The Ridges of Coos Bay

Bonnie's aunt and uncle visited over the holiday weekend with their three children. We were all excited to meet the newborn, Liam.

Don't Let My Insurance Company See This

After the corporate photos taken the day before, Brittany and I shot some of the team members of Busse Design, here in the Bart Nagel studio. Nicole, one of their contractors brought along her pyro-kit and demonstrated a smoke detector test everyone should try.

I TAKE CORPORATE PHOTOS

LAST WEEK
I photographed Russell Hancock for Corporate Board Member Magazine, for an article that Bonnie wrote on Silicon Valley rising again. Brittany and Heide assisted on this one, and it goes to show that Silicon Valley keeps us all employed—and we reinvest our profits back in the Silicon Valley by buying iPods and Powerbooks.

Another one for Erika to stalk

Yes, it's Miranda July. I photographed her in 1996 for the last issue of Mondo 2000—which was never published, four years short of the expiration date. You can read Heide's interview with her at:
Miranda July interviewed in 1996 by Heide Foley

Miranda has some stuff for you to do:
Learning to Love You More

Beauty from ze Beast

I have to put together a portfolio with lots of lovely women in it to show a potential client in the skin care business. So I'm gathering up the creme de la creme ...brulée
avec moi

ce soir.

Here we have the beautiful Bonnichiwa, mio Eswifé, as we say in the fake Esperanto business.













And the wonderful Andrea Gaston, a favorite model of mine from the Arizona days. Bella modella.






And now here's schöne mädchen Patricia

The Boys of Fusion

This photo was taken for the Berkeley College of Engineering alumni mag Forefront. That's Per Peterson in the foreground with grad student Grant to the left with Robert and Atam in the background. This was my attempt at a CSI sort of group shot. These boys rock the atomic world.

In this test shot Heide and Brittany stepped in to test lighting and composition—that's Heide on the right and left, dual Brittanys in the middle.

Here's a shot of good pal Mark Pontin, the writer for the story.

Missed the shot of the delightful Nancy Bronstein. Nancy, I owed you lunch before—now there'll be dessert, too!

H2Offal

Zach Bjornson-Hooper: I just photographed this very bright high school senior yesterday for Edutopia Magazine. A few years ago on a trip to Australia and New Zealand he took water samples from the nine flights he was on and discovered seven of the samples were contaminated with E. coli, fecal coliform or salmonella, one contained insect eggs.

This is why I drink Bloody Marys on all my flights.





















I knew there was a reason.

Dueling Lutists

So you know I used to make guitars, a craft called lutherie, because guitar-making descended from lute-making. Now you know that too.


In October of 1980 my friends Paul Hallowell and Jeff Hixson—the fabulous rythym section of Band X, the group I used to mix sound for—and I, drove to L.A. from Phoenix to see Yes perform on the Drama tour. I carried with me a set of plans to make a unique electric guitar for Steve Howe who I had photographed two years before at the Sportpaleis Ahoy in Rotterdam. I don't remember if we'd bought tickets, but my usual ploy to get into concerts for free was to hang around the stage door before the afternoon soundcheck and offer to help the roadies load in equipment. Paul, Jeff and I lounged around in the grass behind the L.A. Memorial Sports Arena with a good view of arriving vehicles, waiting for our moment. Soon enough Steve Howe arrived alone in the back of a limo. He recognized me (or feared our frantic waving) and had the limo driver stop to pick us up for the 90 yard ride to the stage entrance. We were escorted in and received our ACCESS ALL AREAS badges
and drank the crew's Heinekens in the hospitality room, earning scowls from road manager Jim Halley. While Steve changed strings and tuned up to a dozen or more instruments I showed him the guitar plans. Unenthusiastic, he kindly commented that he had a ton of guitars, but what he'd really like was an electric lute.

It took me almost a year to research, design and build an electric lute (I was still a full-time camera salesman at Guild Camera) and I built it entirely on spec since I didn't know if it was a viable instrument. When it was finished Marian and I flew to London with the lute in a hand made case that looked remarkably like a baby's coffin. I didn't declare it with Customs, and they didn't ask—a good policy I think, for lutes at least—not dead babies. I phoned up Steve and he came round to our hotel and sampled the lute. He wanted to spend time with it before deciding to purchase it and it meant spending a couple of evenings with Steve and his wonderful wife Jan dining out... and dining in... listening to Django Reinhardt on the groovy stereo and viewing his huge guitar collection and recording studio.
I've been in touch with Steve lately and he still has the lute. He's never played it on stage, because probably it's not a very good electric lute. But it's still the ONLY electric lute I know of.


In the dueling lute photo, Steve plays the part of Ronny Cox and I play the in-bred hillbilly.


Only with much less musical talent.

Viva Zappa!

I was trolling through the archives again today and came across these photos: Frank Zappa with a guitar I made from a Gibson SG body. It features a new handmade neck and mother of pearl inlays, there are 23 frets instead of the usual 22 (proof that it's not a Gibson neck!) I also added a star to dot the "i" in the Gibson logo on the headstock. The body has bookmatched rosewood and ebony inlays in the front and back.
He bought it from me for $600 before his show at the Celebrity Theatre in Phoenix on July 17th 1974 (Tom Waits was the opening act). He gave me cash the next day when I came back to meet him for breakfast.
I'd heard later on that it was his favorite guitar, and he kept it even after an airline broke it in transit. According to my friend Eric White it is now in the collection of Dweezil Zappa.
The second photo--well that's the younger me with the maestro himself. These photos were taken some time in1980.
By the way: there's nothing funny about this post. Nothing.





Still nothing.