come on, come on

i just got this note from my mom: "you need to update your blog:) Rye Guy"

she's probably right; she usually is.

sweet things in the summertime

mornin' - starslinger

hands off

all the nothing that i do

the images left over from that roll of 35 mm film ...


the world through gold-colored glasses.

oregon's capitol park as the cherry trees bloom.

i need some summer sun to come and wake me up

i just got a roll of 35 mm film developed. on it, i found this lovely lady. more to come.

california sunrise - dirty beaches

run deep, run wild

there's something about time. you always feel like you have it. and then, suddenly, you don't. while i was gone, i thought a lot about the things that i wanted to do once i got back to portland. i wanted to get a photo show up, i wanted to do more stenciling, i wanted to try my hand at some wheatpaste, i wanted to ride my bike more often, i wanted, i wanted, i wanted.

i wanted to go camping.

now that i might be leaving again, there's a new sense of urgency about these things.

wheat paste city, u.s.a.

into the woods

there's something about the northwest landscape that is just so humbling. all photos were shot near battle ground lake in washington.

oh, hey there, tumblr

casey and i have taken to sending each other e-mails full of links to things we think are nice looking. it's been fun. but you know what's even more fun? filling a tumblr with pictures of them.

check out suitcase. (oh, and maybe follow us?)

honey wine and honey bees

kate being lovely in ethiopia. (july 2010)

-i remember a bee finding its way into your pocket and that sound you made when you realized what had happened.

-i remember you slipping off you pants to show me the welt on your thigh. i remember thinking it looked like it hurt a lot.

-i remember having too much honey wine to drink and deciding that the stairs of a stadium were as good a place as any to take a rest.

-i remember you coming to find me.

-i remember sitting in the front of a van wishing you had a seat belt as the driver hit the breaks to avoid driving through a circle of vultures.

-i remember drinking too much coffee. and then drinking some more.

-i remember throwing books at a cloud of winged bugs and wishing we'd stayed in the nice hotel.

-i remember us trying to track down the kids that stole your camera and then resigning ourselves to the fact we'd never find them.

-i remember listening to ethiopian jazz, sort of like this song.

-i remember you taking pictures with your disposable camera and then handing it over to me. take one of me as i walk past this fence, you said. and i did.

my mother at her best

i don't remember how old i was, only that i was young. it was early in the morning, i stumbled into my mom's bathroom. like i would most every morning back then, to watch her apply her make up, get ready for the day.

'morning!' she says.

i sat on the carpet, blinked the sleep away.

'what was that on your back?' she asks.
'what?'

i stood up and turn around.

'oh my god, are you ok? you don't feel it?'
'what?!'
'there's a huge hole on your back. oh wow, it looks really deep. we should call an ambulance.'

i crawl onto the counter, trying to catch myself in the mirror, running my hands over the parts of my back i could reach. i'm panicked.

'i don't see any blood!'

she smiles. (smiles!)

'april fools.'

you keep my secrets hope to die

because i clearly have a problem; i bought a new polaroid camera. it uses the peel apart film, of which, also due to my problem, i've now built a small stockpile. here a few shots from its first day out on the town:

clockwise: casey, flan, casey and flan together, ryan. (flan was shot with sepia film, the others with black and white.)

young blood by the naked and the famous:

a mix for a winter spent in a friend-filled, snowless portland

the lovely tape-playing radio that is no more. sigh.

1. no nostalgia - agesandages


2. helena beat - foster the people


3. rain on - woods


4. iraqi music - souad abdullah


5. arcadia - dirty mittens


6. if i had a little love - the majestic arrows


7. i follow rivers - lykke li


8. california sunrise - dirty gold


9. living in america - dom


10. last night - the strokes


11. off our backs - m.e.n.


12. lights & music - cut copy


13. all the weird kids know - built by snow


right click and 'save as' the song titles for a copy of the corresponding mp3. also, for more winter-themed music, check out the latest collaborative mix from 'would you jump rope?'

better run, better run

i woke up sick today. awful. but, in terms of silver linings, i found this scene outside my bedroom window. so there's that. there's also this song:


pumped up kicks by foster the people

i get lost in my head

bye bye to the too good to be true kind of love

shot on tz artistic with my sx-70

do you remember, when you were younger, how each year your teacher would dedicate an hour or two to having the class decorate brown paper bags with hearts and arrows and more hearts and more arrows? you'd do it in anticipation of feb. 14, the day when you would then tape the bags to the front of your desks and walk around the classroom slipping store-bought valentines into each others' bags?

well, i do. i also remember, at some point, i became really self-conscious about what it was that those valentines said. i can't say which grade i was in at the time. just that it had to have been elementary school. in any case, just like the year before and probably the couple years before that, i had gone to the store with my mom to pick out the perfect valentines. i thought i'd found them when i came across a box of x-men valentines. the back of the box looked promising: wolverine, gambit, cyclopse, storm, magneto. all the usual suspects. and they looked cool.

but when i got home and started addressing them, i ran into a problem. there weren't enough of the sort of valentines that a boy would give to another boy. you know, the sort that didn't imply love. the sort that were perfectly neutral. there was one in particular i remember. it had on it a picture of magneto and the words on the card said something like "i'm attracted to you." it was a play, of course, on magneto's magnetic superpowers. but to me, way back then, the idea of giving that to another boy seemed awful.

there were others like that, i'm sure, but that's the one that stuck out to me the most. so, i did what i figured any elementary schooler would do, and got out the whiteout. i started erasing the phrases that the card company had pre-printed on my valentines and began writing in new ones.

the next day, after all the valentines had been passed out, i started going through the stack. i opened up one from a kid named robbie (i don't know why i can remember his name). apparently, he, too, had settled on those x-men cards. but he didn't seem to have my same hang up. he'd given me the same magneto card that i'd stressed about the night before. only minus the whiteout.

it's weird the things you worry about when you're young and a bad valentine can seem like the end of the world.

anyhow, given that we don't make paperbags anymore, i'll post your valentine here, a song by edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros:



(for those who may have noticed, i'm using a new mp3 player on this blog, but i'm still uploading the files into my dropbox. that is to say, they're still available for free download. just right click on the band's name. otherwise, use the built-in player for a one-off listen.)

falling back on a better place

these represent the latest of my polaroid snap shots. i'm taking a break from the impossible project color shade push! film, which has been driving me insane. it's just so fickle. anyhow, i loaded the sx-70 up with some of my remaining tz artistic film (by far my favorite polaroid film material). i'm not sure i was as judicious as i should have been with the pictures i took. oh well. the last two were definitely not what i hoped they would be. that said, i had some fun trying to distort the bottom-left image. i might dedicate a pack pretty soon here to polaroid distortions. i need some better tools first, though. anyhow, i'll leave you with a dixie cups song that i can't get out of my head. enjoy:

brush your teeth with the kitchen mop

(shot with sx-70 on impossible project "color shade push!" film, the most finicky polaroid film ever.)

this is where the credits roll

the view from my bedroom window on the morning of feb. 6, 2011:

(shot with my sx-70 on tz artistic film)

standing there lookin' so sweet

(shot on the land camera using the blue polaroid 100 film i picked up while in new york city.)