Home Brewing

The entry I am working on will be on Religion and its tolerances and will appear here with in the next day or two. But tonight a more lighthearted announcement of my new label of my beer. Over the last few months I have fell in love with the idea of brewing my own beer. I recently found a place where I can get some assistance and brew on premisses. And hence I made a clone from a massive book of recipes of a beer I first tasted in San Francisco. The image attached is the label I designed tonight. The beer will probably be around 7% alcohol but given its a limited edition of the first Mezyk beer, who is really concerned about that. Cheers!!

Back and continuing steady from now on...

If I can link the previous entries with this one I will. For now I want to mineralize the procrastination and move forward with the blog.

Now being December, this year has really been somewhat monumental in the course of my creative work. It actually marries the personal and creative self into continual search of purpose for the both. And the transformation has been completely unexpected. For most of the year I have been collecting a lot of puzzles that were to complex to fit together into something instantly meaningful. None of that will go away. At 32 I have accepted that and begun to find comfort in it. Questions of why and their purpose are nothing more then a satisfaction that the creative part of the work will never stay stagnant. So life goes on.

There is a special alignment that occurred this year between the personal and creative self that is gaining momentum. But this finest fragment can only be attributed to something I have previously given too little thought and I honestly admit seriously overlooked. You see, the work I happen to most enjoy creating  comes out of the personal self consciousness and most guarded against social influences which I find myself at war with. The breakdown on universal truth and values has turned into consumerism which lacks any sense of individual value. Further more the only wisdom that is valued is one that can create profit. And hence what wisdom that might be popular today is what is being adopted in the consumption which is falsely believed as a path toward success. Imitation without imagination. Imitation of what was once in fashion and attempting to exploit it for profit while people are still familiar with it. Its sad really. But we're not allowed to think that while the advertisements and political correctness has its time in the everyday rhythm. To think you are individual seems remarkably wrong.

But I am not alone. I leaned that through fantastic luck and fate of this year. Some things are unexplainable. And the biggest lesson I learned this year is that you don't need to compromise to fit in. Simply believe and carry on. The risk at hand is that you will be labeled. But why accept judgment of others if you are worth more. The discovery of that value is the essence of life. Accept now that 99% of people in your life will never understand you. But know that that 1% is worth more then any superficial success attained.

(Note about the photograph: It a reflection on window of the train car. Straight shot - only contrast and black levels adjusted and maybe a slight white balance shift but not much.)

A year since last post. Everything changed there there is little point of writing it all up here. I had my love/hate approach to shooting. Could not stop shooting while not being happy what I have been getting. Well, there is less thinking of the reasons behind now and more of trusting my intuition. Not everything works but I am happy with the realization.

Photograph: Kluczborksa Street, Wroclaw, Poland, June 2010.

Typical day. I have decided to carry my camera around more often. More random posts. Its been too long.

Tonight, just an observation at Costco. Its a funny observation. Its a mad house inside. All bulk items and some are pure luxury. There is never a shortage of customers who pay at least $50 a year to buy all this stuff. Its like this every time I go there. And its not like this is the only Costco warehouse around. There is probably 3 or 4 within a 20 mile radius. Who says economy is changing shopping habits?

New Jersey has a massive industrial landscape. Most vivid examples are around the city of Newark. The northeast corridor train tracks run all along the state but just south of Newark Penn station the city of Elizabeth, Linden and Rahway are clustered around a major Seaport and oil refineries. The resulting landscape is a mixture of still used and long abandoned buildings and structures. This is an everyday set of views from a NJ transit train window.

My other work has kept me from writing here. Wedding Photography is a decent discipline to have paid Photojournalism assignments. Since I do it part time there is still learning of the industry and the time lines of getting more work.

In the recent issue of PDN magazine there are 30 coming about Photographers. There are I think 2 who are self thought. I like work of a Japanese photographer who happens o be the first one featured. Interestingly he got started when a friend who was working in Kosovo on a UN mission asked him to visit. The rest is history.


I can't afford at the moment to go to War zones or flying to third world countries on 3 month self assigned photo journalistic projects. But that does not mean I won't do it in the future. Photojournalism is one from of photography that time and time again inspires me.

I'll be going to Mexico in 2 weeks where I'm hoping to do some street photography.

Today few images from yesterday. A laid back day of the the ordinary. The church is from 18th century and judging by the front it has changed owners a few times. Sadly little attention is given to the headstones. I spotted a one from 1832 but I think some of the other ones are even older.

Happy New Year Everyone! I've been busy all day working on images from last weekend. Over 2000 images to go through and pick the best from. The weekend coming up will be busy as well. There is a lot in the queue at the moment which is good. Sometimes I feel a bit overwhelmed though.

Tonight is a portrait of a celebrity Hair Stylist from Boston. This shoot was from the first weekend of December. Tonight is the first chance I got to at least play with one image. The shoot itself was a bit of crazy. I had literally 10 minutes to set up 2 lights. One was a Octa 'deep throat' box from Elinchrome and the side light was from a Profoto head (giving the higlight). I'm just happy I was able to get it right so quickly. It was just one of those shoots where your subject is eager to leave before you even set up your lights.