This is John. He was named after his father. He snuck into my car in Asheville, NC. He’s pretty quiet, and likes to poke fun at me.

He hitched aboard when I finished doing a photoshoot of his whole species over at StupidCreatures.com Headquarters. I refused to take him with though until he got properly branded as an official Stupid Creature. Those things are so cute, that I thought I’d try it too

After shooting the stupid creatures, and picking up John, we went to have lunch with Brandon.
We had lunch at this place that had good vegetarian food, and despite being a CarnvORI (meat-eating couch surfer), I tried the vegetarian mushroom burger, at Brandon’s recommendation. It was quite good, and way heartier than I expected. After eating that, we returned to his shop and he gave me the tour.

I was so impressed! WOW! Blue Barnhouse Letterpress is amazing. Everything is handmade . They use machines, of course, but they are not the msas production model of many other print shops that I’m familiar with. Brandon showed me the process that Plates are made with. Not eating plates, but printing plates. The design is 1st made digitally, and sent to a service bureau to be made into a film negative, which is baked against a special plastic. The baking process leaves the design rock hard, and the rest of the plate unmodified. The plate is then placed into this washing contraption which rinses and brushes away everything except the rock-hard plastic that looks an awful lot like the original design. That plate is then placed into the press. Ink is applied to the press, and the press is started up. There is a lever to get the press head close enough to the rollers, so the paper is inked, otherwise, it doesn’t affect the side that holds the paper, and is rolled against the inked pattern. Brandon measured the pattern, placed it onto the press, got it rolling, inked it, and then would place one piece of paper (he showed me with notecards) at a time, let it get rolled over (pressed), and would then pull it out, and place a new sheet in its place. The process was very quick, and he had to be efficient, and careful. He told me of this person who got their hand caught in the press, and had it totally crushed, which caused the arteries to explode. I was pretty riveted. He showed me a collection of things that they’ve made there, and I am now considering how I can work their artistry into my future work.
You can see and order from their collection at http://www.bluebarnhousestore.org/ I love their Alice in Wonderland re-captioned images, and their novelty/adult humor cards. As I say in a later post, I also chose a card from there for my Dad’s birthday. Here’s some photos of the presses, and the plate making process, and the Dog-on-the-floor, that every store needs to have.

John and I drove from Asheville to Detroit last night. It was the most beautiful drive! Oh my god, Tennessee and Kentucky had these Mountains - or hills… who knows… when you’re from Florida, and the tallest thing is the landfill, they all look like mountains– everywhere. I guess that was probably the Blue Ridge Mountains or something, as in the haze, they looked blue. I drove through North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky (My joke when calling people: I’m calling you from the state that boasts of the most anal sex, and the best lubricated genitals! Which state? KY, of course!), Ohio, and finally Michigan. The gas in Michigan costs a lot more than it does everywhere else. It was $2.79 in Ohio, and then $3.19 in Detroit. Since it was a really long drive, and I was getting tired way before my drive ended, I had not stopped to take all those scenic photos. They are certainly embedded in my head. I saw a village (or something that looked like one) that was on a hill, with a lake at the bottom. It was very fairytale like. I saw animals, and fog, and a gorgeous sunset. I kept driving, and had spoken on the phone with people that I hadn’t spoken to, those I have spoken to, and those I was doing business with. It all made it easier to stay awake. Staying awake is good It’s quite important when you’re driving. When I spoke to Dan, he told me he was in a bit of a rut with his images. That they’re starting to look a bit similar…. people call it “his style” but that’s not good enough, because he’d like to vary things up more. I said I can break him out of his rut in about 15 minutes.

When I arrived at 2:15am, I did just that. Dan had an image on the screen, and asked how I would modify this one. I changed out the background, added depth, a butterfly, and a bunch of color corrections in a very short time. A lot of the stuff was considered Taboo, as Dan comes from a traditional portrait / wedding photographer background, and I like to piss those people off, and break every rule. Breaking rules or not, my stuff looked different than his, and he loved the restult. At 4am or so, I went to sleep on the Studio couch.

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