Tags:   7.14.07 polaroid polaroid 680 rutabegabunny light painting rebecca's house lou o' bedlam louobedlam.com Lou Noble portrait

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Style. Julia's got it in spades. I've done my best to eliminate style from my wardrobe, it's all black shirts and the blue dickies that are provided gratis by work. A black American Apparel jacket if the cold picks up. Same pair of sneakers every day as well. It's a dash of Einstein, too busy/lazy to "decide" what to wear every day, a bit of not wanting to engage in the eternal struggle of Being Cool that is one of the staples of my home town.

But Julia, she revels in the chance to show what she's all about, what her aesthetic is, and in SF, which in many ways is a rougher place to dress well, as I believe you've got to do an even more authentic job of showing off your personality, and less of just Looking Cool. The girl can dress, and it was a constant joy to see what she'd come up with day to day.

Oh, by the by, it's 5am and raining, the water is pitter-pattering outside my window in complete darkness, and there's something very quietly awesome about that, under cover of night, the rain sneaks out, gone I'm sure by the time the sun pops up. "Don't let anyone know, but it rains in LA." Julia's expression here is a "oh, does it, Lou?" face.

Tags:   6.30.07 polaroidnerdout san francisco miamizeiss polaroid polaroid 680 portrait cock that eyebrow!!! STYLE lou o' bedlam louobedlam.com Lou Noble

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These two are THE team. They been going on little photo nerd outs since before i even started meeting flickr folk, they just stepped into all the various scenes we hit, pre-shoot huddle, and got to work, posing for each other, no shame or pride, doing what it took to get continually excellent photos. Friendship means never having to say "sorry, but i'll need you to climb down into that huge hole in the ground and take off your shirt so that i can get this shot right."

Tags:   7.1.07 polaroidnerdout polaroid polaroid 680 san francisco miamizeiss polaroidjesus lou o' bedlam louobedlam.com Lou Noble portrait

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Sunday was a trip out to the Salton Sea, a man made lake an hour east of Palm Springs. The whole story of the Sea is long and dull, but the bullet points are thus:
-it used to be home to a big resort town
-it's now mostly abandoned, as the sea became, over the years overly salinated & polluted, causing algae booms that make the whole sea smell like dead bodies.
-that algae is also responsible for huge fish die-offs, which leads to hundreds of dead fish periodically washing up on the shore.
-it is awesome in its sense of ruin.

So a bunch of us drove out, played around in the abandoned buildings, crawled around in the dead cars, tried not to vomit up everything we'd eaten in the past week.

Oh, and it was also 100 degrees in the shade.

Good times.

This is Kim a good hour into our field trip, at which point we were all dripping with sweat. It was actually cooler inside the abandoned, bird poo-filled hotel rooms.

Tags:   7.22.07 Salton Sea Kim polaroid polaroid 680 portrait lou o' bedlam louobedlam.com Lou Noble

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Best Viewed Large!!!

This is it right here, this is why I rode in Drew's car for four hours. A car without a radio, people. Next to Jena, THE WHOLE TIME. I endured all that, just so I could see something like this.

I assumed the smell, the horrific, hobo power of 42 smell, was the dead fish. It wasn't until I went home and did a spot of research that I discovered that the smell, the smell of rotting flesh covered in roasted guts, is actually enormous amounts of algae. Algae, folks.

What I still can't quite figure out is, if there's all these dead fish, if the algae and pollution and salt content of the sea are strong enough to kill this many fish, how come there are still living fish IN the Salton Sea!?!?

Oh, and this was not an easy shot. It's not regular beach and then dead fish. No, there's a part of the beach, the part right up against the water, that is dead fish bones and barnacles. Half way onto it, I was sure it was like quicksand, and I was soon to be devoured by this fishy cemetery. Jena was close behind, and I warned her off, hoping that in saving her, she could warn others, that my sacrifice would not be in vain.

Needless to say, wasn't swallowed by the fish bones. But I am still digging barnacles out of my shoes.

Tags:   7.22.07 Salton Sea polaroid polaroid 680 dead fish for EVERYONE!!! lou o' bedlam louobedlam.com not people Lou Noble portrait

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