So I'm sorry it has been so long since I have given ya'll any photos. I have been so overwhelmed with school and life and everything. Here are some photos from election night from 6th street in Austin. I spent part of the election with Holly at the Driskill. The Driskill was the Democratic headquarters for the night and her candidate Larry Joe had rooms for his team.


Here she is being all professional and election-y.


This was right after the announcement that Obama won at the Driskill.


Everyone was celebrating on the street infront of the Driskill and all down 6th.


Tina and Dan.

Alright today was super productive. I did a presentation on Paul D Miller this morning and ya'll should check him out at www.djspooky.com his work and even more so his ideas on creating, deconstructing, and remixing arts of all kinds are very inspiring. Tomorrow I will be one step closer to finishing my website, and one of the most difficult layout decisions I have is choosing the main photo for the main page. I am debating like crazy since it is the first exposure that people visiting the site will have to my art. Input and ideas are welcome. Here are some ideas:

I don't know I want something that has a instant impact right now I am leaning toward the second option just because it takes a longer look to decipher what is going on in the picture. It is a difficult decision because i am marketing myself to common people who want portraiture in austin, bands, people looking for potential editorial work, etc all at the same time. Those of you that are familiar with my work if there is another picture you think should be an option let me know.

Im tired and my ears are ringing from a show last night, but I can never sleep in now, no matter how hard I try. No theme-ing or life and emotion updating today. Only pictures. More from Marfa at Balmorae just a girl jumping off a diving board into the cold pool (The pool stays just as cold or colder than our Barton Springs because it too is a natural spring) but she does it with such determination.


How did all the pictures I have taken before now become so ominous in the present tense?


Just jump

Day 3

What a productive day!! I met with Eli and have only good excited feelings about my Mexico project. This weekend I will be going to Houston and I will bring my camera in order to put some things up here for us to enjoy together. Eli wants me to look into grants so if anyone has any resource ideas I am open. I am willing to write extensively for grants for this project so that is not a deterrent. I am updating some photos from today that Eli felt especially carried some impact. These are from a different barranca than the others. These are of a woman named Elena's home with her four children. When she was pregnant with the youngest she ran from her husband to start a new life in Cuernavaca. She came from nothing and terror and built her own home with her hands everything you see in the background was constructed by her with little outside help. Her children and her are amazingly close they live in a one room house with a bunk bed that sleeps them all. 

This is just a small taste I am hoping to make these into a complete show. Now that we have finished the first round of edits, on to round two.

This is Elena washing dishes in the sink she made outside from a water basin that she collects water in.

This is the youngest daughter

Tomorrow I have another meeting with Eli Reed so expect more Mexico edits. There are new opportunities opening up for that project and I am excited. I want to put these pictures to some use, real use, for change or at least for awareness. Today I am flip floppy and hopelessly hopeful. Today I am sorry and giddy and covered with paint because I am working on a film that I will figure out how to show ya'll pieces of. And today a cool front moved in and I am welcoming change for better so lets see if I can find something that fits into that hodge-podge of ridiculousness. 
So here is another of the recent Marfa trip pictures. This one I over looked in the first round of edits but there is something omniscient and wistful about it on second look especially with the light streaks from the clouds in the top right and the road opening up directly to the viewer.

 
I have a new project idea I am going to have to recruit people for so those of you that frequent the blog I am going to be calling on you and your friends for help. I want to make a fake documentary collection of shots from the "Greater depression" (I am coining and copy-writing that phrase so don't think about it!) that didn't pan out from this stock wall street crisis which has subsided for now. I want to make some high fashion fake documentary photo pieces that will show the way my best friend and I hypothesized we would survive. This project is going to be big with equipment rental costuming and large sets so I am going to need to call on all people who have random things to contribute to be there. Excited.

Day 2

Ok start of a new project today. Give this photo a double take because it is compiled of the past and the present. Its my bed as I left it this morning and found it when I came home. More of these merges later. All the merges will be hard to disern unless the pictures are familiar to the viewer I think that is a sweet dichotomy between the artist as open and on display to the viewers and the artist and product as human, with vanity that makes them unable to be fully naked to the unknown viewer.

Day 1

So today is the first day of my big change and I was doing well until my loved ones made me watch the Sex in the City Movie and I fell all to pieces. Currently I am wallowing over a broken and confused relationship so today's theme is loss. Our subject today is this precious little fabulous kitty, barbara streisand. She was always graceful and tender even when she was annoyed that she was being smothered and teased she was loving. Although she brings up good old memories that are painful to me now, I thought she was appropriate for my start of letting go. All of these pictures were taken the day before she died thus proving how graceful and lady-like she was every day no matter how hard.

New blog campaign coming for yall soon I have a great idea.

Alright today's post is going to go over some of the things I had been doing last week. Since I just finished my work at the Blanton I figured I would give yall a peek at what has been going on in the museum.

This is the interactive first part of the NYC modern exhibit downstairs. The piece is constructed of thick blocks of paper intended to be torn and manipulated by the audience.

This is also an interactive piece where the pennies can be touched and a room is entered through sheer curtains it is a social commentary on religion and its hypocrisy.

This is my friend Rory checking out a modern piece that due to its material choice includes the viewer in what they see.

This morning I woke up. I mean we all wake up every morning but I had be in this naive sleep a long long time. Now that I am awake I say lets be fabulous lets be ridiculous and over the top and unembarrassed about being human lets be young and make mistakes lets each just be us and be proud that we are. Lets not let people make us feel like we are less than, or that we don't deserve to be loved and cared for and thought of. Lets never be embarrassed that we can be vulnerable . So today's photography theme is over the top and dramatic.

I’ve felt a bit dry creatively lately. Last night was crazy random but it started with Tina and I going to a screening of film shorts for the Austin Film Society and it didn’t end till like 430 am hanging out with film makers that I accidently became the Austin guide for. Most of the shorts were scary shorts some were animated, so in honor of that I figured I would do a bit of super dramatic cinematic shots that could almost be film stills.



Those two photos are from the campaign I did for Cain and Abels a campus bar that I wanted to create a extremely young and sexy vibe and movie quality to make it a place that people want to be.

This was a fun little project Sara and I did with a 4/5 and very old hollywood lighting instead of flash.

This last one is from a redesign I did for Modern Bride. This is my tina sitting in Rory's jeep at Laguna Gloria. In the photo I hoped to bunk the typical ideals of how serious a woman's wedding should be and make the wedding seem more like and adventure.

Feeling kind of blue today and it is rainy outside so I figured we could maybe all use a pick me up? Here is some stuff that I don't know what I am going to do with yet from Marfa, Texas. For those of you who don't know Marfa is a destination spot in West Texas. Every wonderful thing you would think about the expansive overpowering west you can find on your way to or around Marfa. Also it is a thriving art town with amazing restaurants. Its where I and an old best friend would go to get recharged creatively. It has a great calming sense and strengthens my faith in wonder.

Here is a storm rolling in I think we were driving out to Fort Davis where there is amazing camp sites or maybe we were going to Alpine which is about 40 min outside of Marfa.

These two are from Balmorae park which is a natural spring with the same idea as barton springs but executed with much more finesse it is clear all the way to the bottom where you can see turtles and catfish and other little river creatures swimming around. Balmorae is about an hour from Marfa and totally worth the drive for a day trip.

ambiguous picture from an exhibit at the Chinati Foundation

So here is how the show went, very informal but it is what it is. I did some networking with a professional photographer that came and I think maybe took a shine to me named John Rees. You can check out his stuff at johnrees.com and filmstill.com. It is just good I guess to put your stuff out there and have people comment on it and see what type of feedback you get.

Here's how it looked on our back porch:

Tonight night is the art party that my upstairs neighbors are hosting there will be local musicians artist etc as well as a kegerator with a broken guitar spout. Here are some things that I am going to hang at the party to show some of my artwork. 




More later. I promise to be more attentive my head has been other places.

Ok here is a quick break from Mexico and the more serious photo-j stuff. We are taking a detour to band photos since I may be doing some more soon for Barry's band, and Joey just paid me for the Bellfurries photos that we did before school started. I am posting my favorite which makes joey look like the leader of a Tarantino pack.

Eli Reed and I are wrapping up our edits we only have one more edit this week. So far we have about 70 images for final pics. So I will be editing this down again soon. I hope to have a final edit of 40 photos that I will then make a portfolio of. Eli says that I need to look for grants. So I am excited to start getting this rolling.

Heres stuff from yesterday's edit:

Uncle and Niece.
Birthday boy playing with new soccer ball at his party at his mothers house on the tracks.

Same birthday, quiet moment. 

This weekend I am doing a small show at an art party. There will be musicians, athletes artists, it is casual but it is still a small show. I think I am going to print and mat some of Mexico edits as well as some of my older work and just see what people are feeling. 

More Mexico edits, but first I wanted to include some more background. These pictures will mainly be from the neighborhood that the children at Caminando Unidos (the volunteer run school that the previous pictures came from) are living in.

This type of lower class neighborhood is called una barranca in Cuernavaca. This specific barranca is along an old set of train tracks in Cuernavaca. Most of the families that live along these tracks built there houses from scrap metal and found supplies.


There is currently a political battle between the community along the tracks and the state Government. The state government purchased the track land from an independent company. Currently the state is forcing families that are already living meagerly on the fridge of lower class to be moved in order to build high end condos in the place of their shacks and small homes. The conflict arises from a federal law in Mexico that permits unused federal land to be claimed by citizens as long as they are paying bills and have proof of taxes or electricity.

The families I meet are mainly women run households and the community that has been there for more than 40 years is very tight-knit.

So this is the first blog of LightsMirrorsPlay. I plan to keep ya'll updated on my photo stories and work. This update is from a large project I worked on this summer in Cuernavaca, Mexico. I found this small community along a set of old train tracks. It was an accidental project I found the community through a school which the community members themselves ran so that the children would have a place to go. I meet amazingly welcome people. These are parts of a large edit Magnum photographer Eli Reed and I are working on from the thousand something photos I brought home. 

This is Joel. Not even eight and one of the roughest children at the school. But for the most part the other children treated him gently no mater what he did. More about him later his story is so layered and the compassion of the other children was so wis

e and impressive. This is the first day we meet he is still showing me a tough face. 

This is America's shoes she is hiding crayons in the little house that we visitors brought to donate for school supplies.