Blog moved to www.bengebo.com

Thanks for the checking out the blog! It can be found at this permanent address: http://bengebo.com/category/news

I integrated the blog in with my main website so all of my creations can be found in one place. More pictures like the one above can be found there. Thanks for looking!

Indobox Photo Shoot, Website Launch Party

There’s a lot of things happening this month. I am currently working with Boston-based Architect Diane Lim(Lim Design Studio) on various projects throughout the city. I recently photographed the newly opened Sweet Cupcakes on School Street downtown for her. Those pictures will most likely be in my next post. She was the architect who also worked on Hi-Rise Bakery which I shot this past October(See previous post). It’s great to be able to have my hands in a bunch of different architectural projects, I find it helps test my approach to make “new” photographs. After all, every photo shoot is a strive to make something different. It’s always an uphill battle and knowing that acts as a reminder that I am only as good as my last picture. I found the key to staying out of a creative rut is to always be uncomfortable and maintain persistent.

I am also having a website launch party this Sunday(12/18) from 2-5pm at The Lilypad in Inman Square in Cambridge. There will be food, beer, a talk about my cross-country road trip as well as an acoustic performance with some remaining members of OkCaptain. Along with a new website and a party to celebrate, later in the week I’ll be co-hosting a podcast with designer Mat Budelman. It will be a free form talk about art, design, the cosmos, anything that could possibly cross our minds.

Here the photographs I took of the band Indobox when they were performing at The Royale in Boston. A great bunch of guys and they put on a dope show. This shoot was a lot of fun and really was impromptu. We only shot for a solid 20 minutes before the band went on stage to play. This was one of those times where I had no idea what the expect, both with the location and the lighting. If there’s anything I know how to do well, I’d say it’s being able to light anything anywhere. Those classes with Stephen Ostrowski when I was attending NESOP really paid off.

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Hi-Rise Bakery, Cambridge

I recently worked with PRE-CON Construction a few weeks ago. A project they recently completed was the the Hi-Rise Bakery Cafe, second of two locations in Cambridge. It was a complete remodeling with a unique design for a Cafe, take a look at the wooden ceilings. I also love the  table and chair design. The architect was Diane Lim who’s based out of Boston. Take a look at some of the photos below.

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Cemeteries, Boston Globe Magazine

A few weeks ago I went to take pictures with Courtney at Mt. Auburn Cemetery right before peak Fall colors kicked in. Perfect day and perfect location; a place I’ve been meaning to shoot at for some time. We headed to Harvard Square as the night set in and finished the shoot at the Goorin Bros. hat store, which is apparently the oldest hat making company in the U.S. After such a fun day, we then stuffed our faces with burritos at Picante.

I was also just featured in Boston Globe Magazine for a bathroom I photographed for designer Brenda Be. This was one of my favorite bathrooms to shoot because of it’s very eco-friendly design. With our population increasing nearing seven billion, it’s more important now than ever to leave the smallest carbon footprint we can. In an unrelated note, I broke my hand in a bicycle accident in early October which can partially explain the absence of new blog posts. The pictures from this shoot were all shot a few days after the accident. Pain is just a state of mind and when you gotta work, you gotta work! I am recovering quickly and my hand is getting better everyday. My new website is pretty much done, now it’s a matter of nailing down a location to have the launch party. We’d like to launch before Thanksgiving, probably the week of November 15th after I return from Florida, which is where I’ll be spending a few days working on a personal project.

Boston Globe Magazine

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Crush Nova Shoot and Roadtrip

Last weekend I worked with a band called Crush Nova, who did a set at the 2011 Boston Pride. It was weather-wise a dismal day, but we were able to make some photographs inside the City Hall Plaza, something I wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to do. The building was created by architects Kallmann McKinnell & Knowles in the late 60′s, a style of architecture that’s called Brutalism(and for good reason, if you’ve ever walked around inside that place). It’s a cold and unwelcoming building but there is still some attraction to it. With their start time pushed back, it allowed us to make more photographs than we originally had time for. They were a fun band to work with and put on a pretty good show.

In less than 24 hours, I am going to be embarking on a road trip across the country. I plan on taking pictures of people I meet along the way, scenes that don’t confront me on a regular basis and mainly documenting America as if I were trying to diagnose it. I’m not sure what I’ll find, but I am anticipating whatever it is I do.

Although I plan on posting once or twice along the way, but if I don’t talk to you before I return…Happy 4th.

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Photo Exercise #1: Chinatown/Theater District(Stuff Magazine Revisited)

Last night I gave myself an assignment shooting with a somewhat easy objective and a set time limit. This idea was to allow you to just create pictures instead of worrying about shooting portfolio-caliber work. If you decide to do one of these exercises on a late night whim, all the better. Last night my friend Kitty Dare and I decided to head to Chinatown at 1am and shoot for one hour, documenting things we saw around us with no specific subject. It was open-ended, but difficult if you can’t turn your brain off. I found this particular exercise helped with working  under pressure and with tight restrictions. Which as a photographer, is something that’s unavoidable.

In the end, we shot our six favorite pictures. Here are mine.

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Pre-con Construction

I recently did some work with Pre-con Construction, based out of Newton, MA. It’s a company that does historical restorations, residential and office renovations, as well as many other kinds of construction. It was a long, but fun project to work with them as well as Visual Dialogue, who created the website. I’ve posted some photographs below of various projects we shot.

These first two photos below were from the first shoot we had where we needed to get a portrait and detail shots for the website. Pictures 3-5 were interior/exteriors of a Boston office building near Government Center. The residential locations for 6-8 were shot in Jamaica Plain and the last one was taken in a Boston condo. To see more of Pre-Con’s work, visit there website at

http://pre-conconstruction.com/

Also, new song:

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New Portraits, Website On The Way

In about a month or less, I’ll have an entirely new website with a new interface. Brought to you by the crafty hands of Donovan Brien and Matthew Budelman. Both have been working very quickly and diligently in getting me this amazing new site, I can’t wait to share it.

I’ve accumulated quite a bit of photographs over the last few months. I’ve traveled to Colorado, Florida and New York to shoot these portraits just for you. Feel free to let me know what you think.

“Cointet Element” is a new song I worked on recently. I’m aware of what needs changing, but it’s just a work in progress at the moment. My friend Darrell said it was the soundtrack to the best Nintendo game never made. Quite a compliment, I’d say.

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Possibilities in Limitation

I am currently benefiting from a change of environment and atmosphere. I am writing this while driving through Omaha, Nebraska en route to Boulder, Colorado. Three nights prior to this one, which just so happened to be my 26th birthday, I spoke at an event called Pecha Kucha and discussed my experiences of overcoming creative droughts. This event collects a handful of people across various creative fields, although most have something to do with design, to discuss whatever they want in front of other like-minded creatives. Current projects, some new form of innovation inside their own industry, or something completely unrelated but having a relevant point, these are all things past speakers have chosen to speak about in prior events.

The platform is set up to show 20 slides, displaying one slide every 20 seconds. I was obviously going to show photographs, just a matter of what I wanted to say about my pictures. I spoke of something that any creator has experienced and will continue to experience: trying to break out of creative slumps. Why this current roadtrip I am on is important to the speech I gave is because of the three things I found helped get me out of such slumps: Embracing failure, limiting yourself and renewing your surroundings.

I found that if you place yourself in any new surrounding, it alters your perception and way of thinking. Whether for better or worse, all environments evoke a particular sense of space on conscious and
unconscious levels. I found while I was running in the same circles and feeling the unclassifiable stress from predictable routines, I felt my world getting smaller. Distancing yourself from your comforts and common environments force you to form a new connection with any newly arrived place.

Alright, it’s my turn get behind the wheel. I’ll try to get the presentation posted online soon. For now, enjoy pictures from the road trip.

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Show Others Your Junk and Kill Your Darlings

I just took a look at some videos for CS5, I’m blown away! The tools you can use to correct architecture; image recomposition, image retargeting, seam carving, it’s all unbelievable. It’ll make workflow a lot easier and make you spend less time in Photoshop all together.

In February I started as a Teaching Assistant for Keitaro Yoshioka for the Architecture program at New England School of Photography. I find keeping in touch with your roots and maintaining contact with other others in your creative field is vital for anyone trying to better themselves and their work. Seeing others’ work and critiquing helps reaffirm my sense of confidence, as well as my editing process. With your own photography, everything you look at is from the inside out. I know I tend to be too critical when I look at my own work, so showing it to trusted eyes inevitably gets a fresh perspective and honest feedback.

There is a new baby in my family. I have been looking for the Nikon D3s EVERYWHERE, but it’s been out of stock in every place I’ve looked. The earliest it will ship is sometime from 8-10 weeks, but my D200 isn’t cutting it and I needed a camera. So, I ended up getting the D700. I do have a lot of projects in the works that I want to experiment with for video, but in the meantime I’ll get accustomed to using a full frame camera with high ISO capabilities. I haven’t even had a chance to shoot with it, I’ve been working on my portfolio and editing recent work that I’ve doing with AIGA. I am an official partner of AIGA Boston and photograph all their important events. Recently, I photographed an event at the ICA called “Skin. An In-Depth Exploration of the Surfaces of Design.” It had a really good panel of speakers, I’ve posted some photo’s below. Here’s the gallery from the event.

Sandy Poirier

Allen Zadeh

Matt

Stefanie

Kyle

Connie

Premier Screening of American Artifact at Emerson College.

A few months ago I started a band with my friend Adam Tavares, who is a humorous and inspiring illustrator. Our goal is to create minimalist, dance-able, funky jams that go well for background music to fun, dimly lit parties. The first song recorded is call Jim’s Beaming It In. Enjoy.