Bruised Bananas

I realized today that I've been eating the bruised bananas on top of my refrigerator for the past few days and those brown spots haven't bothered me one bit. This wasn't always the case and for years I refused to eat even the smallest brown spot on a piece of fruit. I still stay clear of mealy apples and soft spots on peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots and strawberries. But I feel like the bruised bananas situation is a step in the right direction. My friend Dave gives me a hard time for liking unripe fruit. And this is still true for most of the fruit in my life. I like unripened strawberries and the afore mentioned pitted fruits. I like the tartest, crunchiest ones in the supermarket. Because normal people like ripe fruit there is always a solid selection of unripe fruit. I once attributed this like of the unripe to having grown up in a small town with an even smaller grocery market where there weren't ripe options but I can also trace its roots to loving grapefruit and blackberries both notoriously sour fruit. But this whole bruised bananas is a big change.

Today marks my 105th day in the studio shooting this documentary about the band. There are four days left. Four days. This doesn't seem real. I can only equate this feeling with the feeling of an approaching last day of school. Will Wednesday July 2nd be the longest day of shooting?

I've shot around 180 hours of footage that will be cut down to the 30-45 min range for the documentary that will accompany the first 300,000 albums sold. This means that minimally 300,000 people will see my next film. This is hard to grasp. It is another feeling altogether to have worked this hard for something and have it inch closer and closer every day. I have so much to be thankful for; this film, the soon to be published book of photography, and then of course all the publicity, promotion, and marketing tools that I'll make the band for this record, website images, video blogs, press photographs.

James and I are editing the Jacks Mannequin short like you might run a long distance relationship. He's in the City of Angles and so we're about to get on a call together and talk through the first round of edits. I think this project will be released in early September with the new Jack's record titled "The Glass Passenger". Again, so crazy to think that this CD and DVD will be available everywhere, even my mother could go to Best Buy and pick one up.

You're all too beautiful. And I miss you all.

more photos from "Choke, California"

My new friend Frank Maddocks who is the head of the art department at Warner Brothers took these Holga images during our Jacks Mannequin shoot this past weekend. They are awesome images.

"Choke, California", a short film

Last weekend I was out in the Mojave Desert with my friend James Minchin shooting a short film for the band Jacks Mannequin. It was 115-120 degrees during the day out there. Justin made sure we drank a bottle of water an hour. The soles of my feet almost caught on fire. The sunscreen was pancaked on our faces and arms. We got 6 hours of sleep a night, one in an Econo Lodge in Barstow with a bed made of plywood that didn't even matter. We ate bad fast food and Denny's. Our bodies craved the shade. The 1964 Betty Blue Olds went 65 and had no air conditioning. My cameras almost melted.

But we had an amazing time. We shot some amazing images. Here are some video stills.

I love you.

The Coffee Table Book

It has taken ages to get this far, and I can't even really begin to share any more of the project (no time to edit for the blog...) but I did make just a low budget spread of the Polaroids that will be in the book. And when I say low budget I mean I did a low quality scan and then just stuck them on top of a color, no layout, no sizing, no arrangements.

The hard drive with the rest of the images goes to the publisher tomorrow. It has literally taken almost 5 months to get this out the door and I can't tell you how excited I am. Maybe now my mom will think I have a real job!