I’ve been trying my best to grind out the arduous process of battling with Flash to update my website and make it look sexier.

I’ve been spending about eight hours a day editing, ordering, processing and reformatting imagery for the great Interweb. It makes me feel productive but it also sort of drains my soul and my eyes staring at this screen for so long.

Anyway the other day I was at the end of a long session and I decided I’d had enough and got on the ol’ Raleigh and went for a ride. Here are a few images.

I saw this guy walking around a drainage ditch. When I got close he flew off. I followed and caught him on the roof of an old hotel with the sun hitting him just right. I pointed my lens, got my exposure and started making lots of noise to get him to fly. He took off and I pushed the shutter. Luck and a little cheating.

This is a picture of a car wash that also happens to be a liquor store. It’s kind of a strange combination but kind of useful too I guess.

I went inside to see what their selection was like and ended up being really surprised. They had a big kitschy beer cave filled with neat stuff. I picked up a four pack of Oskar Blues Gordon Ale. I think it’s my new favorite beer. So delicious. Try it if you can.

I think it’s about time I grab a can right now in fact. So I’ll leave you with these. Look for that website update soon. It’s going to be at least 7.5% more sexy guaranteed.

I got up early today. It was Florida cold once again, and I was warm underneath blankets. I looked out the window and saw the light hitting the palm fronds outside. It was golden and slanting at an attractive angle. I really didn’t want to get on the bike and peddle around looking for frames to make. But. I did.

This is one of the first photos I took. I walked through this strange opening in an urban patch of tropical foresty green and found a dirt path. I walked for about a minute and saw this television lying there in the undergrowth. I snapped off a shot and headed out of the brush.

When I stepped back into the morning sunshine there was a city worker standing next to his truck across the street from me. He asked if I was burying bodies back there. I told him I was just doing drugs. He asked if I found any good “plants” with a smile and pointed at the greying ponytail that was sticking out of the back of his hardhat. “Not today…” I said.

Up the road I saw this mailbox. I almost kept on peddling but something stopped me and I turned around. I think it was a tinge of nostalgia. My mother was always obsessed with Florida kitsch. Those plastic pink flamingos with the metal legs that you never really see anymore decorated our lawn even during the icy winters when we lived up north in Chicago. The colors of my younger years were turquoise and pink in the art deco shapes of long ago Miami streets.

And then there’s this. Not much more than a frame pointing at the horizon… Venice can be pretty even though it makes me lonely sometimes.

As the V-Town project continues I’m having to get more creative with where I shoot. It seems like I’ve hit all the major spots. I did however miss one big one. See if you can guess where it is…

Figure it out yet?

Even if you do live in Venice it would be pretty tough to guess from these photographs. It’s the local high school.

I biked through there on President’s Day. The sky was gloomy and it was about to rain. The campus was abandoned, I think I was the only person there.

It had this really eerie vibe. It felt like the world was over and I was picking through pieces of the aftermath, trying to figure out what to do with what was left…

Dave and I have come to the conclusion that in order to make our little project into a book we’re going to have have at least 40 to 50 images. So. The shooting continues…

Yesterday it was cold here. Well, cold by Florida standards. It dipped into the lower 50s! I had to wear a jacket and a long sleeved shirt to bike around and get these shots. Tough life I know.

This is a photograph of the bow of a boat that I’ve been looking at ever since I moved to Venice more than a decade ago. It has always been behind a fence so I could only see part of it. Yesterday I biked into the community where it’s stored and snuck into its holding area. It was a magical moment for me to see the whole thing. I used to tell people that I would own it one day. Now, having seen the boat in all its broke down splendor I think that dream is dead…

These are some fish that a guy filleted with an electrical knife. He seemed pretty excited about them. I hope that he ate them and that they tasted wonderful.

That’s about all I shot yesterday. Hope you enjoy it.

I had the privilege of watching the Bowerbirds perform last night along with Geri X and Julie Doiron. The show was a lot of fun. Great music played by all. I got in a conversation with Bowerbirds’ accordionist and singer Beth Tacular about how her hat looked a lot like something out of the movie Jeremiah Johnson and snapped a great picture of lead singer Phil Moore in a spiderman ninja pose. I’ll put it up as soon as it gets developed.

Here are some other shots:

I had the privilege of listening to Tim Hetherington speak about a month ago in New York. He won the world press photo competition in 2007 for his image of an American soldier resting at a bunker in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. You can see it here.

Since then he teamed up with journalist Sebastian Junger to produce the documentary Restrepo. It just won U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance film festival. Judging from the trailer it should be pretty incredible.

These days it seems like there’s a new better faster camera coming out every couple of weeks. Fancy schmancy high def video is at our finger tips in a small package with a small price tag. Megapixel counts are sky rocketing.

It’s always full frame this and insane low light performance that. Or check out these ISO numbers. No noise! It can get a little overwhelming.

A couple weeks back I (gasp) dropped my 5D Mark II on a concrete floor while trying to get it off of a complicated tripod. Luckily it was under warranty and Canon covered the repair (I love you Canon). Unluckily I was set to head up to New York City and off to the Jersey Shore for a couple weeks.

The thought of heading out to these photo filled locales without my trusty full framed friend had me feeling a bit uneasy. I have other cameras for sure but my 5D is my baby…

I looked through my collection and decided to shoot film. I’m a child of the digital generation (embarrassing secret: I’ve never developed a frame myself) so the prospect seemed a little daunting. I decided to go with my Diana F+ , my Canon AE-1 and my secret weapon the Ansco Pix Panorama .

The little Ansco surprised me the most. It’s panoramic lens had me looking at my compositions in a whole new way and the idea of just pushing one little button to make a frame well that’s just crazy talk! No messing with aperture, no shutter speed. Just aim it at something interesting and shoot. I love it.

And the best part is that you too can get your hands on one of these babies if you keep your eyes open next time you’re at a second hand shop. I got mine for a dollar. Who says you need expensive gear to make images?

I’m back from my travels, back in my hometown. I’ve downsized, going from Delhi a super city of nearly 14 million people to Venice Florida a small town of just over 21 thousand. Needless to say the pace is a little slower here. Easy days in the sunshine peddling my bicycle down sparsely trafficked streets aiming toward the beach or a park, dinners out with my family etc. etc.

I am managing to keep busy however. I’m teaming up on a low key art project with my friend David Hoskins. A talented artist in his own right he will be aiming his tablet at photographs that I’ve been shooting over the past few days, adding far out graphic imagery to sparse photography. I’m excited to see what we can put together.

You can see a preview here.

Keep here for more images in the future. I’ll close you out with this. Bye for now…