Luna – Chinatown
	Found at skreemr.com

Today’s photo goes out to kate, who automatically gets a free copy of this photo, along with whoever is the lucky winner of the loser’s lottery. Kate is a huge luna fan, and i promised her i would dig through my archives to find this negative.

When Luna made their farewell tour through cleveland on the way to their final gig in NYC, they stopped by the beachland ballroom. i was lucky enough to get the call to photograph the show.

it was bittersweet to say the least. a band that i idolized, was playing three feet in front of me again. playing the same songs that have floated in and out of my consciousness for around two decades. playing them like i had seen them so many other ohio nights. but this night. this was the last. this was the last time i would hear the strains of “chinatown” lulling a crowd of misfits into a state of… might-fit.

the song attached to today’s photo is just that song. Chinatown.

thanks for the years, fellas.

	Lucinda Williams – Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys
	Found at skreemr.com

okay, today’s photo doesn’t have a deep meaningful story or anything like that, which i think is perfectly fine. sometimes in life (well, most of the time) you do things not because you have some big picture thing going on. sometimes, you have to do things just because they are fun.

i was at a wedding this weekend, and i saw beranda had gotten her hands into the hat table. i thought the hat totally set off her dress, so i grabbed her and had her give me a cowgirl pose in passing.

the song for today? just another fun one. lucinda williams doing “mama don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys..” i just thought it fit the mood.

	Santana – Samba pa ti
	Found at skreemr.com

Today’s picture of the day is one that I had wanted to make for years.

Where I grew up, there was a place called “Texas Lane.” It was on the other side of the river, and a different world away from the rest of my town.

• There was no trash pickup. Guys in a pickup would show up every now and then and haul it away.
• There was no law. The police would’t come out. If something happened, you were on your own.
• A snow cone vendor would show up a few times a week. He had flavors foreign to most people: leche, tamarindo, and coco.
• Everyone grew, harvested, and ate nopales (prickly pear cactus.)
• Everyone had a lemon tree.
• People actually believed in the cucui and la chusa
• The streets were not paved. The roads consisted of fine river soil, and huge river boulders.
• The citrus train would rumble through several times a day. You knew you were a real chicano when you could sleep through the train.

Texas Lane is where i spent my summers, and most any other weekend i could talk my parents into, as this is where my grandma chata lived. Right next door was my best friend, David.

I haven’t spent the night on Texas lane for maybe 25 years, but I can still smell the water flowing in the creek, the river rocks scattered through the yards, and the citrus that seemed to bloom constantly.

Texas Lane is one of those places that I think will always exist in my mind exactly how it was when I was 8, and days lasted forever. A time when summer vacation was an incredible gift from the gods.

I recently got in touch with David again, after twenty something years. It’ nice to know that there is someone out there in this world who also grew up on texas lane. Someone who, when they hear the name, conjures up days of exploration, and nights of hiding from the cucui.

The bridge in this photo is the bridge that separated Texas Lane from the rest of the world.

The song is a song i discovered while staying there one summer, fastidiously studying each and every album in my uncle Paul’s record collection.

	Nat King Cole – Orange Colored Sky
	Found at skreemr.com

Remember to leave a comment to enter the contest
Purchase this Print

This week’s picture of the week is the engagement photo for one of my recent brides, kristin. I shoot so many weddings, that it’s impossible to even count anymore. the funny thing about my couples is that when we enter our talks about wedding planning and the like, i find myself pulling for them. really hoping that they find everything they are looking for. kristin and byron were no exception.

we had a bit of time in planning this wedding, and by the time the altar day came, it all came off like this was supposed to happen. this is how everything should be.

this is their engagement photo. the decided to go for a gatsby look. i added a few drops of bonnie and clyde, and this turned out to be one of my favorites.

i picked the song for this photo the second i saw byron light up when kristin came up the aisle.

good show, you guys..

Purchase This Photo

Remember to leave a comment to enter the contest!

This week’s winner: Nancy! I think i know which nancy this is, but can you drop me an email, so i can be sure that i am pestering the correct nancy?

This is Reilly the dog. I have been working with kaitlin over the past few months to figure out a way to get the word out about the dogs that she has up for adoption. i thought doing a set of portraits of them might be fun. This guy is named Reilly. unfortunately, he grew too big for his owner’s apartment and was eating them out of house and home

he is up for adoption, and we hope that he finds a good home. if you are interested in adopting him, let me know, and i can pass the word along. i would have put a link to his site up, but i lost it. dangit!

i know this song has nothing to do with Reilly’s situation, but i was trying to think of a good dog song, but i was drawing blanks. i have always been a huge stooges fan, and i thought this was a good raw song to start a monday morning. so, from Reilly and me, happy monday. he wants to be your dog.. i probably don’t.

Purchase this photo

Win this photo!

Today’s photo is a picture that i shot first thing in the morning at my uncle’s house in new mexico. this was the third morning of a long ride, with one more leg to go. i had done 1,000 miles the day before.. ashland to wichita.. and then the second leg from wichita to las cruces

new mexico is more like a painting than a place. and for a few hours, i was lucky enough to ride through it.

if you are ever in the las cruces area, you have to make a stop at the pepper pot. this is the chile capital of the world, and this title is well deserved. get there early, for breakfast, and get a half and half. unless you have another 1,000 miles to ride. then, maybe get split one with a friend.

the song for this week is one of my favorite road trip songs ever. it’s a great song to drop into your playlist when you are 500 miles from home, and your body is cramping up, but you know that you will be able to sleep in your own bed tonight. plus, the whole bedouin soundclash album is great from start to finish.

i guess one of the best things about going on such a long and far trip is that although it’s great to wake up in a strange place every morning, and kick around new streets with strange faces, it’s ultimately the nicest thing to be under your own roof, and in your own bed.

good luck to everyone in the contest!

This is my cousin pete. he works at z studios, in ventura. his boss is originally from ashland, ohio (where i live.) if any of you have a grasp of how small and insignificant ashland is, you would know that the odds of such a thing happening are SUPER slim.

Anyway, when i was a kid, the only thing that ever went through my mind all day and night was the creation of images. i just wanted to learn to photograph. that, and listen to records. computers (at least the kind that mortals could afford) had not been invented, so i no had exposure to them, other than stories from my dad about the multi million dollar machines at his work.

we would visit pete’s family, and i would see his cameras, his photography, and his record collection and wish i could just live there. aside from getting chills and in insatiable lust when i saw the name “nikon,” i also listened to tons of records.

among the records that stuck with me until this very day was elton john’s “Goodbye yellow brick road”. even now, as i hear this album, i can still remember being a little kid and evaluating my options for the future. although the song that struck me most was “candle in the wind” (i always wished i could photograph marilyn) i figured it didn’t make a whole lot of sense in this context, so i picked “bennie and the jets.”

i should also note that cousin pete is also responsible for my insatiable love for horror. his pile of monster magazines and monster books got me started on the road i am on now.

for the sake of completeness, i should also mention the other folks that got me addicted to making images:

• my uncle jarvis – every vacation we went on, he would carry his 35mm slrs with him. i would ask him if i could try it, and without flinching, he would let this little goofball kid look through the viewfinder and twist the focus ring. he even told me how the meter works! he also took a ton of slides, and even had a slide projector. he would tell me stories of waking up before sunrise to catch a perfect shot. at that point, i decided to shoot things that were more in line with my schedule. like rock concerts.
• my uncle paul – when he was stationed in japan, he got all kinds of nikon gear. one summer, he let me borrow his nikon f for the whole summer. i spent all my allowance on film and processing. that is the camera that i learned to shoot slide film on. he also had a copy of “goodbye yellow brick road.” i think i wore his copy out. we lost him a few years ago, but my brother still has the amp, tuner, and speakers that we listened to 35 years ago. it lives in new york now, but it still sounds … err… magical. of all the things he had, i would have killed for that nikon f. not that it was a collector’s item, but i wonder if i could still smell orange blossoms when i held it, like i did pedaling my bike around town as a kid, looking for something interesting. i should have made an effort to keep it in the family. dammit.
• john nichols – you should also visit his gallery site and browse around a bit. when i was a kid, john opened a gallery downtown. i used to ride my bike down there after school and on weekends and he showed me that while i had managed to successfully figure out how to build and run a darkroom, i was just missing one piece. how to look at things. from then on, i started working hard on learning to see. the only problem is, the more i learn, the more i find that i don’t know. but john (back then, his store/gallery was called “mr. nichols”) was patient enough to push me along the way. i am still amazed by his work. if you ever get down there, take half a day to browse his image collection. it will show you all the things you don’t know.

anyway. because of those four guys, i dream about images. for almost forty years now.

Purchase this photo

This is a reprint. A photo that i have used on the old picture of the day site, but i thought it might be kind of cool to use this image to kick off the new section of the coffee black site, and to kick off the new format for picture of the day. rather just a picture sporadically posted, i will post them weekly, but each post will have a song that i think goes nicely with the photo.

This photo is the last photo i took of my grandma rangel. after snapping this photo, i hopped on my motorbike and made my way back to ohio. we lost grandma later that year, just after christmas. one of the reasons i really would like to get off the provervial fence about what i really believe is the hope that grandma and her lifelong buddy aunt marion (who we lost earlier this year) are still around somewhere… playing cards, drinking port wine, and laughing about harder times.

I picked this song for a few reasons. i can still hear this song in my head, playing on my grandma’s stereo when their friends would stop by and the house would smell like percolated coffee, pall malls, and scotch.

Last year, when my brother made a video tribute to grandma, and included this song in the closing scene. so fitting, and so cool.

Let me know if the photo or the song stirred up any memories for you guys.