photogrammatical

An outtake from yesterday when my brother asked me to take his passport photo.  I’d think twice before letting this guy into my country.

I found this Batman mask in my brother’s closet.  I then wore it.  For an hour.

"Then all the reindeer loved him..."

This was towards the end of the shoot for Mom’s Christmas card. We were just hitting the fourth verse of our own a cappella version of The California Raisins’ Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.

You know, we aren’t that bad.  But I won’t be quitting my day job.

Madison Nease is kid sister to my buddy/housemate, Wes Nease.  She recently flew out from exotic Virginia for two weeks’ visit, here in the land of Damn Good Mexican Food and Legal Heroin.

She is a Lettuce Farmer by trade.  (That is to say, she works on a lettuce farm.)  During her stay she helped spruce up our vegetable garden, which seems to know no winter.  She also spearheaded the clean up of our “bomb shelter”, an open-air subterranean concrete room in the backyard. Once decorated with white twinkle lights, it became the dance floor at Colin/Kate‘s Epic Joint Birthday/Maddy’s Going Home Party.

The following evening after the house had been picked up and the remaining guests had been wheelbarrowed to the curb.  We made a few images down on the dance floor while enduring weather in the low 50s, or what I like to call Southern California Freezing.

Thanks to Maddy for helping to straighten up our man cave, adding more vegetables to our bachelor’s diet, and for generally cheering up the joint.  Come back soon, the Goose misses you.

Madison and Wes Nease in The Bomb Shelter

I received this letter from my sister a little over a month before my first Veteran’s Day. I found it while thumbing through my journal this afternoon. Shared here with her permission.

Kate and the Marine Corps shared a birthday yesterday.

I was happy to spend it with her.

I was in Laguna early yesterday morning to shoot engagement photos for my cousin Dave and soon-to-be-cousin-in-law, Jenny. Being a family affair, I brought Tara and Kate along as Assistants/Wave Watchers (as in “Watch out, a wave is coming.”)

The water was fairly calm and the overcast skies held all morning, so I left the lights in their cases and didn’t even require the reflector.  This left the girls without much to do except hold the bag of lenses, and again, warn me of oncoming waves.

After an almost heartbreaking swell came a little too close to comfort, I gave Kate my iPhone, lest I lose two of my favorite things at once.  This morning I discovered a dozen or so choice iPhonotypes they’d made whilst I was busy.  A few of me shooting, but mostly it was them pointing at hermit crabs and dancing “all crazy” behind me.  These are just a few of the hits.

Tara surveys tide pools with reflector.

Tara points at a hermit crab.

Kate breaks it down.

A big thanks to my lovely and talented Assistants, and to Dave and Jenny, who took the waves in stride and the crew out to lunch.

He takes his drinks tall and cool, and likes his women warm and willing.

He dances like a boxer, and boxes like a dancer.

He can’t help you move this weekend…

He’s growing his beard.

He is: The Most Leisurely Man in the World.

This upcoming Saturday is my brother Colin’s 3rd Annual “Keep the Fire” pool party. A nautical themed tribute to 70s era smooth music or “Yacht Rock“. Loggins and Messina, Hall and Oates, The Doobie Brothers, pretty much everybody that Michael Jackson wiped out of our childhood memories.

Once a year he sends our parents away for the weekend and turns their backyard into the smoking deck on the Love Boat. Party props include fake mustaches, captain’s hats, bubble pipes, and white deck shoes. Before each party we have taken a series of ridiculous “promotional photos” of Colin that are later made into various flyers and email invitations. Now in it’s third incarnation, KTF has taken on a life of it’s own. Every year his planning gets more and more absurd, it wouldn’t surprise me if Colin tried to rent a yacht next year. Just a few days ago he called me wondering whether our parent’s sprinkler system could withstand having a small sailboat parked on the lawn… “for effect”.

A big thanks to Pragna, my “exotic hand model”, and to my assistants Wes and Tommy aka “Blaze and Blue“. Wes was secure enough to stand in front of the many on-lookers from the Newport American Legion and repeatedly pour water down another man’s chest, all while Tommy stood behind me holding lenses and ridiculing him.

I seem to take a lot of pictures of my siblings. I think eventually I’ll probably just have a section devoted to them. It works out nicely because I enjoy taking pictures of them and they enjoy having a higher quality of Facebook photos than the unwashed masses. Recently I was going to make some large prints and when the question came of what images I could stand to have staring back at me from my office wall, the answer was these two. We get along pretty well, the three of us. Not all siblings have it so good.