Thanks to my woman, I caught the Barcardi sponsored B-Live event at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn on Saturday night. Thanks to a nice guy in line and some smooth talking, we enjoyed the show from the VIP lounge with a great view, no overcrowding and free Bacardi. Awwwwwww, yeah!

Talib Kweli was amazing this time around (none of the voice issues from last time), although I got the feeling that the crowd wasn’t really there to see him. The headliner they were there to see, Sean Paul, was terrible. He looked stoned out of his mind and was completely incapable to moving the crowd. Bam! Bam!

I gotta remember to keep this woman, she takes me to some cool shows.

Well it’s been almost exactly 1 year since after walking over the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time, I, on a whim, purchased my Nikon D80, walked out of J&R in downtown Manhattan, sat in a park across the street and took the photo above. At the time, I was amazed at how much better my new DSLR performed vs my old Nikon 5000.

I still am.

In the past year since then, I’ve taken close to 15,000 photos!! I’ve had the good fortune to art direct a photo shoot for Six Flags (that had a photo featured in this year’s Communication Arts Photo Annual) with the absolutely fantastic Michael Warren who taught me quite a lot. I’ve acquired more gear including a fantastic Nikkor 50mm lens that I received as a Christmas gift. I’ve submitted photos to photography projects.

And, of course, I’ve begun using Flickr.

In the past year, I’ve posted 507 photos to Flickr. Those photos have been viewed over 11,000 times!

The above photo taken on Thanksgiving last year has been viewed 491 times, was featured in Flickr’s daily list of interesting photos, made it into a story on Gothamist, was printed in the Brooklyn Paper and requested as a print by the firefighters who responded to the fire.

I’ve had 3 other photos featured on Gothamist including the lightning one above which has also garnered 66 favorites from Flickr users. Also, 4 other photos have been featured on Flickr.

The above photo was the first photo of mine to break 1000 views on Flickr (I think). Since then 4 more photos of mine (none showing as much skin and 1 taken with my iPhone) have also crossed the 1000 view mark. One now hovers just below 2000 views.

Photography has really become a big part of my life over the past year. I just go through my days looking at everything differently. I think I may even be getting better if the above photo is any indicator. It’s not a super popular one, but to me, it’s one of my favorites.

I guess, I should remember to just keep shooting and not resist the urge to pick up that drool-worthy D300 when it comes out.

Sweet! Another photo of mine has been chosen to grace the Gothamist site. This is the third photo they’ve used (after the fire and lightning ones) and I must say, I enjoy seeing it there. (It is funny, though, that they were all shot from my apartment looking in roughly the same direction.)

I should remember to keep shooting.

So, my woman came through again with concert tickets to see Sia (bizarre site!) at Hiro. Although I dug Sia when she was in Zero 7 and somewhat enjoyed what I had heard from her since going solo, I wasn’t particularly excited since I expected the show to be super mellow and possibly even boring… I was certainly wrong!

My crappy iPhone capture above, shows how the band came out to start the show in crazy blacklight getups. It was trippy and fun and when they were done with the first song, Sia mentioned that she hoped no one had eaten mushrooms before the show. They then went into a great set of mostly new, unreleased songs off of her upcoming album called “Some People Have Real Problems” punctuated by Sia’s quirky and often dirty nonsequiters between songs.

First she introduced us to some seemingly random kid that joined her on stage for a couple songs. Another time, she dug around in her bra to retrieve a tooth that had been recently removed from the guitarist’s mouth. Another time, she managed to remember the names of 7 or 8 fans she had met before the show giving them all shout-outs. And yet another time, she offered to felate a member of the audience.

Sia was extremely fun and despite the fact that her voice was rough, the show was great. My favorite part was probably when she announced that she hates the ideas of encores, so she would do a “fake encore” by telling us that she would pretend to go off stage then come back so we could all get the feeling without the nonsense. This involved her hiding her face behind her hands while we clapped, then peaking out over them to begin the last song. Fantastic.

I should remember to catch her again sometime and hope that her voice is in better shape.

Since yesterday was so gorgeous, the woman and I decided to hit Habana Outpost for some environmentally friendly food and frozen margaritas. While there, we ran into a couple of friends who explained that the bass booming in the distance was coming from the “First Annual” Fort Green Fest. We hadn’t heard of it, but they said Talib Kweli would be performing, so we went to check it out.

The park was pretty full of a fantastically diverse crowd. There was a decent sized ring of vendors with a surprisingly good sounding stage on one end. Unfortunately, the performers seemed as though they would have been more comfortable in a small club with everyone’s undivided attention as opposed to the wide open space they needed to fill with energy. One act, Liz something, even tried to teach the crowd about phonics… It didn’t go over well.

By the time Talib came on stage, people were dying for him. Unfortunately, I gotta say, he wasn’t as hot on stage as he is on wax. His voice, normally high-pitched and somewhat nasally (giving him a unique sound) was horse and scratchy. One very cool moment for me, though, was when he performed Old School from the ultra-geeky Dangerdoom album: The Mouse and The Mask. People who had known all the words to all the other tracks he’d been performing seemed to have never heard this fantastic song before. The worst part, though, was that they practically threw Talib and crew off the stage but turning down his mikes and music before his set was done. Lame.

I should remember to see whether it makes it to a second annual gig.

Although last year I did a decent job of securing tickets for the 2006 US Open, this year, I just let the Open sneak up on me with no real attempt to check it out.

Luckily, I got a last minute call from my cousin to join them for taking in a night of tennis. The day games that day had run late, but we managed to enjoy a match with Justine Henin vs Serena Williams (who we had also seen last year). And just like the year before, she lost. Next was Ferrer vs Nadal, and although these guys were great (especially the tenacious Ferrer), it was pretty late by then so we left after watching just 1 whole set. Oh well…

I should remember to try to get as close to court-side as possible next year, just to see how it feels.

(photo by rudsbp1)

Like most years, I hit the West Indian Day Parade recently over Labor Day weekend. It was the usual mix of fantastic food, happy people, and good music. However, this year the parade seemed extra disorganized as it took literally an hour between the first and second bands passing our location on Eastern Parkway. (I’m sure the Tokyo Carnival has better scheduling!)

Oh well, I should remember to check it out again next year and hope it’s run a little better.