mareadyphotography's blog

up in smoke

mareadyphotography — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:35:44 +0000

last night i looked out of the window and saw this

critics and champions

mareadyphotography — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 07:26:19 +0000

i’ve always like a quote by teddy roosevelt about what it takes to be a critic and what it takes to be a champion. it’s always been in the back of my mind to make a video about it, but i kept putting it off. a bit ago i decided that i needed to make it happen, so i drew my storyboard up and it looked like this:

it was about a boxer – so i started looking up places to shoot. the first place i went to was john’s boxing gym in the bronx. it was beautiful. everything you could ever want in an old boxing gym. i negotiated with the owner and soon had a date set to shoot. he said,”if you want to use some of our boxers – just let me know who and we’ll see if they can help you out.” one of the first dudes i saw was just what i was looking for. his name was chris galeano. turns out that the guy was for real. he had just won the title of golden gloves at madison square garden. that’s pretty boss. after a chat, he told me he was down. i asked him if he had a friend who would be his opponent and he said he’s ask abraham kabore.

a couple of weeks later i was in a car loaded with equipment heading to john’s gym. one of my buddies matt fricovsky was gracious enough to come along and give me a hand, so we unloaded our junk and chatted up chris and abraham. they were buddies and had never fought in the ring, so it was funny to watch them spar. chris was so used to pummeling everyone he fought and he joked around about how it was weird to let himself get hit. chris and abraham were tough as nails, but they were some of the nicest dudes and were really easy to work with.

i had a good idea of how i was going to shoot it, but i changed a few things around and did some stuff on the fly. of course that ate into our time, plus i had promised them both a few still shots for themselves so i budgeted a little time for that before we had to be out. when all was said and done, we had just under and hour and a half for video. considering how it all came together so quick, i’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

miami beach thanksgiving

mareadyphotography — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:50:04 +0000

thanksgiving is a time to reflect upon the miracles of fungi-based turkey substitute and going to the beach in november.

tori and todd from wilhelmina

little bit o’ lifestyle with genevieve

mareadyphotography — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 04:13:29 +0000

this is my friend genevieve lake. as i was shooting her, i was thinking, “genevieve might be my friend with the most “e’s” in her name.” later that night i got curious and was thinking, “what word in the english language has the most “e’s” in it?” so i searched for it – and there it was. kinda incredible that other people in the world wanted to know that exact same question. it’s funny how we search for crap like that and expect an answer. in fact, these days i get pissed when i search for something really obscure and my search comes up empty. i’m like, “‘alien toejam soup spoon machine’ doesn’t have any exact matches?!??!? aw, come onnnnnnnn! why hasn’t someone already written about that?” it turns out that “degenerescence” tops the charts at 6. “effervescence” and “beekeeper” come in second with 5, and genevieve (and 10ish other words with 4 e’s) comes in third. there it goes – that’s the official list. how can i be so sure? because that was the conclusion of the first few results of my search. and in this age of endless information at our fingertips, i’ve learned that if the results from your search aren’t on the 1st page, they’re not going to be seen. and if they’re not in the first 3 or 4 results, they’ll take too long to look for. so as far as anyone will ever know – this list is definitive.

grand central

mareadyphotography — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 17:40:53 +0000

there’s no such thing as grand central station. a station is some dinky joint where trains stop and then pass through. grand central is not a station, it’s a terminal. all train lines terminate at grand central cause this is new york effin city.

elliott gets androgynous

mareadyphotography — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 13:21:41 +0000

one time i won a female beauty contest for dudes in high school. the whole school met in the gym and all the dudes in the contest wore miniskirts, short dresses, wigs and jammed their hairy man-feet into little high heel shoes. the contest was judged on appearance and talent. i’ll never forget how one of the dudes’ talent was dancing – and his skirt was so short that when he did the infamous white-person “one hand on the neck, one in the air while thrustin the hips” dance, his tighty whiteys barely kept his man-pieces from flogging the audience in the first row. almost everybody’s strategy was to get as slutty as possible with massively stuffed boobs and hooker makeup that looked like it was smeared on with a cheap 4 inch paint brush. but see – that’s where i had the advantage; i went for a little sexy sophistication. my makeup was moderate and my boobs were average, but what sealed the deal was my talent. my talent was juggling. i started juggling and after a few seconds dropped all of the bean bags i was using. ”oops!” i said with my hand over my mouth. then i turned around and slowly bent over to pick them up. the crowd went bananas – totally nailed it. see, that’s class right there, people. that’s how you win female beauty contests whilst maintaining your integrity. nowadays i’m sure cross-dressing beauty contests and gender bender days in school are long gone. people can’t handle that stuff anymore. there’d be harassment lawsuits, emotional distress, people crying and passing out and it’d end up on the front page of every news blog. people are way too PC to have fun anymore. but back then it was fun – and i was queen for a day. and i made it look good.

skate through nyc with a gopro

mareadyphotography — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 20:53:18 +0000

the footage gopro cameras produce is fantastic and i’ve seen some crazy stuff filmed with a gopro, but i think i found it’s achilles heel – my skateboard. the day i bought the camera, i strapped it on my board and skated for 2 hours before the camera was completely dead. wouldn’t even turn on. i sent it back and got a new one, determined that i started out with a bad copy, and slapped it on my board. about an hour into my ride, the little guy started spittin blood. i could tell it was going to give up the ghost, so i tried to be easy on it (kinda defeated the point of getting it), but even so, the sd card would disengage after any jolt, and sometimes it would just power off or give me an “SOS” message. just before the battery died, i found out that the vibrations had caused the lens to start unscrewing itself from the camera body. it had slowly been unscrewing for about 15 minutes, making all that footage blurry and useless (you could actually see it unscrewing in the clips as i was skating). to add insult to injury, almost half of the good clips i had taken that day didn’t record on the card. between the 2 days and 2 cameras i ended up with about 4 hours of recording time and about an hour and a half of usable footage. despite the fact that i had to be gentle, i ended up with an awesome video – and a new paperweight.

UPDATE 4 Aug 2011: the last thing i want this video to be is a negative PR campaign for gopro. gopro cameras are tough as nails – but while they might be bomb-proof, it’s crazy to think that they’re indestructible. i skate very hard wheels and the roads are amazingly bumpy, so the cameras i used took a massive beating before they bit the dust. a few of you have asked me if you should buy a gopro – of course you should. they haven’t lost me as a customer and i hope this video gains them a customer or two. they’re solid cameras and i expect that they’ll get tougher and tougher as time goes on.

choc quib town

mareadyphotography — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 15:44:23 +0000

when i was in colombia, my friends, pollo and plata, introduced me to a band called choc quib town. ever since, i’ve been all about em. and guess who ended up in front of my camera? completely awesome.

check out a few of their songs Somos Pacificos and Alguien Como Tu

check out their FANPAGE

mad about you

mareadyphotography — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 15:46:33 +0000

lookin mad never looked so cute

nyc – 11pm – 95 degrees

mareadyphotography — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 06:31:23 +0000

surfing the heat wave like a boss.