Thursday 02.25.2010 | 12:23 PM EST

Weather Report: Bklyn Skies Heavy With Snow

Fat, thick, wet flakes. Not the best light for photog, great light for Nick Drake on repeat.
Seems it’s gonna last through the weekend. Calling for 3 inches today, no big whup.
Why must the weather folks always turn routine into newsworthiness?
Ithaca expecting 20 inches. Now that’s something to sneeze at!

Canon G11 | ISO 200 | 30mm focal | 640th sec at f 4.5 | post-processing in Lightroom 2

Monday 02.15.2010 | 12:23 PM EST

Weather Report:
Another Grey Day in Ithaca, For a Change

In this case, Every Day is Like Monday, every Ithaca winter is silent and grey. Morrissey in heavy rotation. Hard time putting nose to grindstone. Photog: iPhone + Camera Bag. Too lazy to break out a proper camera.

 Ah, the Blahs…

Wednesday 01.06.2010 | 4:23 AM EST

iPhone Camera Not Quite As Shitty Any More

Over the past 10 years I’ve shot with a variety of film and digital cameras to capture off-the-cuff snapshots: Canon Elf, Lomo, Holga, Canon G11 and the Nikon D80 DSLR. All these produced great results… but busy (or lazy) lives being what they are, good shots often remained on the media storage they were captured on, never quite making it to my desktop where I could process and share images. At least not till months later, when the temporal relevancy of the shot was sometimes lost.

The iPhone was my first and only mobile phone camera. My most anticipated feature was the ability to capture a shot and share it with others via email or MMS in real time. But I was initially disappointed by it’s total and complete shitty-ness: Low pixel-count, horrible low-light capabilty, excessive noise, slow shutter speeds, non-existent exposure control and fixed-focus limitations. I know, it’s a lot to ask from a mobile camera but, to a certain extent, some mobile phone models do deliver on some these features.

The 1st and 2nd generation iPhones were particularly susceptible to these flaws. The 3GS somewhat improved it’s viability as a legitimate on-the-go camera by a boost in pixel count from 2MP to 3MP, dramatically improved low-light results and significant noise reduction. Still no replacement for a pro-sumer pocket camera or DSLR, but at least it was a small step forward.

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Sunday 12.27.2009 | 5:23 AM EST

On The Road Again: The National 2009

I had the priviledge of traveling with The National on their summer 2009 tour supporting some band called R.E.M. I guess they were pretty good, but the National lads brought it with typical grace and vengeance.

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Sunday 12.27.2009 | 4:23 AM EST

Marble Tea + Maunet:
The Marble Sleeve Covers

If Calvin & Hobbes hosted a tea party for Truman Capote, J.D. Salinger, Richard Brautigan, Willy Wonka, Stephin Merritt, The Jazz Butcher and Sir Lawrence of Felt, they’d likely sip just enough of the magic tea to come up with marble’s own brand of be-bop-a-loo-pop.

Each month, Berman gifts the internet with tuneful tales of whimsy populated by cats and girls, Batman and rain, chocolate and nicotine and the pain of being pure at heart. Twelve months later, the MT’s inner circle receives a limited edition compilation of those tracks….something we lovingly package as a Marble Sleeve Cover.

It works like this: The BrothersQuote (a moniker bestowed upon us 20 years ago by a dangerously cute fille we both courted, unsuccessfully) sit in the Garçonerie, smoke and talk pop, snicker, giggle and scheme to come up with the next Greatest Idea for an Album Sleeve Ever. Taking a cue from Bowie’s croon for Zimmerman’s sand and glue, we shoot in Brooklyn in 2001 and on the New Jersey Shore in 2005 to produce the gleeful silliness of A Case of the Tea and Jersey Shoreline.

Next year, Berman will don a jet-black punk-rock wig and loosen his tie for maunet’s shot at Patti Smith, Horses. In the meantime, pay Mr. Berman a visit at marbletea.com

–

© maunet.com

Friday 12.18.2009 | 6:23 AM EST

Paris 2009

In between London and Berlin, while on The National Brokeback Mountain Tour. Lovely town. Certain gens were real dicks to us though, despite our sincere, if not broken, attempts to speak the language. It was the Bush years, I guess we’ll for give them.

Friday 12.18.2009 | 4:23 AM EST

Photog: Berlin 2007

Among Kyoto and Tokyo lies Berlin as a favorite in my travels to date. Paris can suck it.

Speaking German is easy. Just add Strasse to the end of every English sentence
and you can pretty much get by…

Friday 12.18.2009 | 4:23 AM EST

Red Rocks, CO 2009

After only seeing it on U2’s 1982 video for Sunday Bloody Sunday, I finally got to witness this amazing venue first hand. Did not disappoint.

Thursday 12.17.2009 | 4:23 AM EST

A Tree Falls In Ithaca

In 2006 my wife and I bought our first house. Not in Brooklyn, mind you, but in the far-off lands of upstate New York in the town of Ithaca. Why the hell for would we want to live in the “most progressive city in the country,” (bullshit), a town where it’s cold as fuck from October thru April, the sun never shines, the offical car is the Subaru Outback and the town is entirely populated by insulated Ivy League kids and aging hippies. Not to mention the worst fucking drivers, worse than the South.

Why indeed? My brainy wife Yula was accepted to Cornell for a well-funded PhD program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology . She was thrilled, I was less so. I mean, no way in hell I’m moving up there. I mean, my business is here in Brooklyn, right? But who am I to keep the love of my life from self-actualizing? No way. So we ended up with our city home and our country home. How upscale. Who’da thought.

So we buy this awesome house: four bedrooms, tons of light, half-acre of land, large porch with a stunning view of the valley…. plus an apple tree, frequent visits from a family of deer and a fat-ass groundhog we’ve come to call Fatty McFatty. Pretty fucking sweet.

But there’s a catch. This lovely house on the hill is accessed by a driveway with a 45-degree pitch. Try gettin’ up that in a foot of snow, Outback or no… Well, this minor to major annoyance poses a second problem of which you will soon learn, for this is where the real story begins…

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Saturday 11.28.2009 | 4:23 AM EST

Photog: Los Angeles + Joshua Tree

Plastic La-La-Land, urban sprawl galore. Scorching desert land, prickly trees are old as sin. Crispy skin and classic cars and rock n’roll. Delicious drink, that burgundy and coke. Go figure…

Wednesday 11.25.2009 | 4:23 AM EST

R.E.M. Live at Red Rocks 2009

I had the priviledge of traveling with The National on their summer 2009 tour supporting R.E.M. Shooting with the “pro-sumer” Nikon D80, I braved the press trench, touched with a bit of penis envy alongside the “real” press, with their 14” fixed 1.8 lenses, multiple cameras hugging their paunchy bellies. Nevertheless, I managed to get some good live shots with a 2.8 300mm zoom.

Now, you would think a southern boy like me, having spent a good part of the early 90’s in Athens, GA, would have attended quite a few REM shows – not so. They are one of a few must-see bands I’ve managed, for one reason or another, to miss altogether (The Pixies, The Police, The Smiths). The last opportunity I had to see REM was on the Document tour at the historic Fox Theater in Atlanta. Alas, I gave up the tix to my then-girlfriend after an unanticipated break-up. So much for taking the high road…

Despite the missing live action experience, REM records were, for many of us, one of the sountracks to our late teens and early 20’s. But let’s face it – every band must run it’s creative course–after Monster, I got off the train before the band reached it’s next station.

So… the notion of seeing REM 10 years after their prime at first did not thrill me near as much as the fact that old friends were opening for one of the biggest bands of our time. Let’s face it: reunion tours, whatever the band, tend to be a most cringe-inducing event–they reak of desperation and crass commercial motives. (The only reunion tour worth its salt was Fleetwood Mac in the late 90’s when they fucking brought it with a vengeance.)

Boy was I wrong to assume REM would prove the rule.

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