Archive for the 'friends' Category

mammoth men v3

let your anticipations rise to the occasion…


Mammoth Men 3 Trailer from FRED EGAN on Vimeo.

In the early wintery months of 2008, eight celebrated, award-winning and downright awesome photographers from all over the country grabbed their snowboards to ride the mountains of Mammoth, California. This marked the beginning of what is now known as…wait for it…The Mammoth Men. What ensued during that getaway was a week filled with adventure, spontaneity, hijinks and storied tales. A bond was forged amongst these men and a commitment made to doing it again, and doing it often!

During the Summer of 2008, The Mammoth Men hit the road again. Only this time, they loaded up 10 photographers in a Prevost rock star tour bus, drove for five days up the California Coast and shared it with everyone via their traffic happy blog. So much so that their blog readers actually got to choose their day-to-day adventures while watching them play out the next day. The blog following continued even after the West coast trip ended and garnered media attention in the blogosphere.

Well, the guys are back for their much anticipated third installment of The Mammoth Men. Watch the mayhem unfold as these 12 photographers board their Prevost and head into the American Southwest to document their Route 66 road-trip. Packed with more guys, more miles and more camaraderie, it’s not just a roadtrip…it’s a lifestyle.

big bear : day 2

blue/greenberries.

in an effort to snap the shot above, i let my walking partners go on ahead.  as, i ran to catch up i was meet with a hurtle.  now, for an asian guy, i have a pretty good vertical leap –  it’s one of the few things i take pride in from my showchoir days ( that and the muscular profile of my legs in tights, landing a perfectly axis-ed barrel roll ).  in any case, i failed to calculate the added necessary height that my loose flip flops required.  after a someone intimate conversation with the concrete in front of me, i lifted my eyes to see that the concrete had also done me the pleasure of dismantling my camera as well.  what courtesy.

in anycase, my favorite lens is sufficiently busted. luckily a car passed between the group and i just at the moment of contact.  so, at least i left with my pride in tact!

kim used to lead a very talented improv group at her college.  we entertained ourselves late into the night mime/CLUE/telephone fusion.  i’ll give anyone a dollar that can ID any of the keywords in these pictures.

most people cry when the cut unions.  jeremy turns into the hulk.


 

big bear : day 1

yesterday, nellie and i made our way up to big bear for a 3 day get away.  the roth family scored a deal on a NINE ( count ‘em 9 ) room chalet, right on big bear lake.  and when i say right on big bear lake, i mean there’s a private dock mere feet away from our 3rd master bedroom! BOOYAH!!!

here’s the spread!

kim + jeremy make me smile…

danger at every turn…

i LOVE this picture ;)

alex has had one question for me all day: “did you bring your ticket’s to the gun show?”

no, but i heard their going for 1/2 price right now…

you might not have been told but my girl is a rocktastical dart player.  of course, no-one told her that i eat rocktastical dart players for breakfast!

ryan’s birthday ( pending )

as with most aspects of my life, blogging has taken a “pending” status.  however, among the many “yet to be posted”, a true gem has emerged…

this past saturday was ryan’s 22nd birthday. much more on that to come but while i continue to rack my brain for ways to avoid work, here’s a great shot of max telling me about… something.

here’s to a hectic summer!

what happens in vegas…

this week has been ridiculous! as a few of you may know, my car got broken into – yes, again. that puts us at just about one major automotive crisis per month this year. i’m choosing to take it as a sign that God is done with our current cars and can’t wait to get us somethin’ new ;)

i digress… i’ve been under a mountain of paperwork and decided to trip back through time.

a couple weeks back nellie and i got to spend a few days in vegas with of few of our closest friends… here’s the frames.

breakfast…

and lunch…

on our way up, we were trying to determine if this was a poor coincidence or a prophetic warning.

little stretch break portrait session. here’s one that nellie got of me.

and one i got of my hotness.

mmm… this image is sooo right, i can’t describe it with words!

in an attempt to stretch every penny as far as we could, we spent a good portion of time prowling for $5 blackjack. i try to stick away from “posey-posey” pics like this, but john looked so dirty, i could barely resist.

yah, we hit vegas hard…

jordan + katelyn + photobooth

after locating jordan’s clothes, the boys got him tux’d up and ready for the big day. jordan + katelyn had a breathtaking wedding at the supah-fly levyland in carlsbad.

of course, the fun for me was gettin’ to photobooth a lot of the friends and family…

you know what they say : “there are no heterosexuals in a male group shot”

WYATT!!

a little tooo serious…

the lovely bride and her red-neck studly groom

and his other lover,

not even hane’s prepared for this.

i’m doing a lot of digital spring cleaning. so, there will probably be a few more posts like this. i feel like i’m finally starting to emerge from the mountain of work that i left behind in january.

regardless, there have been a lot of fun experiences that i’ve wanted to document — the first of which was jordan’s bachelor party. i honestly don’t have much to say. weird things happen when you get a bunch of christian guys together and with a stripper off the menu, some of the guys got a little… restless.

stump the chinese firewall

dear bloggers,

as we touched down in shanghai, i began my regular post-flight routine. find signal, get mail, read blogs. however, despite a swift completion of the first two, the third was causing me some trouble. blogger, squarespace, wordpress… all the greats running, slower than christian bales career between newsies and batman begins.

ding! the proverbial light-bulb went off.

so, i played a little game – “stump the chinese firewall.”

doing standard google query for “noodles”, “rice”, “apple inc.”, etc yielded normal results, as you can see :

however, i conveniently “lost connection to server” every time the subject matter was in any way, well… democratic. note the highlights in the below:

i’m no economist or or social-journalist. i’m just a guy that wants to see what’s going on in my friends lives. so all this is to say – it’s a shame that the government here finds your exploitation of freedom repulsive. if you don’t see my comments, it’s not because i don’t love, it’s because china hates you.

zo + espestis

for those of you who visit the blog to see what nellie and i are up to, move on to the next post… there is nothing for your hear! of course, if you are a super-nerd, like me, and wonder how the cats play when the wife is away, you are in luck!

if you haven’t heard yet, i got a new camera the other day. because this is a “nerd” post, i’ll tell you that it is a Nikon D200 which has been nocking my socks off! of course, now i have a sweet camera and no lenses ;)

my good friend lorenzo saw my lack of foresight and very generously filled my need. he is an incredible photographer and you can see his stunning work “here”:http://ttl-zo.blogspot.com.

we drove around to find the filthiest spot we could to and start shooting. we had a great time together, and i can’t wait until our next run in!

this was a stretching experience for me, as i don’t often go out looking for inanimate objects to shoot, but i learned a lot. enjoy.

!http://michaelandnellie.com/blog/images/48.jpg!
!http://michaelandnellie.com/blog/images/50.jpg!

us + the image is found.

no last week we got a surprise call from “nate keiser”:http://theimageisfound.com with a very exciting proposition. as a part of their new “shootshops”:http://theimageisfound.com/shootshops for aspiring photographers, they would shoot us and buy us dinner for the small sacrifice of leaving work for a couple hours. it was a very difficult decision i know, but admittedly worth the sacrifice. ;)

we felt so honored to be a part of the first of many successful workshops. congratulations to “eight20 photography”:http://eight20photography” for taking this huge first step.

of course, today i kept the camera at home and left the shooting to the pros… click on the picture to see some more great shots from the shoot.

notextile.