I’m flying out to Annapolis tomorrow for a wedding shoot, so I’m busy charging batteries, running last minute errands to get travel-sized toiletries (grrrr. Stupid TSA rules), and emptying CF cards. I’ve been trying to spend a little bit of time each day out in the garden, but won’t bore you with too many flower photos, I promise.
Sometimes everything just comes together, the weather, the location, and the model. This started out a simple headshot session but we decided to push it further and headed into the park to enjoy the perfect spring day. Believe it or not, this whole shoot only took about an hour.
Jamaica’s an extremely talented artist, and a longtime friend. We’ve begun collaborating on a super secret project, more about that as it develops.
My chest piece was done in one sitting by my friend Jason Angst at the Brew City Tattoo Convention in 2009 (He won tattoo of the day for it). I got this tattoo at a time when a lot of friends of mine were going through a really hard time related to family problems and state repression and various other legal troubles. The quote across the banner is “we are the birds of a coming storm” which is a paraphrasing of the infamous words of the Haymarket martyr, August Spies. Spies was an anarchist agitator in Chicago who was sentenced to death for his fiery views and convictions. His last words before being hung were “the day will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today.” In a way, thinking about his words was a way for me to deal with the difficulties my friends and I were going through and to remember that though we felt alone at times, a whole redemptive storm would follow someday.
Medusa
Also by Jason Angst. Medusa is often mythologized as a symbol of femme / feminist vengeance against patriarchal power. When I got this, most of the female assigned people in my life (including my mother) were dealing with bad behavior of men in various ways and capacities. People I thought I could trust, or who were maybe positive examples of how to not be misogynist were proving me wrong left and right. This affected me in a pretty serious way and I had to re-evaluate a lot of the ways I thought about gendered violence and resistance to it. I got a tattoo of medusa as a bit of a solidarity gesture with everyone in my life dealing with violence or pain because of their place in our gendered world. The tattoo is based on a painting by Caravaggio.
Divine:
My first and dearest tattoo, by Gifford Kasen . “Filth is my politics! Filth is my life!”
Thanks Devin!
Live in the Sf bay area and have some ink you’d like to show off, or are a tattoo artist who just finished a really cool piece? Contact me about a shoot. I’m always looking for people with creative and interesting tats to work with.
Today is Pi day! While this is numerically irrational, and the cause of much celebration across the internet, I like to take time on this date to celebrate the presence of an aptly-named member of our family.
Pi Cat was adopted just over two years ago, a scrawny but vocal kitten from the San Francisco SPCA. She immediately came down with a bad case of ringworm – while insisting on sleeping near my pillow. Despite her best efforts, neither of us were infected. Pi’s overcome her health issues and grown into a solid lump of cat with a… unique personality. She keeps David company during late-night coding sessions, refuses to cuddle with me unless we’re both underneath her favorite blanket, and recently adjusted to the arrival of an annoying little sister.
Pi, we love you, grumpy cat. You’re our favorite greeter of guests, investigator of boxes, and lover of smelly shoes.
If you’re interested in Pi as a number, here’s a very cool link which displays Pi to one million places.
Quinn is building up his portfolio to get more work, he’s terrific to shoot, takes direction well, and has a pretty unique look.
What do you think? I could see him on a runway.
David’s a useful guy to have around. When I broke the garbage disposal, he took it apart and put it back together. He also took a grandfather clock to pieces, cleaned every part, put every tiny gear back in place – now it keeps time more accurately than it did before. Here he is, fixing our vintage Nintendo so I can get my Tetris fix. I’m totally keeping this guy.
Be sure to click below for the rest of their lovely wedding day, prep pics, formal portraits, and the ceremony!
Continue reading “Cari and Stephane’s San Francisco Wedding”
Sarah Dopp is an aptly-named ‘culture conductor‘. She’s the founder of groundbreaking Genderfork blog, which has grown into an enormous online community and is constantly busy planning the next big thing. If she looks sedate in this photo, don’t let that fool you for one minute.
