These are from a trip up to Portland January 2024; we went up to see our friends Sam and Kate. I know I said the Driftwood pics were soon, but they’re not quite ready. I need to show them to some people before I can let them out the door. Anyway, this trip.
The air from the plane was, for some reason, super clear; it feels like it’s never this good. I took a bunch of photos out of the window on the way, and really liked this one.
I’m also not at all sure where the light in this photo was coming from. Maybe the city? Maybe another city, like Sac? No idea.
It was supposed to be a nice and simple little weekend jaunt. Go up, drink some wine, eat delicious food, and fly home. We got there, and it started snowing over night; by 10 in the morning the power had gone out and the whole city was basically shut down. We had cheese and crackers and wrapped ourselves in blankets, trying not to freeze. Sam made Caccio e Pepe for dinner, and I realized I was starving. I had been reading Moby Dick all day, got through the first lowering, and that’s where I still am in that book. Somehow, reading it while stuck in on a cold winter’s day was right, and since then the mood hasn’t struck me. I do love that if you just read the first several chapters, it’s a buddy comedy between Ishmael and Queequeg. Nothing bad could happen to our buddies, right?
Anyway. The power came on in the night and the house warmed up; we were all able to shower and charge our devices back to full when we woke up in the morning. Then we went wine tasting in downtown Portland. Neat place, big Burgundies. All the waiters could do this neat trick with the stacked glasses that apparently everyone that comes in has to get a picture of. Yes, I am also guilty.
And then that night, I decided to walk a little bit around the neighborhood. I think I was nominally searching for an open store to sell me a soda or gatorade, but really it was a little cabin fever and a need to move around a bit. Hard to sit still.
Posted by matt on 2025-04-11T08:39:27Z GMT
Here is one of the ways doing photography the way I do is worse than just sharing the pictures on instagram on the day: these were photos from Jeff’s birthday gathering over a year ago. Some stuff is timeless and important and some stuff is just friends gathering for nice drinks. I think they also went out to the bar after this but even at this point I wasn’t drinking, so we demured and I think I drove home? Anyway.
I probably need a system for like, knowing if something is super important or not, because having year old pics just now getting published is a little embarrassing. On the other hand, at least I’m getting there eventually.
I do have a reason for starting to get these out. There’s only so much time, and dying with thousands of unpublished photos couldn’t be me. No sir. No Vivian Maier here.
Many more posts coming. Like a lot.
Posted by matt on 2025-04-07T08:39:23Z GMT
OK so, the setup is this: one night party, setup saturday, strike sunday morning after a few hours sleep. Completely transform an office waiting room into a lounge/dance floor/art space for the duration of the party. We brought in rugs and cushions, projectors, lights, big fabric hanging bits, art from previous iterations of the party, and a dozen or so cool people.
There was also the matter of the music; DJ OTHA (also known as Joseph, the man in the fetching hat) spun like a 4 hour set after opener Vizlicious. Joseph’s marathon sets are always pretty awesome, but this one was really special: https://soundcloud.com/josephotha/joseph-otha-live-drop-party-2024.
I think that’s all? Except to say: dang I’m a lucky dude. Just having all these incredibly kind, creative people around me is really awesome.
Posted by matt on 2025-04-06T05:25:38Z GMT
This was last year, the night before the Drop Party (those pics are on deck). Had one of my once-a-month cigars with friends (which I’ve since quit altogether, because of the transplant requirements). Went over to some friends’ back yard, I think I’d met them once before at some other LoveLab function (the dinner? Drift? something) and it was a nice relaxing evening.
Just posting these because they’re nice and easy. Drop Party is on deck, I just need to make the final edits.
Posted by matt on 2025-04-05T08:33:20Z GMT
these photos were taken a couple weeks ago now, at a weekly dance party that started back in 2020 called Days Like This. Friday night, 5-9:30, just impeccable vibes. really great fun. The first couple were from before, we went to Coach and had sushi before dancing.
despite the fact that the break dancing is the majority of the pictures here, it only really lasted a couple songs. We got to the party late, around 8ish, danced for a while, and then I took a bunch of pictures. I found myself screwing around with the focus modes, trying to find the right one. I think I landed on the 3d-tracking mode? Honestly modern AF is black magic to me, and I’m probably going to spend a little time learning it, because it’s a neat trick to have when the situation arises. 8 frames a second doesn’t hurt, either.
I am woefully behind on editing photos, I still haven’t gotten through the stuff from Driftwood and that was back in August. Had something of a block about it, unfortunately. The photo sets are large and mean a lot to me so I want to get them right (whatever that means) and so I want to do them when I have time to just sit with them but I never do; there’s no increment of time large enough to really digest that many photos into a coherent set.
I am making progress, though. I have a method I think of as the ‘bangers only’ method. When I’m doing my initial selects, I do a pass and bring anything that might work once I’ve punched it up a bit, and then I do a pass toning all of those (global exposure, white balance, etc) and then often this is where my process stalls. I’ll have 60 or 100 photos in a collection, from several days of work, and I’ll have to choose from those, and I just can’t say no to any of them.
That’s where the next step comes in; I have to say ‘yes’ to the picture to get it past this step. No ‘maybe’, no ‘if I squint’, just the ones that are definitely good by my judgement. That usually helps. I got this set down from 50 to 15 in like five minutes (it helped that there were a couple blurry sequences and obvious winners in there). Driftwood 2024, the edit went from 120 to 49 very quickly. I need to do this for the Retreat photos as well, and then hopefully I’ll have both of those posts out soonish. I’m also thinking about doing a book? Maybe? DW 2024 and Retreat 2025. Maybe.
Posted by matt on 2025-04-02T09:12:08Z GMT
