drive-by pt. two

Taken out the car window, Medford.

The Clearing - Dead Sea Siren

Listen to Dead Sea Siren by The Clearing.

Pretty & Nice pt. two

Pretty & Nice somewhere beneath Allston, Aug. 13, 2008.

Stockpiler - Assassin's Dream

Listen to Assassin's Dream by Stockpiler.

Stockpiler is music I make by myself.

Apt. 5 shower

Bathroom in a temporarily uninhabited apartment.

The Woods - Drink Black Ink

Listen to Drink Black Ink by The Woods.

Timeline of The Woods/The Clearing:

The Woods
March 2007:
- James (guitar) and Luke (drums/production) look to form a band, and ask me to play bass for some reason. I had never played bass before, but I decided "the heck with it!" and began my quest to wield that axe like a champion.

March to September or so, 2007:
- We begin jamming in Luke's recording studio.
- We record everything we play. For the first few months it sounds like anemic kittens sighing on guitar strings two rooms over. Really wimpy.
- Jams of failure, with brief flashes of catchiness and technical skill, although this is almost always accidental.
- As time goes on, the audio quality of our recordings improves.
- Sometime during the summer I acquire a better bass, a huge amp, and an overdrive pedal. I start to sound like Mt. Everest punching the Sun in the face with a tank.

September 2007 to March 2008:
- Jams are still full of failure, but we start to bust out some really good, heavy rock-ish songs on a much more consistent basis.

March 2008:
- Luke moves to the west coast, effectively ending The Woods after one year and over 400 songs recorded, although many of these are re-takes and aimless jams. Which brings us to...

The Clearing
March 2008 - March 2009:
- James and I doing the same exact thing, but without drums. Until...

The Clearing (v. 2)
March 2009 - likely March 2010, if history is any indication?:
- We finally found a new drummer named Kenny, who has played with us a few times thus far. We've already come up with a couple decent tunes. Any additional progress will be posted at The Clearing website. Thanks for listening.

stumpcano

It bothers me that there's no depth of field in this photo. It would be nice to see the stump really pop out against the background of leaves.

The Clearing - Vice Of Pride

Listen to Vice Of Pride by The Clearing. Another song with our new rockified guitar-bass-drums lineup.

201 kitchen

My ex-apartment, one by which all Allston dwellings should be measured.

The Clearing - Here Comes The Rain

I'm going to start posting late-night links to my various musical projects. Cuz music is art too. Plus, I do a little visual thing for each track that's posted, usually an altered version of a photo I've taken.

Listen to my band's most recent track, Here Comes The Rain. This is one of our first songs featuring our new drummer, Kenny. Enjoy.

barbershop

This place hasn't changed one bit in as long as I can remember.

warped paper portrait

I bent and curled the paper under the enlarger while I exposed it, giving it the Jell-O-like wobbliness.

Nic Beaven

Nic Beaven at Lily Pad, Inman Square, Cambridge.

hill at Punkatasset

This is like the New England equivalent of a fjord.

reflections at Punkatasset

Water and trees at Punkatasset in Concord, the most awesomely-named conservation land ever.

eagle lamp

Lamp onstage during Amoroso's set at Great Scott, April 9, 2008.

Old Hill Burying Ground

Old Hill Burying Ground in Concord, MA.

The Blacks And The Blues

Some basement, Allston, Aug. 2008.

Allston car crash

One result of an early morning multi-vehicle-smashing rampage by a truck driver last May on Comm Ave in Allston. Somehow there were no major injuries.

nature's bathtub

A little swim on a hot day is such a re-leaf.

calendar girl window display

There's no better way to class up the place than to put an American Apparel calendar in your living room window.

night hammock

At a campground in Townsend, MA.

farm maze

A maze at Lookout Farm in Natick, MA.

Don't go apple picking here. First of all, it's super expensive. You have to pay for admission and a bag to hold your apples, or pears, or whatever you want to pick, which is fine, but at this place it's like $17, which is not fine. Then you have to get on this little choo-choo train that takes you out to specific cordoned-off aisles of fruit trees. You have to walk down these designated picking aisles for about 3 minutes before you can even find any apples. If you're not back at the train on time, you're stuck there until the next one comes, because they've strategically stranded you within this evil grid of fenced-in paths.

Also, these paths are covered with lattice, and the lattice is covered with grapes, but for some reason you're not allowed to eat them, even though they're hanging down just above your head, cruel, taunting you, looking delicious. Eat them anyway.

I ended up giving this farm $30 and three hours of my life for five stupid apples and a lifetime of heartbreak. Go to a smaller, less fascist orchard, where you can at least walk around at your leisure.

The good news is they have this maze, and also I took this photo from atop a giant mountain of hay bales, which was great for playing American Gladiators on.

Young Widows pt. two

Young Widows at Church, Oct. 26, 2008.

flowers & junk

Junk in the driveway.

window stacks

Piles and piles of windows and doors at a junkyard in NH.

drive-by house

Shot out the car window, in Somerville I think.

hang in there!

This site turns one year old today! Like that lazy old lion, it started off kinda slow. But as of today the photo-a-day directive has been met for the past 127 days straight. Can I keep it going for another 365? Maybe. Do I even have enough worthwhile photos? Probably not. But the main reason I started this site was to motivate myself to take more pictures and get in the habit of making art daily and continuously. It's worked out pretty well so far, so we'll continue to see how it goes.

Thanks for the advice, lion friend. And thanks to everyone for checking this site out.

black hole cards

It's my birthday! I went back and looked at what I've shot on 3/11's in the past, and this seemed neat. It's from 2004. Stay tuned tomorrow for another birthday of sorts.

Young Widows

Young Widows at Church, Oct. 26, 2008.

magnifying facemask

One time I took a hockey helmet and fashioned a series of wire frames that attached to the facemask. These wire frames held magnifying glasses. The purpose of this was so I could make my little brother wear the helmet and take pictures of him, where his features would be all enlarged and distorted by the magnifying glasses suspended in front of his face. This was mostly unnecessary and a total waste of time, but I did get this picture out of it, which I like. I trimmed the print in a wavy pattern (also unnecessary) and mounted it to a white board.

swap shop

At a junkyard in NH.

cemetary near Carpineto Nora

I don't know what you call these types of grave-drawer things, but they seem pretty common in Europe. Most "drawers" have flower-holders, a picture of the deceased, and sometimes a little lamp.

wagon wheel

In a field with other garishly painted pieces of old farming equipment, in Concord.

flowers on a fence

This is the kind of photography that people actually pay for. This and pictures of dogs, and buoys.

[ EDIT: I don't mean to disparage pictures of flowers, dogs, or buoys in any way. Nor do I mean to imply that I'm so awesome that I wouldn't take and sell pictures of those things. I totally would. In fact, if anyone reading this is interested in buying such photos from me, I'll head down to the Cape tomorrow to take some sweet, sweet buoy photos for you. I was just trying to point out in a roundabout way that the majority of my artwork over the years has been the kind of dark and frightening stuff that nobody wants to hang on their wall. Maybe I just need to meet more goth kids or something, I don't know. ]

her biggest regret

This picture was framed, propped up in the window of the old Picture Paradise store on Brighton Ave in Allston. I walked past it one day and did a classic sitcom double-take, walked straight in, and said "Good sir, I'd like to purchase that picture of a lady about to realize she just had a one night stand with a lobster, please." Then I gave him an exorbitant amount of money. It felt like a bargain, though.

I know this doesn't reveal any particular photographic skill or artistry on my part, but I did technically take a picture, so that's good enough.

Fisher-Price 1980 model

My trusty recording device and me, on our way back to the big city.

purple print-out portrait

This was printed out on a really old (possibly dot matrix) printer, on the back of a piece of photo paper.

laser hair removal

Happy March! Here's a picture of a poster on the subway that I took with my phone. No need to thank me!

sponge skull

Hand holding a little spongy skull thing. That paper it's mounted to is something I made by typing gibberish into the computer and then moving the paper back and forth while it printed. Spooooooky. I was in like 9th grade, give me a break.

burn & rip, pt. four

See more "burn & rip" pieces here.

Smith Auto Sales

In Quincy on the day of the South Quincy Italian Festival a few years ago. I lost like $40 at roulette that day. But I ate delicious food for free, so it all worked out.

Fabio takes a picture

That Fabio... what a character.

D-Rock

Self-portrait, or magical coincidence?

goggles & a gasmask

This looks like it should be on the cover of some new Xbox game. "Fallout: Lil' Zombie Wasters" or something. I painted developer onto the exposed paper, heavier on the face area than on other parts. Then I painted haphazardly all over the paper with stop bath and then fixer; again, more so on the face area, as you can tell because it's black and white and visible. The rest of the image is poorly "stopped" and "fixed", which causes the paper to turn that purply-brownish color when exposed to light over time.

bride wall

Brides! On sale now! Ask your weird uncle about it.

doll behind a fence

Letsee... it's a not-all-that-creepy doll face, behind a fence, printed through a scratched-out negative mask, and then solarized. Yup, that's about it.

overlooking Allstonia

From the roof of my old place, just after sundown.

scofflaws

You cannot stop them.

holding up the looking glass

One of the first prints I ever made in the darkroom.