a gem of a conversation

pete:  you can use some rusty washers from my personal stash...

boss: you have a stash of rusty washers?!  

pete: of course.  when i'm out walking i just can't help myself from picking them up off the ground when i see them.

boss:  you've got problems.  

me:  ...and you're one to talk, mr. dead dog!   

boss:  so i own a couple of dead dogs....so what?  

festive ramblings

if you know me you know that i'm loopy for holidays.  when i was a kid, despite not having a christmas tree in the house (and I promise that will be the only ex-jovie reference in this post!), come december 1st, i would wage my own subversive holiday by switching to red pen in my journal for the duration of the month.

it's that daily spirit, that anticipation of something (and yes, i know, something so arbitrary and meaningless, considering i am not religious and also considering i haven't the budget for lavishing gifts on people) that warms my heart throughout december.  it's walking through the red and white striped tents of the christmas fair at union square on my way to class from the subway (i'm speaking of a few years past on that one), it's buying hot apple cider instead of coffee, it's trekking out to far-flung brooklyn neighborhoods that go crazy with lights--and for the past seven or eight years it's been hearing the holiday music and the sound of a quick electric saw when one of my neighbors bought a christmas tree off the sidewalk opposite my apartment.

for all of those years i have been charmed and appreciative of the toothless french canadians who come with their truckloads of trees and strand of lights and camp out in their little security outhouse.  i buy a charlie brown tree from them early on and always cross the street on my way out of the house to walk through the smell of christmas.  that little stand has been a steady, underlying source of my christmas cheer.  when christmas is close and it gets really really cold, i bring them loaves of pumpkin bread and gingerbread still steaming from the oven.

i feel giddy with anticipation on the morning after thanksgiving when their 2x4 tree pens appear, ready to receive the trees.  and so it was last friday night that i felt concern when the pens weren't there by bedtime.  jade comforted my anxiety--or attempted to--by insisting they never came that early.  and i got crazy righteous and indignant, counting on my fingers the years that i have heralded their prompt post thanksgiving day arrival.

and here it is, december 1st, and still no toothless french canadians.  still no trees!  jade, with the concern and discomfort of a parent watching their child lose, inquired at the local bodega (that's deli for non-new yorkers), whose sidewalk the trees customarily grace.  dispute with the landlord, was the report.

my holiday spirit crushed over $100 in unpaid electrical bills and a mess of stray pine needles?!  say it ain't so!  but even more sadly, i think the economy plays a bigger roll in the decision not to return.  i noticed considerably fewer cuts on the electric saw in the past couple of years.  a christmas tree is a luxury item that's pretty easy to trim from your overextended budget.

and yes, i'm speaking frivolously here, i recognize that.  there are a lot more important things to be concerned about even in relation to this story than my childish desire for festivity.  but we think about those things all the time.  for now, i'm taking my distraction in a plaid santa mug full of trader joe's gingerbread coffee blend.  welcome december!

don't i feel like a heel.

i was joking yesterday when i told the tattoo artists at the shop that i was probably high from breathing primer all day.  kind of.
but apparently i lost more brain cells than i realized.  see i spent the day as i have the last many, coordinating the renovation of a new tattoo shop.  it's wildly exciting and all, and i've been happy to log extra hours watching this space which had formerly been brutalized by bad color choices transform into ours.

yet all day i felt vaguely that i was forgetting something.  i chocked it up to the overwhelming list of things to be done and proceeded to pinch my finger in the door on the way out.

any plans tonight? my friend who'd hung new sheetrock asked.
oh no, just this.

and after i finally closed the roll-down gate and looked back at our progress, feeling a great sense of satisfaction, i dropped some artwork off at the studio, swung by my friend's place to give hugs to counteract her blues, wandered aimlessly into target (yes, my wild 11pm on a saturday night outing to target), then got hit on by the guy in a truck on atlantic avenue making me the best falafel i've ever had.

while ALL THE WHILE, friends who i really care about were toasting their birthdays!   it started at 6:30 while i was still huffing primer fumes, with ben, who usually receives a loaf of fresh-from-the-oven pumpkin bread from me (i even bought the pumpkin earlier in the morning!).    then continued at 8:30, probably not too long before i closed up the construction site for the night, with dear barbara, who i haven't seen in god knows how long.  damnit!!

and the only way i realized my mistake was to see barbara this morning on facebook.  here is what prompted my 'oh shit' moment:

back to the shop today.  if you are my friend and i've committed to some kind of plans, clearly my leftover brain cells need a reminder!  

12 april 2009 easter sunday: keith

11 april 2009: heather loop

10 april 2009: abi

click to enlarge.

two years later and i'm still posting '98 pictures of 98 people'.  it's interesting what distance from a project will do.  i'm startled to look back on it now and realize how unfinished i was when finals came around.  so many of the images, like this one, never got text.  in my memory it was only a few, but now it's showing to be quite a substantial chunk.  i vowed i'd come right back to those neglected "few", but now it's just how they are.  maybe a welcome breath in a long rattling story.  some of the text was successful, some just long winded.  

you miss spackleshot? how about some ranting?!

i miss blogging.  i miss the pre-facebook world when i read people's blogs and they read mine.  i'm not saying it was better.  i think it's terrific that everyone participates in the micro-blogging of facebbook.  i just miss it.

so i resist the urge to post the following rant to facebook and instead will post it here (this post will automatically post there anyway--not than anyone even clicks away from facebook to read a blogpost anymore...).  even though it is absolutely as exhibitionistly public as can be, somehow it seems more...privately mine.

so here i wind up.

dear man in line behind me at the bodega,

can you please explain to me what exactly you hope to accomplish by arguing with me "last word in" style that chicken stock tastes better than vegetable stock?  are you really all that concerned that i'm missing some nuanced flavor difference?  did i even ask you?  did i, a voluntary vegetarian of 23 years, seem like i was wavering and you thought you'd put your two cents in to help me with this tough decision?

this is a really stupid thing to rant about.  it just gets so exhausting to talk about it EVERY DAY.  


and while i've got the petty gloves on, let me address another daily conundrum that seems to be of utmost importance in these trivial, nothing-to-talk-about times.  if i didn't have lady parts, would you feel the need to ask me WHY i buzz my hair?  think of how ludicrous it would seem if a man had to answer that question 10 times a day, or if a woman had to explain her bob or ponytail...  

and by the way, man in line behind me at the bodega--i double dog dare you to make a butternut squash soup that tastes better than mine.  

like dominos they fall...

it is true that i have finally mostly transitioned, though kicking and screaming, into the digital realm of photography in my general practice.  it is true that my entire darkroom set up currently haunts, in boxes, every spec of storage space available in my small brooklyn apartment.  that is not to say that i don't fantasize about letting it breathe again in some mythical blacked out barn on some imaginary property in the country i'll have when i win the lottery.  but for now, yes, i acknowledge that digital has taken me over.
  
i know it's the way the world of photography has gone, but i enjoy partially blaming some of it on the New School.  for two years leading up to my enrollment at said university, i flipped through the course guide and circled countless darkroom classes i planned to take.  although i expressed these intentions in my application, i embarked upon my first semester clueless to the fact that the darkroom where these fabled classes would occur had been torn down. when i finally became hip to this change, i was told that all of the equipment from the new school darkroom had been donated to the parsons darkroom, where i would be allowed to take classes.  but when parsons figured out ways to get around that promise i was funneled to the Educational Alliance, an incredible community force whose art school boasted alumnus such as Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko.  it was at the Educational Alliance, not the New School as I'd imagined, where i found a home in a darkroom.  


now the Art School at the Educational Alliance faces a similarly vague and sneaky fate at the hands of a building renovation.  


To read a very thorough explanatory article by the Lo-Down:  click here

To Sign a petition of support:  click here

My petition comment below: 
I came to the Educational Alliance in 2005 when the New School University replaced its historic (built during Berenice Abbott's reign as instructor) darkroom with a wide hallway. The betrayal I felt by the mindless demolition of the very reason I enrolled at the New School has not faded in the passing years. I was lucky at that time, however, to be welcomed by The Educational Alliance to finish my current semester at their lovely darkroom. I had such a great experience that I continued for several semesters at the Educational Alliance, despite continuing my full course-load at the New School. Michael Macioce was one of the finest and most inspiring instructors I have had the honor to learn from. It makes me very sad to contemplate the thought of the endangering of another historic and important art program due to thoughtless plans for renovation.



and finally, me standing proudly by my work displayed at credit suisse, an opportunity brought to me by the educational alliance--not the new school.

quote of the day: i should be able to decipher this by now...

me: what's the make and model of your boat?

boss: it's a pissin commanda

me: pissin? Like P-I-S-S-I-N?

boss: nah...that's the accent. P-E-A-R-S-O-N C-O-M-M-A-N-D-E-R

me: ah...boston.

when i repeat his words, questions or instructions to people i never know when they are going to look at me like i'm speaking gibberish, as i don't quite have the massachusetts scallywag swagger down pat....

gettin' gone!

in 24 hours jade and i will depart this sweaty state of summer insanity and head for the glorious and mild mountains of colorardo. actually, the mountains are quite dramatic, but the weather, oh so lovely and mild.

colorardo is one of those trigger happy places for me. it's so stunningly beautiful that i can't stop taking photo after photo, never satisfied with my inability to do its stunning landscapes any justice. maybe if i were a nature photographer....

but having toted my camera around and shot thousands of photos last year, as seen here and here and here and here and here and jeez, now, a newly processed set here, i'm still bringing my camera, but in the interest of not being even more redundant, i'm going to TRY to restrain myself. maybe use the point and shoot a little more and relax.

and relax is the key word. no phone, no computer, no work. nothing but wilderness and campfires and myriads of really nice townsends running around and veggie burgers on the grill. yes, for those of you who wonder what a vegetarian does on a week long fishing trip, i turn you over to the wise words of my friend ben, who on a soho street corner last weekend declared to me, "I've found that fishing is just a good excuse to spend time on a beautiful river..."

09 april 2009 jack z.

i love the unabashed insanity of children. that fun insanity that's really just a lack of inhibition that gets regrettably, eventually replaced by the true adult insanity that is obsession with what others think of us and our actions.

jack belongs to the zinsser dynasty. they are friends. talented, awesome people. those qualities are not dependent on each other, rather two separate and incredible things about them that i love. i am a jill of all trades for them, doing this and that ranging, from assistant teaching to plant watering to art photographing to dressing up like a gypsy and conducting candlelit rooftop tarot readings for giggling but strikingly career-focused eleven-year olds.

when it was little brother jack's turn, he looked into my eyes with all of the grave seriousness such a subject deserved and asked, "will i make it to the major leagues?".

i shot jack in the same school hallway where i shot his father, john, 2 months earlier. see that session by clicking here: ah, may as well make it a two-fer, since i didn't include the actual scan with typed print...

as usual, these are so much lovelier when you click on them to enlarge...

08 april 2009 maria (+diana)

vegetables growing in the sky, part 2

early may vs. early june

some time ago i showed you guys a photo of our modest fire escape garden. much of this garden was planted from seeds. this is something i'd never done, being that i possess the blackest thumb of all. i therefore had no faith that things could sprout from the ground under my care.

so let's credit jade. below, some mysterious kind of lavendar (from seed!) and a cutting of a maple tree. those top leaves--brand spankin' new life!

twin teardrop tomatoes! get your mind outta the gutter....

cucumber blossoms wrapping their tendrils around the metal of the fire escape.

and the dill, admittedly, not the happiest.

you say insect, i say magic little beast

last week i met up with my sister and nephew in washington dc. though (and i knock on wood when i say this), i feel that new york city has been relatively kind to us this summer, my fair sister, accustomed to the freakishly mild weather in Northern California (I really have come to understand how unusually nice it is there compared to the rest of the country...), was drowning in the relative heat and humidity.

always the pollyanna, i periodically pointed out the beautiful side of the ugly east coast summer. i see these as little rewards for putting up with it. like leaving the house knowing you'll return after midnight, in a tank top, with no sweater. like an incredible, awe-for-nature-inducing thunder and lightning storm just went you think you'll simultaneously melt into a gelatinous puddle and spontaneously combust.

and then there are the fireflies. i understand that they are just insects. i understand that they light up to find their mates. yet none of this understanding changes the fact that they are 100% undeniably pure MAGIC. i remember the first one i saw. it was the 4th of july of 1997, my first summer on the east coast. of course i knew about fireflies, but they resided in that category of my brain labeled "exisiting only in the realm of books, television and movies". You know, mac n cheese and pizza behind the lunch line at school. That doesn't really happen except in sitcoms, does it? or halloween parties where every single person shows up in perfect and elaborate get-ups that could sell for $300 at a costume shop.

but there i was, sitting on the porch, and there came floating through lynn's yard, one of those mythical fairies, lighting up like a beacon. I squealed. I screamed. Suddenly they were everywhere. a veritable freakin' fairy garden. like maxfield parish must be lurking behind a bush around the corner. they may as well have been little unicorn/pegauses (pegasi?) flapping purple wings around.

and thus, i don't remember the fireworks. just the fairies.

Considering abbie is my sister and not only shares my exact dna, but also my environmental upbringing, i counted on her to have the exact same reaction. and how pleasing it was.

we toured the national monuments at sunset which led into twilight. as we walked away from lincoln's steps, past the expansive mall and into the pathways of trees and bushes, I knew they'd be there. i stopped abbie and put my hand on her shoulder to impart a great sense of drama. stay still and just LOOK over there! i whispered. and soon enough the squealing came. dozens of little fairies thanking us for putting up with the heat and humidity. our little consolation prizes.

our friendly tourguide, who'd been here for 30 years shook his head, laughing. he said, possibly to the bushes, possibly to the serious statue of lincoln, "....and these are grown women!"



oh! and i forgot to mention the glorious and spellbinding cicadas....

much ado about a tree

you can go ahead and thank me for not titling this post 'a tree grows in brooklyn'. there. it had to be said.

so say what you will about bloomberg being evil, he has steadily garnered my respect over the years by doing things that affect me personally, positively. he took the smoke out of bars. he campaigned for gay marriage. and he's got this million tree planting program that is tree by tree, beautifying new york city.

in this program, even lowly tenants like little ol' me can request a tree planted in front of their building. which is exactly what i did back in september of 2008.

okay, so maybe change comes really damn slowly, and maybe i lost a little bit of faith that anyone from the million tree program ever cared about little ol' me. imagine my excitement when, 2 and a half years later, bloomberg's truck came to call on, you got it, little ol' me.

honorable indeed!

...and dropped this little leaf linden on my front door step just like santa came in june. (our little leaf linden, pictured here with our friendly neighborhood 'vodka zombies'. more on them in a later post, that is, if you all haven't given up on me and my never posting habits of late).

little tree, meet 64 diamond street. your happy new home.

it was an awesomely streamlined process which jade and i watched glued to the window, occasionally running down to the front door to gawk. after the truck of trees delivered our little leaf linden, a man came by and painted multicolored warnings on the surrounding sidewalk, pointing out cable, gas and electric lines. then a big tractor came to dig up the sidewalk.

(are you sensing how this whole process turned me quickly into an eight-year-old?)

the tractor operator rocked an amzing cap covered with a rainbow of pot leaves. his deft hands controlling the dinosaur jaw of the backhoe (?) reminded me of kamaji, the boiler man from spirited away.

jade, glued to the window.

start a new life! plant a tree!!




then these dudes came with the dirt truck and pushed a bunch of dirt out of a secret flap, prompting jade to declare he'd found his dream job: to ride around new york city every day atop big piles of dirt.

and just like that, our new little guardian, and me, a smug as a cat who swallowed a mouse. (isn't there a phrase that goes something like that?) feeling personally responsible for bringing this little life to our little brooklyn block.

07 april 2009: petersen

petersen playing the drums is as much, if not more, of a visual experience as it is an audio experience.

p.s. if you don't click on the photo to see it enlarged, you're not really seeing it...

monday, 06 april 2009: ann scobie

be a dear and click on the image to enlarge!

ah. when i see this image i wring my hands. i wring my hands because this picture was taken the last time i saw ann and that's too long ago and there is no reason. even when we didn't see each other often, we still sent birthday cards. but even that has trickled off and i just wring my hands at the way life sometimes drifts people apart.

i met ann fourteen years ago on a catering job in philadelphia. we'd been bused down there like cattle and stood in line with water pitchers in a sweltering tent, waiting to pour drinks for rich people. ann turned what would be a miserable situation into a standup routine, keeping all of us laughing and smiling. she continued to salvage many tough work situations, leaving bananas and sweet notes on my desk at the us open when she knew i was pulling all-nighters, sharing support hose secrets with me--always reminding me to take care of myself rather than get too swallowed up in the heartless corporate work machine that tried to chew us up and spit out zombies.

ann went on to become a very successful voice over artist, pictured here, through the glass window of her in-home recording booth.

people bristle over the apparent saccharinity of this scene. i wring my hands over that too, as this moment was a fleeting one, a wave hello to her boyfriend, who had just walked in the door and passed behind me.

yet even that misconception is okay. perhaps the saccharinity works. what a strange world we live in, ann, the voice of the martha stewart show and the oxygen network. that soothing or authoritative voice that transitions you from show to commercial, commercial to show, coming out of a 10 square foot soundproofed box within an apartment on the upper west side of manhattan.

they say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes, perhaps the wrong ones come through. photographers are generally terrible at editing their own images because they become too emotionally attached to each one. this is very true about me. i stubbornly chose this one for the series. think what you will.

fire escape sky garden, take four!

mother's day seems like a good day for planting. i was about to qualify that statement, but i think you're probably smart enough to figure it out. let's see how we do this year?

05 april 2009: kevin lips

click on image to enlarge
one of my favorite portraits

saturday, 04 april 2009 t-bone

click on image to enlarge

sometimes there are so many words that there are actually none good enough to choose. therefore the margins remained blank. i think this was tbone's first show as 'hellbent hooker'. for a first show, the divey greenpoint bar was packed full. fresh from cuba, jade and i were still fuzzy, starry eyed and drinking cubalibres. hellbent hooker went on to thrill the crowd and possibly horrify the queens museum of art with their opener to 'those about to die salute you'

HELLBENT HOOKER - Long Black Train from Ben Chace on Vimeo.

03 april 2009: allison

my obligitory reminder: click on the photo to see it bigger. these are scanned prints that i ran through my old typewriter. viewing the text larger is rewarding!

for those of you just tuning in: i started posting this series of photographs to my blog in 2009, while i was still shooting it. the idea was to photograph a different person every day. this project spanned three months of lugging my big camera with me everywhere i went and obsessing over who would be my next subject. i intended it to function primarily as an exercise in constant shooting, in breaking down my personal taboo of asking people to be photographed, and for exploring spontaneous portraiture. I also hoped it would function, secondarily, as a self-portrait. As I've lagged sometimes months between sharing them here, suddenly, two years has elapsed. this time provides the distance to see that secondary function emerge at the forefront. when i flip through this series i see a time capsule.

i shot this portrait, along with a slew of others to come, at a bar in williamsburg called iona. i spent a lot of time there over the course of a couple of weeks, meeting jade's friends and waiting out an awkward relationship transition at home. i didn't know allison at all. i knew her so little that i invented the words to type on her photo. i had no idea she'd become my neighbor, that's she'd sell me girl scout cookies and offer to deliver them in improvised uniform, that we would cook together and vent our troubles at my kitchen table.

to see more of this series, click here.

01 april 2009: miss sarah brown

there are certain moments when you are struck by love. especially when you are just falling into said deep feeling, these moments are poignant realizations of admiration. usually they stem from small gestures that signify something greater, something important to you. maybe it's something you've knowingly searched for. maybe it's something you never knew you wanted until that moment. whatever the trigger, for me, these moments slow the pace of the world and heighten all senses.

behold, a moment at freddy's back room, roughly two years ago. this place no longer exists, having been demolished to make way for luxury condos or shopping centers or some such nonsense that none of us really have the funds to support.

sarah brown used to host a reading series there, monthly. it was possibly the best activity in all of new york (this statement biased by my own interests of course). rather than read from well written books or highly praised poetry, the readers would read from the ratty pages of their own teenage diaries. requirement: what you read must be so horrifyingly embarrassing as to make you physically cringe. hence, the title of the event. CRINGE. i cannot express in words what hilarious fun this was to watch. The comedy came from empathy, from having been there. and oh, was i there. i have 4 boxes full of faux paint-splattered, hello kitty, puffy rainbows, rhinestone-studded, behind lock-(albeit pickable by bobby pin) and-tiny-keyed tomes of cringe-worthy words to attest to this. and finally, i had something to do with them.

over the course of roughly a year, i laughed so hard i found it necessary to smack my fist on the table. on a few occasions i downed a pint of grapefruit vodka and soda to fuel the courage to stand behind the mic and cringe myself, reading ridiculous histrionics over ex-gay boyfriends and jaw-droppingly heinous 'poetry' about affairs with chefs. really bad bad stuff. but getting behind that mic and hearing others slapping the table and roaring with laughter easily constituted a year's worth of therapy. we've all been there, and we can all laugh about it together.

when sarah compiled entries from readers from freddy's into a book (Cringe: Teenage Diaries, Journals and Abandoned Rock Operas) she included a few of my 'gems' in the body of the book and a whole lot of anonymous excerpts and miscellaneous scrawlings and samples collaged into the interim pages. dreams about george michael written on garfield stationary. reports of rick springfield on hello kitty red and white. hearing that these entries had been selected for publication was at once exciting and horrifying, but having experienced the joy of laughing at myself in public (really cathartic!), i decided not to fret.

there was, unfortunately, a wet towel dampening the experience of cringe in my life, and it came in the form of a boyfriend who shall remain nameless, who was less than thrilled with my 'exhibitionist' activities. sharing these entries in public advertised the fact that in my 30+ years, i had actually shared love and lust with someone prior to him. the horror. he refused my invitations to join me even on nights i wasn't reading to see how fun and harmless it all was. he picked huge fights with me upon my return from cringe nights and gave me the silent treatment for days. he refused to accompany me to the publication party of the book and not surprisingly, awaited my return from said really fun and awesome event where i met so many great people and felt so proud to be a part of, with a fight. cringe became a bittersweet night, and so, i started to go in secret, just to avoid the fights, ridiculously sneaking around as though i was having an illicit affair or sleeping with prostitutes.

clearly this was not the man for me.

so let's return from my bitter rant (sorry!), to the moment you see pictured above. i've just fallen head over heels in love with jade townsend. freddy's backroom is so packed for cringe that we sit on the floor behind the readers, holding hands. as sarah introduces the next reader, i look at jade. he is laughing. he is there with me. and i'm so much in love.

i do not want what i haven't got

before

hair.

i've been thinking far too much about it lately. i just can't seem to be happy with any haircut in the past year. this could have something to do with the fact that i refuse to pay for a haircut, but thankfully, i have a fairly buddhist standpoint on the issue of hair. it's not a big deal. it will just grow back. if you mess it up terribly, we'll just buzz it off and start over.

during

so the other day i hit my limit. i've been told i look like a mother, 'too sober', like a skinhead's girlfriend, like a troll. the list goes on and on. so on saturday, after helping jade buzz his unusually shaggy (but still adorable) hair off, i made good on my ultimate back up plan and let him take mine all off.

after

and i have to say, i am happier with it than i can remember feeling about a haircut in a long time! it's likely you won't agree. but don't worry. it won't hurt my feelings.

i wasn't looking!

labor day. eastern parkway, brooklyn. in the heat of the crowd i caught him staring intently at her shimmering butt, index finger on the disposable camera trigger.

i'm in the middle of epic spring cleaning, alternately sifting through many snapshots that make me feel old as well as hand-made prints that affirm what i always knew: i was never a very compelling black and white photographer, as much as i love the magic of the process and the beauty of the print. however, there are a couple of gems that i was happy to see again. like this one from....egads....how do the years just blend together?!.....2004.

el tercero viaje a la habana, cuba

i still feel like crap, but well enough to take the soup pot away from my bedside. gross! now none of you will come over for soup again. i didn't use it. it just made me feel more secure having it there. but as i asked jade for it, feeling weak and nauseated, defeated by a stomach bug, i got nervous for a moment that maybe it was some abhorrent behavior practiced in only my family and he would be disgusted by me.

it's really nice to have someone to take care of you when you're sick. the first two days were taken up solely with sleeping, moaning, thinking i was definitely going to die, deciding that if i didn't, then i surely didn't have enough strength to get through the rest of this life, mixed with trips on the half hour to the bathroom for unmentionables.

finally, today i am still bedbound, but well enough to feel stir crazy, bored and whine about the bedsores i must have amassed from three eternal days in bed.

i have a minute to sift through my photos from cuba. yes! i'm back. in 2009 i went to cuba and my head exploded with an overload of visual beauty and intrigue. i shot literally thousands of photos that, by and large, haven't seen the light of day. in 2010 i went to cuba and felt so much guilt that i had not processed those photos, that when the head explosion came, i punished myself by largely ignoring it and shooting a few snapshots on my iphone, which have also not seen the light of day. in 2011 i went to cuba and only took my camera out for a half day. therefore, i have a very manageable handful of photos to share with you. one day we'll catch up with the rest!