Storm Troopers

I can not tell you how incredibly awesome and bad ass this is! I saw these two guys at the Memorial Parade in downtown Sarasota. They are AWESOME! 

ps. I'm a huge Star Wars geek.

Memorial Day Parade Spectators

Memorial Day Parade #2

Memorial Day Parade #1

Parking Meters for Downtown Sarasota

The city has outfitted downtown Sarasota with parking meters. There are two types, the single space meter and this type which is a little more advanced. Being fairly new a lot of people are still having trouble figuring out how to use the parking meters. 

I say, just bus it and walk around but that's just me.

My First Paid Gig

I answered a Craigslist ad for an artist that wanted someone to snap a few photos of his art work on display in Sarasota. It was a piece at the Embracing Our Differences exhibit (photos of the exhibit were featured on the earlier post). The artist wanted a few photos of his work for his website and offered fifty bucks for the whole deal. Figured I'ld see what I could do and if he liked what I produced. So, I went down to Island Park and took some photos.

The work is 'Mandala' from Eric Carson. His other works are pretty cool featuring religion, politics, and other similar subject matter. His site  is here: http://ericcarson.com/

While I neglected to ask about being given credit for the photos I suppose it doesn't really matter since I did get paid (that is important). Next time I'll know that I will need to ask about credit out right. So, I got to take some photos, got some cash, and learned a lesson. It was a good day.

Embracing Our Differences Exhibit at Island Park

An amazing exhibit at Island Park in Sarasota featured various artwork from all around the world and from all walks of life. Below are a handful of my favorites.

B&W Ballerinas
Debbie Lerman

Brides
-Aurora Gritti

Embracing Our Differences
-Taha Benadada

Equal Should Mean Equal
-Darci Graves

Grandmother and Grandson
Marco Simola

Understand Our Differences
-Chow Yuen Kwan

We Are Happy With Our Differences
-Pavel Melecky

What is Beauty
-Corina Gertz

When It's Over
-Juno Mendiola

Mandala
-Eric Carson

A Woman in a Bandana

Lawn Chairs at Five Points Park

Barbara and the Man with the Foot Injury

Barbara, concerned by her friend's injury, tries to convince him to go to the hospital. "Remember what happened to ____?" she asks. "He had to loose his foot because he didn't go to the hospital."

The People I Met at Selby Five Points Park

I met a few people at Five Points Park yesterday while snapping pictures of the lawn chair protest.

Barbara and Chris

Chris and his dog

Fly doggie fly!

Joe

Clint

Selby Five Points Park and the Case of the Missing Benches

Recently Sarasota officials, vexed by the rallying bitching of downtown condo owners, removed the benches from the Five Points Park which is right across the public library and the Starbucks. Seemed to me like the park was a popular place to enjoy an afternoon lunch with a good book and coffee but apparently the park harbored a far darker element....the homeless! To solve the homeless situation (the homeless have an annoying tendency to want to sit and be treated like humans and believe that they ought to have the right to sit on public benches) city officials yanked out all the benches.

In protest a few citizens gathered yesterday with lawn chairs to sit and chat and to generally show support to the homeless and to demonstrate to the city how ridiculous it is to remove park benches. Seriously, sweeping social change does not start with park benches.

The turn out included a nice mixture of college kids, everyday shmoes, rich ladies, and even some of Sarasota's homeless showed up. Keeping my earlier post about being fearful of strangers in mind I made it a point to talk to a few people. I met four really great people at the park who let me snap a bunch of photos of them. Their photos and my impressions of them will be in a later post.

When Harlock and I arrived at the park we saw a few news crews, I'm not sure who or where they hailed from but the reporters all seemed a little annoyed at having to be out in the heat.

I'm not sure how much publicity this lunacy will receive or what good it will ultimately do but the fact is this, Sarasota has a reputation for being just down right nasty to the homeless and poor and the actions in Five Points Park is just an extension of that fact. 

There is a petition to reinstall the benches in Five Points Park. While park benches will not solve the situation of poverty and homelessness it is a point, a start and besides it's just stupidity.

The petition ---> http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-sarasota-from-pulling-the-chair-out-from-under-homeless-people-2

I'll be posting more pictures from the lawn chair event including portraits of the four I met pretty soon.

Photography and Strangers

The one major obstacle I just can not overcome when it comes to photography is talking to strangers. I can do it when I'm put on the spot and I enjoy doing it really but it's getting the courage to just waltz right on up to someone and say: "Hi." Often I try to muster up all those years of waitressing when talking to strangers was a necessity. Really, a waitress is obligated to talk to and then uncover some of the most intimate details of a stranger's life. I try to approach strangers the same way I approached customers. Calmly, with confidence and a polite nonthreatening voice. But just stopping someone on the street, camera in hand is a little different. 

A project I really want to start focuses on strangers but I can't start it until I get over this crippling fear of talking to them. Ultimately, I just need to get over it. No one is going to scream at me for stopping them on the street or striking up a conversation at a coffee shop. I bet, in fact, that many of these 'strangers' are just lonely souls that would be thrilled with the opportunity to talk and to connect with someone--anyone. But the lack of human connection is something else entirely. I just want to take portraits of strangers and publish them in a book. 

Hanzou

Mister Santiago de la Montoya

Yogi Master Hanzou

Fun With Textures!

Using the rust photo below as a texture I applied it to the above photograph and then did my usual routine of pink color fill and vignette in an attempt to create a picture that looks a bit worn with age.

Possible Project

I want to take candid street photography shots of people on their cell phones to highlight the fact that everyone is always on their phone either making a call, texting, or demolishing structure made by egg-napping pigs.

The Man on the Bench at an Extreme Angle

The Drunken Poet Cafe on a Sunday Morning