Julie

This is a PSA.

Julie Michelle, the photographer behind "I Live Here: SF", is going through some rough times.

 Here are the relevant details from All City:

There is a fundraiser this Sunday (12/18) at the San Francisco Motorcycle Club to help All City friend and fellow photographer Julie Michelle and her partner Lee.

As some of you know, Lee recently suffered a massive stroke mid-November, leaving a lot of uncertainty in the couple’s lives. As you can imagine, the medical expenses are through the roof, even with insurance. Julie and Lee are currently in the midst of trying to relocate to a new home that will better fit Lee’s needs. 

In addition to trying to run Lee’s companies, Julie is currently staying with friends and working on packing up their life belongings in preparation for the move. Julie has done a lot of great things for the San Francisco photography community and beyond, and chances are that many of you reading this either know Julie personally or are familiar with her work, so I’m hoping some of our local readers are able to attend Sunday’s fundraiser. If you cannot attend, you can still help out here: 

http://julieandlee.chipin.com/julie-and-lee.

Your support is great appreciated! 

San Francisco Motorcycle Club

2194 Folsom Street (at 16th Street)

San Francisco, CA 94110 

3:00-7:00p.m.

If you're not familiar with the "I Live Here" project, Julie started it by posting an invitation on the internet to take portraits of people. She asks people to pick the place in San Francisco that means the most to them, and then will meet them there. Total strangers, sometimes in some totally strange places.

The result has been not only some interesting portraits, but also people doing the same thing in other cities.

Julie needs our help if she wants to continue her project -- if you'd like to chip in, just follow the link above and donate whatever you can.

Eulogy

My grandmother, Norma Landry, died this week at the age of 81. Yesterday was her funeral, and this was the eulogy I gave. 



The picture is one I took of her in May of this year, on a road trip Betsy and I took across the country. My mother had asked me then if I could take a picture of her, telling me, "I'm worried she won't be with us that long".   She'd been telling me this for years, but I decided I needed a picture of my grandmother anyway.


When I asked my grandmother, she insisted that she get to put on her lipstick and take off her oxygen.


It's a simple portrait -- Betsy held the flash with a little LQIII portable softbox off to camera left, and I took the shot.

"Eulogy"

Mamaw always had a special place in my heart: She was the one who told me stories. I say this as someone who will always love my parents for reading to me when I was young -- it's just that I would sometimes be insistent on new stories, that no one else had heard. My grandmother would take bits of character and plot from movies or television we'd both seen, and begin there. Over time, the adaptions became more elaborate, and with a few years to refine her handiwork, they began to take on a life all their own.


Princess Leia became "Queen Pearl". A cloaked starship became hidden by "invisible paint" (helpfully suggested by my grandfather) -- and plots that began as space operas began to become shaped by the narrative trajectory of skits from Saturday Night Live and the Golden Girls. Every so often, I have occasion to tell a story of my own. When I do, my friends invariably comment (some charitably, some perhaps less) on where I could have dreamt up such things, and I just smile.


I know where the stories started.

*

One of my earliest memories of Mamaw was being at her house, and seeing one of the brass horses she had on the mantle. 


I asked her why she had it, and she explained to me that it reminded her of her horse Bob, which she'd ridden as a girl. As she told me about the horse, her eyes lit up, and both she and I were transported back to the days where she was young, and had her very own horse to ride. 


You could trace everything my grandmother did back to one central truth: She always had the heart of that girl she used to be. 

*

Growing up, the thing I looked forward to every week was that come Friday, I got to spend the weekend with my grandparents. When people talk about the idyllic days of youth as a metaphor, those weekends are the literal image that springs to my mind.


Imagine a weekend where you could wake up on a Saturday morning, take off in a fishing boat you'd helped your grandfather build, shrimp for your own bait, then catch a double dozen redfish from a fishing hole in an undisclosed location in the marshes of Lower Alabama and Mississippi. Not enough adventure? Imagine the same trip, except with the biggest squall you've ever seen zapping the water feet away from you with lightning bolts. 


Still not enough? Imagine being taken with an uncle to ride in a monster truck through a swamp. Or riding ATVs through that same swamp a few months later, only to discover there are considerably more snakes at ground level than at monster truck level.


At the time, these all seemed like regular occurrences. Sometimes, you don't realize you're having an adventure till it's over. 


After a day like this, we'd generally end up nipping a few oysters from a bed, and then heading back home. The part of the day that came next was the most important. We'd get home, tired and exhausted, and my grandfather would sit outside shucking oysters on the porch. I'd come in, and there'd be Mamaw. Who'd fuss over me, listen to me talk about the events of the day (and whether I'd been scared or not), and then we would bake a pizza in the oven together.


Every Saturday, like clockwork, for years. 


For me, this was the definition of a happy childhood; but speaking it out loud, it sounds a little like a lot of people's idea of heaven.

*

I could tell you a lot more about my grandmother, but I think most of you here already knew her and have a big list of what made her unique. In the days since she's been gone, I went through just such a list in my head, since a list that describes who she was also describes why I would miss her.


What we lost when we lost Norma is a big list, but the biggest for me was the hour when I realized that if I or my sister ever have children of our own, they would never get to have those Saturdays.


It's just a story now: 

"Mamaw and Brandon's Son, and the Saturdays that Never Came."

But if there's one thing you take away from the life of this 81 year old woman with a young girl's heart -- generous to a fault, and so loving of her children and her children's children, it's that her story doesn't have to end here.


Remember the best part of her. Remember what she gave to me, and what she gave to you, and try to give the same thing to the people you care about.


When you remember her story, remember that one too.

The Yucca Man

Not to overdo a good thing, this is another portrait from that make believe Haitian village. Superior light here, and love this guy's expression.

He's grinding yucca back and forth on a log here, which they in turn baked into bread, which was yummy. :)

Artiste

Whilst on our cruise, our one and only one shore excursion was the "Haitian Cultural Excursion".

Let me back that up a bit: When I say our cruise ship went to Haiti, it didn't actually go to what you might think of when you think of Haiti -- it went to Labadee, this private island leased by the cruise company. This island has about the same relationship to actual Haiti that Disneyworld does to the Florida panhandle: Which is to say, almost none.

They do have this little excursion where they take you to a 'model' Haitian village though, where you supposedly see how people live in an actual Haitian village. Super, super, super cheesy, although, I guess, there was peanut butter?

Oddly, the "cast" of the village all had an intense amount of character -- I found them all to be great portrait subjects, despite doing things calculated to appeal to ostensible tourists like myself.

This dude ran the arts & crafts hut at the end of the tour, where they upsell you on stuff they carved out of wood. Love his eyes, particularly set against the pattern of the staves and statuettes all around him.

Her First Beads

Shot this one on a trip to New Orleans last weekend. B didn't see the point of why people were going so nuts for Mardi Gras beads at first, but once I caught a set and gave them to her, she got right into the mania.

On thing about photos of B -- they're always best in wild color (how can you not, with her hair?), and shot fast. You don't catch a grin like that tromping around in the basement of 1/250ths of a second. 1/500 or go home. ;)

Paranoid Much?

There was some amazing partial directional light through the window of our lounge at work today. While we were sitting around, shooting the breeze, I took some shots of my co-workers. Over time, I've tried to get head shots that work for all of them in various poses, and every so often, I get some that have a little sizzle. Sometimes it comes from a friend who I photograph all the time, others are like Eugene here who I've barely photographed at all, but something just pops out.

No direction here -- I was just sitting on the couch with my 135mm, waiting to strike when the moment was right.

I would say that being a clinical paranoid helps with computer security, but another friend of mine did a study where she showed that people suffering from paranoia actually pick worse passwords on average than normal people.

I also can't stress enough how much of a fan I am of indirect window light. I have a model in my head for how it works, which really helps predicting what I get at the end -- using flashes is easily several stops more difficult for me. Give me a window though, and I feel like I'm bound to get something good if I wait there long enough.

The Player

I went on a date[1] at this little Cuban place in Palo Alto last Friday called La Bodeguita. Pretty awesome food (though I can't vouch for whether it's "real" Cuban or not), with a bunch of different spices there than you normally taste around these parts. This guy was playing a guitar near the entrance, and I felt like he was in a special pool of light and he had one of those really textured, wonderful faces. Donated a dollar, and then snapped this one of him as he was focused on playing.

Had hoped to get some attention on his hands, but they weren't in the good light -- and so this is what came out.



[1] What, you don't bring your camera on dates?

Roots

I don't do a lot of off-camera lighting. Not because I think it isn't cool (it seems awesome), but it involves schlepping around a ton of crap. A little ironic, since it seems like a lot of photographers are excited about how they no longer have to carry around 300 pounds of crap to do professional quality lighting. Instead, it's just the stands, the umbrellas/softboxes, three speed lights, backdrops, diffusers, etc. etc.

My compromise for social events is a little fold-up soft-box and an SB-800. Last night, I was at a friend's housewarming party, the conversation got around to another friend's tattoo. One thing lead to another, and he was taking his shirt off to show people. Naturally, I asked to take a picture, and out came the flash.

I had my friend Steve hold this beneath and underneath. My understanding is that muscles and the like work better with some harder light to make them pop (I guess the well-defined edges on the shadows help?), but I wasn't convinced with just one flash I could get enough spread to light his whole back. So, I put on the softbox, and got this.

It's a little more cooked in post than normal for me, but the glow and the flexing-muscles-in-the-dark thing works for me.