June | A Month in Review

My poor blog has gone terribly neglected in the wake of an incredibly busy month so here's where I get to play catch-up. I've also begun something of a photo-a-day project on my instagram now that I have a functional phone so I'm going to include a few of those as well.

I:

At the end of May, I worked Boston Calling - a music festival filled with bands I love. I more or less got paid to see Brand New and needless to say, I was very happy.

II:

I went to my first east coast beach! We ventured out to Ipswich with a slight detour through Salem on the way back. Word to the wise, the Salem Witch Dungeon was the best/worst idea we could have had.

III:

General adventuring around Massachusetts.

IV:

I went to New York on Monday to see my awesome friend from California, Tomm. I haven't seen him since New Years-ish so I decided to take the bus down despite working both the morning before I left and the afternoon I came back.

The morning started off with a crazy fitness shoot behind the wall at BKB, which I will get to in the next post. But all in all, it was a great way to spend 24 hours.

Four weeks, four sets of pictures. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming from here on out. If you want to follow my iphone photo project, you can do so on my instagram.

Mt. Auburn Cemetery

A fellow photographer friend, Cassy, and I decided that a gloomy Monday is perfect for exploring cemeteries. We ventured out to Mt. Auburn in Watertown. Cassy is an adorable model and took the opportunity to jump behind the lens as well. All the photos I'm in are hers and everything else is mine.

"All that live must die. Passing thro' nature to eternity."

Cool Air | Exploring Boston

Sometimes I forget that it's important to spend time alone and after yet another stressful week, I took my day off as an opportunity to go on a solo adventure. I’ve spent the last year resolutely becoming a workaholic and I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t seen much of the city I’ve come to call home so I wandered downtown.  

Unfortunately it was raining and I discovered belatedly that my umbrella was broken so I holed up in a coffee shop and read a little Lovecraft.

On the way back, I had a chat with an older man on the subway who was going through a midlife crisis. He saw my tattoos and wanted to share his excitement because he was about to get his first. I listened to him talk for a few stops and he decided to share a piece of life advice with me. 

The most important thing he’d learned, he told me, was not to put all of your energy into something you aren’t passionate about because someday you’ll find yourself retiring from a job you never wanted in the first place and wondering where your last thirty years went. He finished the conversation with a sad smile, quoted Joseph Campbell (“follow your bliss”) and got off the train.

It was a short conversation but it was exactly what I needed to hear at this point in my life. For the first time in awhile, I feel like I’m pointing my energy in the right directions.

Bicycle Adventures

I've spent a year adjusting to life on the east coast and while the culture shock isn't quite gone, I've passed the point where unfamiliar things surprise me. I made it through the frozen hell that is winter, adopted Dunkin Donuts as a staple of life, and didn't bat an eye at the man I saw running the marathon in a kilt and sandals. The one thing I've yet to acclimate to, however, is cycling.

Few things scare me more than the idea of riding a bike in traffic and in Somerville, it seems to be practically culturally unacceptable to get around any other way. Luckily (I guess), my persistent friend is both very patient with me and stubborn enough to talk me into getting onto a bike in the first place. 

Yesterday, she somehow managed to get me downtown and we rode to the esplanade.

I have a love/hate relationship with this hat.

I don't know if bicycles and I will ever be friends but either way, they make for some good pictures.

A Weekend in New York City

I spent this last weekend in New York, somewhere I haven't had particularly positive interactions in the past. This time, I was determined to change my opinion on the place. My three day adventure began in Brooklyn.

As some of you know I work for the Massachusetts branch of this rad company, Brooklyn Boulders. I've been the in-house photographer for the last eight months and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that working for this company is never - and will never be - boring. I took a pilgrimage to our home base to climb and snap some pictures for our database back home.

The next two days were spent wandering the city and while I still can't say I'm fond of New York, I met some great people and had some good times.

Violette Gluten-Free Bakery Promos

Yesterday, I did a small shoot for a bakery down in Harvard Square, Violette.   

Boston Exploration

Last year, I transplanted myself from the eternal summers of Southern California into the actual Winterfell that is New England. Winter just kept coming and coming and "unprepared" proved to be a severe understatement. To be honest I'm not convinced it's ever going to end but even the sun gets tired of hibernating once and awhile. On the first sunny day Boston had seen in months, my friend Mike and I decided to go on a photographic adventure from Cambridge to downtown via a bike path near the Charles.

Mike wanted to test out his newly acquired, pocket sized film camera and obliged me in taking a few shots of me on my 7D as well.

 I wanted to test out the lens I recently bought off my boss (thanks Nick) and didn't think far enough ahead to realize that while the lens does close ups beautifully, it isn't meant for landscapes. I should have brought one of my other lenses along for the ride but at least I've learned for next time.

We're climbers so, naturally, that meant hanging off of bridges and out of trees.

In just over a week, I'll have lived in Boston for a year. It's still surreal to me that a city like this exists at all, let alone that I'm a part of it. A series of happy accidents coupled with incredible luck have led me to the people and places I have in my life right now and I'm grateful. Everything is pretty beautiful.