothes, art supplies, etc. and all of it speaks to your inner design geek.  Getting an email from them is exciting and never a drag, because even if it’s not something I’m going to buy, at least its something that aesthetically inspires me.  Garbage in, garbage out.

*write me a message if you want me to use even MORE parenthesis in my next post.  I can do it.

Chubby Mechanical Pencil by Xonex

C.W.Keller Ply shelf by Matter Design

Key Module in Walnut by Housefish.

Fferrone Design fine glassware.