heartbreak hotel from rumur on Vimeo. My friend Toby was telling me the other night that in high school he played bass in a band partly to get girls. It wasn't working out that well for him. After high school he had to make a decision - try to get girls by being in a band or by starting...
We all live in our own little bubbles. There's no avoiding it; it's just the nature of "culture". We can work to step outside them, but it does require sustained effort, and we often slip back in to these bubbles before we even realize it. Sometimes though, the information just flows so heavy and so strong that the...
Why Are You at Occupy Wall Street from rumur on Vimeo. My facebook feed is filled with a sense of resigned shock today. Brexit just happened and while I am connected to many people in the UK I an quite confident that none of the people that I know wanted Brexit, or even believed it was possible. I don't...
On Tuesday June 14th, 2016 I went to document a Donald Trump rally in Greensboro, NC. I heard about it on the radio that morning and immediately thought of my friend Jonathan who often works for Reuters. I figured he would be going so I hitched a ride. My plan was to shoot with the people outside the event, but...
[caption id="attachment_19882" align="aligncenter" width="1338"] Unwound at CBGB 1991[/caption] As a photographer I have generally stumbled into projects, only realizing that I was working on them halfway through the process. Besides my mall project, which started as a class assignment, my first big project was documenting the underground music world. I began doing shooting bands before I was in one and the...
Elections are about votes but they are also very much about optics because it’s the optics that lead to votes. Optics are the reason that Hilary Clinton declared victory in Kentucky despite the fact that news organizations declared it too close to call. Sanders has a great deal of momentum and if he were to win all of...
Trailer, WHO TOOK JOHNNY There are basically three ways for a film to reach an audience. In the first scenario, a well-financed production/distribution company pours its resources into making the a film and then handling publicity, marketing, and advertising. People then hear about the film from a variety of media sources and seek it out in theaters, on TV,...
[caption id="attachment_19673" align="aligncenter" width="816"] self-portrait from a book made in Lorie Novak's NYU photo class[/caption] I was inspired to write this post because one of my photography teachers in college, Lorie Novak, posted an article from the NY Times about migraines that featured a stunning image of hers - taken as part of a series of self-portraits she made while suffering...
[caption id="attachment_19654" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] John Kuester, the UNC point guard poses with the author during Carolina Basketball Camp[/caption] As a kid growing up in Chapel Hill, NC during the '70s and '80s, I was a Carolina basketball fan just like everyone else in town. My parents were professors who had season tickets to the games, and often they would be...
On Tuesday I got a steady stream of emails about a new study that found that mindfulness meditation is a more effective treatment for back pain than either cognitive behavioral therapy or standard care (physical therapy, pain medication, etc). The people writing to me were all aware of the film about Dr. John Sarno that we have been working...
Yesterday I wrote about spring and "The Presence Process". Today I once again walked in the meadow and took pictures. It was cold this morning and there was a hard frost on the ground. As the sun rose it burned off the frost in moments. When I saw this I knew I had a short window of...
“I respond consciously to all my experiences” This is a mantra that I have been repeating each morning and evening this week. I’m on week three of the ten week “Presence Process” as outlined in Michael Brown’s book of the same name. I have been meditating in different ways for the past two years so I was somewhat prepared to engage...