The Coachella Experience
I could ramble on and on about how great Coachella was, bore you with the awesome stories, and put you through reading past my horrible grammar, but I won't do that. Instead I'll just do bullet points about some highlights and such. Oh, also some pictures!
- Just go! Do it! You know you want to!
- I was lobbying to camp but was overruled by Laura & my friends and put into a hotel... I love them for this! Waking up with a great breakfast, spending my mornings at the pool, then heading over to the festival in the afternoon on a shuttle was great... especially in 100 degree heat. I love camping and some may say camping is part of the festival, that was my thought, but screw that because the hotel rocked.
- Free water!
- There's music for everyone: Rock, Rap, House, 80's aerobic sounding Euro music (which rocked!), it's all there... I even heard a nice jazz set from the great Jeff Goldblum.
- Yes, that Jeff Goldblum. Thank you twitter for this one! Funny or Die put on an impromptu jazz set, starring Jeff Goldblum on piano, in the camping area on Saturday. There was maybe twenty people around for the whole sixty-minute set. In-between songs we all played the movie/actor game... He was really damn good at it. He even had people from the crowd come up and sing some songs. It rocked and he was pretty hilarious.
- I spent three days under the desert sun and left Monday morning without getting sunburned! I'm really proud of myself for this one,
- Being there made me realize how big this thing is. It's a worldwide event and that adds so much to the experience. I meat numerous people from Canada, England, Australia, Asia, Mexico, and some other countries that I just couldn't figure out where the accent was from.
- You have to watch out for (stupid?) people with hula-hoops. I really can't stand that girl who hit me in the face with hers. I really wish I could have thrown that thing to an area she couldn't get to... maybe next time.
- Don't try and see every single band you want to see. I tried this on Friday and it's just not possible. Saturday and Sunday went much smoother when I just went with the flow and didn't rush around from stage-to-stage every half hour. Enjoy each set and maybe you will find some new music... I sure did.
- I really enjoyed every part of this festival.
- The whole festival was surprisingly organized.
- Leaving at 1/2am every night was weird/funny because they had floodlights shining on the dirt paths back to the parking lot. With everyone leaving it looked like a scene from Children of Men or some zombie flick.
- Celebrities were around all weekend and Laura "paparazzi" Hughes was all over this. From Hilary Duff, Rihanna, David Hasselhoff, cast of Always Sunny, Chapelle, Usher, Paris Hilton, Eric from Tim & Eric, and Shaun White, Laura had her camera ready.
- Every person I talked to was extremely nice... Especially the time when I lost my sunglasses in the middle of a crowd, during Mumford & Sons. After I noticed that I lost them, I walked around in the dark, with a phone light, looking on the ground for my glasses. Couldn't find them anywhere! About an hour later a girl taps me on my shoulder and hands me my glasses!!! I just couldn't believe that this girl went looking for me, just to give me back my sunglasses. It just really blew my mind how nice she was to do this.
- I won't name my favorite set or anything, I just enjoyed every second I was there.
I'm know I'm missing a lot of other details about the weekend. I could probably right a novel about everything I saw.
Well here are some photos taken throughout Coachella. These were all taken with a Canon p&s and an Iphone since I did not bring my dslr with me. Enjoy!
This last one is Lauras work. Like I said earlier, Laura was the paparazzi queen this weekend. She's so grand. Can you name all the celebs that she captured?
Baseball
I love it... Baseball that is. It's the greatest game ever created. From the home runs, to the perfect game, to my favorite thing... the double steal, there's nothing more entertaining to me than baseball. I could watch/listen to baseball everyday, and during the season I do. The month of March for me is dedicated to watching as many baseball movies as possible. As I write this I'm watching Ken Burns documentary about baseball called 'Ken Burns: Baseball." If you are a baseball stat nut, like myself, twitter is your best friend during the season because all the beat-writes and stat-geeks fill your stream with stats, that a lot of the time you have no idea why are even kept in the first place.
Living in San Diego right now, it's tough for me to watch Phillies games but fortunately for technology there's these neat little programs called apps. MLB At-Bat is by far my favorite app on my phone and I am able to listen to a majority of the 162 Phillies games played in a season bescause of it. Yes, I could get MLB.tv but the Phils games are usually in the 8th inning by the time I get home, so spending the $120 on a program I would rarely get a chance to use just doesn't make much sense.
Walk around Philadelphia and ask anyone what they were doing on October 29th, 2008 and they will probably tell you their story about how they witnessed the Phillies win the World Series. I was downtown, just a few blocks from broad street with a group of friends, just waiting for Brad Lidge to record the third out so we could all run out the door and and join in the celebration with thousands of other fans on Broad.
I posted these photos around the same time last year, but with baseball season just beginning, I can't help but post them again since they are a reminder of one of the greatest experiences of my life. I also wish I could take credit for the first photo but I really can't do that, even though it was on my camera the next morning. My good friend Jon took this photo with my camera while I was down on the street, on top of a phone booth, too busy banging on a street sign, with my camera bag filled with empty beer cans.
Photo Drought
So the past two weeks have been pretty slow on the photo front for me. Not sure why, but I just haven't had my camera in my hand as much as I would have liked. With an eventful April coming up I'm sure I will have new photos every night of the month, which will make up for this slow end to March. I could blame work or the weather for not having my camera turned on, but I won't bother doing that and will just blame myself.
A few weeks ago, a client at my office said she looks forward to coming in and looking at my pictures. She said, "It brightens her day and inspires her." I, of course, said thank you and went along with my day, but kept thinking how she said my photos inspired her. Really? That could be the greatest compliment I have ever received! So, for the past few weeks I've been wondering to myself, "What photos inspire me?"
Since there hasn't been any photos to post, I figured I would share with everyone some of the sites that have given me inspiration over the past few years. There's a mix of landscape and wedding photography below. The first site is a daily visit for me. It is a great place to go for anything that has to do with photography, whether you are an amateur or a professional. Without them knowing it, these photographers push me to continue to take pictures and constantly try new styles of photography. Maybe some of these sites will inspire you as well.
Enjoy!
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/
http://www.theimageisfound.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrick-smith-photography/