However, that project is effectively over. The Oh So Wise Santa Cruz city leaders who consider themselves good little liberals have enacted laws that have all but driven away the performers away. The intent, as stated, of the laws is to make the down town safer and more hospitable. They claim that the “street people” intimidate folks and harass them thereby driving away business. Really the law is aimed at the homeless who also scrape by a living begging for money/food/pot.

The laws make it illegal for anyone to camp in the city limits. The good folks of Santa Cruz don’t want to build any shelters because no one wants one in their neighborhood, so it is just easier to criminalize poverty. Another law forbids anyone from staying for more than one hour with in a few feet of any tree, bench, building, statue etc. This is the one that catches the performers. There are little ladies in yellow and blue jackets with “Hospitality” across the back of the jacket whose job it is to enforce the law. They drive off these malicious and evil doers who have the audacity to bring their art to the people. The fact that their tags label them as “Hospitality” is a Orwellian accident hasn’t escaped me. I witnessed one of these little ladies ask a man to leave because he was sitting on a window seat in front of a store. Of course the man was clearly a trouble maker. He claimed he was only waiting for his wife to finish her shopping inside but we all know he was really just a wolf in sheep’s clothing waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting shopper.

Any way, my rant, like my project is over.

Hope you enjoy the images as much as I enjoyed capturing them. There are plenty more where these came from.

This woman was among a group of Krishna’s going about doing what they do – you know, annoying people. I was about to pass them on when she began to dance. Mesmerizing isn’t the right word. There was a transcendence to how she moved that for most of her dance I forgot I had my camera. Lucky for me I snapped out of it and got some amazing images of which this is one.

This is Jose Garza. One day he’ll be headlining a punk show, just wait and see.

Curtis is on a crusade to remind the rest of America of our failure to rebuild New Orleans and to raise money for his home town.

Of course no collection of Santa Cruz photography is complete with out The Great Morgani.

Lyrical I is a street/beat/jam poet. A lot of people think they are poets, but this guy has a gift.

Rad.

I’m proud to say that I am the current unofficial record holder for the largest afro wig photo shoot.

Here are just a few of the promo images we shot downtown. Many thanks to the models who donated their time and Retro Paradise for lending the clothes.

Santa Cruz’s very own Pink Man even got into the shoot…

meet jeremy. he did everything right. he had a good job. he paid his taxes. he isn’t a drug addict or crazy. he is just another casualty of free market capitalism.

we will, at some point, move beyond ideologies that idealize the poor or demonize them. we will, at some point, no longer be able to see the jobless/homeless as “the other.” the other who must not have as good a work ethic as we do, who if they would just work hard enough they too could have a piece of the american dream.

or maybe not. maybe we will carry on the way we have and some will rise on the casualties of our battle for the almighty dollar and in process destroy not only the other but our selves as well.

god speed jeremy.

One day when the little boy, who had grown to a man ran away from Rome in his Swiss Guard uniform and lived on the donations of passers by as a busker playing his accordion on the street.

Shot in the middle of the day, sun high and to the left of G.M. filled with two strobes, one on camera and another hand held at about 1/2 power.

The Great Morgani is available to perform in any number of unique and odd costumes for your birthday, corporate and civic event and even weddings.

One would think with so many photographers around it would be a snap to find a fellow creative to collaborate with.

uh, not so much.

So when I met Brandon while shooting our World Record Afro Wig Photo Shoot and he, like me, was down for working together I was stoked.

Today Brandon texted me to see if I wanted to head downtown and try and grab some portraits on the street. That turned out to be a bust as it was ri-donkulously hot. We did come across one of my favorite portrait subjects – The Great Morgani. I’ve got gigabytes of images of him, just do a search on this blog and he’ll come up. He is always patient for the camera and his outfits are so far out and well done you would be dull in the head not to photograph him.

Brandon has been wanting to work with me for a while to hone is off camera flash skills so we set up and started shooting away.

Here is Brandon.

Here he is doing something artistic with a hole in a window.

I read all the time on forums about how mid day sun is the worst time to shoot and how using off camera flash in bright sun is oh so hard. The key, they will tell you, is to get your subject into the shade. Failing that you have to get them to face the sun and hope for the best. This is all well and good but the problem is sometimes you can’t move your subject or to do so would ruin the mood. I of course didn’t know about these “rules” when I started incorporating strobes or flashes in my street photography. I had to try something else. If my subject is in direct sun with their back to the sun (most sane people don’t like to squint into the sun so they turn their back to it) I use the sun as a giant rim light and then my little strobes do the work of filling in the shadows. The result is the subject pops out of the background. I thought I was a genius for about 2.5 seconds for figuring this out then I found out it is all old school after reading about it on David Hobby’s Strobist Blog
**. Oh well. I love the result so who cares. I use this technique all the time in my street photography and as it turns out it works really well at weddings. I’m in Santa Cruz so I shoot a lot of weddings on the beach. Most of those weddings are right in the middle of the day with the hardest harshest light you can imagine. No one likes squinty eyes in formals right? But where are you gonna find shade on the beach? No problem I say. Turn your groups away from the sun and flash them – er, fire off the strobes that is.

For example here is a shot of The Great Morgani. Back to sun (cause, you know, duh it is bright). Pretty boring image. It is a snap shot and not that interesting.

But add a little flash and the image comes to life.

This was two strobes, one on camera and one in my hand, both dialed up a bit. Of course it doesn’t hurt that TGM is a real performer and with out any coaching from me through in that added bit of flare.

* glut is the right word right?
**seriously. if you are at all serious about photography and want to learn how to effectively use your flash you gotta check out Strobist. He puts all his knowledge up on the web for free.

at any rate I don’t normally shoot the Krishnas because, well, they just don’t do anything all that interesting and if you’ve seen one Krishna you’ve seen ‘em all.

but there was this woman dancing to the side that was beautiful. “evocative” is the word that comes to mind.

Andrew is getting his masters, or PhD or something like that in advanced intelligence or superior genius or something or other. he is fascinating to talk and listen too. he also talks with his hands. despite how it looks he isn’t talking about a big fish that got away.

of course holly is simply amazing. this is her “Thank god school is out for the summer” look. she teaches up in the East Bay. they are both looking to move back down to Santa Cruz sometime in the future. which would be rad.

earlier i captured these images while shooting down town

here you can see her dog. the poor guy was hit by a car recently. she doesn’t have money for food, let alone a vet.

i was about to head back home when i spotted these kids…