Went out to far rockaway to check out that new cement skatepark that got built, after we got done riding we went up the road ten minutes to check out the other park in rockaway. Chris Rafferty decided to blast this table for me while I was doing a panorama. Hope you like it.

yesterday greenport today car cruise

Yesterday a couple dudes and I decided to take a trip out to Greenport. It was a really good time, it was a good crew to ride with. Jeff Purdey is home from school for a couple weeks and I got to shoot some photos of him towards the end of the session. The other photo is of my friend Cory Canzone cruising in his all-track celica. The photos of Jeff were shot with two external flashes with a 50mm lens and the photo of Cory cruising is with my 10-20mm lens. Check em out and tell me what you think, thanks!

On a whim

So this weekend has been interesting... I've been pretty busy with school work since its the end of the semester. I had to shoot a self portrait for my digital photo class, so lately I've shot a couple self portraits besides the ones I needed for the assignment. The top two photos are of my friend Kaz riding and hanging out at Montauk skatepark today. Montauk skatepark has THE best bowl on long island to ride and its so awesome because its so far out of the way that not many people ever ride there. We both needed to get out of our houses so we went on a whim and had a good time riding for about 45 minutes.The bottom three are photos I took of my self, two are for the self portrait assignment and the last one was just messing around in the bowl and with setting up my external flash with a slow shutter speed. Im excited for next semester to take the lighting class and learn more about shooting on site flash. I hope you enjoy them, please tell me what you think.

asmp workshop

So I went to the ASMP workshop the other night that Prof. Harold Nadeau was hosting at Briarcliff College and I had a really good time. There were many questions asked that were super relative to me. A good point that was made during the discussion was how equipment is not the biggest thing to be concerned with. The photographers were saying how its more important to invest your time and money in promoting yourself. This was good to hear but where do I start? Anyways this photo workshop was really good for me because it got me interacting with other photographers and it also got me thinking about many other different things.Plus the brownies were great! I hope to go to more of these workshops in the future, I thought it was very helpful.

busy week

photo of brandon that I took for a portrait project.

photo I took of emma for a portrait project.

portrait of kaz I shot for a portrait project.

the above 5 photos were my favorite photos being exhibited at the moma at the time.

photo I took of my car while rolling through hecksher.

rolling shot of brandon.

So I've had a pretty busy week. Spent the weekend in the city and juggled doing all of the school projects in the mean time. Also spared an hour for a quick cruise down to hecksher park to get this rolling shot of brandon driving his new subaru.I also went to the moma for the project that we were assigned. I had a really good time, there was alot of awesome photos being exhibited. 

cleveland,ohio wknd

So this weekend a couple of my friends and I thought it would be a good idea to drive to cleveland,ohio after we got done with our thanksgivings. Ohio has one of the best bike parks for bmx in the country. Rays MTB park is probably one of the funnest parks I have ever ridden. I did tons of filming for a short video that we're making of the trip but I squeezed in some time to snap a couple pics of a couple sections of the park. This weekend was interesting for me because I really learned how valuable the high iso is during situations like this. The lighting in this park is pretty poor for photos and video, I didn't want to set up my flashes and stuff, so I took advantage of the good quality iso that my camera has. Check them out.

visit to jim lennons studio

So this monday the photo seminar class took a trip to Jim Lennons studio. as we waited in the lobby to be shown around the studio, I looked around and was really interested with pretty much everything. I was psyched to see how "professional" everything looked. The studio was really clean and organized. As we got shown around I was constantly thinking, how much hard work this would take to make something like this come about. When being in the studio, you immediatly got the vibe that Jim and his wife were really hard workers. I liked that. The actual studio in the back where they shoot the photos was the best part obviously. Everything seemed like it went though a system type order, prep<photos<computer<edit<print<hand deliver. Well what I am trying to say here is I was really impressed with just about everything in the studio, I would like to visit more studios like Jims sometime soon.not going to lie, it was pretty inspirational.

These two photos were from yesterday when I went out to greenport with a bunch of my friends. Havent gotten many riding photos that I've liked lately, but I do like the top one. I show these two photos with my sigma 10-20mm lens to get that distorted look.

so i went to a monster truck show this weekend...

Yeah so I went to a monster truck show this weekend and got some cool pictures. Just kidding, these photos were for my digital photo class. we had to do a scale assignment and I thought making to monster trucks look semi-real would be pretty cool.

I was in long island city this weekend for a friends art show and the next day on the way home I figured we should stop at the very well known "5 ptz." For those of you that do not know about this, 5 pointz is a legal painting spot for street artists. 

Above are photos that I have taken throughout this weekend. I've been really busy lately and have been trying to manage my time wisely. Coincidentally, last weekend Prof. Naideau handed out a time management worksheet in art 144. The assignment consisted of writing down what you do every hour, for a whole week and then we have to hand it in when we're done. After doing this assignment I noticed that I clearly need to add more time for studying and home work, and less time working on my car.  I felt that this was a good exercise for the class because we all know most college kids have bad time management skills. Even though I felt like this assignment was kind of tedious, I felt like it had a positive  outcome. 

This is a panning shot, from the manhassett car show the other day. This also would be for the cover of the magazine. I like how it came out. 

car and driver cover shot

This photo was shot for the assignment where we try and emulate what would be on the cover of the magazine we're reading for class. My magazine is car and driver. For this article relating to the photo, it would talk about something like "S2K new trend" or something like that. This photo was just outside of a boat yard and it is naturally lit. 

fall photos

My friend Kaz and I went to a bunch of cool spots around my area yesterday and took advantage of the fall weather.I shot the top photo of kaz when he was walking ahead (not staged). The sun was at a pefect point in the sky for the photo. The lower photo, explains it self pretty much. I was walking through the woods and found the perfect opportunity for an interesting sillouet. 

I've been real busy with school work this week, and finally got some time to shoot some photos today (not for school). I met up with Paige (the model) and we went to a local spot that I used to hangout at when I was younger. I had two flashes set up for this shot, but for some reason the flash on the left, wasn't firing. So I ended up using one flash positioned at a 45 degree angle from the model. I am pleased  with this photograph, but it is not what I pictured the photo to be. We got to the spot a little to late and it ended up getting dark way to quick. Going to redo this photo real soon, and would like it earlier in the day.

reach out

"As is well known, viewing a color photograph is different from looking at a black-and-white one. Film theorist Stanley Cavell has noted that both in photographs and in movies, black-and-white pictures are psychologically perceived as documents of completed action. The motifs in color photographs, however, appear to be from the present, or even in a certain sense from the future. They are less burdened with the labor of memory, and are therefore easier to approach. As source material for scholarship, they are more exact, because the colors of the period concerned are reproduced. Since color photographs are one stage less abstract than black-and-white ones, they seem to us to be more concrete and to have a more direct connection with the world."


I read this today when trying to write an essay for Art144. This view on color vs b&w film photography is perfectly described in this paragraph.I really feel like this is 100% relevant to my work right now.Being that I love black and white photography and I shoot 80% of my work film, I usually am having a conflict of b&w over color. I have this conflict because I love color film, but these days it is so hard to keep it totally pure. By pure I mean, Take the picture, process the negatives,develop photos all your self. And with the society that we have, and the advanced in technology I feel that it is hard for me to do something that is not totally pure. So I stick to b&w for the most part which is a more serious and abstract photograph. I hope I get to shoot color film and use a color lab sometime. It is a true art.

first october days

Went into long island city for the weekend, had a awesome time. Went to the Art book fair at the MOMA in queens. It was really awesome, saw tons of awesome photo/street art books that I wanted to buy. One day I want to have a huge art book collection in my house. I also wish I was able to spend more time in the darkroom, went today for the first time in a couple weeks and had a good turn out. I will post a couple photos later on in the week with what I did.

This was pretty awesome, I found it on vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/29777584

Brilliant.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raaphorst/4648497458/

Note to self:I will print this many of my b&w's by the end of this year.
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/mcgee/img/BM_2.jpg

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/09/arbus-speaks-1.html

bamboo

Last year around this time Emma and I went looking for the bamboo forest and we couldnt find it. A bunch of my friends have told me about it in the past, and I've been really eager to check it out. Then just about a week ago, a classmate of mine told me that she actually lived on that block. So I asked her how to get there and then went there with Emma on her birthday. The whole place is really interesting and you would never know its there. Once you walk through a small entrance to get inside of the bambooed area, you start to just feel a different vibe.A canopy covers the top portion of the area and only small bits of light shine through the bamboo so I broke out my my external flashes to get these shots. I shot them on f4 and 1/200th. I hope you like them.