This was such a wonderful 2 days in so many ways! We had a husband and wife team, 2 sisters, and 2 babies-in-utero there – a first time ever at one of my workshops. Plus so many friends, guest lecturers, shoots and stuff going on all at once- we covered pretty much everything from my deeper more philosophical subject matter, to technical, business, creative, editorial, workflow, portraiture and lots of hands-on stuff. Plus eating, drinking, music and so much more. In fact, I couldn’t have said it better than the attendees themselves! Read all about it in the AWESOME attendee reviews of this workshop HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

I have organized tons of photos taken by the attendees as well as sweet Kaz from Woodnote Photography who provided coverage of the entire event.  Thank you Kaz! I love the photos and so happy to have such a rad new friend!

All photos credited above each set of images.

Photo below: Studio 222

I rented this gorgeous giant beach house in Pacifica, CA- this was the view we had to deal with! The house had tons of secret rooms and lofts with hidden doorways that led to other rooms.

Photos below: Woodnote Photography

Photos below: Shutter Sam

Above, Chloe‘s Polaroid lecture and her stunning work!

Photos below: Rory Amber Photography

Above, Chloe‘s dogs paid us a special guest visit during our Polaroid project! The last image is of our shoot for Rue Magazine with the amazingly talented styling skills of Erin (Apartment 34), produced by Anne Sage of Rue Mag/ City Sage blog. We did a shoot featuring Three Babes Bakeshop (and then we ate their delicious sweet & savory pies!) Images coming soon in the next issue of Rue!

My dear friends and clients Tim & Nicki Bluhm hung out and sang at my workshop after party, an exclusive little performance just for us! We also gave each attendee a copy of their beautiful cd Duets.

You must watch this little video shot by attendee Sara Wilbur Photography of one of the songs they played!

Photos below:  Patti & Russ of Ressull Salvi Photography …

On Day 2 of the workshop we had my friends, special guest lecturers Anne Sage (Rue Magazine / City Sage Blog) discussing social media and creative business, and master photographer Chloe Aftel teaching us about Polaroid cameras using Impossible Project film. We also received some discount coupons from Impossible!

Above left, Nicki and I getting a little snuggle in on the couch. On the right- me talking to the cops at the after party: The neighbor decided to flash my guests his private parts through his window, and then had the audacity to call in a noise complaint on us! So I asked the officer if we could file a counter-complaint at his genitals… he said No. But still… Anyways, we had a blast that night! Dinner, wine & live music… I loved hanging out with everyone there- what an epic group of people! After that, everyone crashed out in the house…

Chloe Aftel lecturing the next morning… Photo below: Studio 222

Photos below: Woodnote Photography during our Polaroid session. We teamed up into pairs of two as Chloe allowed us to use her slew of cameras to create some Polaroid magic…

Photos below: Jetkat Photo – waiting for the Polaroids to develop and then hearing all the excitement and gasping around the room as we slowly turned each one over to look at it…

Photo below: Woodnote Photography

And here are all the Polaroids everyone took of each other! So beautiful…

Kaz & I teamed up and shot these of each other. But the middle photo with my head replaced by a blast of light (what it looks like when my “mind is blown”) was taken by the fantastically beautiful Véronique Roch-Lefebvre.

My favorite one that Kaz took of me below.

The beautiful Rachel who produced the video that her fiance cinematographer Drew Dorsey shot of the workshop, interviewing the attendees. Photo below by Sarah Layne Photography

The crew! Group shot & all other photos below by: Woodnote Photography

The gift bags for my attendees!
Customized canvas tote bags from FBS Print – I use mine all the time now / Customized notebooks from Paper Coterie – everyone loved these!/ Had to share the beautiful sounds of my dear friends & clients Tim & Nicki Bluhm‘s Duets CD’s / Gorgeous art magazine Sioux Magazine / Cookies shipped from my favorite place to eat in LA Gjelina /  Discount coupon specifically for my workshops from my lab George’s Camera

FOOD! I wanted the BEST- Clean, super yummy food for my group- and I hit the jackpot! Catering provided by Square Meals (SO GOOD!) and delicious breakfast & baked goods by Batter Bakery – we ate like royalty!!!

And a few more from Kaz (Woodnote Photography) below…

I cannot say enough about Stacy, my workshop intern assistant who was so awesome that I ended up offering her a job as my Workshops Manager / Social Director … She completes me. Thank you Stacy!

Special thanks to Cinematographer & friend Drew Dorsey for video coverage (coming soon!) and his gorgeous fiancee Rachel for producing the little film we’re making. So glad we all got to live together in that giant rad house for 3 days! Also a very special thank you to my best friend Rob who set up the AV for us and gives the best hugs in the world- I love you , brother.

Read some AWESOME attendee reviews of this workshop HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

I am currently gearing up for my next few workshops- 1 in San Diego (at my house!) on June 28th & 29th (subscribe to the mailing list HERE) and New York at the end of July (mailing list), plus another London workshop coming up later this year (mailing list).

Btw, Virgin, you were an asshole to me TWICE on my way back home – You didn’t let me get on my flight back & you forced me to wait 4 hours at the airport to get on another flight- which was actually fine because I made some new friends, incidentally I also made some new friends on my flight there too, so whatever… then I went to pick up the book I had left on my plane ride into SFO just 3 days previous, and you had already sent it out to headquarters…. totally annoying… but I still kinda like you, and your beautiful planes, and the fact that you don’t care about showing HBO & nudity on your in-flight entertainment. And I also really enjoyed your Virgin-produced Boing Boing channel… super cool!

35mm groovy film (straight out of the camera)…

You can purchase the lecture from my London Workshop here.

And read my stream-of-consciousness summary on the entire crazy one-month trip HERE.

Featuring Emma Case, Rock ‘n Roll Bride, my husband Stuart, my Italian bestie Patrick, and many others…!

world tour part 1: brooklyn, ny & morning passages
world tour part 2: caught in the floods / hurricane irene
world tour part 3: summary of travels
world tour Part 4: Brooklyn (35mm film)
And images from my London Workshop here.

I guess I initially named these posts “world tour” because I was supposed to go “around the world” to Fiji as well but couldn’t make it because of Hurricane Irene (read link above)– so it’s not really a “world tour” per se, but who cares.
This is my set from Turin Italy, and the Italian and French Rivieras.
All shot on 35mm film…

The insanity that was my trip so far (read links above) rendered me completely exhausted. I hadn’t slept much at all the last few days in NY, or on my flight from NY to London- arrived in London early in the morning, my luggage was lost (got it back later that night), got about 3 hours of sleep that night and woke up to workshop day- 25 people and a full day of me talking that I had to be conscious for. After the workshop we all went out for dinner. I knew we had to catch a taxi to the airport to go to Italy at 4am, so we decided to just stay up and party instead of sleeping just a couple of hours. A bunch of the workshoppers agreed to party with us. I had never in my life been so exhausted, jet-lagged and out of it, yet I still managed to dance & drink with everyone, narcolepsy aside. Pappin (Son Of Shark Pig), who I had invited to come with me to London to film the workshop & to hang out in Italy, threw me in a cab at 4am, handled all the crazy airport/luggage issues, and everyone helped out with packing my stuff and getting me on my way (bless their hearts!) We took a 2-hr flight to Italy, another night of no sleep, and arrived there at 7am. We were meeting with Patrick, one of my besties from when I was a kid. I hadn’t seen him since I was 15, that was almost 20 years ago. The last time I saw him we had a seriously terribly bad acid trip together- Shortly after that, he moved back to Italy, I moved to the states. Now he invited us to come hang out in Torino (Turin). Seeing him for the first time in 20 years & meeting his wife Lidia and baby Mila was beyond amazing! They picked us up from the airport and he asked: what do you guys want to do? I responded: I haven’t seen you in 20 years, I haven’t slept in weeks, let’s keep going, fuck it, we’re in Italy– so we kept going another day… walking around Turin, eating, drinking and catching up. I finally got sleep that night…  Patrick’s brother Valerio was out of town and offered up his home for us to stay in for those 2 weeks… Thank you so much V! And our hosts gave us the BEST TOUR OF ITALY EVER. I highly recommend Patrick as your tour guide, if you want to experience the REAL underground Italy,

As Patrick likes to summarize: “We drank Barolo and Barbera in Piemonte (where it comes from); Ate Pesto in Liguria (the region that invented it), and if that wasn’t enough, drank PASTIS in the South of France where Serge Gainsbourg fucked Jane Birkin.”

As a birthday gift, I got Stuart a ticket to come meet us out there a week later…

(It really is difficult to describe what an incredible experience this was, but for a full stream-of-consciousness description of this entire trip, go here: world tour part 3: summary of travels)

Waking up, opening huge French windows, and watching a Pasticceria come to life, every morning. (This is the only shot in this series that is digital).

Stuart and Pappin… 4am and we were looking for a Torinian strip club… we found one… and that story is a long one.

Stuart <3… Wine & Gelato at the foot of an ancient castle.

Patrick…

This obelisk, in the center of Turin, is the most negative energy point on earth.

Nouveau!!

People in Italy enjoy hanging out of their windows and people-watching… I have an entire series of these.

Inside our apartment…

below: Andrea! My sweet Italian gay boyfriend…

Patrick & Mila.



Situated a few feet away from the Obelisk of the most negative energy point on earth, this intense & beautiful sculpture below is supposedly built “directly over hell” where the devil himself lives… Turin is a cheery place… In fact there is so much occult history here, they have a nighttime occult “magic” tour in this city.



Lidia…

At the end of our trip we went down to the Italian and French Rivieras where Patrick & his family own some properties. My dream, ever since I was a kid and watched Dirty Rotten Scoundrels a million times, was to visit that part of the world…. dream come true. I shot these Riviera photos on a roll of expired 35mm film- which came out so beautifully- I love how washed-out, grainy, nostalgic and dreamy this film looks- just like how my brain always imagined this place…. Menton.

Stuart took this one of me- proud to finally be here.

We drove from Turin to the Rivieras on a road that took us along the coast when we got there, and drove back through the French Alps! A million tiny little old towns tucked away in beautiful mountains.

(For a full stream-of-consciousness description of this entire trip, go here: world tour part 3: summary of travels)

world tour part 1: brooklyn, ny & morning passages
world tour part 2: caught in the floods / hurricane irene
world tour part 3: summary of travels

I guess I initially named these posts “world tour” because I was supposed to go “around the world” to Fiji as well but couldn’t make it because of Hurricane Irene (read link above)– so it’s not really a “world tour” per se, but who cares.
This is my set from NY. (Italy will be posted next).
All shot on 35mm film…

Williamsburg.

Above, Kara & Clementine. Below: Kara in a cab.

Kara’s house.

3 sweet little Polish ladies, just sitting around.

Staying at Teo’s- we ate like this every day. And that Spanish wine is to die for.

During my meeting with Jessie (Morning Passages/ Lomography), Shoko Wanger recognized me on the streets of  Williamsburg and came to say Hi!
You can read about my meeting with Jessie HERE, and Shoko is the extremely talented (and stunning!) writer that interviewed me for my feature in Rue magazine, you can read that here (pgs 143-167)- I am so lucky to have met them both in person.

Beautiful Teo. My bestie. Her work can be seen here and here.

Eric Kvatek, incredible fashion photographer and old friend from Santa Fe.

Noelle.

Then there’s lady Jane– read all about HER, on this post. Jane’s work can be seen HERE.

Jane and the magical grave garden she created for Doodle the 3-legged dog. Who was one of the best dogs I have ever known.

Teo.

Hanging out with Brandon, Noelle and their friends. (these 2 shots where taken on an expired disposable camera)


Breakfast the next morning. Live music.

Below: Brandon in his living room.

My beautiful clients Margot & Matt- after their Catskills wedding when we were all back in Brooklyn, they invited me over to their place for a drink — photos from their wedding coming soon…

And a snap from the Catskills wedding and the giant storm (Irene) that started that day.

To read more about my trip and all these beautiful people, follow the journey here:
world tour part 1: brooklyn, ny & morning passages
world tour part 2: caught in the floods / hurricane irene
world tour part 3: summary of travels

Up next, Italy… coming soon.

(Below: self-portrait in Valerio’s apartment where we stayed in Turin, Italy)

I’m back home, physically, I think, although not quiet in my body yet.

My mind is floating around in the international universe, hanging on to some of the new and greatest memories of my lifetime so far… Lost in fresh, bitter-sweet emotional nostalgia over all the beautiful people I spent time with: old dear friends, and the new cherished friends I have made over the past month of my journeys…

My heart was definitely left in Italy. I’m in love with Italians and every single thing about their beautiful country, how they live, what they care about. Italians do it right.

My soul needs at least a couple of weeks to figure out what it’s been through.

My brain is doing it’s best to stay awake- filled with millions of tiny disjointed scenes and fragments of this crazy whirlwind trip, all swirled into a jet-lagged haze of a psychedelic dream: Romanian strippers in Torino. Gypsy pickpocket children dressed as clowns. A lazy mime. A satanic sculpture of epic intensity built directly over hell. An obelisk built over the most negative energy point on earth. Eating the official “best pizza in Italy”. Drinking illegal blackmarket wine. Pink flashing bunny ears. The “I love you” fan. Gelato. Menton! Mediterranean waters. Hole-in-the-ground toilets. Baby Mila telepathically asking me to be her official Auntie. Drinking wine with new friends while watching Irene’s raging flood of a river rise. Photographing a beautiful couple in a Catskills hurricane. “There are 50 000 different words for ‘slut’ in Italian”. Huge French windows that open up to sweet Italian Pasticcerias in the morning. Brioche & Cappuccino. Listening to ASTRA while driving through the Alps. Small, hidden villages. GRAPPA that gets you stoned. Homemade Limoncello. Markets. Antiques. Twerking with UK’s finest photographers. Narcolepsy. Busted lens. Elderly Italians dressed to kill! Taxis, planes, busses, trams. The exact location where Nietzsche lost his mind after petting a horse. Epic churches. Watching the sun rise. Canals. Singing French driving songs to an upset baby “Un kilomètre à pied ça use, ça use, Un kilomètre à pied ça use les souliers.” Homemade pesto. Beautiful windows & their accompanying clotheslines. Rimbaud. Doodle the 3-legged dog’s magical grave garden. The incomparable Lady Jane and her art & soul! Antipasto. Ancient castles. Family saves the day. The locals of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Iced cappuccino in Williamsburg. Noise. Quiet. Bad smells. Wonderful smells. Teo’s plants. Noelle & Brandon’s indigo wall. Kat’s pink hair. Patrick’s purple shirt. My seafoam green designer dress getting destroyed by Balsamic vinegar, coffee and wine all in one meal. PappinNurse/ PappinMom/ Pappinating/ Pappin’s first coffee/ Pappin’s last night. Lidia’s cooking. Teo’s cooking. Stuart devouring Pâté. Mila’s special “dance”. Patrick’s humor! Antlers. Fur. Skulls. Smoking fags in London. Hanging out with fags in Italy. Discussing fags in New York. The 70-yr-old haunted busted-spring mattress that we slept on at Patrick’s beach house. Seeing a collection of posters for a museum showing of old paintings and realizing all the subjects where loaded on Laudanum or other Opiates “Hey, Grandpa’s on the nod, someone take a painting real quick!”. Our grand ‘last supper’ the night before we left… As for the Italian leg of the adventures, my bestie-bro Patrick likes to summarize: “We drank Barolo and Barbera in Piemonte (where it comes from); Ate Pesto in Liguria (the region that invented it), and if that wasn’t enough, drank PASTIS in the South of France where Serge Gainsbourg fucked Jane Birkin.”

Oh My God.

My eyes have seen ultimate beauty on the Italian and French rivieras.

Italy is perfection. Visually, auditorily, olfactorily and especially gastronomically, I have never been so fulfilled. I thought I had eaten tiramisu before, but I hadn’t until I ate it in Italy. I thought I knew what wine tasted like, or what food should taste like, but I didn’t… I knew nothing until I ate and drank in Italy. What do I eat and drink now? Anything would be a sad attempt at merely satisfying hunger now that I’m back home. Italy destroyed any chance for me to ever eat an enjoyable meal again, unless, of course, I go back to Italy. Which I will, often. I brought back 5 extra pounds of weight on my body – every ounce was worth it.

Besides learning one ultra-important, survival-dependent phrase in both Italian and French: “un vino bianco per favore/ un vin blanc s’il vous plaît”, respectively; I also learned that French people really DO walk around in the streets holding that quintessential French baguette under their arms… I learned a few other things which may be too difficult to remember in my current state of mind.

100 bruises. 1000 mosquito bites. 2 sprained ankles. A fingernail bent all the way back, and having to bend it back into place. Travel-related back pain. Caught in hurricanes and escaping floods. Sadly missing my job in Fiji because of Irene. Losing luggage in London. Losing a diamond from my engagement ring in NY… And a plethora of other assorted little difficulties. My bones and muscles hurt from running around the earth, airports, cities. But my body also feels so warm, remembering every hug and kiss from every beautiful person I met everywhere I went… I have taken a small piece of each person, place, and thing, and brought it back home. I feel different. I feel more.

I realized I was finally home when Stuart and the cat and I all snuggled in our bed last night. Exhausted, I remember sighing “ah, home” before drifting off to sleep. But, ironically, this morning was the first time in a month where I woke up confused as to where I was…

Travel. IS. Home.

Always has been.

I need some time to gather my thoughts, catch up on the massive pile of work that awaits, and ease back into my life, but all I can say right now is THANK YOU: To everyone that crossed my path in the last few weeks… To all those who made my London workshop so amazing- helped organize every detail, shared their hearts and minds with me that day, and after-partied like true Artists…! To everyone who has awaited patiently for me to respond to emails due to my lack of wifi access over the past few weeks… To everyone who spent any time with me in the past month, who took care of me everywhere I went, helped me, fed me, gave me a place to sleep, put up with my jet-lagged-lack-of-sleep existence & babble, and who opened up their hearts and homes, shared their families, their time and their love, shared their wine and their humor, and made the past month of my life one of the greatest & most significant fragments of my 34 years so far- I love you so intensely.

From my brain, heart, spirit, mind, body, soul, and each of my senses; I am the luckiest person on earth to know you. From every corner of myself, my appreciation and love for you runs deep and wide. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Noa

So anyways, I wasn’t able to make it to Fiji for my other wedding, which is a real bummer. We finally got out of the floods and drove back to Brooklyn Sunday evening. A 2.5 hour drive took about 6 hrs with all the closed freeways and all the people coming back to the city because they had initially escaped the hurricane to go upstate where it would be safe… Ha, funny thing is, the city was almost untouched by the storm!  So anyways, we’re safe and sound and all that.

I’m in Brooklyn for a few more days before I head off to London, if anyone wants to set up a shoot/ one-on-one workshop/ meeting etc, just shoot me an email! info@featherlove.com

This was the gorgeous place where the Catksills wedding took place… pics coming soon.

Self portrait. Brooklyn, NY. Teo’s apartment.

Next up is the Catskills mountians for a wedding, then straight to Fiji for another wedding. London after that for my Artist Workshop. And then off to Turin, Italy to see my old pal Patrick who I haven’t seen since I was 15 when we did some bad acid together in South Africa… Pappin (Son Of Shark Pig) is coming along to London and Italy to shoot our workshop and whatever else he gets his camera on. Remember the epic behind-the-scenes video he shot for my feature in Rue Magazine? Stuart is meeting us out in Italy (yay!) and then we’re going to try and go over to the French Riviera for a couple of days before coming back home. I am SUPER excited!

My absolute hands-down favorite inspiration/design/fashion/art blog is Morning Passages. Jessie and I have been “online lovers” (as she puts it) for 3 years now since we discovered each other and she posted this feature on my work a while back. So, of course, coming to Brooklyn, I knew I had to try to meet her in person. We met for a drink last night- she is even more rad and beautiful in person. Jessie also works for Lomogoraphy and we have some very cool stuff planned! She posted this on her blog today : )

In a beautiful strange coincidence, I also happened to have run into Shoko Wanger while I was hanging out on the street in Williamsburg last night! Shoko is the sweet, beautiful and talented writer that did the interview for my Dark Weirdo Rue Magazine feature, and we had never met in person before either. She recognized me on the street and we gave each other a huge hug – she’s so lovely!! Then Jessise and I talked about how gorgeous she was for, like, ever.

I am stayng with my best friend designer Teo Griscom of Unforeseen Circumstances here in Williamsburg. We all met up last night with Jessie, an old friend of mine from San Diego- Noelle, incredible Photographer Eric Kvatek who’s an old friend from Santa Fe, NM that I haven’t seen in 17 years, and his beautiful girlfriend, Bunny.

After that we went over to see my friend Jane Blevin- a cult icon in her own right/ incredible artists, designer & textile maker. I also hadn’t seen her in about 14 years since she left San Diego to go on her adventures. The first time I saw her was at my first Crash Worship show back in 97/98 (changed my life). What an epic creature she was on stage! Last night, until 4am, we had the most “ineffable” (her favorite word) time: listening to Jane’s stories about her burlesque days in New Orleans (Lady Jane was the FIRST burlesque show in this now-modern resurgence of the old performance art). She showed us her magical garden, built around the grave of her beautiful 3-legged dog Doodle, she made us cocktails and showed us all her photos & art: textiles, prints, and her beautiful illustrated poetry book (which made me cry and reminded me a LOT of the concept for my short film: The Alchemical Poisoning Of Magus Sherwood). Jane is one of the most fascinating, beautiful, talented and honest people I have ever met. A true artist. We got Blevinated.

I took photos of everyone on my film camera, so when I get back from this trip I will get it all developed and post. Heading to the Catskills tomorrow morning…

This wedding also got an incredible feature on Style Me Pretty today, with tons of info from the bride and a HUGE gallery of images, go to Style Me Pretty to see more.
We also got an excellent feature on The Wedding Channel! You can view that here.

Location: Sunset Ranch. Haleiwa, Oahu.
Bridal Gowns: Princess Kaiulani Fashions and John Galliano
Entertainment: Halau Ke Kiai A O Hula
Catering: Gourmet Events Hawaii

(The divinely beautiful Alexandra Fulton shot on 35mm film).

This trip was back in July but I have been so swamped this year that I only now finally got done editing.

It was seriously the most fun trip I have ever been on. Which is ironic because so much bad stuff happened, but yet it was amazing… more details below.

ITALY

We arrived in Italy right into the lap of a mega heat wave. Intense.

One of the first things I learned about this country is that everyone just makes out on the streets, everywhere, all the time. It’s pretty amazing. I even wondered if there was anything else Italians do besides make out and eat… my kinda place.




Best Pizza any of us had ever had ever. Actually pretty much the pizza, wine and cappuccino in Italy were all the best I ever had.






Florence.




We stopped in at some nightclub.




Then we were introduced to Grappa aka “firewater”. Which got us drunk real quick. And it seemed everyone else on the streets was drunk on the same stuff.


I might title this one below: Stuart in Florence with Grappa

Once we realized we actually had too many extra shots on the table and didn’t want to get too drunk, we offered a guy who was walking around a shot of tequila. He obliged.


First show they played was in the town of Pistoia for the Pistoia Blues Festival.

Below. Me trying to deal with the heat.








Italians are so beautiful…

Well what happened about 2 minutes after this photo was taken, was that Brian got punched in the face by the tour manager of “another” band. He fell back and busted his head on the street and was knocked out cold. Luckily, Dave is a trauma nurse and he was right there to try and get Brian conscious again. He got the paramedics and he and I went with Brian to the emergency room for the night. It was nuts, we thought he was dead for the 2 minutes he was out. Everyone was so freaked out. But anyway, they tested Brian’s head at the hospital and he was good to go, so thankfully he was alright.  So that’s how the tour started.

Then, the HEATWAVE was insane, it must have been 110-115 and fully humid. The back of the van where we all sat had no opening windows, and the van had no Air Conditioning. So as you can imagine, it was pretty nuts and we all started going crazy. Then we just started pouring water all over ourselves, then we just ended up drinking wine and beer in order to deal with it. It was miserable but totally fun.

Nathan the driver, and Chris the Tour Manager where up front. And this was where we all pretty much lived for the next week or so. In the van with no air or AC, in a heatwave, driving through Europe. We named it The Heavy Metal van because there was nothing but metal blasting the entire time and the speakers where in the back with us.

Also Nathan & Chris are the raddest, funniest people! And Chris swore up and down that the band was cursed because bad things just kept happening this whole trip.

That’s Conor’s lovely foot above.
Below: Sweet dreams my <3



As a solution we would just pour water on ourselves and open the van door every once in a while- just to get that hot oven air.

Below: Brian, Nathan and Chris.
Incidentally, this was the stop where Stuart and Dave both got “attacked” in the bathroom by some guy who was playing with himself. That’s enough about that.


Chris & Nathan.

Bubbles!

SWITZERLAND

This was maybe around 9pm or so when we got into Switzerland, the sun didn’t set til late. I was all “wow check out the view!” And Richard was like “yea check out this view”… (video still- Starship Troopers)


I have never seen anything more beautiful than The Alps!  One of the most memorable and precious experiences from this trip was when it was finally dark and we had been dealing with that horrid heatwave all day, Nathan surprised us by stopping at the most perfect crystal clear lake at the foot of some giant Alps, he opened the van door and was like Go For It. We jumped in, I threw off every stitch of stinky sweaty gross clothing I had on and cooled down in that pristine water. The first form of any relief we had from the heat. Beautiful dark sky, cool clean water, and it all looked like it was right out of a fairytale… In fact I was so mesmerized I forgot to take a photo of that moment. I try to skinny dip in some body of water everywhere I go… when we went to Spain, we walked right out of a club at 5am and right into the waters of the Mediterranean… Skinny dipping all over the world.

We spent the night in Switzerland at a hotel (which also did not have AC because they had never had to deal with that kind of heat before) so we didn’t get much sleep that night either. In fact I would say I averaged maybe 1 to 2 hours of sleep per night.
Oh and the Swiss Chocolate was SO good.

We headed off to Holland via Germany the next morning.

Stopped at a strip mall to pick up supplies and Conor & Stuart decided to try and find something to wear to deal with the heat. So they picked these 2 things up in the woman’s section of the 2 dollar store. Badass.

Oh yea, when we were on the Autobahn, fastest road in the world, we get stopped in traffic completely, for 3 hours (some accident). The irony.

GERMANY
The German countryside is absolutely beautiful.

We got lost trying to find both the hotel as well as the next Festival they were playing that night…

Burg Herzberg Festival…

You can see in this pic below of Brian, how swollen the side of his face was from being punched out the few nights before in Italy. Poor guy : (

There were maybe 7000 people or so, filled up the entire space. ASTRA played after Hawkwind. It was THE best show they ever played. I know I have said that before, but this really was the one.

Autograph frenzy & boob-signing.

Crazy night.

On a couple hours of sleep, we had to head out again. Back on the freeway, a few hours later, the tire explodes. Apparently the brake line was also busted so we couldn’t drive it on the spare. Very long story short, we waited on the side of the freeway for 8 HOURS to be picked up by the insurance company (like AAA) and they finally came and got us because the cops got a hold of them and told them to get us out of there- we were kind of a danger. We got towed to the Mercedes dealership Mechanic but because we had gotten there so late, the mechanic was gone for the weekend and we wouldn’t be able to get the van back for a couple days. We sat there til 4am and finally got a hotel room somewhere. The nice guys from the Holland Festival came down and picked us up so the guys could still make it to their show.



Brian thought this would be an appropriate shirt to wear in Germany ; )

HOLLAND

ASTRA at De Affaire Festival in Nijmegen.









After their show we walked around the festival and went to some clubs and bars.


Official band photo.

Here’s a few video clips from that night, this was when we accidentally slipped and fell into this bar, the dudes flip out (video by me).

Back at the hotel, we hung out until the sun rose and Brian Ellis serenaded us with a song he had just made up: Vanishing Act.

AMSTERDAM
Then we went to Amsterdam for our last two days of the trip- and I didn’t really get any photos of that because it was mine and Stuart’s time to hang out together and walk around, do fun stuff, and eat shrooms… but there are photos from our other trip to Amsterdam in April on my blog here.

THIS WHOLE TRIP WAS THE MOST FUN I EVER HAD.

(these are straight out of the camera- no processing)

Be still me heart! Stuart when he was 24 years old… & he just keeps getting hotter…

Below is my fave for sure.

Stuart and I went to Massachusetts for the 4th of July weekend. Our dear close friends Bill and Emilia got married! Remember them from this engagement shoot I did a while back? Well this was the first time I got to go to a wedding as a guest in like maybe 4 years or something, so we were really excited. Plus Emilia designed her entire wedding (view her Sweet Emilia Jane Event Design blog here & Auburn & Ivory here), it was absolutely the most perfect and beautiful backyard hippie wedding in history, all on her parents’ property in Sutton.

The wedding was all photographed by the magical duo over at Davina & Daniel Photography! Who are the sweetest couple ever. And btw, we got to take some pics with them too! Here’s a photo that Davina & Daniel took of Stuart and I:

(above PHOTO: courtesy of Davina & Daniel Photography)

The next day we went back to the property to have brunch with everyone and we took some photos. Emilia’s parents’ house was built in 1790!! Dream. Home.





I would do almost anything for these gorgeous antique insanely-wide plank wood floors. Seriously some of the planks were maybe 20 inches wide!

Stuart took some pics of me.



And look at the beautiful newlyweds!!

After brunch we took the drive down to Scituate, MA.  The town is so pretty- everything I imagined an east coast beach town would be.  Stuart’s family has a beach house over there and they happened to be hanging out for 4th of July so we paid them a visit for a couple days. Stuart hadn’t been back in maybe 20 years or so, so we were really excited!



That’s my dude <3


This little tiny dog is named Little.









I really love this one below.



Stuart took this one of me & his cousins’ kids below— I love it, so Eggleston-esque!

All the kids, and all the dogs, are so sweet! <3
















Going tubing.




I love our east coast family. The nicest funnest people  : )
After that fun-filled beach day, we wanted to try some of the local food.  Stuart and I were advised to go to Barker Tavern nearby, everyone swore hands-down that the food was incredible…. We were told to go to into the “back” which is where the locals go, no tourists….

Food was insane (evidence above- me stuffing face). Service was the best that either Stuart or I had ever experienced. We couldn’t stop talking about how amazing it was. We started chatting with some really nice local folks in there, everyone was so friendly. And then we had some cappuccino and this indescribable dessert… I don’t even know what the hell it was called but it tasted & felt exactly like what it might be like to bite into a chocolate cloud… I was in heaven. When in Scituate- go to Barker Tavern!

Stuart took this outside the tavern.

Then we went back to the beach house for sunset and fireworks with the family.


This sweet labradoodle (I don’t remember  his name) that belonged to the family actually saved us from a coyote that night! It tried to sneak up the stairs right past us and Best Dog Ever (that’s what everyone called him after the incident) chased the coyote away and held down the fort for the rest of the night to make sure it wasn’t coming back…. bless his heart.



Our room was upstairs with 360 degree views and a constant ocean breeze… the sounds of waves crashing rocked us to sleep…



Below: taken on the plane coming home the next day.

Part 1: LONDON.

The Right Stuff.

London Underground.

We stayed in Belsize Park- beautiful neighborhood. The following pics were taken on my daily walks around the area. Every morning for breakfast I had a chocolate croissant from a local bakery- simply the best I have ever had!

Right outside our door.

This church, Saint Peter’s, was right around the corner from where we were staying. I shot Emma & Pete’s (Emma Case Photography) engagement session here, click here to see those photos and tons more of the gorgeous church inside.

Meredith (Brian Ellis’ girlfriend) and I went to a little french cafe for lunch while the guys were getting their sound check. Then we spent the remainder of the day in Camden.

One of my favorite series of shots from the entire trip, below.

Riding in English taxis, vintage shopping, and the wildly-entertaining STABLES market in Camden…

Then later at Scala, ASTRA played with Diagonal & Litmus.

ASTRA live @ Scala April 14th 2010.

There are a few videos from this show on youtube.

Backstage after…

Then Lee Dorrian (Cathedral / Rise Above Records, ASTRA’s label) went out for a drink with us after the show.

Then he convinced us to go to the Crobar in Soho- he said it was great, everyone else said “that place is shit!” and warned us that we would have a terrible time, so of course we got in a van with Lee and went over to the Crobar. ..

On the way, Lee told us some of the most amazing stories about himself and his past and how much of it was spent getting totally trashed and waking up in strange places and wild fun stuff like that. Now I have a great story that I can tell one day about how I sat with Mr. Lee Dorrian in a van on the way to the Crow Bar and listened to these crazy stories. By the way, Lee is one of my favorite people, I always look forward to seeing him when we go to Europe.

The Crobar is officially the tiniest yet most intense/ heavy-metal / scumbag/ epically rad bar of all time!! We had a BLAST!

This great description on the Crobar website should give you a pretty good idea of what this place was like: “The Crobar is London’s (and probably the UK’s) only bar dedicated to bourbon, beer, Rock music and the principal that it’s ok to have fun without some idiot bar tender, doorman or arsehole giving you shit for it. Obviously, there are limits. The moment you become the arsehole punter,we show you the door but we like to give you lots of rope before you hang yourself. We don’t have a dress code, just an attitude code. All we ask is that you are dressed. We like cool people, and contrary to what you may be lead to believe, as you battle the angry, bitter and psychotic crowds on London’s streets, there are cool people in London. We know because we’re glad to say, all those cool people drink at The Crobar.”

The bartenders do shots and give kisses.

Another one of my faves from this trip, below.

I f’ing LOVE this one below of Lee’s coat….!

What a night!

So while we were out in Europe is right when the whole Volcanic Ash incident happened. We were supposed to catch a flight from London to Amsterdam but of course that got canceled, so the label organized a last minute ride for us instead (driven by Steve, the most awesomest dude ever).

This was a strange roadtrip- I think it took about 7 or 8 hours or so? But we were in a van and then we had to drive the van onto some sort of train that went into an UNDERWATER tunnel across the English Channel and into France… I still don’t exactly know how the whole thing works but it was weird. And I certainly cannot complain about driving through FRANCE & BELGIUM- the countryside was gorgeous! And everything smelled like manure, which was fine with me because we were just drinking Vodka shots in the back and listening to Stuart’s ipod mix and enjoying the ride…

Brian reading the ASTRA interview in the Classic Prog issue, and that’s a photo I took of the band! Nice!

Vodka in paper coffee cups whilst driving through Belgium/France = Quickly followed by nap time.

Riding in vans with dudes.

Part 2: HOLLAND

We arrived in Tilburg after that looong day of traveling and went right to the Roadburn Festival to see if we could catch COMUS play. We just missed them right when we got there. And we missed our friends EARTHLESS too- which we always run into in Europe (because they’re pretty much always touring out there).  But running into COMUS was wild, they were really sweet and turns out they stayed at the same hotel as us (we had breakfast together & debated over the volcano!), and, well pretty much every band that played at Roadburn stayed at the same hotel. Speaking of other Roadburn bands, you absolutely MUST see Jex Thoth live sometime– they were totally incredible! (Here’s a youtube clip of Jex Thoth at Roadburn)

So the next day was when ASTRA played at Roadburn. Here we are backstage acting stupid before the show.

Oh and I ate one of the best fallafel sandwhiches ever that night! They had an entire food section at Roadburn that was all vegan/ vegetarian. Kinda weird walking around that place filled with heshers and doomsters looking all tough and rad, but acting all peaceful eating their vegan felafels and getting trashed.
ASTRA live at Roadburn Festival April 16th 2010.

Here’s one of the youtube clips of the show…
They KILLED it– such a great show. Afterward we decided to walk around and see which bands we could catch. We ran into our friends the EARTHLESS dudes again. And there was a constant stream of ASTRA fans wearing their shirts and coming up to talk to the band… apparently the show was sold out and there were several hundred people waiting to get in outside that missed it… it’s a good thing the band’s going back in July!

When in Holland…

Above, the menu at a ‘cafe’ in Tilburg.

part 3. AMSTERDAM

We headed over to Amsterdam after Roadburn. We planned it so that we would have a couple days off there just to enjoy and travel etc. But we ended up getting stuck out there for another like 5 days or so because of the Icelandic Volcano situation,  so after eating out and going out every night, the last few days were all about buying bread and cheese and wine from the market and eating in our hotel rooms…. oh and the CHEESE in Holland is INSANE!  I still can’t get over it- I brought a bunch back too.

We spent all our time walking, catching buses, trolleys & cabs all around Amsterdam. We visited the Van Gogh Museum (amazing!), the Sex Museum & The Vodka Museum, and generally explored the city which is absolutely gorgeous: the buildings, canals, parks, restaurants, as well as the dry, smart-ass wit of the dutch folk… ; ) I love them.

The city is so well organized. Everyone, and I mean everyone, was on a bicycle: children, business people, students, grandparents. The whole city is set up around transportation. So all the streets have bike lanes as well as car & trolley lanes & pedestrian, bus & bicycle stoplights etc, all worked into the system.

Amsterdam. Is. Beautiful.

Below: the Red Light District. (Oh and for some reason I threw a photo in below of how messy our hotel room was, this has nothing to do with the red light district so I have no idea why I did that… maybe subconsciously I was thinking what a “dirty” “filthy” room and for some reason my brain grouped that in with the Red Light District collage…)

An authentic and incredible little Nepalese/Tibetan restaurant in the Red Light District…. to die for!

And below is another one of my favorites from this trip of Meredith, shot with my point-and-shoot.

Our room when it was “neat” which lasted for about 5 minutes. This is was the beautiful view we had! We stayed at the Hotel Alexander. Highly recommend for those on a budget. Clean, central, in a beautiful area, excellent customer service/concierge etc.

I met up with an old friend of mine, Riley Salyards. She is one third of the Jackston Johnston & Roe team (my bff Teo’s gorgeous clothing line) as well as an amazing artist, designer, photographer… everything! Riley’s blog is where you go to see beauty of all kinds. You must must must go here. She is so ridiculously talented.

Meredith took this photo below of Stuart and I, and this lady in the pink jacket was totally zoned out and kept stepping into our kodak moment. Oblivious.

This is what the old lady was staring at. So I guess I don’t blame her.

I love this shot of Riley outside Cafe Vertigo. This place showed old black and white films but was also a bar, restaurant, cafe…

Stuart took these next few below— I LOVE them!!

On my walk home from the Cafe that night…

Our hotel: Hotel Alexander.

One of the things I was looking forward to the most in this trip was the fact that we were going to be in Holland during tulip season. A few of us took the bus to Keukenhof to see the gardens & fields…

I’m in love with these colors below! Can someone please use this as a color palette for their wedding & have me shoot it !? Please ???

Words cannot describe how beautiful that place was, but suffice to say, those tulip gardens were like a dreamy fairytale land where magical unicorns ride liquid rainbows into soft green meadows and albino peacocks rule as philosopher-kings and stuff like that.

After all that AND some, we finally found some flights back home. That was such a fun trip….Here’s my dude, styled out on our way back… Love you baby.

To see more of my travel photography, go to categories and click “travel”.

Also, Emma just interviewed me on The Photography Parlour! A blog for aspiring as well as professional photographers. There’s so much good stuff on that site. To check out our interview, please go here.

And the absolute radness that is Kat of Rock ‘n Roll Bride just featured this shoot on her blog! She is also a mega fan of Emma’s : ) You can view it here.

Emma & Pete are the cutest cutsies ever, and I instantly fell in love with them. It was so great to hang out for a bit and meet this budding (exploding!) artist and her beautiful musician of a man.

Right near where we were staying in Bellsize Park, there was this gorgeous church, St. Peters, that I kept walking by and freaking out over, so we decided to shoot there.

We wanted to see if it was open so we went in and found that not only was it open but that there was some really beautiful choir music playing. The adorable priest inside was so welcoming when we asked if we could shoot in there. Once we looked up we realized that it was actually a real choir practicing! Elated.

I was totally blown away by this church which I think just celebrated it’s 150th birthday. Emma & Pete were a little surprised I think, probably because these types of old churches and buildings are a dime a dozen in Europe- I really wish we had more of this architecture stateside.

The choir practicing.

Sweet priest was so into us shooting in there.

The giant gorgeous old pipe organ!

And these tiled floors! I was losing my mind…

My legs made a little cameo.

And this was kinda strange: as I was looking down at them I had a weird psychedelic momentary mind lapse because I realized that Emma and I look so much the same! I was like, woah Emma- we kinda look the same. I felt like I was taking a photo of myself for a second.

Precious loves.

!! the ceiling !!

These next 2 photos reminded me of some old movie shot in circa ’69, where the young lovers are having an existential debate with each other, or something like that…

I love this one below so much.

Aw, I love you guys!! Thank you so much for the shoot and for the interview!… xxoo

And double thanks to the extremely talented & super sweet Amy Seeley for conducting this rad interview!! xo

I have been photographing this ongoing project on & off for about a decade or so: shooting people in their homes…
This shoot was one of two I did in San Francisco as a submission for a magazine.

Here is my friend Ingrid in her home.

I have always been intrigued by taking a look at people that I find fascinating, how they fit in their homes, the things they choose to collect and surround themselves with, and what that says about them. I love this combination of objects, art, colors, architecture, clothing, curios etc., and the unique portrait it paints of the individual.

When given the theme “cabinet of curiosities” by the magazine I was submitting to, I decided to combine these two ideas into this project. For me, this meant looking at that conversation between the person & their space & their inanimate objects together as one subject- sort of a “posed /propped-up-on-a-shelf / behind-a-glass / in-their-natural-environments” view, so to speak.

Another underlying theme that comes to mind is “oddities”- which is generally the purpose of these cabinets filled with collected items. I choose people who interest me based on their character, their art, their strangeness, or anything else that strikes me about them. It’s odd to collect things, if you think about it. And I like people who are odd…

Check out this shoot I did with David Hurley of ASTRA at his home earlier this year, for the same project…
Also, I will be posting tons more SF pics in a few days, so check back!
The next Cabinet Of Curiosities shoot I will be posting is a much much darker one….. ; )

Me fighting the crazy wind…

The ASTRA guys.

baby i <3 you

self-portrait.



Lazy Jay, aka. sugarrush railroad inc.

gettin’ my diego borregoed.

Mario Rubalcaba of Earthless.

Dust storm.

And just like that scene from E.T… the cops arrived.