Posts in Travel

So I’m back home after my nice little break, it feels good. Luckily the weather here in San Francisco today is sunny so it’s not such a huge change from Tulum (although it’s about 20°F cooler). I had a great time and got some good shots with the little Canon Elf but I did miss having my D80 along. It was nice to not have to lug around a big DSLR, but the handheld just didn’t cut it for a lot of the shots. I’ll try posting up some of the better ones this week. Now it’s time to start sifting through the email and get back into work mode…

So a couple of months ago I realized that I haven’t really been on a real vacation in my entire adult life. Sure, I went on that trip with my brother a couple years back, but there was a fair amount of business mixed in there and the rest of the time it was more about seeing and doing everything we could and less about relaxing. My neighbors got married in Tulum, Mexico a couple years ago and all of the stories and pictures they came back with made the place seem amazing. Fast forward to a couple months ago and throw pig flu into the mix and you have a cheap, awesome vacation in a tropical paradise. We’re flying into Cancun then driving down to Playa Del Carmen for the first few nights and then it’s on to Tulum. Staying at this awesome hotel called “Basico”. Looks very well designed.

In keeping with the vacation spirit I have decided not to bring my laptop or the big camera. I know I will regret this at some point, but sometimes you need a break from everything and with those two things anywhere near me I just start thinking about work. I will be bringing my little Canon Elf which can take HD video and does a surprising job at still photos for how small it is. Besides, it’s a pretty good feeling knowing I’m going to be leaving tomorrow morning for a week and everything I need will fit in a carry-on shoulder bag. I think that fact alone is enough to make up for leaving the D80 behind.

So I’ll be leaving the blog posting in Jakub and Alex’s capable hands for the next week. I will have my iPhone so I’ll probably post some stuff up to Twitter now and then. And hopefully the site itself doesn’t completely implode — if you didn’t notice today (what timing!) we had a lot of server issues which seem to have been resolved for the time being. Anyways, see you all in a week, time to disconnect from the matrix for a while…

Photographer Tim Navis is participating in The Mongol Rally, a drive from the UK to Mongolia. You can follow along at Tim’s Rubik Crew page. Seems like an incredible adventure, I imagine he’ll be coming back with some amazing shots, can’t wait to see them. And in case you haven’t checked in on Tim since we last featured him, here are a few of his recent shots to refresh your memory:

Are waaaaaay more entertaining than I’m used to. It’s good to be back in Jakub’s neighborhood again. We saw his latest signing (on his Moodgadget imprint), Body Language perform at Machinedrum’s release party tonight, which was amazing (pictured above). It’s far too late though, my schedule is now worse than it was back home where at least it’s still 3am. The shots above are from the new Elph, which has been pulling it’s weight and then some. got the Nikon ready for tomorrow though so should have something good to post, unless this rain keeps up.

Yes, that’s Jakub hoisting a cup of joe: 5am @ Kelloggs. That’s good bacon. And tennis.

I’ll be heading back to my other favorite city today for the F5 fest. I’m staying a few extra days as I haven’t had the chance to really enjoy myself the last few times I’ve been in NYC. Jakub scored some tickets to the Brainfeeder/Flying Lotus show @ Love so we’ll definitely be making it out to that. I’m brining the Nikon and the new little Canon (which, by the way, I’ve been loving) for some undercover HD video action; I’ll post up the results as they roll in.


Amazing photos via Chozno01

Sorry for the lack of posts this week (thanks Jakub for holding it down), I got back from Florida on monday and have been playing catch-up ever since. I flew Tampa -> Atlanta -> SFO so it was a rather grueling trip as I basically got there, played the show, then turned around and flew home. Thanks to everyone who came out to the show; it was great meeting you all and talking. I also want to apologize for the technical issues. I’m not quite sure what the cause was, but the power on stage was intermittently going out and dropping the sound system, luckily it only went out once during my particular set.

The visual highlight of the trip (aside from the sunset the night of the show which I didn’t have my camera around the catch) was the typography in the Tampa Airport. All of the signage was set in my personal favorite: Trade Gothic LT Std Bold Extended (and look at that logo!). Unfortunately, I dropped my D80 before the trip somewhat crippling it so I wasn’t able to get very good shots. I took a ton and most came out blurry or underexposed. Thankfully, Nikon has a great repair program (which I’ve used many times in the past) which is relatively cheap and quick. So I’ll just have to find a week or so when I can do without my camera and send it in. Or just upgrade…. But given that I just made another major upgrade (more on that tomorrow), I think I need to hold off a while longer on getting a new DLSR.

On a side note: A design student at the show gave me his card (the one with bears on it). I said I’d check the site but when I got home I couldn’t find the card anywhere. If you gave that to me, please drop me the link so I can check it.

Flying out to Seattle today for tomorrow night’s show. The show has sold out so I’ll see you all out there, and if you didn’t make it in this time I’ll be back up soon enough I’m sure. The doors open at 8pm and I’ve been informed I’ll be on around 11:15pm. I’ve worked out some new visuals and added some new effects and tweaks for this set so it should be fun trying it all out for the first time. I’ll also be playing a new unreleased song along with some of the old favorites.

I’ve got my D80 with me so hopefully I’ll get some good shots of the city while I’m up there. And for those of you who have been asking about video from the live sets: We taped the Toronto show at the Drake, it’s still in production but should be up in some form soon so stay tuned. See you tomorrow…

Seatac image (above) via Ramparts54

I’m probably posting this against better judgement, but here’s the raw footage from the FITC "Conversations" segment Si Scott and myself did in Toronto this year. I was under the impression this would be edited, but it just plays straight through, sort of funny. There are a lot of other conversations in the series, they can be found here. Some of them get pretty interesting, everything from pron to drugs…

Our conversation clocks in at 51:55 and sort of rambles all over the place, but Si Scott is an incredible artist so it’s interesting to hear his take on things. You can find Si’s portfolio here.

Took these shots of some amazing tiled designs in the Baixa area of Lisbon yesterday.

The festival has kept me pretty busy since we arrived so I haven’t had much time to walk around and get some pics. The first day / night I was able to get a few though, they are all from the Campo Pequeno area. We’ll have a couple extra days after OFFF is over to really explore, planning to get some bikes and ride all over this place. Really excited for that, from what I’ve seen there is a lot of visual stimuli out there just waiting to be shot. Still sort of limping along here with my Nikon D80. I’ve found ways around most of my big gripes with it but being at the OFFF I’ve seen a lot of people toting around their 5D’s and D400’s, been getting jealous.