mayyyyyyyyy

Yeah, I'm sort of getting ahead of myself cause it's still April but whatever. May's great, it's my birthday  month and I'm turning 18 and finishing high school, thank God. Plus that means summer's coming soon.... more flowers, more ice cream, more music, more everything, May's just a great fucking month. Usually when I get bored or have an idea for a photo I go to my roof and just start shooting, I'm slowly getting tired of that but here's some stuff I did on Sunday.

what I'm wearing: Vintage Henri Bendel suede motorcycle jacket, thrifted floral dress and converse

Taking Photographs in the Subway are Illegal

"During the financial crisis, Reinier Gerritsen took photographs of people in the subway between Wall Street and Grand Central Station in the New York banking district. His unposed group portraits of introverted commuters reflect the state of shock of a world unable to comprehend the collapse of the global financial system..."

Reiner Gerritsen's Website

Now that you've seen these you should go watch this Youtube video depicting his process in taking these images, search "Wall Street Stop Reinier Gerritsen".

Okay so the story behind the title of this blog post is this... Last week I took a picture of an elderly woman going down the stairs on a subway platform; once she'd left I went and stood pretty close to the platform edge, looking over to see when the next train would be coming. A couple seconds later I see a police officer who makes a notion at me which I initially thought was him telling me to step back, turns out he wanted me to come over to where he stood. So I did. This imbecile asked what I was taking a picture of and WHY I was taking a picture. I told him I was a photographer and that I like taking pictures of old people (yeah that sounds weird I know). He then informed me that taking pictures in the subway has been illegal since 9/11. I'm standing there like "what the fuck?" I understand the reasoning behind this, the NYPD doesn't want people plotting different ways to fuck up the infrastructure of the MTA. The thing is I'd never heard that before and a lot of my photographs are taken on platforms and in subway cars, so even if he was right-- that rule is definitely not enforced enough. Just wanted to share that small snippet of a day in the life. Speaking of Subway Photography I'm in love with these.  Monsieur Reinier Gerritsen.

RUDIMENTAL

Rudiemental is a group of four guys out of the UK who are song writers and producers that collaborate with other artists, those different artists do the vocals over tracks. Their most recent video was released a couple weeks ago and I LOVE their videos because they always make me really emotional. Then again it doesn't take much to me cry, but it's not just watching a four minute clip but like you can feeeeel it. The first two videos I posted have actually made me cry multiple times. The beauty of it is really in the syncing of the music and the editing. There seems to be a different experience every time I watch them, enjoy.

spring bling

some pretty art from Duane Michals

I tried to download this video I watched on Duane Michals from Vimeo and then upload it here but it's so small and I'm really annoyed. So if you want to see it on a larger scale you can view it here, you really should it'll make you cooler. ok.

http://vimeo.com/40237404#at=0

LAZY piece of OAF

I love the internet because when I come across something I think is interesting or want to learn more about all I have to do is look it up and read. So I was on tumblr (what else is new) and saw a picture of some girl with this cool bandana collar and my first thought was "ooh i want this". So I clicked the source link and was redirected to a page filled with beautiful prints, models and great photography. I wanted to share some of the images of their clothing because I think a brand's ability to market and advertise their clothing the right way is more important than just being able to make cool clothing... that's also essentially why i'm so excited about going into the field of marketing and advertising in college. It all just looks really fun and bright, I posted pictures from the website, but if you  look at Lazy Oaf's tumblr here you'll see some of their cooler editorial work.

neon signs

I just want my entire fucking room to be illuminated by these and natural sunlight.

Phineas and Ferg

I slept on Ferg. I did. Rocky I've always liked, Ferg not so much. People would be like what are you talking about Ferg has the nicest flow, he's up next and I'd be like Okkk. So a couple weeks ago I was like well clearly I'm missing something. I guess two summers ago when I first listened to his music, maybe I just didn't hear one of his best songs, then I just remember all of his shit sounding the same to me and being reluctant to listening to his music again. I was wrong, he's not that bad. I guess I just heard one bad song. Anyway, I'm happy he's getting shine. Not just him in particular but I love when someone who's part of a group that has a particular figure head gets recognized as well. Like when Frank Ocean went from being "the guy who was part of Odd Future who made Novacane" to "the guy who's part of Odd Future who won a Grammy for his first solo album". But anyway I watched the Nylon Guys interview with him and Rocky (here) and now I'm actually interested in reading the interview in the magazine.

*spoiler alert*

Did I ever mention how much I love and appreciate when artists invest time into their videos beyond just singing/rapping the lyrics into the camera? What about how much I appreciate artists who not only write their own lyrics, but make beats, and come up with concepts for their videos as well? J. Cole's video for his single "Power Trip" ft. Miguel off his second studio album came out the other day and it's just reminded me of my appreciation of artists who give that extra artistic "mmph" to their work; as well of the fact that I really want to get into videography. In the video Cole can't get over his ex girl, he's up all night drinking and singing love songs while this girl's moved on to the next guy (Miguel). So Cole and his hefty friend decide to take care of the situation and kill Miguel :(. The angles in the video are nice (although I could do without the random panning of tits or a stripper shaking her ass on my screen). Seeing Miguel's face a little more before he ended up in a body bag would've been cool too. I love that the video is not edited in a chronological order, so by the end I was like waiiiiit all this time they had a body on the roof of their car? then they just head to a strip club?! I actually went back and rewatched it three times, I love J. Cole though, and the song is mad catchy.

some random cool shit

Best Barnes and Noble Experience

Okay this sort of has nothing to do with Joey Bada$$ but just keep reading. So the other day I was at school exploring random sites with stuff that interests me as usual and I learned that Joey Badass, a rapper I'm a fan of, made his first cover of a magazine (Wax Poetics). My first thought was something along the lines of "wtf wasn't this kid just on Jimmy Fallon a couple months ago, he's currently on tour AND doing magazine covers damn". So I was planning on heading home after school but then I was like I don't have shit to do at home anyway so I decided to go to Barnes and Noble to catch up on my fave magazines and read Joey's interview. While there with my friend, he checks his email and he gets into college, so he's like really excited and sort of makes a scene and leaves to go call his mom. After he leaves there are people looking at me so I'm like "He just got into college!" anyway this older gentleman sitting across from me was like that's great and we start talking. Turns out this guy is a veteran in the advertising world and started his own company twenty five years ago. His daughter went to an art school in California and his friend's kid went to SCAD (where I'm going this year). So I'm sitting there like ARE YOU KIDDING ME this is quite the coincidence. but anyway we talked for like twenty minutes and he was so nice, probably in his sixties or seventies and was just giving me all this advice about how if you're going into the art world to just remember originality is key and that you have to be passionate about whatever you're doing because things get very competitive. He was seriously like a little blessing in disguise and was just so chill, he gave me his name and told me to look him up on Google and Youtube, so I did. Also, Joey's article was pretty cool, granted I knew a lot of the information already since I keep up with his career but like-- it was still nice to read. Shout out to these creative individuals.