Places

KEG PARTY FOR BLAZEY!

in

This weekend, if you are in any one of the 5 boroughs (ok, jersey too), COME OVER TO BROOLKYN AND DO A KEG STAND WITH BLAZEY! We'll update with directions and such later this week. blazeysbirthday

Sometimes you got to go over-board.

in

Me and Ebony when down to visit dad for fathers day this past weekend. Amongst a bunch of other things we visited the Civil Rights photo exhibit at the art museum. I decided to sit and play with the post of these images. I took most of the processing too far but it is good to know these things so when i do want to apply something similar i know where not to go:

over used the sharpening here :

Dad:

I'm back in Columbus

in

Sole Classics is my go-to place to find kicks when i'm in town. For some reason I find it easier to go here than it is to shop around in NYC.

soleclassics.com

I'm here shooting some things for one of our clients. We are developing a bank of images to use for a couple different story lines. Below is a few quick picks for the Teen Driver story.

Can We Party Yet?

in

Blazey's birthday is next weekend. Is it time to party? For the folks who are waiting for the info on the festivities, we aren't sure yet. We are considering a fly night out on the town w/ bottles and models and such (which would make us lean heavily on or resident fly guy and club man, loren f. breezy) If you know b, this is a big change. two years ago him and I spent it at the Musty Basement, aka Welcome to the Johnsons aka the funkiest bar in LES

(ps i'm stuck in the airport with not much to do so i started looking at old treo camera phone photos)

More Ologie progress

in

Welcome to another peek into the progress of Ologie's New York office manned by blazey and yours truly.

View all the photos after the link:

Some tech things.

West Elm oh how you are becoming the Ikea of my late 20's.

The sun comes in around 3:30 - 4:30 and tries to bake my screen. I ain't havin' it.

Almost finished. I thought we would have our desk today but they will have to wait til Thursday.

The book on the table is a gift teeny book girl aka marcia gave me for Christmas. She grabbed a bunch of my photos from flickr, wrote a bit about bklyn and got a book printed. It May be the best gift ever.

The other things are ologie pr items

Why couldn't British Knights represent bk with some better looking shoes. I'm almost certain these will never get onto my feet but i kinda had to get them.

Forum Gone Wild

in

This past weekend our site, along with a few others we have hosted on the same service, was suspended. We couldn't figure out why. The bills were paid  and everything seemed alright so why cut us off. After a few calls and some support tickets filled out we finally get a back a response:

Your site was suspended, as Randolph indicated in ticket CUT-977291, due to the fact that your account is consuming a large amount of server resources. This includes CPU and Memory usage. Since late last week we have been monitoring the resource usage of your site which ranges betwee 45% and 95% of the servers total resources.

What? How could it when there is nothing on my site other than a few large files for clients. Then later on in the email it mentioned somethign about a 15 gig forum database. What! i don't have a foru....oooooh yeah that forum.

About 3 years ago Mari was a blogging champion. She had great, well written stories, funny life moments, nice photos and some random design sketches she would throw up every now and then. Well we – aileen, mari, aaron, me and several others – would end up using her comments like large chat room/twitter post. Things we would go off on a tangent about nothing at all all day. Well i thought, lets get all this nothing into something that focus it a little better; a forum.

After about 2 or so months it was kinda dead and slowly forgoten by us but not by all. I checked it today and guess what...the spammers came (no pun..well yeah it was intended). 260,000+ thousand messages filled with everything Bubble Boy's mom never would want him to see.

German Village Guest House

in

A few images of where i stayed this past week in Columbus. It is one of two locations for the German Village Guest house (Whittier Suite 1). The owner is a fella I used to work with back at Fitch. I took a bunch of photos for his marketing materials about 4 years ago when he first opened (here).

I haven't really got a chance to enjoy my stay at his places yet. When i'm in Columbus i usually find myself out late night and up extra early in the morning. Next time i'm going to try to just chill. Maybe have a few folks over instead of hitting up a bar.

Get Your Hands off My Magazine!

in

So after several months of thinking about it i'm finally getting around to posting something about my huge collection of magazines – I get it from my mama. She can't throw them away. Essence, Ebony, Jet; we've got piles and piles of them at home. I grew up thinking magazines are as precious as books (i HATE for someone to look through it first cause they usually treat it bad). Look, there are folks that take the time to write the article to layout that page to pick the right photograph. How can i just toss their work out? It has to be saved and cherished. NOT stuffed in my tiny mail box like the mail man seems to love to do.

Anyhow, I was growing tired of seeing them all over the place and unorganized. I took them all out and for the past 3 months they've been on the floor of my room. Patiently waiting for me to get on my knees and try to figure out which ones i wanted and which i could toss. I asked marcia to help me with them but that fell through (probably because we ended up drinking instead) and they just sat and sat. So last night i took the time to shoot a few of the covers. I figured I should go ahead and catalog all the different titles before i toss any of them. Below are a few from my collection. I'm saving some for later just cause i doubt you will read all i have to say about each one in one long post.

okay, enjoy:

Digital Photographer There was a dope little magazine shop on Grandview Ave near Stauf's a while back. I want to say i picked this up there. It is out of Europe somwhere (london maybe) It was the only one i ever picked up since it was an import and cost a lil bit extra.

Digital Photographer

PDN (Photo District News) The best magazine about the business of photography. Gives great insight to ad campaigns and great articles about well known photogs.

ever subscribed? No. I think i will soon. maybe today

title

American Photo They always get me with the covers but then the content usually sucks. Very biased and generic reviews about cameras and gear (They are afraid to eff up their advertisement dollars). I think this is one mag that was hurt by the 'net for me.

I grabbed this for the cover shot of Naomi. Which leads me to the next magazine:

title

British GQ The above mag just featured images that was shot for this magazine. Both are amazing cover images.

title

Trace Mark this as the 1 of 4 magazines i wanted to work for in college. I love their design and the covers, always very minimal. The Black Girls Rule issues are/were dope. (To my white girl friends you get Maxim/Vogue/Elle/(pick any other mag you want) cover every month we need this, ha)

title

Fast Company

My goal is to grace the cover of Fast Company, seriously. Blazey and I chillin like yeah, we had this ridiculous idea and just made it happen, here is our story. I can't front I was a lil salty that Mr. Legend got there first but I guess he is doing his thing. I love this magazine. I love reading it on the plane. I love the portraits inside. I love that they focus on design and business. I love the way it feels. Excellent read every month. I subscribe and will forever and ever til death do us part.

title

One World Russell Simmons' old joint. They had some great covers – this is the absolute best. Best cover for them. Best photo ever of lil Kim. Don't you agree? The typography is great. The best gift you can get me would be a print of this cover framed.

title

NV I started getting this back in '98 i believe. An alternative Black business magazine in place of Black Enterprise. The paper stock is great.

I was in Atlanta and met one of my dad's friends who introduced me to this designer around the corner from me in Brooklyn. Come to find out he did the first few issues of this mag. (Mr. Boyd – look him up. he's dope...he also did all those old G-Unit ads)

title

Suede Black womens fashion magazine. They had a great photo editor. EXCELLENT for a black magazine. It lasted about 4 issues i think.

title

The Fader Best outkast cover ever.

The fader seemed to pop up out of nowhere. It was more fashion mag than music mag in it's appearance. The photo editor was top notch also.

title

New York Magazine I'm not sure if any magazine has a web site as good as theirs. This issue i remember because Mari and i sat and chit chated about how much we love the city when these issues came out.

title

Essence I mean c'mon it's Essence, Essence. 100 miles better than janky Ebony mag. I think i have this issue cause my mom is in it somewhere.

title

Interview Back when his head could fit more than itself on a mag cover.

title

ReUp The only issue of this mag i have. It is design or something. i don't know.

title Nylon guys I used to purchase Nylon because I loved the layouts and how they played with different elements in the spread. The photos were pretty good as well - kinda like the art direction at Urban Outfitters. Well they dropped a guys mag so i picked up a few. This issue featured Nigo. I had to get it.

title

SEED It is way over my head. I love science but this is just too much. Ttick to Wired bk. I would sit in the bathroom like, huh? wha? haha...they do a great job on the illustrations and the layout.

title

Mugshot I can't remember where i picked this up. Columbus at a concert? NY? I thought it was nice to put the masthead at the bottom.

title

Texas Monthly I picked it up last year when i was in San Antonio (the first time back since i was born) I picked it up because of DJ Stout. He is a partner at famed design firm Pentagram. I heard quite a bit about his skills at redesigning mags and this is one of the more famous ones.

title

Business 2.0 Ah another one bites the dust. They stopped publishing it about two years ago.

title

944 Phoenix I picked this one up about 3 years ago in Phoenix. It is their local magazine. Maybe they share the same zip cause they make one for Las Vegas also called 944. Your standard local magazine that tries really hard to be hip. This one tried extra hard cause it was in/near Scottsdale and Las Vegas. The quality of the magazine is pretty good though it just uses PR photos for the cover and random blah blah about local restaurants. you know the deal.

title

C Monthly C = Wack. Yup Columbus' premier cool kid magazine is wack. 1 the title sucks. 2 the quality is jank. 3 the photos are boring and lame. I am also lame for not doing a magazine in cbus myself.

title

Shape dont' ask. (shut up blazey)

okay, okay. it was free. i had to pick 8 and i was suck on the last one.

title

Black Book no, its not about black people. This is one of my favorite covers ever. The gold foil. The pink. Jay. It was daring and dope.

title

Esquire The covers are excellent, the spreads are not. They are not GQ. I hold every mens magazine to the GQ standard. They are the Best. Period. No one is beating GQ when it comes to editorial design.

oops, we are talking about Esquire. So yeah, The covers are dope. The type treatment is unique to them. I love it. And homegirl is sexy.

title

Blaze I wonder who remembers this magazine. It was from the good folks at VIBE. I dug it. I think they gave them away free my freshman year at Hampton University. This is the first issue. It lasted about a year or more.

title

Lil Weezy when he was little

title

Cargo I loved cargo too. It was like Complex. Not sure whey they got rid of it.

title

XXL This became my favorite magazine the day it dropped. I used to look at the design for hours trying to figure out why it was good. I started writing down the names of the photographers that i loved. Great photography. Good articles. Great Editor (elliot wilson aka YN). XXL came out when the source was on top of things. They slowly killed them and were not quiet about it.

Then something happened about a year or two ago. They started to go downhill. (you know, VIBE style but not as hard) I don't know if it was when YN left or if i'm just getting older. But the things they talk about are just boring. I will say the internet is hurting the hip hop mags too. It needs to be right now. These magazines come out too late.

xxl

This is my favorite XXL cover. Paid homage to the legendary Great Day In Jazz shot by my man Gordon Parks back in the day .

xxl

Okay so that is about it for now. It was probably way too much. Maybe I should break it up? Nah, i got more coming anyway.

Escape from NY (again)

in ,

This weekend Blazey, Sonya and I are in Tucson Arizon for Comron's wedding. He and Blazey have been kinda like bffs for since way back when they were youngins. The photos here are from this morning at rehearsal. (yeah, i'm the wedding photographer if you couldn't have guessed already. No, I don't do weddings*)

Put On - Jeezy ft. Yeezy: Hit play this then look at the photos. If i could wear headphones while i shoot tomorrow i would have this on repeat.

[audio:http://wordbk.com/audio/puton.mp3]

Tina is back from her world travels (here for her blog)

* unless your wedding is somewhere I haven't been yet and I can party with you after the first dance.

I Can't Ask For Much More.

in

This is my dream trip for the end of summer. Most know my girl (not girl girl but homegirl girl - her blog here) is in Austraila and I don't have much of a choice but to go see her. Mari brought up the idea of making a stop in Fiji on the way home and it got me thinking about hitting up Japan again for a week then going down under. The only problem is, well the problem is the cost. 3k for the flights. How can I be enterprising and make something of this trip?