Halloween

Our pumpkins are a little sick. I wish that was our concept but I got the idea from the internet. The kids helped in the design phase.



Dash was a skeleton and Magali was a ballerina.







Sara made the costumes like she does every year. This year Dash and his buddy Ryan were both skeletons.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Apple Pressing

On Thursday, we went with Dash's class to an apple orchard to collect and press apples into apple cider. I made a little album of the journey which can be viewed by clicking below:

Apple Cider Album: HERE

More of today's pictures: HERE

What's With Those Tiny Pins?

Brian had a birthday party and Dash bowled for the second time in his life. Magali opted not to bowl. It was great fun and Dash did well but he didn't win. ARGGG!

For those of you (ya'll) down South... It's called Candlepin bowling and you use little balls that have no holes in them. You get three throws at the pins and they aren't cleared in between throws.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Zoological Walks

Sara took this picture on the way to school. In the past few weeks we've seen a skunk, an opossum, a praying mantis, and this cool snake.

More of today's pictures: HERE

The Sky Is Copying Me

Sara took this picture of Magali walking home from dropping Dash off at school. Magali was singing to herself. We are proud to say that our kids both really love the Pogues. Their favorite song is a typical Irish folk punk brawler called "Sally Maclennane." There is a lyric that goes:

Sad to say I must be on me way
So buy me beer or whiskey 'cause I'm goin' far away

And then the whole band shouts "FAR AWAY!"

The kids love this part. Anyway, Magali was singing the song as she walked down the street and when the chorus came up she screamed at the top of her lungs, "FAR AWAY!" Then she stopped short. She screamed it again and then told Sara, "Mama, the sky is copying me."

Sara said, "That's called an echo."

So then Magali went walking down the street screaming, "ECHO!"

More of today's pictures: HERE

Our Insect Neighbor

Living in the city of Cambridge, one doesn't often see a five inch long praying mantis. This creature was hanging out on one of the kid's painted pumpkins. It's back is the same color as the stem of the pumpkin and I had to look closely at first to see it at all.

I wish sometimes that I had a proper macro lens but, truthfully, I don't take too many insect pictures.

Keira

I had the pleasure of shooting portraits of little Keira the other day. This child will have a difficult time in life if these superhuman levels of cute don't wane a bit. People will be falling all over themselves trying to give her everything she wants. She'll think everything is easy... Seriously, they don't come any more adorable than this, excluding my own impossibly gorgeous children, of course.

Anyway, the shoot went so well that I decided to make Keira my first test subject for a coffee-table style album. I do these albums for weddings but have never done one for a child shoot. I'm very happy with the results:

KEIRA ALBUM

Cork Gun

I've mentioned before that I love low tech. I also love childish things... And the two converge in cork guns. I described them to Dash when we were in France this summer and I've been meaning to find one somewhere and today we found it at the candy store in Harvard Square.

The last picture is Dash blinking at the report of the gun. This is instinctual. Take a hammer and bang it really hard on a piece of wood and try to keep your eyes open the whole time. It's very hard. Now try it with someone else banging the hammer. It's even harder. Now try banging the hammer in your eye. I always blink when I do this.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Charlene Came Out to Play

Magali asked me if she could go to Charlene's house to see if she could come out to play. It took me a second to figure out what she meant because Charlene is our upstairs neighbor and she is not a child.. at least physically. But I said, "sure."

So Magali asked Charlene to come out to play and Charlene said, "yes." They played hide and seek and Charlene read several books for which Magali kept running into the apartment.

Dash got in on the action in the end as the three above shots illustrate.

Thanks Charlene. You are one of my favorites of all of Magali's playmates.

More of today's pictures: HERE

A Mother's Hands...

Dash had his shirt on backwards so Mama helped him turn it around but not before performing a little puppet show in the parking lot of the mall.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Magali's Subtle Anti-War Statement

Magali with our neighbor's grandson, Hayden. She's using the camouflage netting on her army helmet as a black veil.

"The chain reaction of evil--wars producing more wars -- must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."~Martin Luther King, Jr.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Sleep Brushing

Magali fell asleep before she brushed her teeth so Sara brushed them for her while she was asleep.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Magali Gets a Haircut

Magali has refused to get a haircut since Marc's wedding (June 14, 2005). Here's what she looked like then:



She's being held by Toby. Magali has changed shape a lot since then.

Anyway, she wouldn't let a barber do it so Sara had to. Magali also decided she wanted to keep her "curtains" or "jungle vines" and not get bangs. She doesn't really look all that different... just neater.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Sibling Rivalry

We haven't seen it yet.

Seriously.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Lensbaby- I Love Low Tech

My favorite piece of camera technology costs $150. It's a cheap little plastic springy lens that I use for a huge percentage of my shots, weddings included. It's called a Lensbaby (dumb name, I know). It is basically, a flexible tube lens that allows you to bend the plane of focus any way you like. You focus on an object by pushing or pulling the lens, then you can twist it away from the focal point creating amazing, dreamy shots. It is also very primitive and many shots look like pinhole or Holga cameras with strange light shafts and diffuse glows. Here's what the thing looks like:



And here are some wedding shots:







More of today's pictures: HERE

The Blues

My life can be mapped out into a series of focused obsessions. I become interested in something, say World War Two aviation, for example, and I study it to the exclusion of near everything else. I read every book, play every game, watch every movie, buy paraphernalia on eBay, until my next "thing" comes along.

There are also two constants- obsessions that never leave: music and visual art. Sometimes one of my "things" will merge with one of the two constants and then the intensity of interest almost forms it's own inescapable field of gravity.

In the past, for example, my visual art constant was sculpture and one of my things became gothic architecture- they merged into gargoyles. So I sculpted gargoyles for many years. I even had a little store in Cambridge where I sold them.

Usually, as was this case, unfortunately, my obsessions are uniquely non money making. I tend to be interested in things that people don't want to buy. Perhaps that is one of the aspects that attracts me... that nobody else seems to care.

Well, my latest thing is acoustic blues music of the 20s, 30s and 40s. I bought a steel guitar, started taking slide lessons from a New Orleans virtuoso, and got National Guitar F holes tattooed on my neck...

I've been learning these amazing tunes and just decided I needed to perform them so I bought a portable amp and set up outside the candy store in Harvard Square. Yesterday and today I played out in the baking sun and just had the best time. At one point, pictured above, Magali got some tuning pipes and started honking along with me. I bought her a harmonica on the way home that day.

The second picture above was actually shot by Magali (the first was shot by Sara). Magali and Dash seem to have inherited a little of both of my constants. They are both interested in music in different ways and they both love to draw and take photographs.

Photographs... that might be the one that makes money. More people are interested in weird black and white photography than I thought. This might be good for us :)

More of today's pictures: HERE

Discriminating Skunks Prefer PB&J With the Crusts Cut Off

Magali doesn't ever eat the whole sandwich. So she left it outside our sliding glass door on a bench. As I was locking up for the night I saw it and thought, "I'll just clean it up tomorrow." Then around 2am I saw a little something out of the corner of my eye. I grabbed my camera and took these very low light stealth images of this little guy.

Now, we live in Cambridge, Massachusetts which is a sizable city. We don't often see skunks so it was cool enough for me to wake Sara, "Hey Sara, sorry to wake you, but there is a skunk hanging out eating a sandwich outside our door. Do you want to see?"

Without a second thought she grabbed her glasses and leaped out of bed. I told her I was taking some pictures of it for the kids. She asked me to just not piss it off.

Let me share with you some wonderful lyrics to an old blues song by Barbecue Bob. It called "Black Skunk Blues"

I caught a pretty little animal
It was all stripy black and white
I caught a pretty little animal
It was all stripy black and white
What it done to me
spoiled me the rest of my life

I thought it was a squirrel
I took him into my camp
I thought it was a squirrel
I took him into my camp
When I put him down
all my clothes was damp

All the people around me
They give me plenty of air
All the people around me
They give me plenty of air
It was so dog gone strong
I smelled it everywhere

I never smelled a smell
That smelled so dog gone bad
I never smelled a smell
That smelled so dog gone bad
It was the worst old smell
Baby I ever had

I jumped into the water
I scrub, scrub, scrub, scrub
But I just smell stronger
Baby, the harder I rub

It was a dog gone pole cat
And he ain't no friend of mine
It was a dog gone pole cat
And he ain't no friend of mine
He had pretty little white stripes
But he ain't worth a dog gone damn

More of today's pictures: HERE

First Day of First Grade for Our First Born

Today was Dash's first day of first grade. We walked him and his friend, Ryan, to school.

I told Dash that when we got there I wanted him to cry and hug my leg and beg us not to leave him. But, just like the last two years of kindergarten, he basically went, "See ya." and dove right in.

Oh, well.

More of today's pictures: HERE

Rob Kanigel Pictures

This weekend I had the pleasure of shooting author portraits of my neighbor, Rob, for use in his next book. These were three of my favorites.

I asked him how creative we get to be and his answer is brilliant:

" How creative? If you conceive a spectrum between, at one end, the stiffest, most hopelessly formal corporate head shot you can imagine and, on the other, an almost unrecognizably loosey-goosy image that screams Art from every pixel or grain of silver, I'd say about two-thirds of the way towards the Art side; that, anyway, is probably where I'd be most comfortable."

I like to think we walked that line.