Phliffer Dezig Phaces His Phears!

Phliffer Dezig is a phrog phriend of mine: I received him as a parting gift when I finished working for Slifer Designs (his very-nearly-namesake) and headed for Los Angeles a little over two years ago. On the way to L.A., Phliffer was involved in the Great Cross-Country Debacle that ensued when Tom, my then twelve year-old teal Taurus, tarried tremendously in Tuba City when his transmission terminated. The whole mess involved frozen credit cards, no cell service, flatbed tow trucks, empty bottles of Thunderbird, a destroyed Impala, a blue hearse with no wheels, a sandy bed in a junked out trailer, $2,500, and the Navajo Nation, but somehow Phliffer managed to keep his head firmly planted in his hand all the while. It's taken us a long time to be able to talk about what went down in Tuba City, Arizona back in August of 2004... it would take even longer to explain the ins and outs of my relationships with inanimate objects like large wooden frogs.

As fate would have it, November of 2006 saw us all wrapped up on the great City of Angels and heading back to Colorado. I wanted to avoid Tuba City... and I know Phliffer did too. But we were also drawn there: when we broke down two years prior we were mere miles from the entrance to the Grand Canyon - a destination to which neither of us had previously traveled. Instead of spending the night on the edge of a huge mystery, we ended up passing the park gates in the cab of a flatbed tow truck, faces pressed to the window glass, on the way to Flagstaff and a Goodyear mechanic named Chilson. We could taste the depth, but we could not see it.

At any rate, they patched us up and life continued westward. Sure, eventually we got used to Los Angeles and our new lives out there, and we put that wild drive across the Southwest behind us. But planning our return route to Colorado brought everything roaring back, like a river sluicing through rock: since we were forced to head right through canyon country in order to arrive in Denver, we knew we couldn't miss another opportunity to see the grandest canyon of them all. And to do that, we'd have to hit up Tuba City.

Needless to say, we gotterdun.

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Phliffer in triumph. Tom the Taurus is visible in the background with a fully-functional transmission.

Phliffer contemplates the Great Mystery on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Incidentally, he was also extremely popular with the foreign tourists at this particular location and posed with several strangers in their photographs. Photographs that will scatter across the coffee tables and computer desktops of the world....

When Philffer and I first arrived at the canyon, we had missed the sunset by about forty minutes. We drove out to the rim anyway, but the sky was black and the canyon just a void of velvet nothing. A shutter exposure of several seconds yielded a surprising amount of color and detail: the stars shown here were not yet visible to the naked eye.

Don't bother arguing with this guy: his platform is rock solid, and he can see all your moves coming from a mile away.

A rock unfortunately too big for me to take home.

Phliffer and I are proud to announce that after all the higgle haggle, we managed to arrive safely in Denver in time for Thanksgiving. Somehow it is already the new year, and we're beginning to settle into our new home and recover our senses. One of these days life will likely be back to some version of normal, and we might actually start posting about our more current adventures. In the meantime, happy new year! Here's to having an eye on the phuture.

And in the words of Slick Rick - "Goodnight!"

Om........

These shots are the result of my friend Kelly and me pretending we're employed by a big yoga magazine. We were deep in the Sequoia National Forest in the middle of a five or six mile hike, and it occurred to us that it was time to realize our dream of achieving utter harmony of body and environment. Or something.

(Really I just liked the lighting, and she just loves those yoga tops. And no - she didn't wear that outfit for the whole hike. That would be ridiculous.)

Damn! Them trees're huge!

Roxie & Marcos - 10/21/06 Hollywood, California

Marcos and Roxie were referrals from a wedding I shot in November of 2005; when Marcos called me in June to check my availability, October 21st was quite literally the last Saturday I had available in the Los Angeles area all year. We considered it fate and booked the date! This couple was an utter blast to work with - so easygoing and wonderful, always in high spirits. I also was able to bring Juan as an assistant, one of my grooms turned burgeoning photographer. I shot Juan's wedding in September and we hit it off; it was exciting to bring him behind the lens for Marcos and Roxie's event.

The ceremony was at a Catholic church in Hollywood, and the reception was at a Persian Banquet Hall in Glendale. We shot portraits nearby, at the Brand Library Park.

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I love the reflected light afforded by the white walls of the Brand Library in Glendale. So gorgeous!

Three brides!

Of course, I'm not the only photographer who loves shooting at the Brand Library. If you look carefully at the above pic you'll notice three brides. THREE. And that's just from this angle... I think there were at least six just in our area of the park. When this kind of thing happens, I try to stir the pot a little by getting my wedding party riled Jets vs. Sharks style, a la West Side Story. Our wedding rules! Our angles are righteous and our lighting ideal! Don't worry kids: you run with me and you run with the best!

But joking aside, the effect is eerie when weddings collide: the facade of originality that each wedding maintains definitely takes a hit or two when confronted by such a host of brides, tuxes, limos, and camera shutters snapping like alligators. It's like going to the intersection of three or four movie sets: Sense & Sensibility meets The Breakfast Club, Clueless meets Waking Life. All the characters seem to shuffle to the corners, eyeing the others with suspicion and disdain. And the photographers? We do our best to ignore each other, while watching for ideas under one barely-slitted eyelid.

Marcos and his brothers

My favorite family and The World's Smartest, Coolest Middle-Schooler (in blue)

The reception featured delicious, family-style spreads at every table. In order to accomodate the fluid number of guests (which fluctuated between about 150 and 300 people throughout the evening), there were no seating arrangements; guests could come and go from the various tables, and the spreads could feed more than one round of people. Consequently, the DJs and I found ourselves sharing a space with an ever-changing cast: the members of the lovely family pictured above were my favorite companions. I talked with the oldest daughter for a good chunk of the night - what a bright, incredible girl! It's uncommon to meet a middle-schooler with her level of confidence and intelligence; I was fascinated by her observations and loved getting to know her!

Later on, a richer Roxie prepares for the bouquet-toss

Marcos gets a hoist before flinging the garter into these very animals

Los primos

Although I can understand the desire for an adults-only environment, my heart belongs to weddings with oodles and oodles of kids! They're always the first to open the dance-floor, and they keep the energy high all night long. Plus, as long as there are enough of them, they pretty much keep to themselves; it's my observation that a brood of first cousins can resolve their own conflicts and invent their own entertainment for hours at a time.

Thank you Roxie and Marcos for a great day and a fun evening, and congratulations!

Outing at the Pier Vs. Man and Dog

Your basic night photography camera function: flash plus slow shutter speed equals the effect of having the tops of your heads blown off by a fast roller coaster ride. David and Matt hardly survived this experience at the Santa Monica Pier the first week of November; the coaster is piddly compared to the mammoth rides at many of SoCal's amusement parks, but apparently any thundering machinary perched over the Pacific Ocean can be daunting, as evidenced by Matt's TOTAL terror at riding the Ferris Wheel. These are the same two boys with whom I went skydiving six years ago. Do we lose our chutzpah as we age? Are carnival rides scarier than jumping out of a plane? Bear witness and decide.

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David balks at the gentle rise and fall of a carousel pony

Matt regrets asking the Ferris Wheel operator to stop at the top for David's birthday. He is terrified I will somehow catch my fingers in the slow-moving gears as we crawl in lazy circles: I torment him by sticking my hand out of our hanging bowl, screaming "My hand! My hand!"

I, on the other hand, love carnivals. As is well-known, a little skee ball and rickety fair rides go a long way toward my total happiness. Pony up!

But I can't always be dashing off to the pier, now can I? I have to WORK! Shooting Peter and Sergeant was a challenge: Sergeant hates cameras and will tuck his tail between his legs and disappear if he sees one... camera phones included. Consequently, Peter didn't have any photos of his best friend. We felt that with a little distance and some super-stealth action we could trick even a 160 lb Rottweiler... or suffer the debilitating consequences. Peter is the one wearing shades.

Is Serg on to me? Can he see me? Certainly all the celebrities walking their dogs up Runyon Canyon in Hollywood can see me hiding in the bushes with a camera, and that makes it difficult to convince people that I'm not one of the paparazzi. My reputation for photographic integrity be damned! I have a difficult dog to shoot!

Best Friends Forever

See those ears? He is SO totally on to me. I'm hiding behind a fence at the base of a tree shooting with a 200 zoom, but it isn't my shape that catches Serg's attention. I realize he can hear the shutter opening and closing, so I freeze until Peter can distract him. If he realizes our intention, he'll shut down and the shoot will be over. What a DIVA.

I learned a lot doing this shoot: it was a good exercise in how to escape the subject's awareness. The same principles that make it possible to fly under a dog's radar can definitely help with small children and cranks. And it was a gorgeous day to boot!

Leaves & Petals - Brookline, MA

Just before my trip to New York, I stopped in Boston to visit my friend Daniel and his family. Daniel is a writer and performer I met when we were both freshmen in the Boston University acting conservatory; I was seventeen, and Daniel was forty-eight. His children became my first real photography subjects: I've seen them grow up, and I've documented the process. Daniel and his family have supported me in so many ways it's impossible to count - from storing my belongings in their basement while I lived abroad to encouraging me to charge what I'm worth. They are the only people I know left living in Boston, but I make the trip every year in order to stay in their creaking, yawning, dark-stained home that leaks light and laughter from every crevice. I have to come, if only to get my ass kicked in Scrabble, Set, or Double Solitaire by any given member of the family.

Oh, and did I mention Daniel is a landscape artist? So this time around, we decided to shoot his gardens instead of his kids. Although a portrait or two always sneaks in somehow...

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Daniel walks along the low stone wall on the side of his house.

End-of-the-season flower heads. I was struck by the drama of the dead flowers contrasting the lighter leaves below.

Even though it was autumn, many of the plants were still flowering. These lavender bells are made even more stunning by their placement next to the yellow stalks of a plant past its prime.

I loved this intimate, detail-rich backyard; there is so much mystery to it. When designing this client's garden, Daniel had to consider how shaded it is from the huge trees beyond the fence, as well as the fact that the T train runs right on the other side. The design he created keeps my attention very focused on this tiny oasis: I can imagine getting lost in this space and never even hearing the train pass.

These clients were tired of looking at their neighbors' swingset (not to mention their pesky kids!), but Daniel was bored by the idea of planting a traditional hedge to mask the other yard. Instead, he created this interesting, meandering landscape to pull positive focus into the immediate space. Problem solved.

Grass and a smiling Samsun