So three weeks ago I get this email :)

Hello

Good day. My name is James Brown and am sending this email regard to order some Fuji Films and do you have the size FP100c.If yes email me with the price and if not email me with the size you have and also what form of Credit Card do you take for payment.

Thank You.
James Brown
James photo ltd

So we all had a good laugh about this because well you are looking at this site (If you are reading via RSS Click here and go to the site for full effect.) is there anything about this site that would suggest I am a store? No didn’t think so. Ha Ha n00bs on the internets!! right? Well today I received this email.

Hello

Good day. My name is David Lister and am sending this email regard to order some Fuji Films and do you have the size FP100c.If yes email me with the price and if not email me with the size you have and also what form of Credit Card do you take for payment.

Thank You.
David Lister
David photo ltd

new scam?? odd stuff?  I googled snippits of the bad english as well as david photo/james photo to see if it was the same as some other bad scam but got no hits. I am tempted to email back and say yes I sell it just to see what happens. However, just incase it isnt clear I don’t sell polaroid film.

Last night there was an after party at the lamplighter in which i was given the power to divvy out free beer. Seriously Chris Heuer was awesome and bought us all beer last night. Instead of handing out a bunch of beer tickets he ‘consolidated the beer purchasing process’ via a badge. Some one was foolish enough to bestow this ‘responsibility’ on me

It was a resonably mello night that was one of the best bar nights i have had in a while!

Sign his shirt!!

Yuppers it is NV09 and the weekend started as all good weekends do, on Thursday with beer and wine :) Tonight we went to Frederico’s Supper Club on the drive for the  NV09 party.  It was an evening filled with food, wine, a really Cheesy singing guy, and despite fears to the contrary I didn’t have to promise that my first born would be a liberal party member nor I wasn’t forced to drink some sort of liberal kool-aid by my local Liberal MLA.  It was all a good time really.
I have photos that I submit as proof.

It has been a super crazy couple of weeks filled with good times and much music!

Monday the 9th
After an early morning meeting with some clients I decided that I should spend some quality time with Andy (my snowboard) & Cypress Mountain.  So I took to the hills! The snow was swell and there weren’t many people about.  Most of the Eagle chair runs were still groomed for the world cup and thus not available to be ridden, but the raven chair runs were awesome as per usual.  I wish that chair wasn’t so long :)

Tuesday the 10th
we started the day with an awesome headshot session followed by working Mexican lunches with Trevor Jansen

Wednesday the 11th
Did some photo wandering and out and about errands

Thursday the 12th
Thursday was this jerk’s birthday, so with the exception of a mid day meeting I didn’t do much of anything work related. I played my guitar for the better part of the day and collected my Mac from the Mac doctor.  While I was at the Apple store I also grabbed a little 25 key midi controller that I have been eying up for a long time. I called it a birthday gift for me!

It is quite swell it recognizes how hard I am pressing the keys and they are weighted much like a real piano, so it and garage band are the awesome!! I will be learning to play the piano via YouTube.  Don’t laugh, seriously there are some decent lessons on the You Tubes.

My Friend Lisa also had a Jam session at Rockspace that evening which was a little sketchy at first until we found our way around the PA system and what not. Shan & I both sang on what will be an awesome version of the Communist Daughter which needs some works so you don’t get to hear it yet. Typical Frog beer after and then an evening of playing guitar/piano/garage band.  All in all an awesome birthday.

Friday the 13th
Friday was regular work and such, no scary unexplainable phenomenon that I was aware of but that’s not to say that it didn’t happen. :) There was a chunk of awesome on Friday though Tracey that awesome gal that she is came by and gave me the perfect b-day gift ever….

The Crate Acoustic-60 Amp!!!!

It has two channels so I can plug in a Mic or a Guitar or both at the same time!! It is the only amp that we would really need for an acoustic show! It has lowZ outs to tie it into house sound and the like. :) Tracey You really really really really rock!!!! Thank You!

Saturday the 14th Valentines Day
We had a party at the studio where we met some new people and somehow managed at our tame party to scandalize a number of other people.  Kimli tells it best.

Sunday the 15th
Sunday was a take it easy day. We had a photo shoot in the middle of the day but outside of that it was a hang at home day. We watched Revolutionary Road. Not a great movie really… It was well made and well acted but nothing really remarkable about it other than its predictable build up to a un-climactic ending.

Monday the 16th
As Mondays often are we had kind of a busy day with work and what not. That evening we were invited to speak for the PPABC. For those not in the know PPABC is the original photographers association in BC. It is the true definition of old school. We were invited to discuss what we do and marketing and such. Being that most of our marketing has an online component we discussed things like Facebook and twitter and I got the impression that most of what we said was complete gibberish to the vast majority of people. It was good though I enjoy talking to groups of people like I am an authority in subjects, and they are talking about bringing us back for a full day session. Good times!

Tuesday the 17th
Tuesday was another busy day but somehow in the middle I found time to hit Long & McQuade for a bit of awesome shopping. I was there to get some better guitar pics and possibly a mic stand but I ended up finding a used/returned bass for very cheap!! It is not going to win any awards for spectacular sound or anything but it serves my functions. I have been playing with the four track a little playing guitar and then laying down some simple bass tracks its really fun. It is a short scale Bass so it is smaller and easier to handle. It is perfect to try out different bass line ideas and junk and as I said before it was super cheap :)

Later there was some Third Tuesday action, but other than that, this has been a busy week and a bit with The Jerk. I will try and keep up with the actual posting of things when they happen so I don’t have a crazy week in review thing going on :)

When it comes to playing music for other people I am actually extremely shy believe it or not.  It takes quite a bit to bust out and really play my guitar when I am in the company of others. (‘cept when I am loaded then all inhibitions go out the window but then i sound terrible.) I am twenty times better at playing for people than I used to be, mostly because I am constantly forcing myself to take these leaps out of my comfort zones and I force myself to do scary things.  The result is that things are not so scary after a while.  An example of stepping out of comfort zones was at our New Years Party this year,  I was sitting on the kitchen counter playing my guitar when some people decided to go outside to the street to grab some air and watch the no pants crowd stumble about. I decided to join them and I brought my guitar with me.  So here I am playing random things outside on the streets of Gastown with all sorts of people walking by and listening, all of which was fairly tough for me to do, but I did it and I am glad that I did. So now imagine my fear of singing with people around! I assure you it is a ridiculously large fear
Today I was playing with the four track abilities of the Zoom H4 and I came up with this cut. This is me doing a cover of Neutral Milk Hotel’s The Communist Daughter. It is not a difficult song to sing or play (it is actually supposed to be sung so monotone) and this is not a prize winning performance by any means, but I figure that if we are going to have a band that I need to over come my fear of performing in front of people. Performing to an anonymous internet audience is my baby steps :)

I played one of the Guitar tracks first, then recorded the singing track, followed by a couple of different guitar tracks and then a hint of tambourine. 4-track recording is awesome!!!

So it’s only one day after I complained that I am lazy bastard and I get to say that I am moving forward. I think that today would really qualify as at least a good step.  In fact it was a super busy day filled with pure awesome (:  The day started at the early hour of 5:30am with a bit of morning driving about while M was at her weekly cult meeting. While they were toasting kool-aid and such I was chasing the sunrise around.

Harry Jerome Statue with with morning in the back ground…

…and my favorite tree in Stanley park.

Next on the list of awesome today was a photo shoot with a couple of new models that I haven’t worked with before – Leanna and Amie. We had a blast shooting with old cameras, vintage clothes, and some old furniture.

Amie out in the wilds of Vancouver and in the studio.

The same place with Leanna. These four shots are taken with my standard run of the mill Polaroid 600 Camera

I took a few rolls of film that I will drop off to the lab as well but these are a few of the digital shoots from the day.

I think we are going to do a whole fashion inspired chair in random place series.  Mostly because chairs in random places = buckets of awesome! And Buckets of Awesome is what I am all about!

Continuing right along with the awesomeness of the day, I had band jam time in which we did a few takes of our favorite songs. I managed to somehow tear my fingernail half off yesterday on the mountain so I was playing with a bandaged finger. Shan played us a hidden track from a band (I forget the name of the band) where they ‘cover’ Guns and Roses. This prompted us to start playing Bon Jovi and well it all went down hill from there. Luckily the Zoom was recording the hilarity that was our version of Dead Or Alive :)

Now because the raven chair is a long one I figure I will go ahead and write a bit. I am at that point in the new year where I am apprehensively excited. Feb Is always a month of great stress for me, but also great optimism. I am another year older and it is another year that I feel that I have accomplished very little in terms of the things that I wanna do. I haven’t even begun work on the ‘big surprise’ in fact at this point I am not even sure when/if it will happen. I am inexplicably really busy doing nothing and it’s always the same at this time of year. I don’t get any work done, and don’t get any non-work done, I don’t snowboard (I know I know I am writing this on a chair lift) I don’t play guitar, and I don’t photowalk, and yet I am up till 4am up at at 7-8am and I am busy. What the hell am I doing?

Dude that run kicked my ass!! Note the powder under the chair is not actually powder today ): This not accomplishing things needs to stop. I am making a strong commitment to get off my ass and do stuff this month. I am sure thatif you were to check the jan-feb archive of previous years you would see that I have most likely made this statement before. But it is true dammit I am just an unproductive jerk.

In other news I am going to unveil the bands website and such in the next few weeks. I hope we (i really mean me) can rock though and get some halfway decent cuts at tomorrow nights jam. I can only hope and practice so the recordings are something where I am not playing wrong chords and forgetting changes.

Wow I have to it is amazing how they can transform a mountain into something entirely different. The whole west mountain of cypress is being transformed into a track for the world cup. It is a completely different mountain! It is kinda crazy.

I am headed up a mountain right now to play in what is hopefully awesome snow, but I also wanted to share some of yesterdays much anticipated film glory. It will be a day or so before it is all scanned in because I am an idiot and insist on scanning everything in at super high quality. It takes about and hour and a half to scan three 6×7 frames or 12 35mm frames and I have like 5 rolls from yesterday and I am behind another four or five from last week, so you can do the math. But I am super impressed with the cross process of the Kodak Portra 800. It was exactly what i was hoping for I just hope the 400 and 160 give me the same level of awesome. The tungsten Cross Process i am not so wild about. I think the next rolls i shoot of it I will just stick to regular process and shoot in the daylight. I have no examples yet but soon. For now i am off to cypress for snowboarding glory.

I am super excited today for all sorts of reasons.  I meet with a new model today that I am excited to work with her, I have shoots lined up this week and next with all sorts of exciting ideas floating about. I have five rolls of film awesome that will be ready to be picked up in an hour or two! I have a mostly free day tomorrow (as long as I get my shit together today) and Cypress has gotten a fresh 15cm of snow in the last 24 hours on top of the 15-20cm it got over the weekend.  The dot com of for the bands website came available, and I was able to snag it.  The Zoom H4 is super awesome in many ways, and I was feed a chocolate croissant this morning by the ever awesome Tracy. So ya super excited!!

It may also have something to do with the chocolate and the 3 (working on the 4th) ridiculously large coffee’s that I have already had while being out and about as well as the better part of a pot that I drank at home, but I am choosing to disregard that all and just be excited for the sake of excitement.
Even hanging out in a truck on Broadway for an hour while M meets with some of her cult members and the fact that I have a tonne of work to do today can do nothing to ruin my excitement!
In fact even the fact that the rewind motor on the EOS 3 bit the dust on Friday when it jammed while rewinding some redscale can do little to temper my mood (: I am off to Burnaby after all the Kool-Aid had been drunk over here to hit the other lab, but then it is all about the working for me!! I did pick up some other random film when I was dropping of Friday awesomeness and discovered that a few of my midnight Mamiya x-pro selfies worked out kinda awesome.  I am so excited to see what comes of the Tungsten film xpro that I took on Friday.