Sunday...

...was a pretty great day, so great that I blew my streak of uninterrupted blogging.

It started with diner food at the Pine Grove family restaurant and ended with late night musical conversations that stretched into the wee hours.

The Pine Grove is a wonderful little place that I've always been curious about. I'd never been inside and was excited when I set foot in the door. This place has a full bar! Drunken old folks sipping whiskey on Sundays is priceless. The food was good too, typical greasy omelets and heavy duty itis inducing biscuits were the order of the day.

I fought off the post Pine Grove food coma with an impromptu road trip to St. Pete to fix my ailing 5D mark II.

My friend Denver and I have decided to start cooking for the week on Sundays. Yesterday was the maiden voyage in what I hope to be a series of culinary misadventures. Follow us here.

Today I finally took the plunge and bought the Canon 5D Mark II. It's a lot of camera and I don't see it getting replaced any time soon.

I took it out on a leisurely bike ride down Bayshore Blvd. and eventually to Davis Island. I saw this blimp and it looked sort of lonely out there by itself on the empty airfield.

I'm pretty sure that this is the blimp that once upon a time wore the logos for the Outback Bowl. Now that's over and it's naked and waiting for another mission...

The new camera is wonderful right now. It can shoot crazy high quality HD Video in really low light situations. As soon as I find something interesting to shoot I'll upload some clips here.

That's all for now. Time to enjoy Saturday night.

Reppin'

I was sitting at Sam & Eddies enjoying a delicious slice of pizza when this beauty drove by. He was stopped at the light so I had enough time to calmly reach for my camera and capture this beautiful scene.

If you look closely you can see that he's hood tough. If you look closer than that you can see he's rollin' on 26s.

William Eggleston and Stephen Shore...

Are two photographers who I've been turned on to recently. Apparently both of them pioneered color photography as an art form in the 70s. Eggleston's was the first one-person exhibition of color photographs in the history of New York's MOMA. He used dye transfers to get extreme saturation out of his prints, that combined with his ability to find interesting concentrations of hue in mundane places results in some pretty intriguing stuff. Stephen Shore was kind of doing the same thing. Both of them manage to create some pretty great images, stuff that I wouldn't think to capture.

Shore

Eggleston

Not the photograph I wanted to take...

Boring...
Originally uploaded by TristanWheelock

I got off work feeling good. The air was crisp and the crush of mundane duty wasn't so heavy today. I felt light on the two wheels that carried me home, I felt like taking a photograph.

I wanted to add to the lagging numbers of my 100 strangers project. I got back to my apartment, changed and set off by bike to find a subject. It was tough finding people and when I did for some reason I just froze up. I couldn't ask them if I could take their photograph. I felt awkward and a bit overwhelmed.

I kept going through different approaches in my head but when the time came to open my mouth I couldn't find the words so I just biked on by. I don't know what it was. I suppose rejection but when you think about it objectively "no" really isn't anything to worry about. Alas and alack.

I'm disappointed in myself but I'm going to use the feeling as a motivator. Hopefully there will be more faces up here soon until then I'm sorry you have to settle for this faceless landscape, at least the sky is sort of pretty...

There you have it...

Blur

The past week has been a blur and thus I haven't posted, as I am just now getting back into the swing of things.

Sitting in my apartment I no longer hear the shuffle of feet above me. My best friend has moved to Brooklyn for bigger and better adventures than this midsized Florida city can offer. And so an apartment that I spent so many years visiting is empty.

The New Year is here. It's a time for transition and new growth I suppose. I feel good if not a bit sad and nostalgic every once and awhile. There are big things happening and sometimes I even feel like I might be part of something.

I haven't made any resolutions myself but I'm inspired by the lofty goals and bravery of my peers. In four months I hope to be back in India, this time with a friend. As for the time being I suppose I'll just keep shooting and hope that I can get more of that kind of work at the St. Pete Times.

I hope the New Year brings good things to you as well. There are some pictures floating around here and there but I think most of them will be confined to my hard drive.On another note I have been digging through suitcases and dusty boxes lately. They're filled with treasure and some of it has been uploaded to flickr.

That's all for now. I'm off to watch elephants eat ice cream. Maybe I'll have a picture of it up here later...