It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything here, and I’m so glad I was offered a compelling opportunity to start again…

I met Audie 4 years ago during a permaculture retreat in Costa Rica.  We stayed friends over the years and she was one of a few wonderful people who helped provide a soft landing pad for me when I arrived in Portland.  Kino and I didn’t know each other well, though we have found a lot of common ground between us to grow our friendship from over the last few years.  In the end, it was Kino’s idea to ask me to photograph their wedding this September.

I hadn’t been the official photographer at a wedding since many moons ago, and at first I was a little worried if I was really up to the challenge after so much time out of the game, and I questioned whether my eyes and intuition were as sharp as they used to be.

Well, I’ve already graded myself on this wedding, and now I wanted to share some of the photos with others as well.  Enjoy…

Rehearsal went smoothly.

Onto the wedding…

Well, that was a good one.

Earlier in the summer, my friends and I started a video project based
around the concept of a man returning to the mountains to seek out
the Gods and Goddesses that lived amongst them.

It proved to be harder to execute than we anticipated.

I shot a lot of video, and couldn’t help but take a bunch of photos as well.

Amanda is a photographer, so we asked her to help us film some parts of it.
Amanda is also beautiful, so we asked her if she would be in front of the camera as well.

She said yes.

The idea was to have her represent the energy of a Fire Goddess.

I recently went thru these photos from July, and finally took the time to
edit a few.  Seeing these now, I wish I had spent more time taking
photos of her.  She looks damn good.

Maybe there will be a next time for more photos.

Tight on time and with little light, this is what we shot.

The amount of effort it take to get to Burning Man every year
seems to increase.  This year I had virtually zero time to prepare,
a third of my camp got scammed when buying tickets, and
I could feel I wasn’t in the right mental space at the start of the week.

My burn this year felt like it went by way too fast.

The days just slipped by, like my foot was grounded to the accelerator.

The nites were super cold, and I was exhausted for almost all of them.

But my heart stayed open for this whole week.

I’m always grateful for the people I meet.

For ten minutes.

For a day.

For longer.

Thank you for keeping me coming back.

Thank you for making this festival what it is to me.

There are a lot of photos here.

Here we go.

Harvey (the RV) loves to challenge us.  Thomas evaluates the situation.

Waiting out the traffic by crushing potato salad.

Mer.

Cody.

Harry.

Kevin makes his entrance as a virgin.

Hayden and Ky.

Our dome at nite.  Complete with bar, DJ, lasers, and snow making machine.

Zach.

Noah.

Kevin.

 Brenna.

Couch potato nite.

Hammock tower.

Anna.

Maya.

Joey.  That’s me. 

These girls were wonderful.  I wish I saw them again.

Best hat.

Robot Heart at sunrise. 

Zach.  Aka St. Terrible.

Playing a show at The Man.

Mer and Allie.

Christina.

Those eyes tho.

Sunrise.

Friendship.

Also friendship.

Lani.

I run into this stunning woman everywhere.

The first time at the burn in 2011.

Again at the burn in 2013.

And in Costa Rica in 2014.

There’s something special about her.

And probably more than one thing.

Sun worshipper.  

This guy and I had a connection from afar.

Respect the beard.  

Another Robot Heart Sunrise.

This flirt.

Can’t remember her name.

But she was fun.

Elizabeth.

Jordy.  Chillin.

My Little Pony Panty Party.

The perks of having a well prepared nurse as part of our camp.

IV drips when needed.  

Photos from a performance at Dragonfly Den.

River.

Zach and I went romping around in the white out dust storm.

We got lost.

And took some photos.

Kat and Harry.

The Temple.

This guy made some freakin’ cool music.

Before I got to Burning Man, I reached out to River, who I follow on Instagram.

She had posted that she would be at the burn.  I asked her if we could get together
to take some photos.  I ended up seeing her a few times that week.

We decided to get out and shoot on Friday afternoon.

Friday afternoon ended up being the coldest, windiest, dustiest afternoon I
have ever experienced at Burning Man.

The conditions were not ideal for keeping one’s eyes open, let alone attempt
to do any sort of photo shoot.

But we did it anyway.

River was a lot of fun, and had a real lively energy about her.  I was really
glad to meet her.  She brought along her friend Sabrina as well, who
I was happy was there – she made a really nice addition to the shoot.

I just wish I had more time and less brutal conditions with the two of them to shoot and play.

Maybe next time.

Here’s what we got.

Our camp.  9:30 and H.

A dusty Joey.

Until next year.  I hope.

-JoeySee

I invited Koby and Joni back to my parents’ house on Long Island during their NYC
visit in January.  Not to brag, but my mom and dad are pretty rad.  And they love
having company over, especially when that company is friends of mine or my brother’s.

Dad cooked up some bangarang pasta and meatballs, I’m pretty sure we had some
delicious dessert, and we vegged out on the couches and talked and stayed cozy
and warm, protected from the winter outside.

Koby made it known that she and Joni had never seen snow in real life.

We hadn’t had much snow up to that point in the winter, but I saw some light snow
forecasted for the very next morning.  It was only a 50% chance of precipitation though,
so I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up.

I woke up early the next morning to find a familiar cloudy grey sky and world of white
outside.  Success!  It had snowed… although it was very dry snow, and there was only about
an inch of it on the ground.

Not the most exciting snow storm for an experienced New Yorker, but at least it was something!

I lightly knocked on the door to the room where the girls were sleeping.

No response.

I opened the door and found them both sound asleep.

I considered letting them stay asleep, but I decided that was a dumb idea.

I went over to Koby and touched her arm lightly.

“Koby…”

“Mm…”

“It’s snowing outside.”

What followed next made me wish like hell I had video rolling at that point.

The half-catatonic Koby shot up in the bed, wide-eyed, open mouthed, and let out
a gasp of pure shock combined with uncontained and genuine excitement.

She was dressed literally within 8 seconds, boots and all.

Joni would not be roused just yet.

Koby and I entered into the lightly dusted world outside.

Snow Angels followed.

My brother Andrew and I decided it would be a stellar idea to take Koby and Joni to Jones Beach.

Because if you can’t be at the beach in summer, you might as well enjoy it in the winter.

And it was really, really beautiful.

The beach was awash in thick fog, and all around us was white.

The sliver of tan sand and mass of dark cerulean ocean were the only features in
this otherwise featureless world we had entered into.

I had never seen anything like it.

And I loved it.

And Koby and Joni… let’s meet up again in real life, soon.

-JoeySee

As of late, I’ve been spending a lot of time reflecting on people and things I’m grateful
for in my life.  It has been an incredibly rewarding process, and right now, I’d like
to share one small chapter in this book of gratitude my heart is writing.

I’ve written before in this blog about my impulse to seek out a woman who passed
by my subconscious twice in the desert of Burning Man. I wrote an update on that post
about catching up with Koby months later while on a hitch hiking road trip throughout
the west coast of the USA.

Koby was back in the states this past year, and we caught up via phone in November.
I was staying in Portland at the time, and I think she was somewhere in California.
She mentioned she would be flying to the mid-atlantic coast at some point in January.
This intrigued me because I would also be on the east coast during that time.  I invited
her out to NYC on a whim, not expecting her to be able to make it, since she already
had plans in place.  She told me she would look into flights and see what she found.

A note for all you travel bugs out there.

Flying into NYC, Newark, or Philadelphia will almost always be cheaper than flying into
any other city on the mid or north east coast.  This is great news for me when I want people to visit.
Koby found this out when she did her research.  She would save almost $400 by
flying to NY instead of her original destination.

I was stoked when she called me to tell me she and our friend Joni decided to pay NYC
a visit.  They’d never been there, and though January isn’t the ideal time to visit New York,
I promised them a great few days.

After some early morning mishaps on the day of their departure, including missing their flight
from California, my friend Flounder and I picked them up at Newark airport in a borrowed
car (Thanks Sam) in the miserably cold, sleeting, east coast winter weather.

Then the adventures began.

Photos from January 2015

Williamsburg waterfront.

Poetry in the streets.

Flounder then purchased all of us pickle backs.  Spicy pickle backs.

Bartender: “Do you want the monkey bowl?”

Flounder: “Yep.”

Joni: “What’s the monkey bowl?”

Flounder: “I have no idea.”

Crocodile Lounge.  Where each beer comes with a mini-pizza.

Quick breakfast.

The next day we hopped on the Staten Island Ferry.  It was really windy and cold.

Friendship continued the next day.  To be continued on the next blog post…

-JoeySee

It would be an understatement to say that I have talented friends.

Yet I’m always blown away when I find out how far down that rabbit hole goes.

Some friends of mine from the University of Delaware have been designing
incredible clothes for the past few years.  I’ve never seen anything quite like what they’ve made.
I’ve wanted to do a simple fashion shoot with them for a while now.  Last May, I found myself
in Brooklyn and had the opportunity to shoot some of these unique clothes in motion.

Check out the website for Tilly & William here.

The fantastic Nellie Blue was on hand and just killed it on the modeling front.

The light set up was one medium softbox directly overhead, pointing straight down,
a few inches in front of Nellie.  It turned out to be quite an effective set up for what I wanted.

Here are some of the shots from the day.

-JoeySee

]]> http://joeysee.com/blog/2014/11/tilly-william-feat-nellie-blue/feed/ 0 http://joeysee.com/blog/2014/10/hiking-with-marie/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hiking-with-marie http://joeysee.com/blog/2014/10/hiking-with-marie/#respond Mon, 27 Oct 2014 20:42:29 +0000 http://joeysee.com/blog/?p=3414 NOTE: the images in this feed have been downsized or removed for copyright reasons. To see them in their unmodified state, please view the original post by clicking here.

When I visit the east coast, I like to squeeze in all the fun and see all the people
I can manage in my short time there.  In the summer of 2013 I spent a few days shooting
this music video with the supremely talented Mree.  She was so much fun to be around
that I wanted to be sure she was one of the people I took the time to make plans
with when I visited this past summer.

In June, we went up to Harriman State Park to go hiking.  We got a wee bit lost trying
to find our way to the trail head, saw a monster snake right in front of us on
the actual trail, unexpectedly scared off what was most likely a black bear as we were
turning a corner, blew bubbles, had a lesson in portraiture with lens flares, ate
a tasty dinner, and then I was fortunate enough to hear some of the new songs
she was working on at the time during our ride back to the city.

It was a beautiful adventure day.  Here are some photos from it.

There’s that monster snake we came across.

WHAT IS IT??

Let’s dissect it and find out!

We still don’t know what it is!

That tree is adorable.  

Glorious Marie.

Contemplative Marie.  

She nailed it behind the camera!  Eventually.  

That was a fun day.  Let’s go on another adventure!

-JoeySee

Finally got around to editing this spur of the moment shoot with Kyleigh.

Shot back in August, just off the road here in Idaho.

I would love to find time to do more of this.

Where is the time?

-JoeySee