Today also saw a deer heard crossing through John day as we ate dinner and coles first roadside ummm… Evacuation. Apparently bears aren’t the only thing that **** in the woods. Good on ya son, you did well.

For the non-parents, long car trips with a potty trained but still really young child means you have to face a few possibly traumatic scenarios. Your child will have to go in the middle of nowhere, there are three options as far as I can see. Because you showed a lil’ foresight he’s wearing a diaper (knuckles for that one, good choice) you can:

1) tell the kid they have to resist every natural urge they have and pick now to start strengthening the muscles used to “hold it” for the next 40 minutes till you find a roadside John. (potential hazards: child can’t hold it and ends up not only soiling their drawers but also feeling they’ve failed and disappointed you and if youre lucky enough to reach said porta potty, the interior of it could end up being an entirely different kind of traumatic.)

2) you pull over asap and tell the kid it’s ok to not deposit mr poo in the potty in an emergency and hope they not only buy it but also are brazen enough to drop trou on the side of the road (poss issues: kid can’t do it and throws a fit AND now has to hold it longer, you have to now rationalize why everytime he has to take a dookie and he’s not actually IN the bathroom that it’s not kosher to bare all and pop a squat)

3) you try to completely reverse engineer the past 6 months and convince him it’s ok to poop in his diaper. (poss. issues: kid refuses and screams until you do numbers 1 or 2 above, he kid agrees and the shit hits the fan)

I’ll take a number two 7 days a week.

So what road trip is complete withou tunes? Here are some selects from todays playlist ( aka Local(e) listening):

Daisy – ben lee
Bachelor and the bride – decemberists
Hazy Jane II – nick drake
Viva las Vegas – dead kennedys
Hazelton – Justin Vernon
Gangsta gangsta – NWA
The burden – horse feathers
A boy named sue – Johnny cash
Trouble weighs a ton – dan auerbach
ELT – wilco
DOWNLOAD THE TUNES HERE

It now 4 am… Night.

Passers-by were able to stand in front of a series of three background images which had “SNOW” flakes falling in front of them. Using the motion detection software, people could move the falling snow in random directions as it fell to the ground by waving their arms or legs… or whatever else they could think of.

In addition to the installation itself, I also co-produced the spot which featured the installation for the seasons TV campaign. Check it out by clicking the link to the right.

roles: concept, producer, implementation, technical producer, photography

using all the social medianess i can muster (including twitter, facebook pages, facebook ads, blip.fm, ning and the oldest form of social media, rubbin’ shoulders with people) this new venture has proved not only a viable creative outlet for me, but a fun exercise in practicing what i preach as a righteous route for clients.

about the site:
photography, for me, is about capturing a significant moment. one that speaks volumes about what it was like to be present at that particular instant.

a live performance (be it musical or otherwise) is filled with these moments. split seconds that build on each other to construct the arc of the whole event.

it doesn’t seem possible that one element or person would be able to tell that story completely. you’ll see a lot of pictures from me that don’t concentrate on the performer’s faces, but instead their shoes, hands, instruments, pedals, and lists… all parts of the whole

i just love doing this and what’s better than doing what you love?

**update**
after a steady push on the variety of social networks listed above, about a month and a half of effort has translated into being in talks to shoot for an online music mag and possibilities ranging from an exhibit to a residency at a local music hall.

roles: concept, design, photography, production, social media, strategy

< rant >

as part of my ongoing love affair with the live music scene in portland (and as part of furthering portlandconcertphotography.com), i hit up the dan auerbach show @ the wonder ballroom last night.

i called ahead to make sure i was going to be good to get my camera in. kristin was kind enough to tell me she hadn’t heard of any restricting policies from dan auerbach and they let the artist determine the camera policy. she said she’d call me back if she heard different, i never heard back so i headed over giddy as a school girl.

seeing as i though i had nothing to hide i didn’t try to smuggle in my 5D. i actually got past the doorman before he called me back and stopped me, saying i couldn’t enter with my camera. anything with a detachable lens was considered professional and wouldn’t be allowed in.

i’ve heard this rap before, so i asked to talk to a manager, hoping against hope it would make a difference.

it didn’t.

he immediately picked up for his doorman and they both denied even knowing who kristin was. frustrated i asked him what dan auerbach’s camera policy was and he replied “no professional cameras” and when i pressed for details he explained “no cameras with detachable lenses. it’s a industry standard in this business.”

*************************
dear industry,

if you’re concerned about people taking your intellectual property and posting all over the internet you’re failing miserably. essentially what you’re doing is degrading the quality of free publicity for you and your talent. why wouldn’t you want as much free quality material out there about your product? this is the new world and it’s time to wake up and embrace it. the public, now more than ever, will make or break your image.

not to mention you’re not allowing me to go in with my still camera and take quality pictures, but you’re allowing dudes like the two above to record entire songs in HD and then post them all over the internet. doesn’t this seem the least bit whack to you?

stop basing policies on technological specifications from 1990. times have changed and you’re lagging behind miserably.

love and kisses,
steve

*************************

< /rant >

roles: assistant producer, crew, video editing, technical producer, photography

couple this with the fact i saw fleet foxes’ new album for sale on the other side of the counter a few months after they shot to the front of my playlist, and i’m beginning to think i’m old and slow.

ouch.

well either that or i should get a job @ starbucks…

forget your first class tickets.

frequent flier miles won’t do it for you.

it’s even more effective than government clearance.

want through security quickly? take my screaming son on the trip with you.

the end of a two-week holiday odyssey in massachusetts left me on the brink of d-day.

later in the afternoon i would be traveling (solo) across the country with my over-active, under-slept, mile-a-minute, incredibly cute, sometimes-psycho and oft-times charming two (going-on-13) year old. if anyone reading has experienced something similar, i know you’ll be able to identify with some part of this story.

i won’t even go into the details of driving around for hours, pre-airport, so cole could catch a few Zs and i could find my happy place before launching into the rest of the journey. cole ate at dunkin’ donuts twice in one day and loved every minute of it (i knew he was a new englander at heart) and let’s just say that things went fairly to plan. it felt like a mini-victory. i headed into the car rental return terminal with pretty positive feeling about life in general.

pretty much status quo. some whining, some singing and one “go away daddy.” he did, however, stick with me, rolling his wonder pets back pack in front of him while i juggled my backpack, our suitcase and the car seat. the shuttle driver was pretty helpful, lashing the car seat to my rolling suitcase and even wishing me good luck, so a fist-full of bills found their way into his hand from mine. a good old-fashioned palm greasing ought to earn me a little good fortune with the travel overlords.

into the terminal and up to the luggage check (thank you pre-boarding) and no major catastrophes. trust me, these little victories are important to the ego.

while moving forward in the line, cole began his desent to the dark side. shortly after declaring he’d stay with me if i put him down, he takes off through the terminal, sending my backpack and the mini luggage tower tumbling to the ground as i take off like OJ in one of those old hertz commercials. whining and grunting i carry him back to the check in just in time for the first-class check-in guy to call me over.

gotcha! we didn’t fly first class (i wouldn’t do that to the rest of the first classers) but he had no one waiting so he called me in. cole continued to do the head dives and screams as i tried to quickly get everything checked in. apparently the car seat was of an odd shape as it took the guy twenty minutes to get it into the plastic bag he was shoving it into. he was obviously sweating as much as i was at this point, as the first-class check-in line had begun to pile up behind me. he literally thrust the boarding passes back at me with the baggage tags affixed and even manages to avoid eye contact after doing so. “have a good one buddy…” i said out of the corner of my mouth in classic new england style. apparenlty this was not the place my deity was going to smile upon me.

onto the quarter-mile long security line. as i wrestled cole and our carry-ons and walked past the first security lady, i smiled at her and said (with a genuine grin and a nod) “this might suck.” after a minute of standing there with a 30 lb fish wriggling in my arms, she taps me on the shoulder and says to me “come back this way please”, letting me through the shortcut divider to the front of the line.

many thanks to you my good woman, but i must focus my energies now. this is time when you take everything the kid holds dear away from him and promise he’ll get it back. this time it was his blanket that sent him into orbit. screams reached glass-shattering level when i had to go back through the uprights a second time after forgetting i still had my belt on. he was losing it so bad the security guard on the other side of the walk-through took my passes and immediately shoved them back into my hand without looking at them (see a trend here?). after we’d managed to gather our things and scramble off to a bench to collect ourselves, a well deserved granola bar settles the monster down for a few.

all told, i’d say it was about 8 minutes. felt like 2 months.

on further into the terminal and i’m adding one to my list of people to leave off the christmas list. the guy who puts giant stuffed animals out for kids to grab and latch onto as they board the plane should have to deal with said kids when they refuse to let go of not one, but two stuffed frogs. i mean really… come on. help a brother out will ya?

time to cash in the good karma chips. we were lucky enough to get seated next to laura, another mass/portland transplant, who on the reverse flight sat in the middle seat with two kids on one side of her and one kid on the other. apparently even cole’s physical spasms, leg thrashing and occasional fits of rage couldn’t break her. score.

of course cole wasn’t without his charms, plying her with raisins and coy smiles when not kicking her.  the stewardess (yes. i said stewardess… it’s got a bit more romance than flight attendant, don’t ya think?) was nice enough to comp a couple cocktails, so i let cole pick his fav from the pretty little rainbow of bottles in the cocktail section. tanqueray & tonic it is. and a bloody mary for my seat partner.

after four plus hours of stickers, dvds, snacks, painting (yes painting), failed snack packs, reading, squirming, jumping and turning the over head light on and off cole finally knocked off. phew… good night sweet price. the hand pretty quickly went up for another round.

all things considered, it could have been worse (like the time he lost it so bad the paramedics at the airport insisted there was something wrong with him and took him to the ER), so i guess i got off easy.

the adventure continues…

well it’s up.
it works.
people like it…

and it’s soon to be the subject of a TV commercial.

the installation finally went up amid a whole lotta hoopla (see above) and despite a few snafus like someone taking two mighty tries to bust in through the front door to get to the goodies last sunday night (thank you schlesinger brothers for taking care of that for us!) things have been going fairly smoothly.

the next step in the evolution of this thing is a TV commercial about the installation it’s part of the series being done for Portland’s Downtown Marketing Initiative by NORTH. it’ll air locally through the holidays. you’ll also be able to see the spot on the downtownportland.org site once it gets distributed.

stay tuned, and as always, read more here.

as a parting shot, if you haven’t read this great article about the future of advertising (among other things) i would highly suggest it.

doooooooo it.

it’s worth the five pages.

the installation hoopla continues.

on top of the site madness and the incredible job the NORTH crew has done on this year’s round of commercials (soon to be featured on downtownportland.org and in a limited way on YouTube) our little installation has been gathering some pretty good momentum.

we’ve encountered more challenges than even i thought we would, but so far have slayed them all (save one pretty big one which will hopefully be resolved in the AM.)

the papers show up tonight for a “sneak peak” photo-op and the channel 8 morning news will be around in morning on Friday to capture the ribbon cutting by mayor-elect Sam Adams. Thanks go out to John and Katie @ NORTH and for coordinating all the big media push and Chris from Reactive for helping get this thing up.

t-minus three days till live on the downtown installation.

we got a lot done today unfortunately it didn’t start happening until about noon, so it’s been a loooong day…

the windows were cleaned and blacked-out, the camera hole was stiff bristled with goo-gone, we completed (twice… don’t ask) the “den of inequity” that will shield the projector from any extraneous light that could dilute the image on the window itself, installed the camera, blew up the processor of our computer, reconfigured the software to run cooler and reseated some ram and finally saw some actual interaction on the projected piece.

it looks pretty fantastic.

more pictures are sure to follow…

oh and we had pizza AND subway in the same day. so much for the after-holiday fasting…