New Home

This past weekend Stacey and I took the plunge and dove into our very own new house! Bored? Get married, have a kid, make another one, move to the San Fernando Valley during the beginning of summer and ... move!

I had forgotten how hard it was to hang curtains.

I'm sitting here, just setting up the ole computer and adjusting to the new smells, sounds and weird little ins and outs of an older home. I love this place. Stacey loves this place. Zoe loves this place! (random, did you know it's only 1 space in between a period and a new sentence? Trying to re-learn how to type at the moment...) We feel very inspired in this place. While the garage/studio won't work as a photography studio, it's a perfect painting studio. There's an old 1954 Ford somethin' or other, a car I suspect was owned by the woman, grandma, of the man we rent from. Pretty cool!

Stacey is doing well, fyi. What a trooper any woman is who carries another human being for 9 months inside their stomach. Um, we are weird creatures, ones capable of reproducing ourselves ... and the process, to witness again, second hand, is amazing.

Are computers making us ADD? Double spacing between sentences on Twitter wastes like 3-4 characters a tweet...and that's just unacceptable.

I want to promise to blog more, to vlog more, to post more iPhone photos to my tumblr, which shares to my personal twitter and facebook. I want to swear to post every single photoshoot that comes through Blackwell Photography's doors... but man, sometime life gets in the way. I think that's a good sign. If you can focus on building a home, instead of searching for gigs like a desperate rat searching for stale cheese, you're ok. Let the gigs come to you, I say. They will, if you put the work in!

I'm trying to post photos to this blog post, but unfortunately iPhoto does not have a "Post to Blogger" option, and e-mailing, downloading, uploading, and resizing tonight doesn't sound up my alley. Plus, I think Stacey would kill me if I posted a preggo photo of her without permision. She gently sleeps, building our second child, in the room next to me. In our house. Very surreal.

Today, Stacey almost made me get in an accident while driving. Her mother had surgery yesterday to remove some cancer her doctors found. All too close to home, but her mom is totally fine and chillaxin' in the hospital room just waitin' to go home, cancer free. But to hear Stace call her mom, tell her she loved her, and let Zoe say "HIIIIIII!!!!" from the backseat was enough to remind me of the unfortunate fact that I can never do that. How excited my mom would be for me to be a husband and a father of soon to be 2, to be shooting photos & music videos for a living, to be mingling with movie stars, and all the other positive aspects of my life. All I can say, looking at my life, and how blessed me and my family are, is all due largely in part to the upraising my mother sacrificed for my well being. My pops was right there too, 50/50, raising us boys to be men, and respect our wives and obey the law, and to be righteous, upstanding gentlemen in today's society. I live each day, every moment, focusing the same love, discipline, and respect towards my family and hope in the future they too will see a beautiful side of life, happiness and prosperity in this cruel, upsetting, and unnatural world.

Ok, perhaps I haven't said enough. I never will. I can write for days and no one may ever read it. That'd be OK with me. Perhaps I've said too much, without saying anything at all.

Cheers,
-marc

I Can Do Anything

I've recently reinforced an attitude I believe in 210%. I can do anything. I always knew this in the back of my head, but sometimes I think it's good to put it out there into the universe. With 1 child, I learned more so than ever that I can do anything. Change a diaper in the middle of an alley with newspaper? Yup. Get me and Zoe out the door in 2 minutes? Yup. Carry 18 grocery bags and a squirming 1 1/2 old? Not a problem.

With two kids I need to more and more adapt the philosophy that I can do anything. Because I can. With Stacey by my side, we are unstoppable.

That's all. Bring it.

-marc

It Gets Better - To the "Bullies"

I recently posted on my Facebook, and now here, a video from Apple Employees, which is part of a positive campaign for GLBT (Gay Lesbian Bi-Sexual Transgender) people.  Most of these employees were obvious homosexuals or transvestites and gave messages of hope to other possibly younger GLBT people.  It was inspiring to watch, hearing these stories of mentally battered children and adolescents and how suicide plagued their soul - but also witnessing their success and triumph, and the joy at beating the ugly monster we have coined as "bullies".

The It Gets Better campaign promotes videos from celebrities and common Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and/or transgender people.  You can check out Barack Obama's, or Max Alder, the kid who's secretly gay, but beats up on Kurt in Glee('s),  and the Apple Empolyee's It Gets Better Video.  This project is great, and I support it 100%.  Keep promoting, making videos, and spreading the encouraging hope that with time things get better and you will be OK as long as you're honest with yourself.  But here's a message I want to send to the other side ... the "bullies".

While we are all capable of being a bully at one time or another, some people take it a little too far.  To you, I ask, stop.  Stop being a bully.  To all of us, be nicer to one another.  Stop talkin' behind your friends' back.  Stop trashin' your professors.  Stop making fun of gay people, transgendered people, and transvestites.  Especially younger ones.  I mean, it's 2011 people!  Look at how much hate and ignorance there already is in this world ... can't you do your part to make it a little better?  Haven't we learned how to be nicer over time?  I get it, you're bullying people because you have low self esteem ... so start boosting it by not being a jerk.  Once you've done that, pick up a hobby and make yourself useful to society.

If your life sucks so much that you have to bully other people, to you I say, it gets better.

Cheers,
-marc

Flyin' the Skies

Yesterday my buddy Robert and I went to the Santa Monica Airport to take our first flying lesson! It was a blast. Check out the video!

Cheers,

-marc

Social Media

People pass by the Darulaman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

Said like Seinfield, "What is ... the deal ... with Social ... Media?" Why are we all so addicted to websites like Facebook and Twitter? It may just be in my geography of people, but almost everyone I know has 3-10 social media sites! And we use them daily, if not dozens of times daily. Why? Why do we feel the need to post any message to the world? Why am I writing this blog? What does one accomplish by posting thoughts, photos and videos to the world wide web?

My english teachers will cringe at the progression of this post, as it follows no coherent guidelines for a proper written piece, but I think at least one of my english teachers from high school follows me on Facebook, so take that. I use Facebook and Twitter. Hi, my name is Marc and I'm addicted to Facebook and Twitter. Not really, I've toned it down in the past few weeks, have you noticed? Didn't think so. I use the Book of the Face and Tweeter for business, but only Blackwell Photography business. I don't promote my little side website business and/or painting excursion on them, but that's a whole nother post. I try to entertain the thousands of viewers watching our photography business thrive. They are hungry for cool images and I find FB and Twitter to be an outlet to generate creative content on. I get that purpose, or say you're a writer, comedian, or run another small business - it's great for reaching new, existing and past customers. You almsot don't need e-mail!

But what about personal ... indulgences of social media for ... whatever purpose? Is it boredom? loneliness, craziness, depression or entertainment ... all these things? I stutter, thinking I started another blog with a question I don't have the answer too. I'm as guilty as those I criticize. I post pictures of my daughter. I don't know who the hell follows me, some like 1700 on Facebook alone call me their friend. I ask political questions to rile people up and share links to friend's cool life and all that fun stuff. But why?

I guess my point is, I barely have enough time to work, survive, give proper attentive attention to my daughter, my wife, and my fetus baby - why would I take time out of my day to share something personal with people I don't even know? Or why would I scroll down and down and down and read what people had for lunch? I do it all the time. I'm doing it right now? Everyone uses it. Some people abuse it.

I think it's a great business tool. When you have something to promote, like a movie or an album coming out, having a large social media database is a wonderful and effective tool. One must learn the ways of the common buyer/website user, and accommodate to their user ship and what not ... (again, another separate post) ... that's all fine. When one starts to post pictures of your hamburger and fries (guilty) and posting that you just took an amazing poo, it goes a little too far. I'm trying to come back to reality, and enjoy more time with my family and friends. What do you think?

Will Social Media fizzle out in time? If so, how soon? How often are you on a blog, or Twitter like site? How do you think Social Media has affected you and your friends around you? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Cheers,
-marc

Zoe in a beautiful field

Today it seems trivial to post about anything. How lucky are we to be able to frolic around a field and be safe and sound?

In wake of the Japanese earthquake, it's a sad and emotional day. It's a chance to realize that life is fragile. This earth we live on is fragile. At any second, the ground can open up and swallow hundreds of thousands of people. In the blink of an eye massive amounts of water could wipe everything away.

It makes you wonder what you've done that's intangible... That if my life, my apartment, my "things" got swallowed up in an earthquake (very possible in Southern California) what would my life leave behind? If the internet survived, you could see my body of work and these videos. I hope that at least that would "leave behind" a somewhat lasting image to value love, family, art and beauty.

I could go on, but like I started, it all seems kind of trivial. While other videos emerge on YouTube of shaky ground and terrified people, perhaps this little video can remind people there is love, beauty and wonderful moments in the world that need appreciation. Don't forget to tell those you love you love 'em.

Cheers,
-marc

Marc & Zoe @ the Santa Monica Pier

The other Sunday Mom had a photoshoot at the Santa Monica Pier. Zoe and I tagged along and got to play up and down the beautiful wooden pier. Here's what we did!

Enjoy! It's a lonnng one.

Peace,
-marc