Well, I really will try to get up more of the New Orleans pictures and strange stories of avoiding the Dixie Brewing Company because “the junkies will KILL you.” I swear I will.

First Friday came upon us again; sweltering heat and a scaled back event (due to the Downtown Getdown… why why why, its not football season?) did nothing to stem the flow of eager patrons of the arts. I had several people with obviously excellent taste purchase my works at both South of Soho and Simply Artistic. I debuted three 8×12s from New Orleans and had a great reaction to them… ended up selling two of the three. Star Seas Cafe’s recently acquired beer and wine license helped keep the PBR flowing into both Ed and myself throughout the night. Olan Thorton’s new piece brings his usual elegance to divergent subject matter… and I’ll need to snag a good photo of the painting as soon as possible to post. Ended up at the Fermentation Lounge later, as usual, enjoying amazing beers with my strange friends. As much fun as Fermentation is on First Friday, I’d suggest either Sunday movie nights or sometime during the week as it can get terribly crowded in the bar.

As I talked about in the previous post, my friend Ed and I are starting a portrait studio…. and I had my first photo shoot with Nikki March this past week. It was more testing out the lights and getting used to the equipment but we snatched some great shots. And now we have the two strobes with accessories, a backdrop stand with two 10×20 foot backdrops and a list of esoteric ideas. I’m looking to post a casting call on Model Mayhem for some more guinea pigs and hopefully have some more promotional material by the end of next week. Also, I’m revisiting a few collages I gave up on about a year ago. Massive buggers. Minimum of 20″x30″ but probably larger. Will post production stills as soon as I have something tangible. Planning on breaking down the characters in the collage into smaller vertical frames to display along with it. And on a minor side note, I might be doing some stills for the Cosa Nostra production of Tom Wait’s Alice this week. Waiting to hear from them about dress rehersals and such….

So I might be a failure with regards to blogging. I’ll attempt to be better… be a better narcissist, self absorbed in my every day life. I promise to try. Er. Anyway, so a bit of a retrospective. Moments from months ago, a week long trip to New Orleans. Brief news blast before hand. I have the photo studio that rock built; vinyl records paved the way for a pair of high powered strobes, lighting kit and backdrop set… life is good. Ed Babcock, god amongst pirates, and I have teamed up to terrorize the portrait landscape. More info, images and question marks to come.

I drove out to New Orleans early on a Sunday, hoping to make it into town with enough time to check out the French Quarter before we hit up a burlesque show that my friends had setup as the evening’s entertainment. My FUCKING AIR CONDITIONING doesn’t work. Six hours… in the heat… listening to a strange mixture of Burial, the Frogs, the National and Madlib…. I was baked in my Caprice. Arriving in New Orleans I found myself hailed by the community, enticed by the make and year of my car. Driving blind by sweat, ignorance and a lack of a local map, I parked and waited to be found by Ansley and Jon. Onward throughout the Quarter with moments for photography;

After a bit of walking, we ate at Angeli’s on Decatur… wonderful wonderful sandwhichs. A locale that we would return to as you got basically two meals for $7 and change. Lovely stuff. And good beer on tap. A necessity.

We eventually retreated from the heat to find refuge in our hotel room. The Hilton on St. Charles, which had previously been a masonic lodge. Baphomet watched over our sleep. A brief interlude for another photo;

That evening we ventured out to the so-called burlesque show. So-called burlesque. A much more particapatory event, the doorman says with a grin and a wink. Worried, we are. He’s not. Coke and Jack help encourage us upstairs. Goth tinged love den of darkness and teddy bears. Hosted by the Dragon’s Den, we found it was more of a mutual meet up for fetishists in the NOLA area. I was mildly drunk and kinda stoned and not really feeling the fifteen year old mascara wearing, too young to know skinny puppy music (speaking of the darkwave music, not the denizens). So, after watching the two cute girls start making out with each other in front of the large screen that projected Betty Paige stripping, I went home. Well… home to the apartment. Cue day two and the next blog entry. Will attempt to relay the whole trip this week as I should have new images and prints from NOLA on Friday for FF at Soho.

-The Marzza

A few weeks ago I found myself back in Sarasota for a shoot with Boyce Avenue at an “undisclosed” historical location. Upon arrival at the location we found ourselves set upon by an unwashed hoard of elderly folks. The youngest visitors by at least forty years, we were put under watch. Thankfully we attempted to subvert those stares by appearing as young couples, out for a stroll. Although, as an afterthought, perhaps my rough looks broke the illusion as the elderly wondered if I was bear to Fabian’s cub. First stop was a complete wash. Foucault’s Panopticon don’t have shit on two historical recreationist actors wary and wise to our presence. Ducking into an orange packing plant we established a lookout for those wiry old folks and their tour. Faint voices could be heard growing louder in the distance as we hurried and scurried. We spent a moment or two at a church and then sped to small home where we could change and recover. Unfortunately, we found ourselves trapped by another of those blasted tour groups. I, coward that I am, retreated out of the house to the garden where I paused to ponder Boyce’s fate. Thankfully, they escaped unharmed and regaled in new attire. Tracked by tour golf cart, we headed to a few final shots upon Cock’s Footbridge. Seriously. Anyway, without further ramblings or character defamation, below are a few images from the shoot.

Follow the links either on the right or via the photos posted above to reach my flickr account for more images from the shoot as well as other madness, mayhem and mild diversions. I still have a few images from the shoot to work over so I will be posting those to my Flickr account as I complete them. For more information on Foucault’s Panopticon and other fallout from Althusser’s theories…. read more.

On the second trip of Mr. Mazza’s Magical Mystery Tour, we ended heading out to Chattahoochee and beyond. Despite the rain and my car’s less than stellar condition, we ventured to some lovely locales. Between the bridges and dam at Chattahoochee and a rundown shack masquerading as a Cracker Barrel, the best location was in our back yard. An abandoned factory off of Southwest Capital Circle is an untapped gem. I’ll be returning hopefully some time this week to spend a bit more time shooting it. And if tresspassing, photography and hedonism sounds like a fun time to those few who read this blog… come along on Mr. Mazza’s Magical Mystery Tour! Either find us on Facebook through my profile or search through the groups for us. Its a bit sporadic but hopefully we’ll be coordinating more trips on a regular basis as I get myself more organized and focused…

I’m leaping forward in this post beyond at least one much needed update but found it easier to upload these photographs at the moment. Thanks to the IRS this year I had a lovely tax refund and purchased a mildly needed macro lens to help round out my equipment. I picked up the Sigma 105mm f2.8 with a Kenko 7 2x teleconverter from KEH. I purchased them used… and they look a thousand times better than a few pieces of my glass I apparently am a terrible parent to my lenses. Anyways, I took pwetty pictures in the cemetery up in Bainbridge, GA with Ansley Simmons this past Wednesday.

Kyle wished me to put forth the following information;

Eric Nylund’s new novel, Mortal Coils, will be available for purchase on the 3rd of February, 2009. Nylund is an author in the sci-fi and fantasy fields, having written Signal to Noise (no, not the Gaiman/McKean one) and many of the novelizations of the Halo series. If you follow the link above or surf to www.ericnylund.net, you can find out more information on both the author and his upcoming work.

And a brief update for myself…

The Boyce Avenue shoot that was supposed to go down at the end of the month has been pushed back to late February/early March. They will be out of the country, being wildly successful and making me horribly envious. However, when they get back, I’ll be heading down to Sarasota to take some pretty pictures of the boys. Having given up on the idea of a photography group a few years back with “Get the hell out of Tallahassee”, I’ve decided to give it another go with “Mr. Mazza’s Magical Mystery Tour.” So, productivity is my new goal this year. And if anyone has any interest, look me up on Facebook and join our little group. I’m like the silent bus driver who used to leer at you on the way to school. Leer.

An update. Small but significant. Pieced together from the relatively recent photo shoot, a new collage. I’m currently finishing a long standing obligation and will soon spawn a multitude of mad projects.

Forthcoming projects… Boyce, Tigger, Nikki, Jesus and my inane returning prose. Beware.

Just uploading a quick update featuring a new collage that I feel is nearly finished. The lettering works, I think, but I’m also feeling I may have overloaded the images and overcomplicated the collage. Comments and criticism are welcome as I don’t think I’ll be able to upload this on Facebook without repercussions. I will be uploading another collage in the next few days, hopefully. I’m attempting to go smaller in the blind faith that college students will spend a twenty on a piece of art, rather than simply buying postcards from me.

Oh, and a minor side note. I might be heading down to Sarasota towards the end of the month for a shoot with Boyce Avenue. Nothing confirmed yet and considering how unattentive and irresponsible I am, who knows :-/ Anyways, more updates in a few days.

EDIT:

And popping up an earlier version of the collage this morning to show a less complicated image. I’m torn… 

This is the first successful collage to come out of the photographs I captured for Nikki.

I should have several others finished in the next week. I’ll be rolling out the works this coming First Friday at South of Soho. I’m contemplating a fire sale on older works this coming Sunday… after work tonight I’ll come to a decision. If so, I’ll post pieces and prices here, on my email list (email me at odingallows@gmail.com if you’d like to be added) and on Facebook.

And so we have a myriad of collegiate gals attempting to sidestep the homeless in Tallahassee’s back alleys. Via Nikki March’s designs and handywork, here we have riot girzls.

Follow to flickr… brought to you by Patti Smith’s Gloria: In Excelsis Deo / Gloria (version)