NUANCES

Free Track downloads for Purity Ring's new 7"

2011-04-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

Purity Ring’s new Ungirthed 7” released on Transparent. Edition of 300. You can pick one up Here (These might be worth alot in a year or two)

Lofticries is the excellent B-side to Ungirthed.

Both make use of driving, shadowy beats and ghost vocals, a microtrend among electronic bands like Burial, James Blake, Four Tet etc. Article about ghosting

here

Both tracks are free downloads. Enjoy, and buy the vinyl!

1.Ungirthed

2. Lofticries

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Whats up Next: Developing a Roll of film from the lomo-camera, Summer, vinyl collection, Video from Barcelona + more

Cold War Kids/Tokyo police Club Jacksonville Tour dates!

2010-12-03T19:32:00.000-08:00

In the next two months, COLD WAR KIDS and TOKYO POLICE CLUB are going to be playing in Jacksonville. Its really exciting not having to drive out of this city to see a good show.

Don't miss these shows! They are a rare thing in our city.

Cold War Kids play at Freebird Live this coming wednesday. opening act is The Cave Singers

Tokyo Police Club plays at Jackrabbits January 29th (sat) 2011. unknown opening act, but they've been touring with Two Door Cinema Club lately.

Both Freebird live and jackrabbits venues use etix to sell their tickets online, here are direct links to save you time.
Buy Cold War Kids Tickets here

Buy Tokyo Police Club Tickets here

Haven't heard of these bands before?

Here is a selection of their greatest tracks to get you acquainted.

Hang Me Up to Dry is the Cold War Kids classic song. Very raw, with great rhythmic guitar.

For Tokyo Police Club, Bambi from their upcoming album, Champ

Things to do in Jacksonville for the Cultured Traveler

2010-11-13T15:03:00.000-08:00

(Statue @ memorial park)
Jacksonville isn't the most cosmopolitan city in the world but has its share of treasures that give it character.
I.
Cummer Museum
-Variety of art, including Egyptian sculptures, Norman Rockwell pieces, and a beautiful garden out back.
Free admission for students Tues through Thurs after 4.
Picnic at Memorial Park
-close to the Cummer Museum in 5points, good for picnics, vista out to the river, designed by the same man who planned Central Park.
Tibetan meditation on Saturday mornings at 10 am (address here)
Riverside Arts Market (Saturday mornings only)
-Arts market that has exploded in popularity lately. lots of interesting food/wares like locally farmed honey, timo wallets and art pieces.
Museum of Contemporary Art
- Located downtown right next to the Main Library hosts traveling exhibits such as the Marilyn Monroe exhibition, has a couple of B side Picasso's, childrens area on the 5th floor. Always free for college students. Check out the beautiful Main library while you're at it, have a relaxing read on the terrace.
Art Walk
- Art event that brings most of downtown Jax to life on the First Wednesday of every month. A must see if you haven't gone. Free admission to MOCA during art walk. live bands, artists set up everywhere, including the old location of the main library. More info on the link.

II. Venues
Jack Rabbits-
Free Bird live- Cold War Kids are playing here December 3rd 2010 (Wed)(So are Yo La Tengo on january 26th)
Shanty Town- intimate dive bar in Springfield with a nice back yard
TSI- small bar and venue downtown, plays indie dance inside and hip hop outside, Dubstep on most Sundays
The Black Kids got their start at TSI. Who else has played here? Neon Indian, Diplo, and Bonde Do Role to name a few.
Underbelly (New in 5 points) Eclectic backyard venue for bands and art located in the back of Anomaly clothing store
Florida Theatre
St Augustine Ampitheatre

III.Food
(Beach Blvd)
Angies- Best subs in Jacksonville, bar none. Try the Peruvian
The Secret Garden Cafe
(Avondale/5 points)
O'Brothers Irish Pub- Serves Traditional Irish fare! There's Guinness on tap,+ other British favorites such as Harp, Bass, and Newcastle. Try their Guiness Mac N Cheese, Bangers & mash, fish and chips with curry sauce, and crowd favorite fried Pickles.
Moonriver Pizza- One of the best pizza places in town, very eclectic interior.

(Feel free to make suggestions, as this is a work in progress) Links with more info are everywhere, just click.

New News

2010-10-07T21:41:00.000-07:00

I bought a Diana F+ Film camera so will be posting up tons of analog goodness and a full review of its capacities with pictures. Also found some sealed polaroid film so ill be scanning and uploading that too! (once I use it up)

In other news I'm going to do a photo segment on local Street Fashion with all pictures coming from random well dressed locals I run into every day. It feels good to finally get blogging/working again :)

Until Next Time

Watch this before you see the English remake in theatres this year

2010-08-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

Here it is! The full version of the film I promised to post up. I don't wanna give too much away but the movie is a Swedish mystery. (I recommend letting the whole video load first and then setting your browser to "work offline" since megavideo only lets you watch 70 minutes of video at a time)Enjoy.

Let The Right One In (Swedish with English Subtitles)

2010-08-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

Heres a quick post of some film photography from my stay in NY

US Remakes of Foreign Film/ why I haven't posted in so long

2010-07-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

Remakes galore.(SKINS + LET THE RIGHT ONE IN are being remade in the US)
I haven't been posting up much on this blog because of my internship at Columbia U and because I am strictly using a film camera for this trip to get away from digital medium for a while(so I will develop the photos for you to look at when I get back home!)
Anyways here are two American remakes of edgy foreign film/tv you shouldn't miss

1) The American remake of Swedish film Let The Right One In comes out October 1 starring Chloe Moretz from Kickass and Kodi-Scott Mcphee from the Road. Exited to watch it but hope Matt Reeves (Cloverfield director) can keep it up to par with the original.(It's going to be difficult to accomplish to say the least)
I fell in love with the original, and you should watch it before Oct 1! (The full original with subtitles is on youtube if you search for it)ILL BE POSTING UP THE ENTIRE MOVIE IN PARTS UP HERE SOON
(trailers and such + details on Skins US remake after the break)
Here's the trailer for the original

Here's the trailer for the Americanized version..

what do you think?

2) Skins, the popular british tv show is getting a remake here in the US, and will be set in Baltimore Maryland. I really hope MTV can pull this off without killing the dark edginess of the original. The show will air sometime this year (2010)

series 1 trailer.

trailer for series 2.

Anyways, look forward to a bunch of film photos from me and the full version of Let the Right One in online soon.

A.W.

The Pier.

2010-05-22T21:26:00.000-07:00

Instead of buying any new cameras now, I'm going to focus on photography and timelapse. I'll still be solidifying ideas and scripts for the short films (anyone care to help?), but it'll be awhile before they are actually produced. (i'm waiting for the next gen canon photography/camcorder hybrid).
Anyways I recently did a shoot at the Jacksonville beach pier with my great friend/photography muse it seems haha. Here are some of the shots.

-Alex

The pictures with the observation posts remind me of a picture I took in NY a couple of years ago.

This was back when I was exclusively using a Canon AE-1 from the 80s

I've always wanted to do one of these pictures and decided to go for it. Never having done any really intense editing before I think it came out great. This is a blend of three different pictures. I used an opensource software called gimp which is completely FREE and works pretty much like photoshop. If you want to do some more advanced editing, save yourself the $$ and download Gimp instead.

Just Listen.

2010-05-14T19:58:00.000-07:00

Every time I watch a season of Skins, There are a couple of songs I can't help but play again and again. Do your ears a favor and listen to these two. They're kind of polar opposites.

First one is a hard electro remix and the second is soft and wistful, with measured percussion

1) Xtatic Truth by Crystal Fighters (Last Japan Remix)

2) Sweet Disposition by the temper trap

P.S. For anyone who is mildly interested/ for the purpose of cementing my ideas somewhere, i'll be posting up info and timelines for the first of a series of short films i'll be making. Until then, enjoy the music :)

Washed out

2010-05-11T19:20:00.000-07:00

Wow, I haven't been on here in a while. Its because i've been busy with school, and have been preparing for an internship at Columbia University this Summer :] (for dentistry) But i'm glad to be back!

Right now i'm mostly using my film camera instead of my digital, and will be taking it with me to New York. I recently finished out a roll of film from my 80's era Canon AE-1 that has been in that camera for like a year.

Developing a roll of film where you don't remember a thing about the first few pictures you took feels like

Christmas morning did when I was six and still believed in Santa Claus. I realized he was fake when I was 7.

Really, theres something magical about taking a film camera around with you and later developing photos/moments you forgot you even captured. Sometimes I forget this is a blog and not a journal i'm writing to myself. But thats not a bad thing really. I wonder if it happens to anyone else.

here are some of the photos from the roll, both recent and not so recent:

This last picture is probably my favorite out of the whole roll of film. I just had to capture this odd little staring contest between species.

P.S. I've promised myself to write more, so soon you'll hear about my plans to produce/direct a series of short films, and eventually a call for auditions. The films will be interconnected, but not too overtly. Some will be dark in tone/mise en scene some will not.

Baby Road Trip to Tarpon Springs, FL

2010-01-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

More New Years and a Preview of Whats to Come

2010-01-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

So here I am, being lazy at home eating Spanakopita and uploading some pictures. The ones up there are from last night, and the picture below is a preview of what is being putting together right now. I am printing several of my photos and framing them as I plan to exposition them within the next few months. Also, some of these should be at artwalk across the street from the main library this coming Wednesday the 6th of January, so swing by and say hi!

2010

2009-12-30T19:10:00.000-08:00

its Almost 2010! I’ve already begun new years resolutions, starting a journal for songwriting/thoughts and preparing to apply to put up my pictures at a certain coffee shop. Haha actually, I just realized you can see some of the frames in the bottom right corner of the first picture up there. More on that later.

What are your New Years Resolutions?

Thee Partyy

2009-12-24T11:33:00.000-08:00

Here are some shots from Denia/Karla's winter break party!

Oaklawn Cemetery

2009-11-20T18:27:00.000-08:00

Here are the results from the cemetery shoot today! The Sprinklers were on for half the day, and we thought we were locked in at the end of the shoot haha, but the photos came out great. Still learning to gauge visually what speed and F-stop I should use, my skills are definitely improving with all of this practice. Quick tip, using a low f-stop while having a person close to you with an interesting background makes the person stand out very well.

First Photoshoot

2009-11-13T19:42:00.000-08:00

First try at portraits in awhile, i'd say they went quite well! That was a wonderful afternoon.

I've been itching to photograph a "Skins" house party. Too bad those only happen in Britain haha. Also, exciting news! I finally have all the equipment I need (tripod + sigma super wide angle lens) to fully unleash my potentiallll. Expect to see work with lots of long exposures, two more photoshoots, light graffiti, and timelapse photography very soon.

Artwalk/Broken Places/Biggest Post Ever

2009-11-06T15:41:00.000-08:00

Artwalk had some pretty interesting people. I swear one woman was carrying around a fake baby in her stroller, then a guy who looked EXACTLY like Dennis Hopper from Blue Velvet approached me and asked if I had found Jesus.I didn't sell any prints, probably because they were huge 16x20's, but made a lot of new interested contacts. Actually, in the two days after art walk about 120 new people read my blog, which is really exciting!

What I realized from art walk/the vendor next to me was that cute handmade headbands sell like baked bread haha. The headbands were very well made, and I know most if not all of my female friends would love to buy one of these. Here's the etsy website where you can get them.

www.secondcycle.etsy.com

After displaying my photography at art walk I've been really productive with my work. As I said before i'm focusing on people now, so i've taken a couple of pictures of myself (they are on lookbook/they were pretty hard to do by myself) and soon i'll be photographing two great friends who are going to model for me. For those who don't know what lookbook is, its an online, invite only community where people post interesting photos of themselves/ what they are wearing. Looks gain popularity by the number of people that "hype" them. Click on the HYPE link to go to lookbook.nu and hype me! Next time I will definitely have someone photograph me instead of using the camera timer.

HYPE

Next, a couple of photographers and I have gotten together (This was David from the Jaxscene blog's idea) and decided to photograph the "Broken Places" In Jacksonville. Here's My take on that theme.

And here are some photos that did not fit in the "Broken Places category, but warrant posting on the blog. Interesting Story about the last photo; I kept on running into that couple that day and when I saw them sitting there I couldn't help but include them in the photo. the photo came out so beautiful, I kinda wish I would have given them a card for my blog so they could see it. Anyways i'll be posting up/actually doing those photoshoots soon and feel free to comment!

-Alex

Swing Tree

2009-11-02T17:18:00.000-08:00

Hello there friend, heres a picture I took just today. Theres a magical time in the day (as the sun rises and sets) when some things just look AMAZING. Seriously, set your camera on a stabilizing surface and take pictures right before the sun sets.

I should be able to visit a graveyard this week and get some good shots to put up.

Oh dear Santa please bring me a tripod so I can take perfect pictures right before the sun sets/rises!

ARTWALK PREVIEW!

2009-10-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

Hey there, I will be at the Artwalk this Wednesday November 4th in Hemming plaza right across from the main library! And I am pretty sure i'm getting another photo in the Spinnaker. Next step, artshows and possibly riverside arts market. If you want any of these 16 by 20 poster prints they are all $20 dollars each, and you can get them at this coming Wednesday's artwalk. They would be great for decorating dorm walls, any walls aand you'd be supporting a local independent artist.

Here's a link to information about the first Wednesday artwalk

P.S. this song makes me want to Indian dance around a campfire, Which hopefully will actually happen. Maybe this summer or when it gets warm again?

http://neonized.net/uploads/stuff/2009/sueltas/glad%20delorean%20remix.mp3

Die-in for Darfur

2009-10-27T12:16:00.001-07:00

Here's a couple of shots I took of the Die-in for Darfur at UNF. This "Die-in" is a form of expression where the people lying on the floor visually represent the casualties in Darfur, bringing awareness to the lives lost through complacency and inaction.
Project peace hosted this event, and their group profile mentions, "As the world stands by, 330 people are killed every day in Darfur region of Africa's largest country, Sudan. Although the US government has declared this a genocide, the massacres are still ongoing. To date, as many as 400,000 have been killed and over 2.5 million have been displaced."
What a visually arresting and effectively thought provoking display.

-Alex

Heres a link to the group that hosted this event.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=174876979186&ref=nf

Bangers and Mash

2009-10-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Helloo there. In the near future I will be focusing on two themes in my photography.

People, and Broken places in Jacksonville.

Pictures of me will probably be posted to lookbook, but i'll post them here as well.

Anyone have any ideas about interesting abandoned/dark/gritty places in Jacksonville or anything else let me know by commenting!

credits to Nat for that picture in memorial park. Also, a picture I took of the memorial park statue (picture at the top of this blog) is featured in the UNF newspaper this week!

On a more random note Devendra Banhart released his latest cd on Warner Brothers?wtf

O well I am still modeling my tattoo on his.

For those curious the tattoo is going to be two red bands around my left forearm. (a play off of Banhart's four red bands on both). They symbolize balance and, most importantly, my other half that I have yet to find. Or maybe i've found her already and haven't realized it? Could be.

NEOOOON

2009-10-17T22:17:00.001-07:00

So last night I went down to TSI to see Neon Indian! The band before them, Awesome New Republic(from Miami), was pretty good too. Their songs had lots of vocal harmonies and synth arpeggiations. Very pleasing to the ear.

Neon Indian's music was delightfully lo-fi and spacey. Due to this i'd say, the crowd was really moving and at one point Alan Palomo(frontman for Neon Indian) said "you guys are crazy" after watching some of the people dancing/waving around like seaweed in a rip current. Neon Indian's set was pretty short, but I guess it would be since they don't have that much material yet.

I Spotted Reggie Youngblood (front man for the band Black Kids) in a green hoodie with his asian? gf, while a remix of a black kids song was playing. Oh the irony. Also the music they were playing in between the two bands was the Twelves 90 minute mixtape they just released about two weeks ago. Good choice there.

Summary:

Even though I felt like Antoine Doinel walking the empty streets down to the river walk while I was waiting for TSI to open, i'm really glad I went. I met some very interesting people there. Stupid flu is still killing my activeness, i've been coughing all over the place.its gotten so much better though. I really should have brought my camera to creep on people so I could have pictures to go along with my stories. Anyways, i'm a huge fan of Neon Indian now(secretly more so than VEGA just cause of their lo-fi, warped tape sounding goodness)

P.S. that song playing is a Neon Indian track (Deadbeat Summer)

P.P.S. I swear I never bring my camera when I need it. Lesson learned. My camera will be permanently attached to my body from now on.

Oink Oink

2009-10-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

This week has been something else. I have the flu so i'll be staying home and taking Tamiflu for awhile. Yes that's the medicine they give for swine flu. I started getting the chills as I was watching Blue Velvet in my film class, and when I got home yesterday I felt too dizzy to stand up. There were some really awkward moments in that film where I could literally see my class squirm and laugh uncomfortably haha.

Also, two more things.

1 ) www.nycblanks.com is legitimate, I received my American Apparel hoody and red striped shirt today

2) I will be at November's Artwalk in Hemming plaza next month!

Poll Pictures

2009-10-02T13:44:00.000-07:00

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Question: What is Love?

2009-10-01T16:00:00.000-07:00

Answer: hard to describe

SUNday Part Deux

2009-09-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

After the meditation I ambled around with my lens for a while. Which one do you like the best? P.S. Scroll down for SUNday part 1

SUNday at memorial park

2009-09-27T13:19:00.000-07:00

Today I went to "Meditation in the Park" a small event sponsored by KTC Jacksonville, a Tibetan Buddhist Practice center. Two speakers instructed our group on posture techniques and principles of meditation, in accordance with Buddhist philosophy.

The concepts they introduced were quite interesting, among these the idea that there are 9 recognizable stages of "awareness" in meditation. Theses stages ranged from a "waterfall" of thoughts that flood the beginner when trying to meditate to a "calm ocean" that allows the person meditating to have an extremely clear mind. Though provoking in the very least. Also, notice the random dog.

Also there was a "Chihuahua Meet Up" I just had to photograph.

The website for the Buddhist practice center is http://ktcjax.org/

The website for the Chihuahua meet up is www.meetup.com/jaxchihuahuas

Cummer Museum

2009-09-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a few pictures from a trip I took to the Cummer Museum of Art (829 riverside avenue). Tuesdays are always free you should visit then. The Museum is really close to Memorial Park.

In general, the riverside/San Marco/ 5 points area is FULL of picture taking opportunities

http://www.cummer.org/

Gold Nugget

2009-09-26T18:45:00.000-07:00

So I just found and ordered some really cheap American Apparel clothing (black pullover hoodie/red striped shirt) for about 50% off what the prices normally are. Sounds too good to be true but I ordered anyways.

The website is www.nycblanks.com if you want to check it out.

I'll definitely post up soon when and if I get my clothes haha.

2009-09-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

I haven't said much so here's a little about myself: I'm a bio major who loves his camera.

first picture is a little spider I caught with my macro lens.

second one is a scrabble letter (same macro lens)

2009-09-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

Art walk October 7th! theres a new zine collection the library has started and Tuffy is playing you should go. Hopefully i'll be at the art walk with my pictures soon. (when I find a good method to print my photos)

meanwhile... fun with light graffiti

Haiku

2009-09-19T18:00:00.001-07:00

I thought this would be an appropriate first picture. took it in my school courtyard a while back.

That was a good day.
An eighties era Canon.
Can't wait for winter.