Rubik’s Cube

I met someone during my last job and they had a Rubik’s cube on them. I noticed him solving it repeatedly so I asked him how he was doing it. He was nice enough to show me the tricks. Then my brother wanted to know how, but he lives ten hours away. So I decided to make a video for him. Before I did though, I went online and found a bunch of other videos about how to solve it. Most are poorly shot in low res and the ones that aren’t are too long. I even feel mine is too long, but even if I didn’t explain it, it takes me almost five minutes to solve it. So I think a ten minute video is acceptable.

Please keep in mind, even if you know the tricks, it’s difficult. It takes a lot of practice and patience. It took me two full days until I had it down. The guy that showed me told me it took him a whole week.

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Hanging out with Banna

This past St. Patrick’s Day eve, my friend invited me to come hang out with him and his family to watch his new Celtic band Banna perform. Celtic music isn’t my cup of stout, but I had a good time. The band was good and festive and there was Guinness.

While the band performed, I took some pictures. Below are some of my favorites.

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Faux Memories

I live in a very nice, well-to-do suburbs in North Carolina. I love it here. It’s peaceful, quiet; safe. Everyone here is nice. The roads are maintained, lawns are well manicured and it’s only fifteen minutes to get to anywhere you want to go.

I used to live in Detroit. Yes, the REAL Detroit, not the suburbs that everyone calls Detroit. Detroit is not peaceful or quiet. If it wasn’t for the bars, food, music, casinos and sports teams, it would suck. The homes aren’t maintained, roads suck and it’s an hour to get anywhere you want to go. Yes, it’s the polar opposite.

It was an easy transition to make. I got sick of watching my back. Multiple break-ins, car being stolen and a gun to your head will do that to you. I miss it from time to time. Especially when the sports teams are doing well. But I’m glad I moved.

The only problem is that I’m used to danger. Excitement. So I have a hard time coming up with photography ideas while I’m home. I see the same stuff every day and it’s clean and neat and safe and I can’t find anything to photograph! That’s why most of my work is shot outside of North Carolina.

My friend told me to grab my camera and go for walks. He said I’d find something interesting to shoot. You just have to put in the hours.

So I decided to take his advice and have been walking around with a big ass lens making people uncomfortable. Only one person has said anything to me, and that was about the camera. He wanted one. Anyways, I’d be dead in Detroit already. No one wants you photographing their crack house.

I decided to make some fake memories of the life I never had. Or wished I had.

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Satanta, Kansas

This past April, I drove from North Carolina to Kansas to pick up my mother and move her to Michigan to take care of my father. It would have been exciting if my father’s health wasn’t so poor, because my mother hated living in Kansas. It’s a desolate place where there isn’t much to do. My mom doesn’t have many hobbies, but she likes to play bingo and the nearest place to play was a half an hour away and she had to rely on friends to take her because she had no car.

I’ve been there numerous times to visit her over the past decade, but I hated going. Really, there’s nothing to do. There’s maybe two stores in town – a grocery store and a pizza store – and only the pizza store had VHS tapes to rent. Yes, VHS. And some DVDs, but their selection was very small and I’d mostly seen everything they had to offer. And most of the time, the store was closed – either seasonally or in transition of ownership; I didn’t care to know why, I wasn’t staying.

But there’s a weird thing about towns like this – they’re ripe for photo and video opportunities. I could shoot thousands of fantastic things out there if I had the time. Of course, you have to be careful; there are many people there that grow weed or make meth and they don’t like it when photographers start taking photos of their homes – as I learned. If I didn’t have a business card on me showing my website, I may have been in trouble.

Below are some photos I took while I was there in April and a short video I made to remember the town by. Most likely, since my mom moved, I’ll never be going back.

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End of 2012

Towards the end of the year, you often run into people you haven’t seen in a while at holiday parties and events and the obligatory question always comes up, “what have you been up to this year?” I never know how to answer that question. I rarely think about what I’ve done, but always what I’m going to do next. But this year, I started thinking about that question and decided it would be cool to answer it with a video. So I ran through my files and started pulling little clips of what I shot and put it together.

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An evening with Messersmith.

Last Monday, Jeremy Messersmith stopped by our house to perform for his Supper Club Tour. We had some great food, great wine, made some new friends and had a great time. Oh yeah, and he played some music.

The first thing he did was give us a nice gift for us offering our home for the tour.

Apparently, he’s a mushroom hunter. I verified that he knew what he was doing (I’d hate to die from eating a poisonous mushroom. I’d rather die from spontaneous combustion). He assured me that he did, but I’m still waiting to hear news from a killing spree by mushroom toting musician. If I don’t hear anything soon, I’ll take a nibble.

He was also gracious enough to sign my albums and take a few photos.

My girlfriend* took this photo, hence the soft focus..

I’m happy that I got some new photos for the portfolio:

And finally, I recorded him playing a little:

And here he is showing a sense of humor:

*note to self, only let pros handle my gear

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Jeremy Messersmith supper club tour.

I love music. I love concerts. But I’m not particularly fond of large concerts. I don’t like being a half mile away from the act and barely being able to see them. And most large venues have horrible acoustics. So I like to discover great bands/artists early, see them when they’re in small intimate venues and not bother when they get too big to play the small clubs anymore. So when one of my new favorite artists announced a house party tour, I jumped right in.

Recently, Jeremy Messersmith announced he was going to do a supper club tour. It’s going to be a house party where guests have to make a dish and pass it around like a potluck, but with Jeremy performing in the house. How freaking cool is that!? So when I saw he was coming to North Carolina, I got excited and offered my home for the supper club tour. After a few e-mails with his manager, it’s been finalized and he’ll be playing in my home on November 19th. If you’re in the Winston-Salem area, you should get some tickets and swing by. It’s going to kick ass.

If you have some time, check out his music on his website and check out this song on soundcloud. Below is one of my favorite music videos.

Jeremy Messersmith – Tatooine from Eric Power on Vimeo.

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Joseph Gordon-Levitt

It was an adventurous weekend. So adventurous, I wrote a short story. The short story was so good, I’ve decided to try and get it published. It needs another pass or two and to be trimmed to an accepted length, but I’m pretty excited about it.

I went on Playboy to see about publishing it. I remember they publish a short story every month in their magazine and I think this story would fit well in their pages. While I was on Playboy, I noticed a 20Q article about Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his new movie. It was a refreshing article because it talked about a couple of things. The first thing was when he said,

“I love when someone approaches me and tells me they’ve seen me in something that made them feel something and that they connected to it. That’s part of why I do it. The other interaction is with people who really don’t care about the movies or anything like that. They just sort of buy into the fame thing, and that feels icky to me.”

That’s good, because when I ran into him at The National concert and blabbed about how much I loved The Lookout and thought he was fantastic in Mysterious Skin, I worried he was thinking, “oh, great, another douchebag that’s not going to leave me alone.” But I think he understood I was a true fan of his work. I hate the fame thing as well. People are famous for being horrible vain selfish people and it creeps me out.

The other thing he talked about was his character on 500 Days of Summer:

“The (500) Days of Summer attitude of “He wants you so bad” seems attractive to some women and men, especially younger ones, but I would encourage anyone who has a crush on my character to watch it again and examine how selfish he is. He develops a mildly delusional obsession over a girl onto whom he projects all these fantasies. He thinks she’ll give his life meaning because he doesn’t care about much else going on in his life. A lot of boys and girls think their lives will have meaning if they find a partner who wants nothing else in life but them. That’s not healthy. That’s falling in love with the idea of a person, not the actual person.”

I’m glad he recognized it because that’s why I hated the movie and couldn’t finish it. He was a horrible character and I didn’t enjoy it.

Also, he talks about why right now is so exciting. I have lots of friends that live in the past and they love 80s music and 80s movies and I think if they could, they’d live their whole lives in the 80s. I agree with Joseph that with the power of the Internet and computers, you can create anything and find an audience. No one is beholden to anything. We’re all free to do what we want and that is extremely exciting. Sure, politicians suck and corporations suck, but when have they not? Wall Street was just as evil and greedy in the 80s as it is today.

And last, he talks about cars. I’m from Detroit. My father greatly benefited from GM as well as most of my friends. My girlfriend works in the car industry. I used to as well. I hate cars. I look at them and see giant vacuums sucking money out of my pocket. I just want a cheap car that gets me from A to B without breaking down. The fetish of muscle cars and classic cars and luxury cars and all that crap is completely lost on me as well. Money could go into so many more useful things.

I’m done ranting. I recommend reading the entire article.

Off to see about getting published.

Waiting for the train.

I’m sitting in an Amtrak station waiting for the train. I’m going to the Greek embassy in D.C. to apply for my dual citizenship. I’ve tried contacting them through e-mail and phone but it’s been hopeless; they’ve returned neither.

I’ve always wanted to live in Greece. I’d always hoped to live in my family’s home, but several years ago they sold it. Now, I want to live off the Mediterranean in Thessaloniki for about six months and even get a job. I want to be there long enough to learn the language. Being Greek and not speaking it is very difficult. Most Greeks just assume I know it and it’s always embarrassing to tell them I don’t. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to do this; too many responsibilities just to leave.

A lot has gone on recently, with the passing of my father and my girlfriend’s father, it’s been a tumultuous past few months. I’m ready for some normalcy. I’ve thought recently about what I wanted out of this blog and whether or not I wanted to keep it going. I agree with many that most blogs are narcissistic and are only there to feed egos and it perpetuates the culture of me me me, but I often finds blogs that I love that teach me news things or they help me to look at things from different perspectives. I’d love to be that kind of blog, but I don’t have any specific talents and everything I can do, I know many that can do it much better. I wish I was smarter so I could help more, but I’m the student and probably always will be.

I recently purchased a Steadicam vest and a Blackbird steadicam. I’m going to start practicing and post some videos showing the results. I have an idea for a music video / short film that I’m going to shoot in December and my skills have to be great to pull it off. Until then…

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Work sucks.

I just noticed it’s been a month since I last posted. Sheesh. Unfortunately, I have to take jobs I don’t like so I can do the things I do like. I was holed up in a clinic for three days and I struggled to find the inspiration to write. I still haven’t felt like writing since I’ve been back. Tomorrow, tomorrow, I keep telling myself. Before long, twenty years has passed.

Anyways, more will be coming soon. I’m struggling to find a bridge from act 2 to 3, so I’m going to work backwards.

If you have time, check out two Kickstarter campaigns I recently funded:

One is from my friend and fellow photographer Eric Cousineau who’s working on capturing a dying part of American history. Click the link here. If you think he’s asking for too much, remember that he’s using real film, he has to get the books printed and gas is expensive. It’s a great project that will be more appreciated by future generations.

Another is from a local theater company whose play was accepted for the NY Fringe Festival. Click the link here. Theater is hard to fund because the only benefit you get is the satisfaction you helped out, but they’re not asking for much and they’re nice people.

The life of an amateur

The forever student.

Life