why i am the way i am

Top photo taken in the house I grew up in, circa 1998. Bottom photo taken over Christmas to show scale.

Yes. Yes, indeed.

otero style portraits

One of my students introduced me to the unearthly and beautiful work of Cristina Otero. I wasn't impressed until I realized she's (a) sixteen and (b) working with natural light. Makes the amount of effort I put into dissecting my own teenage photography seem pretty preposterous.

When I see photographers who are better than I am, I immediately set about deconstructing their work so I can steal better appreciate their process. The results are sometimes worth posting. These were shot with window light and (heavily) processed in Photoshop.



Even after getting the look down, there was still something missing. Instead of looking unearthly and beautiful, my photos just looked bald and haggard. I tried dialing the "ugly" slider all the way down in Photoshop, but it didn't help much. Time for a reshoot:



Much better.

rosie was hit by a car

. . . at about 23:00 the night before Christmas eve. She made it. Her left fore-leg was de-gloved and we've been changing old-school sugar bandages for weeks. Andif you didn't already know, lemme tell ya: rotting cat flesh is disgusting.

But we're past that now. These days her wound is scabby enough to be left open, but she still has to wear the cone of shame. None of us are happy about this, least of all Culpepper, who has to put up with a sick Rosie 24/7 from now on. This results in a lot of anxious darting and hiding.

Still. Worth it.

I suppose.

this head, this tail

necklace + chromes

Shot with my dad's old Konica and some Sensia.

I purged most of my film cameras last year, including my favorite camera of all time, the Nikon FM2n, and one of my most coveted, a Nikon F5. It was hard, but film is dead.

For the ghost rolls that still bang around in the fridge, I kept the Konica. The going rate was only $30 or so, and I decided I'd rather be able to run film through an SLR.

And that was a wise decision.

happy new year

This marks the first new year that hasn't precipitated a big sappy DarkTopo post and a new masthead. This tradition started with a post about the New Year's eve when we smashed a burning guitar over The Bard's head and beat the shit out of each other in the falling snow.

2012 was a big year. I haven't even begun to post the photos. Weddings, presidential candidates, hobo knife fights, naked women, guns, money, you name it. I've got a tremendous backlog and I'm going to try to keep the updates coming. Stay tuned.

Until then, here's an iron.

xpress cover: south slope