Out and About
Out and About…Geneva, NY
Uncle Charlie got the tattoo on his forearm during World War II. He was in the U.S. Navy, serving on a ship near the Philippines. There is some confusion about the female name that’s part of the tattoo. One version of the story is that it’s a girl’s name, but the story our Aunt Pauline got is that it’s a ship’s name. (Uncle Nicky, left, is Aunt Pauline’s brother, and to our knowledge he does not have a tattoo.)
Photo by Kira
Out and About…San Francisco
This is my favorite bakery in San Francisco, La Boulange in Cole Valley. If you go, definitely try the pain au chocolat. It’s almost as good as what I make, and a lot less trouble.
Photos by Kira
Out and About…Germantown, Md.
At the wedding of my friends Robert and Jocelyn, I got chatting with this salsa-dancing couple. She told me her favorite of her tattoos is the spider on the back of her neck, because it felt so good going on. She attributed that to the density of nerves back there, which sounds counter-intuitive to me.
Photo by Kira
Artomatic: Tattoo Project’s First Exhibit
Artomatic is an arts extravaganza in D.C. This year, hundreds of artists took over nine floors in a new office building on the southwest waterfront. It’s hard to convey the level of creative chaos…on top of all the sculpture and stuff hanging on walls, there was a packed schedule of films, bands, poetry readings, comedy and fire dancing.
Tattoo Project joined in for our very first public show. We set up near the tattoo parlor on the third floor and had a great time chatting with people about the photos.
Many thanks to Daniel and Jennifer for their help setting up!
Photos by Kira
Out and about… Canandaigua Lake, NY
Photos by Ryan
Wakesurfing is what wakeboarders do when bored. Wakesurfing involves a slow-moving boat which creates a large rolling wave thereby providing an appropriate place to “surf” without having to actually drive to an ocean.
Out and about… Conklin Gully, NY
Photos by Ryan
My friend Kathy has an elephant on her ankle. If you look at it upside down it vaguely looks like Richard Nixon in his “I’m not a crook” pose. And before you ask, the only time I’ve ever seen it upside down was when I took the above photo… jeez.
Out and About… Cleveland, OH
Photos by Ryan
This weekend I couchsurfed for the first time (www.couchsurfing.org). I’ve always felt that you can best experience a city or country by staying with someone who actually lives there, and this site makes it very easy. After sending a few email requests, I found myself watching Roller Derby and partying with my new friend Svetlana and her roommates in Cleveland. Sveta has hosted several couchsurfers and couchsurfed herself for 2 weeks in Scotland.
1st photo: Evelyn by day, Rogue Cheddar skating for the Hard Knockers by night.
2nd photo: Bettie Shocker and Margarita Mayhem skating for the Rolling Pin-Ups.
3rd and 4th photos: Devoted fans.
More info on Cleveland Roller Derby at www.burningriverrollergirls.com
Out and About… Canandaigua Lake, NY
Photo by Ryan
One of the challenges with using an extremely wide-angle lens, like the semi-fisheye I used here, is that the lens must be extremely close to the subject for it to fill a significant portion of the frame. This can be rather awkward when the subject is a person to whom you haven’t been introduced yet. My face was less than a foot from the tattooed and sunburnt back pictured above, but I don’t think he noticed me since I’m about a foot shorter than him.
Out and About… Brooklyn, NY
Photo by Ryan
A fisheye lens provides you with a certain level of stealthiness not found when using typical camera lenses. Since the field of view is almost a full 180 degrees, you can capture objects and people that assume they’re standing well out of the picture. In this photo, taken on the Brooklyn Bridge, the woman with the tattoo was standing almost directly to the right of my camera, yet she still appears on the very edge of the 180 degree view.
Incidentally, if you rearrange the letters in Brooklyn Bridge, it spells “Dork Nibble Orgy”.
Out and About….Washington, D.C.
Every year swing dancers from all over the country come to town for the D.C. Lindy Exchange, aka DCLX. The outdoor dances are my favorites, because this stuff is too much fun to keep in dance studios and ballrooms. Take it to the streets, I say.
I caught Cole (sp?) chilling by a lamp post. She and her friend Caroline were visiting from Seattle. I never would have noticed the three tiny raindrops on Caroline’s ear if Cole hadn’t pointed them out to me. Even better, they match the light blue in her hair.
Out and About…Washington, DC
Seriously, this place is like a circus. Last time it was fire dancers, this time hula hoopers. All with tattoos. I love it!
Out and About… Miami, FL
Photo by Ryan
While speed-walking through the Miami airport on my way to Panama, I spotted this guy already sitting in the perfect pose for a tattoo-related photo. He didn’t speak English and, since I’m an American, I only speak English, so we communicated with a succession of grunts and hand gestures combined with much pointing, and after a fairly lengthy game of charades, he realized that I wanted to take his picture. Since he had moved from his already perfect pose in order to play charades with me, I had him reassemble himself and quickly took this shot. And just to clarify, speed-walking, my chosen mode of propelling myself at the time, is something people tend to do in settings like airports, bus stations, or the mall if they’re a senior citizen and it’s ridiculously early in the morning, or the tampon aisle at the grocery store if they’re male and their wife/girlfriend sent them on “an errand”.
Out and About… Panama Viejo, Panama
Photo by Ryan
Panama Viejo, the historic colonial section of Panama City, Panama, was abandoned in 1671 after being sacked by Captain Morgan. Interestingly, although Captain Morgan violated a peace treaty by attacking the city and was arrested and brought to England, he somehow proved that he “didn’t know there was a treaty”, and was instead knighted and became Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. I was in Panama City for my friend Brett’s wedding which was held in the abandoned convent in the background. You may have to look closely, but there is indeed a tattoo in this photo.
Out and About…Washington, DC
Today was a freakishly warm Sunday, which meant that the drum circle made a rare February appearance in Meridian Hill Park. As usual, the drumming brought out other sorts of performers, too. The fire-dancing-hula-hooping contingent was out in full force.
Sadly, they brought only practice gear, which does not involve flames. In fact, these poi looked suspiciously like stripey socks stuffed with bean bags. It was still really cool to watch.
Photos by Kira
Out and About…Inauguration in DC
Photo and notes by Kira
This is Crystal, a firefighter from Washington state. It was the biggest party weekend Washington, DC, will ever see, and we were at the Green Ball, where Al Gore and Will.i.am got about the same volume of shrieks. We became fast friends in the flailing mass of formalwear right in front of the stage.
Crystal was beside herself with excitement at Melissa Etheridge’s surprise appearance, and was calling home for about the eighteenth time to say something on the order of, “Sweetie, you are sooooo jealous!!”
Out and About… Boca Raton, FL
Photos and notes by Ryan
What can I say about Samantha? Not much, since we just met. She has a sweet apartment in Boca Raton which offers “roof access” if you’re not afraid of heights or climbing out windows. I know her boyfriend quite well, so I suppose I could say something about him in an effort to expand this paragraph. He surfs, snowboards, is decent on the drums and with nunchaku (numchucks, for you numbskulls), and is dating a girl named Samantha.
Out and About… Canandaigua, NY
Photos and notes by Ryan
I spotted the tattoo on Nicole’s left wrist when her boyfriend introduced her to me, so I casually mentioned TattooProject to her. I’m glad I did, as she turned out to have several unique tattoos and was more than willing to let me photograph them for art’s sake. In fact, she went as far as to say “thanks for letting me participate in your creative endeavor.” I was flattered.
Out and about… Halloween in Flint, NY
Photo and notes by Ryan
It’s actually possible to hold your breath for the entire time it takes to drive through Flint, NY. If you take a deep breath at the “Now Entering Flint” sign, you will, without a doubt, make it to the “Now Leaving Flint” sign. Don’t worry about getting stuck at a traffic light… there aren’t any. Therefore, you really can’t blame those who live in a town such as Flint for taking Halloween this seriously, can you?