Beanie Cap Guy

Stigmata...

 

 

Are we down the rabbit hole yet?

Lee In The High Uintas...

Photographed Lee again today, this time in the Uinta Mountains instead of on the Salt Flats. There is much more to come from this shoot, some it kind of wild. But for now this is all I could muster.

 

Popped on my old favorite lens today, my Nikkor 105 1.8 and was reminded why good lenses cost so much money. Just look at this picture, how rich and beautiful the colors are. No photoshop manipulation here - this is about optical quality glass and having to set everything manually and relying on skill instead of luck.

Bound...

Not sure why the rope and the bondage theme in my images right now because it's not something I'm into or have real experience with. But it's happening and I'm going with it.

 

I photographed Jim again yesterday and for part of the shoot I had him bound to a tree with ropes. Only have time to prepare and share one image now but more will come along later as I have time to work on them. I also photographed Jim and his wife Deb yesterday with their herd of alpacas. Two baby cria that will make you go aaaaah. All in good time - lots of shooting and not very much time to work on the images themselves.

Ari...

   

I photographed Ari out on the Salt Flats yesterday. In my wildest dreams I had an idea what could be with him but once he got in front of my camera I had to keep wiping the grin off my face. Ari's never been photographed before so the privilege of introducing him to the world goes to me. So here he is, Ari the piercer from New York. 21 years old and more at peace with himself and at home in his body than just about anybody I've ever met. There are several more pictures after the jump, most of them nudes. You know the routine around here by now, right?

Sia...

She may be old news for some of you but I was a little late getting to the game. I'm not going to get into any crazy accolades here. Just going to say that Sia has brought something refreshingly rich and simple and new to the world of music. The more I listen the more I listen and the more I listen the more I fall in love.

 

It's the voice of course. It's always the voice. And she's got one. It kind of reminds me in some distant way of that ethereal lightness and fragility that Jane Olivor once had; a voice that can break your heart in three notes or less.

So yeh, just give it a go because something somewhere in her music and in her singing will likely get you where you like to be got. The album I bought and like so much is the one pictured above, Some People Have Real Problems. My favorites off the album are Lullaby, Day Too Soon and You Have Been Loved.

Sometimes music saves my life. Sia's music is contributing right now to the saving.  :-)

Relief & Sadness...

I am relieved at the news of Michael Jackson's death. I am relieved because his death is an act of kindness for all of the little boys that would have been molested by him had he lived. He gave us something musically that will forever Thrill me. In the process of becoming one of history's greatest musicians and performers he also became an incorrigable pedophile. His death spares those whose lives would have been marred by his molestations. I don't feel sadness for Michael's death as much as I feel relief. I'm glad the trainwreck has stopped. The sadness is for his children who will likely never have a shot at any kind of sanity. Maybe the trainwreck isn't really over yet.

I feel deep sadness for Farrah's death. I ache for the loss of someone I never knew or met.

See You Later Angel...

 

I knew it was coming and still I feel such sadness. I never had her poster on my wall but she was a part of something special in my life; something I will probably never understand but just feel.

Les would never say goodbye, only see you later. When he died those were the words I imagined him saying to me as he slipped away. Those are the words that come to me today. See you later Angel.

[a few hours after Farrah died, Michael Jackson died of a heart attack]

Rethinking Two Images...

I took both of these pictures in the summer of 2006 in the Tivoli Gardens at the Villa d'Este east of Rome. The image of the father and his two sons reading books at the edge of the reflecting pool is easily one of my favorite all-time pictures ever. It speaks to me of all sorts of things; some of which would be easy to explain and others quite impossible. One of the things I find most fascinating about this image is that each of the guys is sitting at the edge of the pond reading a book and yet look at how differently each is sitting, how differently each one's legs are. Each has found his comfort zone; a moment that speaks of poetry and serenity and the old shoe comfort of family.

 

I have retooled this favorite once again, this time converting it to B&W and then toning it. My hope was to create an echo of an older print with its origins in B&W film. You can click it of course to see it full-sized.

This second image was also taken there in the Tivoli Gardens that same day as I happened upon a photographer who was taking pictures of a bridal couple. I stood from a polite distance and took a few pictures of him photographing them. Here he is adjusting the bride's veil; a moment I have lived so often myself. This is voyeurism to be sure; the subjects completely unaware of my presence.

 

I don't always carry a camera when I'm traveling or vacationing. But sometimes I do. I love these pictures of the Tivoli Gardens because they remind me of my childhood when my mom would take us there to play. Maybe these are the gardens I keep trying to recreate when I do gardens for people...

More Jim In The Uintas...

I've had such positive response to the pix of Jim that I'm doing a second entry with a couple more pictures.

 

This first image is still a little bit of a mystery to me. Something amazing is going on here but I'm not sure what it is yet, so for the moment its working title is Pausing By A Tree. You can click on it to see it full-size.  The next is self-explanatory...

 

These images and the explorations they point to are speaking for that part of me that can never be stilled no matter what else is going on.

Jim In The Uinta Mountains...

 

I photographed Jim yesterday up high in the Uinta Mountains above Park City and Kamas. We loaded his horses into a trailer and drove up and up and up until we got both the truck and the trailer stuck up to the axles in mud. By the time Jim got us unstuck it had started to hail and rain and black clouds had filled the sky. We forgot the bridles in the trailer and so all we had for the horses were halters. My horse didn't like the sound of the plastic that was covering my camera and I was having flashbacks to a year ago when a horse named Cody decided he didn't want me on him and tossed me on my head. Uh huh. Remember that story? 

Jim was naked, it was 45 degrees, the horses were jittery from the thunder & lightning and all I kept thinking was fuck this shit, I'm gonna get me some pictures or I ain't leaving this mountain.  :-)  I got my pictures but poor Jim's testicles might have made a permanent retreat back into his body somewhere. I hope he finds them someday before we shoot again.

Jim is an amazing guy - a longtime artist's model and a real cowboy. He made the wool coat you see him in here; a work of art in clothing if I've ever seen one. I spent some of the evening with him and his soon to be wife Deb. They have alpacas!!!!!!!!! And a couple of llamas too. And they also have a trailer full of alpaca fiber since the herd was just recently shorn. Don't get me started. The pix of the alpacas and a three day old cria will be coming along as soon as I can get to them. A gorgeous black alpaca named Maria Elena kept coming over and touching my nose with her nose, laying her head on my chest and nuzzling up into my neck. Can you imagine?

There's another picture of Jim after the jump. It's a gorgeous image and it's a nude, so that's your warning.

Stone, Salt, Sage & Skin...

 

These are some of the shots from my recent shoot with Lee out on the Bonneville Salt Flats. I had a lot of fun with Lee - he's completely free with his body and as a result we were able to get some amazing shots. After the jump there are some astonishing and what I think are rare pix for you to look at. Please be aware that they are full nudes and might not be appropriate for where you're viewing them from. I'm proud of the work and make no apologies for it. But I recognize that you  might need warning for full nudes. So here it is. Warning.

The Handsome Attorney...

I actually feel sorry for mormons because I think a lot of them are trapped. I see these really well off successful mormon attorneys and their support staffs every day and I'm thinking to myself, "There's no way this guy believes in that stuff. He's a good looking guy in his late forties, very expensive suit, he's paying for lunch with a black Amex card, he looks me in the eyes and he knows that something's up with me and probably knows what it is and he probably knows that sprired building behind him is a boatload of shit and yet he's too far into the game to walk away."

These guys are seeing and defending the worst that mormonism has to offer: the bishop who has molested a dozen young girls and the young men's group leader who fucked one of his guy's in the ass on the kid's 16th birthday. These are attorneys who know that other attorneys who've been going after the catholic priests are now coming after the mormons. They're educated men and women. They're not living in a bubble. They know what's going on and when I look into their eyes and they look back into mine I know that they know that I know they don't believe a damn bit of it. They know Joe lied and they know that the book of mormon is one of the worst pieces of forged shit on the planet. But they got too far into the game before they knew that it was a crock of shit and now they're stuck. They have to much to lose to just turn and walk away.

I feel sorry for them because I know that they're mortified by what went on last fall in California. But they're stuck.

I watched a young attorney the other day, a very good looking guy in his late thirties or early forties, stand in the window and look across the street at the temple. He stood there for a very long time in complete silence just looking. What was going on in his mind was so strong that the vibes from it traveled the 20 feet between us and caused a huge amount of sadness to well up in me. He is extraordinarily good looking for someone not in the TV or film business. He easily could be but for some reason is an attorney. He connects with me easily and that's perhaps why I felt his immense sadness the other day as I watched him stand in the window and look over at the grey spired temple. I knew that he was contemplating the impossibility of it all. His sadness was likely a result of feeling that there was no easy way out. And I don't think that he's alone. I see his peers every day of the week and many of them share that same strange mix of worldly sophistication and the sadness of being trapped in a cult.

Catholic Church Shamed...

The New York Times has an excellent article on the tragedy that's been unfolding in Ireland over the past century.  http://tiny.cc/abuse639

To wit, one of my recent social commentary pieces.

From Brazil...

I started crying the moment it started rolling. I knew. I think you will too.

Fuck The Mormons...

 

Whatever shred of patience or tolerance for the sewage of mormonism that remained in my soul is gone. I don't care if I ever speak to my twin or my mom again as long as any of us live. I hate everything about this cult called mormonism. It's the ugliest grouping of people on the face of the earth. Fucking white misogynist racist elitists. They can all go shove their anti-gay attitudes up their puckered pink buttholes.

Today was the end. Enough. That part of me that is influenced so heavily by my Scorpio sun has awakened from a long slumber. After so many years of keeping the hypocrite's secrets I've decided to go public with the names of the people in Salt Lake I've had affairs with.

Mormons: go fuck yourselves. There are no more cheeks to turn and you have used up all of the patience I might have ever held in reserve for you.

It's over. No more Mr. Nice Gay.