Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends

And before the street begins,

And there the grass grows soft and white,

And there the sun burns crimson bright,

And there the moon-bird rests from his flight

To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black

And the dark street winds and bends.

Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow

We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And watch where the chalk-white arrows go

To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,

And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,

For the children, they mark, and the children, they know

The place where the sidewalk ends.

(From Shel Silverstein's Where The Sidewalk Ends)

random polaroid from last spring

Happy Birthday

Photographing Photographers...and other strangers

I like photographing strangers, especially catching them in candid moments:

The lead singer's little brother

Manager, I assume

Moon Duo

Gamble House

We went here for some live music on Saturday evening. I don't know much about either band other than I enjoyed photographing them, but you can find more on them here and here.

Downtown

1 Scene, 3 ways

Too much noise in the photos, so I'm not sure I like any of them...except perhaps the black & white shot (cityscapes always look better in b&w to me).

Taken from the roof of the car while overlooking the 101.

Seafoam

#20

Remember last summer when my hardcore obsession with Tom Petty took off? I'm glad to say that phase hasn't passed (and hope it never does). Remember this list that I sometimes blog about? Well...

I was really getting worried that he wouldn't be touring again in my lifetime, but in 58 days, I will see Tom Petty (and the Heartbreakers of course) perform live!

Film

That necklace was my sisters in high school. I'm not sure if she made it, but it somehow wound up in my room recently.

I'm starting to shoot film, or trying to anyway. I'm using an old Nikon n60, and it's pretty similar to using a digital, with one obvious difference. Every time I click the shutter, I instinctively pull the camera away from my eye and look at back door expecting to see the image :)

A random street in Chino Hills.

Saturday Night Laughs

I never blog about TV, which is funny because there are certain shows I am obsessed with. I don't really follow many new shows (with the exception of Modern Family and Law & Order: SVU...if you aren't watching Modern Family, you are seeeriously missing out. I mean it, your week will be better having watched this show) but my DVR is full of episodes of old shows I've already seen dozens of times, including but not limited to The Simpsons, That 70s Show, Golden Girls, and older seasons of SVU.

Here's a scene from That 70s Show that never fails to make me laugh. It's from season 2 episode "Holy Crap". Eric and Laurie refuse to go to Church with Kitty, so she invites young, hip Pastor Dave over to bond with the kids. I'm not sure how many of you are church-going folk, but if you dread waking up and getting dressed on Sundays, maybe you'll get a little laugh out of this.

Pet Peeves: A Brief Venting

So you may not know this about me, but I despise cover songs. I understand when you're at a concert and the band chooses to play a few covers for fun. Totally acceptable. I've nodded along to a few and experienced the excited "I can't believe they know this song!" in my head. But when I'm driving around and I hear a cover on the radio, I can't change the station fast enough. Most--not all, but most covers are not good. There are few that I can tolerate (like this) but I just can't like a cover because my principles are screaming at me not to. I mean come on, it's like saying a photocopy is better than a painting. A lot of it is the sheer lack of creativity on the artist's part. And 99.9% of the time, the cover butchers the original. Then there's also 85% of the time (I'm being generous) when the cover slaughters/murders/decapitates/mutilates/guts/destroys the original so badly that you are traumatized and can no longer listen to the Go Gos without hearing stupid Hilary Duff. But mostly, the reason I hate cover songs is because somewhere along the lines, originals get forgotten and instead of saying "I like that Don Henley song," kids are saying, "That Ataris song is awesome!" Or even worse, one day some little turd will hear the original Don Henley and say "Whose this old guy that's trying to sing Boys of Summer???"

**I apologize for the overly morbid words but I just really hate covers. And I realize the Ataris/Don Henley is an outdated example, but in my head it's up there as one of the worst, coming in second to Jessica Simpson's take on Berlin. There are tons more that I'm forgetting at the moment, but you must have an opinion. What do you think is the worst cover of all time?

I Can't Complain But Sometimes I Still Do

I'm not sure why but I'm feeling unusually optimistic this week. Maybe because I've been listening to this and this (I know "Glory Days" isn't the most uplifting song, but you can't go wrong with the Boss). I feel like I should be wearing an "I ♥ America" shirt or something.

The above photo was taken in New York this past October. Sorry for the recycling and extra cheese in the last few posts. I'll work on it.

Hands. Yes, you read that correctly--a post about hands

I have a slight obsession with hands. Is that weird? I'm not bad with people's faces, but when it comes to hands, I have of a photographic memory. I can clearly picture the hands of 95% of the people I know at a moments notice and I'm fairly confident that if presented with a lineup of hands, I could match them to their owners in record time. I can remember the color, texture, and nails on a person's hands better than I can remember the details of their face. I'm not sure if this is something to brag about, but I just realized all of this and am experiencing a moment of clarity in regards to why I have so many random pictures of people's hands.

**Note: I did not crop any of these to turn them into "hand" shots, my lens just naturally gravitates to los manos.

Also, I threw in that last photo to show the gigantor bug bite I got the day before I left Pakistan. Do you see it on my pinky?

A Piece of Pakistan

I've finally decided to crawl out of my hole and return to the bloggernet. To be completely honest, I've hardly touched my camera (or done much else) since my return to America. The post-vacation comedown has consisted of work, tv, falling asleep every night at 10, and not much else. I really miss Pakistan and could have stayed for at least another 2 weeks. Here's a glimpse into just one aspect of my trip: my Grandma's house.

No one currently lives in this house, but whenever we go back, we take my Grandma with us and stay there for a few days. That ceiling fan is more than 50 years old and was transplanted from the house my grandparents lived in before this one. I don't think it works but it still hangs in my grandparents' old room (now used for storage). Older houses were built starting with one room, into the next, into the next, and so on, as you can see in the very last photo. I'm standing in one room but the camera looks through 3 different ones. Those doorways must only be 6' tall because I distinctly remember most men in my family having to duck down every time they walk through them. The cat is a stray, but she visits everyday for lunch (and by her increased size from last year, I'm assuming she stops by a few more houses as well...or maybe she's pregnant, not really sure). The spot where the towels are hanging to dry is where my Grandpa used to spend all day soaking in the sun during warmer months and where my Grandma spends most of her time now. My uncles often talk about demolishing this house to rebuild a better, more sustainable structure and I worry that memories like that will dissolve with the framework. True, I don't live in Pakistan, and of all my cousins, I've spent the least amount of time in this house. But even in those 100 or so days, I've established a very sweet catalog of memories. Sitting in the sun with my Grandpa while he told silly stories, playing with water guns with my cousins in the 110 degree summer heat, climbing onto the roof, playing cards by candlelight during power outages, repeatedly tripping over the elevated sewer grate (I think that's what they're called), playing Carrom Board with my Grandpa, this list could go on for awhile...

I specifically took these pictures to preserve the memory of this house, but this is a still a modified version of the one I more vividly remember because it has undergone a lot of changes since my grandfather's passing in 2001.

"All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this- as in other ways- they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it." - John Berger