Break Time

Colin Szydlowski with a hint of the glam rocker look

Thanks to Leanna Spina, a wonderfully talented make up artist, and Colin a very willing guinea pig, we managed to produce a bunch of incredible colorful images in just a few short hours. Fun, fun, fun. Yes, yes, I know I should have been doing the tax work today but work all day and all week makes this photographer a person wanting to jump off a bridge (while taking pictures of course). Plus my back was getting sore from bending over my floor of receipts sorting them into their various categories.

As thrilling as that may sound to some of my accounting friends out there, I needed a break. And what better way for a shutter bug to take one than to take a couple hundred pictures.

Running around

On the theme of rabbits...

Today or this evening rather was spent running around the city. First there was the InsideOut launch, the gay and lesbian film festival, at the Gladstone. Then run off to shoot the opening of Contact. Only I got the dates mixed up it's actually tomorrow. Still, I got to see some of the photos already hanging on the walls. Then to Cache to talk to Mike, one of the PR guys, about photos I took last week.


"Jen" at Cache from the "Bold and the Beautiful".

Does anyone out there watch this daytime soap. I forgot the last name of "Jen". If someone could leave a comment I'll update the info. Also if anyone knows the bunny guy at the door of the InsideOut I'll put his name up as well. With all the running around I really did a bad job at remembering people's names.

To be honest the act of doing my taxes has been in the back of my mind lately, causing me to not think clearly on any particular thing I'm doing. If the blog entries seem sluggish over the next few days it's because of the tax work I'll be doing.

From the Garden to the Table

A wasp at the top of a grass blade.

I managed to procrastinate again from doing the taxes which are due at the end of the month. Instead I shot a backyard insect then went inside to shoot some building blocks for photographers direct (an online stock agency based in the U.K.). Someone on the site was looking for the letter 'P' and objects that contained them.

After shooting the 'P' blocks I decided that since I was all set up to shoot stuff anyway I'd shoot my pork chop dinner as well. Of course as it usually happens when I'm cooking a got a phone call. It was Juliet from Juicy Stuff. She wanted to brief me on tomorrows event. Luckily the pork chop has two sides. The face down side is, shall we say, a little crispy.


"Form of... a Bunny! Shape of an Ice Bucket!"

The cake mold I used to shape the rice had too much detail in it that didn't translate to the rice clump. You can't make out the bunny eyes, nose or mouth. I thought about putting a cherry half for the nose but that required me going out and buying a can of fruit cocktail. As this isn't a real photo shoot (and I was hungry) the bare rabbit had to do.

Note: I did not eat the food with the chopsticks. The chopsticks seemed to photgraph better with the brown place mat than the spork.

Black and White versus Color

Leanna Spina

Today at lunch I got into a discussion with Leanna about black and white versus color. She thinks she looks better in black and white photos where as I think she looks just as good in color. I do think the black and white draws your eyes more to the texture of the image itself.

As a test I've shot an image and as you can see I've uploaded it as B&W and Color.

Any comments from the readers?

Worm Sign

A slime pile of worms

It rained all day right into the night. Someone told me last night it dropped to -8 C. I find that hard to believe as I didn't see any ice in the morning. Early this morning (around 1am) while doing my taxes I decided to take a break and get outside. Holy cow! It had gotten cold. The misty rain didn't help.

I ended up at the nearby park gathering worms for the backyard garden. There were hundreds of worms on the ground. I didn't see them at first walked very slowly in order to not step on any of them. While most of the worms were relatively small, maybe 10 cm in length, there were the huge worms that were about twice the length.

I'm storing them in two large ice cream buckets with soil, corn husks, and water in the basement sink. I plan to release them into the backyard once it gets warmer.

Cat People

Nigel Fluffypants aka Droolio looks at me with distain.

On my way home, on the bus, I overheard a couple talking about the bad side effects of asbestos and other wonder technology that doesn't get tested enough before entering the market. In the mist of the doom and gloom chit chat I realized I knew one of the voices. It was Orbis, a guy that I met at my birthday movie "Serenity" back in September of last year. I joined in on the conversation. Here are the hilights (true or not they make good points).

hilights

• deet used to repel mosquitoes melts plastic.


• thanks to vegetarians, big business, and the invention of cloned meat, cows and other farm animals that require lots of land, food, and resources will go extinct.


• asbestos with fire, good. Asbestos with people, bad.


• bananas will be extinct in 10 years unless a new replicating seed strain is found.


• corn that we eat today are hybrid versions of corn smaller than your palm


• orange carrot flavored cauliflower is tasty.


• wonder drugs come on the market way too fast without enough testing.


• pharmaceutical companies are generally evil.


• Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a great TV show!

Kate and Orbis invited me over to continue our chat. It was at their home that I was introduced to Nigel, the cat with the "Fat Head". Nigel looked like his head was big due to the rest of his body was shaved.


Nigel using cat will power to get human (any human) to open door.

I realize that this is the second blog entry in a row to feature a cat but how can you say "no" to these big eyed fuzzy animals?

The cat came back

Mimi, the Lopez family cat

Today's job got me outside of the apartment to go and shoot some candid family photos. After shooting the people I hunted down the family pet, a cat named Mimi. Cats are incredibly difficult to shoot while moving around a dim house. Mimi was no exception. After crawling around on my hands and knees chasing after the cat I gave up and started packing away my camera gear.

It was only after packing my camera, the last thing to be packed, that the cat ran up to my leg and started purring. Sheesh.

Hang 'em High

The hanging Easter egg

On the way to McDonald's with Leanna, we noticed a tree of Easter eggs, some leftover decorations from the holiday that just past. It reminded me of the dead body hanging from the tree in the Clint Eastwood movie. As grim as that sounds it was an okay western. Can a person watch too many movies in a lifetime?

Stylist Party

Model and film maker Jason Davie

Tonight at Cache, a cool bar to hang out hidden in the King and Bathurst area, was a party for the "Stylist" modeling agency. My assignment, was to cover it for Juicy Stuff (the web site I've been getting work from recently- ed.). As I wasn't given a time to get to the bar I rushed there immediately after seeing the movie "The Sentinel" with my Dad.

The movie was not that great thanks to editing done by an advanced deficit disorder editor. The number of jump cuts in the first part of the movie seemed never ending. Hold the camera still for a moment. Can we hold on a scene without jumping back and forth? It was like watching a movie by moving a pair of bifocals in front of your eyes.

I arrived at Cache early. It was another hour and a half, around 10:30, when people started showing up. In among the crowd of dancing women and people smoking I bumped into Jason Davie. Jason is a film maker that I met at Darryl's HLAP party and as part of an improv troupe that my friend Bruce Simpson was in a few years ago. Turns out it's a small world.

Spring still Springing

The tree next door

A while ago it came to my attention that there's a large percentage of blog entries talking about women and or food. While both subjects are fascinating to me (as well as others I'm sure) I would like to take a timeout and post a nice floral picture to say that "Yes, at Bagelhot, we listen to our readers every now and then".

This blog entry is dedicated to Roger (at Monster Records) and his mom. Thanks for reading.

Okay the coast is clear... Bring on the food and girls!