This is your chance to own the first in a series of limited edition All That Glitters postcards! Fresh off the presses, these postcards are each uniquely numbered and feature Paris Green of the Belmont Burlesque Revue in Chicago, Illinois.
During the past year I’ve completed over 80 portrait sessions towards my goal of 100 from all across the United States. In the coming months I will embark on a new road trip throughout the West Coast to capture the remaining portraits. Your contribution will help me accomplish this goal.
Below is a PayPal donation button. When you click on that button and donate at least $2 or more, I will autograph one of these postcards and drop it in the mail to you. How far does $2 go? The majority of the first dollar covers the cost of getting the postcard in your hands. The second dollar (and any additional dollars you provide) will go directly into the All That Glitters West Coast fund.
Don’t delay! With over 300 million peope in the U.S. and only 600 postcards, these won’t be around for long.
As the new kid on the block I’m giving Los Angeles a great deal on headshots. But act fast because this is a limited time offer. Book your headshot session with me in the next two weeks and you’ll get two looks in natural light and two edited high-resolution images for only $250.
Refer a friend and if you both book in the next two weeks I’ll give you EACH an additional edited high-resolution image – a $40 value!
Remember, this deal is only available for sessions completed by August 31, 2010. Call now to schedule your session: (708) 212-3202.
Did you buy a nice new digital camera only to find that all you get out of it are bland, uninspired pictures? Or perhaps you received a camera as a gift but haven’t taken the time to learn what all the buttons do. Whatever the case, let me help!
I can teach you how to create stunning photos with YOUR camera that will impress your friends, family and Facebook followers. We’ll talk about the basic rules of what makes a good picture better. We’ll talk about light and how recognizing the light can enhance or change the mood in a picture. In fact, we’ll talk about anything related to taking better pictures with your camera that you want to talk about. Best of all, we’ll take pictures with your camera to demonstrate how each of these techniques can improve your photos.
Sessions start at $60 for one hour with no long-term commitments. Contact me today to schedule your first lesson so that you can begin learning how to create amazing photos with YOUR camera!
I love you for helping me grow into the person I am today. For presenting to me opportunities and challenges that broke, shaped and rebuilt me in ways I never could have imagined.
I hate you for the painful memories with which I am leaving. For the friendships and relationships gone wrong and the reconciliatory conversations left unspoken. Conversely, I love you for the people I have met, the friends I have made, and the relationships that I will cherish for years to come.
I love you for the education I received here, both in the formal classroom and the classroom of life’s hard knocks. For the professional endeavors I was able to pursue and the personal and financial successes they afforded. You helped me free my mind, simultaneously revealing how much there is to learn in life and overwhelming me with the possibilities.
I hate you for your bitter cold winters that consume my soul like a cloud from Mordor, silently creeping into my conscience unannounced and unwelcome.
I love you for showing me that money isn’t everything and that it is possible to engage in the pursuit of happiness without engaging in the pursuit of wealth. You also showed me that money sure does help in the pursuit of happiness, especially when it comes to paying the rent.
I hate you for being so far away from anything else nice to look at on a weekend. I can drive for two hours in any direction and still be in a flat cornfield…or under water.
I love you for your public transportation, even though I didn’t use it as much as I thought I would. But then again, when you charge me nearly five dollars for a round trip when I can usually put my positive parking karma to good use and park for free within a block of my destination, I’d rather drive.
However, I hate you for your Big Brother traffic lights. It didn’t matter that I came to a full and complete stop before I turned right on red…you still took my money.
I love you for your lakeshore path and for the hours I spent biking along the waterfront. And I love you for your irony, calling those dirty, sandy patches by the water “beaches.”
So yes, Chicago, I both love you and hate you for many different reasons – more than I can write here, but enough to keep you in mind for many years to come.
But it has come to this. I am leaving you. You have been home to me longer than any other place in my time on this earth. I am “from Chicago” although I was not born here, nor was I raised here.
But since I subscribe to the mantra that “home is where my stuff is,” later this month all of my stuff will be loaded onto a truck and placed in storage, thus rendering me homeless for the month of May. In June, my stuff will all be delivered to my new home in Los Angeles where new adventures and opportunities await, and with them the requisite heartbreak and life lessons.
It’s been good, it’s been fun, but it’s time to go.
I use Gallery to post and organize photos and media on this site. Gallery can also display flash videos, but I was never happy with the flash player that is installed by default with the Gallery software.
Instead, I wanted to use the very popular JW Player and searched far and wide on the Internet for instructions on how to replace the default player. Despite the power of Google, it took some time, but I finally found a solution through Krunk4Ever!’s blog, for which I am immensely grateful.
However, with the latest releases of the Gallery software, those instructions no longer worked for me. Again, a long search ensued, but to no avail.
Though I am not a programmer, I know enough to break stuff often, and fix stuff sometimes. After a lot of breaking, I finally fixed it!
So here now I share with you the changes I made to my Gallery flash module in order to use JW Player to display flash videos. I should point out that these changes are in addition to the changes applied by Krunk4Ever!
All of the changes outlined here were made in the FlashVideoRenderer.class file found in modules/flashvideo/classes within the Gallery folder.
In October I visited Grand Rapids for a weekend during which I met a handful of the fantastic folks from Super Happy Funtime Burlesque. I haven’t been able to catch their show in person yet, but from what I’ve seen in vidoes and heard on the street, their show is not one to miss. The weekend I was in town happened to also be the closing weekend of Art Prize, an open art contest.
GiGi Animalicious & Mr. Happy Pants
The first night in town I met up with Mr. Happy Pants, GiGi Animalicious and Velveeta the Cheetah for some tasty eats and then headed to Original Cin’s place for a shoot with her and her son Mike. She also introduced me to her pet snakes and her hilarious chinchilla. If you’ve never seen a chinchilla bathe itself in volcanic ash, then you are really missing out.
The second day was a full one as I worked with GiGi Animaliscious, Vivacious Miss Audacious (who was suffering from a sinus infection and had to put up with me for a little while – oh, and we had to kick out her boyfriend’s band so we could finish the video interview. Sorry guys!), the lovely Rita Ambrosia Schuvitinitcsz & Velvet Dan, and producers/performers Mr. Happy Pants & La La Vulvaria. The latter shoot was momentarily interrupted by a homeless knocking on the window shouting, “Don’t be makin’ it sexual!” Don’t worry, Mr. Homeless Man, it was all on the up and up.
Balloon Monster
In amongst that busy day I had the opportunity to consume some delicious Spanish tapas and peruse some of the art work around town with GiGi Animaliscious as my tour guide. As with all art there was some good and some…well…different. I especially liked the giant jellyfish made of hundreds of balloons as well as the portraits screen printed on salt.
Sunday, my last day in Grand Rapids, started with a lazy morning during which Original Cin’s fiance whipped up a yummy egg & bagel sandwich, a tasty surprise. That afternoon I had the pleasure of working with Velveeta the Cheetah in her beautiful and bright loft space. She happened to be holding a rummage sale in her space at the same time, but we managed to get our work done before the crowds swarmed in.
The return drive was a beautiful sunny day, quite the opposite of the rainy weather that accompanied me on the trip to Grand Rapids. Michigan is known for its beautiful fall foliage and I got to experience a bit of that view on the ride home.
In 2008 I had the opportunity to photograph artist Verna Sadock’s court room sketches of the Chicago 8 trial of 1969 for use in a film. The film is a documentary about the life of radical civil rights attorney William Kunstler by his daughters Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler.
WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE is coming to the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago January 22-28. Join me and the filmmakers in a showing of this film on Saturday, January 23 at 7:45pm, or check it out on a night that fits your schedule. Just don’t miss it!
In WILLIAM KUNSTLER: DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE, filmmakers Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler explore the life of their father, the late radical civil rights lawyer. In the 1960s and 70s, Kunstler fought for civil rights with Martin Luther King Jr. and represented the famed “Chicago 8” activists who protested the Vietnam War. When the inmates took over Attica prison, or when the American Indian Movement stood up to the federal government at Wounded Knee, they asked Kunstler to be their lawyer.
To his daughters, it seemed that he was at the center of everything important that had ever happened. But when they were growing up, Kunstler represented some of the most reviled members of society, including rapists and assassins. This powerful film not only recounts the historic causes that Kunstler fought for; it also reveals a man that even his own daughters did not always understand, a man who risked public outrage and the safety of his family so that justice could serve all.
For my birthday this year I received tickets to Banana Shpeel. I saw it last night at the Chicago Theater in downtown Chicago, making this the fifth Cirque du Soleil show I have seen. My list thus far includes:
Cirque is billing Banana Shpeel as “A theatrical mix of comedy and dance” and “A new twist on vaudeville.” It is most definitely not like the rest of the Cirque shows I have seen.
Things I liked:
Cirque du Soleil shows always exceed my expectations and imagination when it comes to production quality. The stage, the costumes, the lights, the music – all top notch. It reminds me of my time as a stage manager, ensuring that the inner workings of concerts flowed as smoothly as possible, hiding the chaos of backstage from the audience, and only showing them the final, polished product. I’d love to peek behind the scenes at one of these shows.
The solo acts were fantastic and inspiring. They were what I’ve come to expect from Cirque (talented, mind-blowing and high quality) and although I’ve seen some of them before either on stage or on TV, they are still thrilling to watch again. The acts included a hat juggler, a foot juggler (she juggled umbrellas, not feet), a tap-dancing duo and one of the most buff and graceful pole-dancing/balancing contortionists I’ve ever seen.
There were a number of group dances throughout the evening, the most fun of which was the black light number. I couldn’t help but think, though, how any of these dancers could just as well be backing up Britney Spears. So was it Cirque-tacular? Not really. Fun to watch? Definitely.
Things I did not like:
The “Shpeel” was apparently the vaudeville aspect of the show and I feel it missed the mark a little bit. The bits seemed to drag on too long at times, and there wasn’t really a compelling story line to tie the whole show together. I also expect more character development from the comedy relief, and each time I thought there would be a new revelation or climax to one of the characters it would turn out to be more of the same. I would break the show down as 60% Shpeel, 20% solo acts, and 20% group dances. I would have preferred more from the latter two categories.
The parrots behind me. There was a woman and her boy/friend that repeated nearly every punch line that was said on stage. It was quite a distracting and unnecessary quirk for someone to exhibit in a theater audience.
I do recommend seeing Banana Shpeel, but with the warning that you will not receive the full Cirque du Soleil show experience by doing so. It seems like Cirque might be feeling the effects of the relaxed economy and decided to produce a light-budget show that will still sell well simply because of the reputation behind the brand. Even then, the theater was not sold out, but nicely populated nonetheless.
Last week I created a giant cupcake to be used as a prop by Natasha Minsk. Inside said cupcake there is a place to store a real live cupcake that is revealed during the performance.
[Tech Details: The cupcake creation portion of this video was captured by a Canon G2 camera tethered to a PC with interval timer shooting, the rotating cupcake was captured by a Canon 5D Mark II with a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens, the music was written, programmed and recorded by me, and the whole thing was assembled in Adobe Premiere Pro CS4. And though you're seeing this presentation as a Flash video, the final output is HD 1080.]
