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The Whip!

2009-04-07T01:43:00.004-04:00

Tonight I had the opportunity to have dinner with and shoot a really fun band at Arturo's on Houston. Go and listen to The Whip immediately. These guys were so much fun and such great sports. "What can we do next?" was all I heard from them. "Get in that bathtub!" "OK." Thanks Danny, Nathan, Fee and Bruce!

No Bull

2009-01-13T23:25:00.003-05:00

It's been said on many many occasions that I am a big nerd. I am. And never was I more nerdily excited than when I got to shoot the Professional Bull Riders Built Ford Tough Invitational at Madison Square Garden last Friday. Seriously. I'm a recovering cowgirl, I used to ride horses when I was little, in fact I used to ride Quarter Horses and barrel race when I was really little, I was in a saddle before I knew how to walk, and all I ever wanted when I was about 9 was the perfect pair of cowboy boots. So Friday was the chance for my big city self to meet my cowgirl self inside one of the world's most famous arenas. I was so very close to squealing out loud many many times. What's cooler than getting to take pictures shoulder to shoulder with the world's best professional bull riders, right by the chutes? (Click on any of the photos to visit the whole gallery of photos.)

The Deitch Holiday Party

2008-12-23T23:16:00.000-05:00

Just before Halloween I met an exuberant bunch of young artists who were re-enacting the parade scene from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" at the Village Halloween Parade. They were so much fun to photograph. They asked me to shoot their next crazy performance art project for them, a crazy, free for all, join in if you like, free dance to "Freebird" at the Deitch Holiday Party at Santos. So much color, so much fun. Who doesn't love a costume party?

Or a puppet show?

Or Amanda Lepore?

Bumping into Justice... or Quick Justice

2008-12-11T23:10:00.000-05:00

In December I stopped by the Wired Pop Up store on 18th St and 5th to check out Mapei, a newly signed artist to Downtown Records. I was shooting for Prefix. Walking in I saw two guys who looked like they were trying to look like the guys from Justice, and then I realized, "No, those actually ARE the guys from Justice." I asked Gaspard and Xavier to pose for a quick photo, and this is what I got.

And here's the woman of the hour, Mapei.

5 nights in a row, 5 shows

2008-10-07T15:53:00.002-04:00

Last week was one of my busiest weeks ever. It always seems to happen that the shows I want to check out are bunched together, and then there'll be nothing for a month.

Tuesday - Bird and the Bee at Spiegeltent (for Brooklyn Vegan)

Wednesday - Echo and the Bunnymen at Radio City (for Prefix)

Thursday - The Parenthetical Girls, the Evangelicals and Muggabear at Cake Shop (for Prefix)

Friday - Hot Chip at Terminal 5 (for Brooklyn Vegan)

Saturday - Glasvegas at Mercury Lounge (for Prefix)

kaiju big battel

2008-08-25T16:18:00.003-04:00

If someone said to you, "Do you want to see a bunch of grown ups in furry mutant costumes wrestle in a cage at some place down by the Gowanus Canal? I hear they have tacos too." And your answer was, "Umm, no." Then I don't think we can be friends.

My eyes nearly exploded right out of my head.

Scenes from the Kaiju Big Battel at the Yard in Brooklyn

200 disappointed guitarists

2008-08-16T12:00:00.000-04:00

I was so looking forward to Rhys Chatham's US premiere of the Crimson Grail for 200 electric guitars at Lincoln Center Out of Doors. But unfortunately rain and electricity don't make a great combo, and after tornado warnings and a torrential downpour (that had better "pressure" than the shower in my apartment) the show was canceled. Oddly enough, once I found a place to huddle out of the rain after a soaking, and once I got over my disappointment that the story I came to tell wasn't going to happen, I settled in and found that the group melancholy was an equally interesting story unfolding.

88Boadrum

2008-08-08T20:08:00.001-04:00

Lately I've really been seeking out non-club shows to go and see, I think the visual stories are so much more interesting...and frankly I'm sick of the same cycle of the same venues with the same lighting I've shot 25 million times before with the same challenges. All the shots look the same. Plus I just got a fisheye lens.

On 8/8/08 at 8:08 pm, 88 drummers (rock drummers with full kits) gathered on the Williamsburg waterfront and played together for 88 minutes.

awesome color, literally

2008-08-02T19:01:00.003-04:00

If you take as many pictures as I do, you end up with a few shots that are your favorites of the moment. These are the shots where you look at your LCD and think, "Yup." These are the shots that make you take better pictures next time.

My current favorite is this one.

Partly it was because this was a great show and the atmosphere reminded of when I used to enjoy going out on a weekend and listening to weird music and hanging out on street corners talking to weird and enthusiastic people. Look up Awesome Color and go see them, it's a good show.

village voice sends me to red hook

2008-07-26T13:26:00.002-04:00

I love pictures and I love food, so when the Village Voice liked my idea to shoot the opening day of the much publicized re-opening of Red Hook Ball Field food vendors, I was very excited. You can see my whole photo essay here: Village Voice Galleries

Here are some of my favorite shots from the day...

i'm really bad about updating

2008-02-28T17:49:00.005-05:00

But I'm really good at posting new pictures at least once a week or so to Flickr... anyone moderately curious to see what I've been up to, where I've been walking around, who I've been going to see, etc, please stop by here (click on photo below):

Entrance to the Capitol Studios on Hollywood & Vine

my favorite gig photos of 2007 (because I'm a little OCD about the whole thing)

2008-01-04T15:55:00.000-05:00

xavier de rosnay from justice

sondre lerche

inara george from the bird and the bee

craig pfunder from vhs or beta

conor deasy from the thrills

emerson hart

joel pott from athlete

fred schneider from the b-52's

small sins

britt daniel from spoon (giving me the stink eye)

the little ones

what's-his-face from the national

i heart <3 james murphy from lcd soundsystem

regine from the arcade fire

natasha khan from bat for lashes

bjork

the chems

kt tunstall

kristina train

jamie t

tragedy!

craig pfunder from vhs or beta again... because i'm obsessed

damon gough aka badly drawn boy

ad rock('s dimples) from the beasties

andy bell from erasure

j holiday

bradford cox from deerhunter

kt tunstall (because we like her around these parts!)

norah jones

lily allen

luke from the kooks

the most delightful commute

2007-07-17T01:13:00.000-04:00

I remember when these little bronze sculptures popped up all over the 14th Street A/C/E station in New York. They were immediately delightful. Immediately a mundane commute became a visit with strange little friends. For years I've been trying to capture their personality, and I'm finally happy with the results.

wild parrots

2007-06-18T17:32:00.000-04:00

I am totally and completely infatuated with the wild Quaker Conures in Edgewater, NJ. They are so much fun to watch and photograph. I have one myself, she's 12 years old and a vicious, lovable little wench who will kiss you one minute and try to rend a hole in your lip the next. Unfortunately, not knowing much about the breed when I got her 12 years ago, I didn't know how busy and con/destructive Quakers can be, and the unfortunate part is that in captivity they often get bored no matter your efforts to occupy them. Poor Gertie, my Quaker, has managed to pluck all her feathers out as a result of boredom, and no end of attention and treatment from me and some of NYC's best exotic specialists could make her stop...and believe me I tried everything short of sending her off to the colony in Edgewater. So I get to enjoy the plumage on these guys, and can go home and play with my little plucked chicken.

why would i ever go out on saturday, if THIS is how i spend saturday?

2007-06-09T22:00:00.000-04:00

imagine if this is what you saw when you came home

2007-06-09T17:00:00.000-04:00

years ago, probably more than a hundred years ago, but my history of the spot is a bit foggy, this was the entrance to a grand estate. the owner was one of the biggest developers in manhattan. however, this developer built his estate out of wood - obviously he hadn't read 'the three little pigs' - and didn't plan for a possible fire. well, a fire broke out in his glorious house, and he hadn't built a water pump strong enough to pump water up to his house to extinguish it. his house burned down and now his estate is fort tryon park. the park itself was designed by one of frederick law olmstead's sons, and if you know your new york history, olmstead designed central park. central park is a masterpiece of man emulating nature, but fort tryon is a beautiful symbiosis of man and nature. the park was in such disrepair until recently that nature had almost taken over most of it. bette midler stepped in in the 1990s with her new york restoration project, and added the spit and polish necessary to make it one of new york's grand parks again.

i ask you to imagine if this grand driveway were part of your morning commute, how would it make you feel? this is pretty much all that's left of the estate.

the heather gardens

2007-06-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

i'm going to show you the historic entrance to fort tryon in a moment, but i wouldn't do justice to my favorite park if i didn't include pictures of the heather gardens and the beautiful seasonal flowers.

i am such an old lady

2007-06-05T00:37:00.000-04:00

I spend all weekend in the park feeding squirrels and taking pictures.

my favorite picture (recently)...any botanists out there?

2007-06-04T17:59:00.000-04:00

Does anyone know what kind of flower this is? Is it a Columbine?

the jimmy juice experience:::a photo essay

2007-06-04T13:40:00.000-04:00

My friend Jimmy does not ordinarily allow anyone to take his picture, I have numerous shots of him with hats pulled down over his face, scarves pulled up over his hair, or sneaky out of focus pictures taken on the sly...until the other night when the spirit of Bill Nolan's truly bad ass car overtook him, and he staged this whole photo essay a few Fridays ago.

NO PAPARAZZI PLEASE!!

iggy and the apocalypse

2007-05-09T12:30:00.000-04:00

Iggy Pop and the Stooges at United Palace on 4/9/07
(click on images for larger previews)

These photographs will shortly be available for sale. I'm printing a limited number (signed and numbered) on dense, velvety, archive quality water color paper. Currently I'm experimenting with image size, and whether to release these in a selection of sizes. So far I am very happy with the 16"x20" image on 20"x24" paper. Please get in touch if you'd like more info on pricing and updates on availability.

gabiporter@gmail.com

sucker for nature

2007-05-08T19:36:00.001-04:00

Please excuse my girlie, O'Keefe-wannabe posting of tulips and lilacs and an unidentified species of lily. I also like trees and spring colors and blue jays, I left out the pictures of squirrels and any gratuitous cuteness from my dog, Speedy. All of these photos were taken in Fort Tryon Park, in northern Manhattan. My dog woke me up at 6 am and dragged me up here last weekend, and I'm glad he did. Usually you'll find me taking pictures at rock shows or taking blurry, tipsy, embarrassing photos at parties, but I decided I should try my hand at a little nature photography to make me a more balanced person who occasionally puts her drink down and sees the light of day and a flower every now and then.

FYI I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC F27 for any who have asked in the past. What sets it apart as a trusty digital camera that doesn't exactly fit in my pocket is the beautiful Leica lens. It's pretty bulky for a lil' ol' point-and-shoot, but that's what you get when you want a better lens.

how cute is my dog?

2007-05-08T17:14:00.000-04:00

Pretty cute right?

i could listen to this woman sing forever

2007-04-19T18:24:00.000-04:00

The first time I ever heard Norah Jones sing I was passed out in the backseat of my friends red, Volkswagen convertible on the way back from a very good meal in Rhinebeck. She'd already won her Grammys and seduced the rest of the world, but I was a hold out - maybe hold out isn't the right terminology as I was shamefully ignorant of her talents. However, deep asleep in the back of a car, with a belly full of roasted chicken and a shared bottle of Riesling, "Come Away with Me" came on the radio. The song gently roused me out of a dream of good meals and after a couple of verses, I sat straight up, stuck my head between the front seats, and rudely interrupted my friends' conversation and said, "Who IS this?"

My friends didn't know either, they're not music people. But I made them listen to 5 other songs in a row on that station until the DJ did a recap of what was just played. I'm a drill sergeant that way.

These are pics I took at the Theater at Madison Square Garden at Norah's performance 4/18/07.

NOW AVAILABLE:::IGGY POP AND THE APOCALYPSE PRINTS

2007-04-10T02:00:00.002-04:00

I am selling limited edition, signed and numbered prints of the two Iggy Pop photographs I took at United Palace back in April. They are printed on lovely, velvety 20"x24" archival quality water color paper, the image size is 11"x20"...and they look spectacular. (A little plug for the printers who did such a marvellous job with the prints, I highly recommend Peter and Ryan at Gotham Imaging for all your digital printing needs. www.gothamimaging.com )

Click on photo icons for larger previews from Flickr.

Iggy Pop @ United Palace (frontal) -- $300 (includes delivery fee within NYC)

Iggy Pop @ United Palace (back) -- $300 (includes delivery fee within NYC)

+

Special Deal! Can't decide which? -- $450 for both purchased together (plus the same $40 delivery fee in NYC)

grammy weekend in LA

2007-02-12T18:10:00.000-05:00

Occasionally I get to do something really glamorous for work, like go to LA "for the Grammys." The reality is quite a bit less glam when your informal title is "the List General" for the EMI Grammy after party. No, I didn't attend the Grammy ceremony, which is fine, because we didn't win big. However, if you wanted to party with Corinne Bailey Rae or the boys from OK Go after the telecast, you had to talk to me. By the end of the "ordeal" I had memorized nearly 2,000 names, decided that Terrence Howard is perhaps the most handsome man I've ever had the opportunity to meet, determined that I must have genius IQ to have worn sneakers with my tuxedo pants rather than a heel of any height and was bummed that I didn't have a chance to have one of the In 'n' Out burgers we had delivered to the party.

I was too busy "working the party" I didn't have time to take a single picture, plus it probably wouldn't have been 100% kosher. I did have the chance to take numerous shots from the glorious rooftop of the Capitol Records tower as I took smoke breaks between computer emergencies and disasters and bouts of hyperventilation in the pre-Grammy hours.