It’s been an amazing 7 years. She been here since the inception of the farming idyll. She was our first layer and the last of the tiny threesome we brought home to our daughter’s bedroom so long ago. So much farm has built up around them in the meantime, some serious work has gone into the the palace making for these feathered ladies. Mommy had it good here. We saved her from an alchi in Riverside. She was the size of a golf ball when we brought her home. All fluff. Many great poached eggs have gone under this roof in her honor over the years. All hail the quietus of Mommy Chicken, the long standing Mother of The Brood!

The pink one must die so the royalty may persist.

A child’s world is meticulous and small. And more expansive than we can ever hope to return to.

I had photographed Valerie Azlynn a while back for my SCAR project. She had open heart surgery when she was young. We folded that shoot into a fashion moment that in my mind played as nod to Sharon Tate. Always good, the gems found in the old photos box.

She removes the stitches from my goring.

I’ve put some of the images from the ‘Small Town‘ project that my wife and I did with our CHICKS this past Fall in New England. Ilse did the art direction and styling and I witnessed the moments. Ilse is from Western Mass. and we go back to the Happy Valley often to visit her parents in Amherst. It’s a magical place and seeing it over the course of seasons is always a mind-blower for this LA man. We often go out and lose ourselves in the country there. Often with a camera. Thus I conceived ‘Small Town’. We brought a bunch of antique cloths to style the girls in and pulled props from their grandparent’s Terry Gilliamesque basement. We would just head out in the clouds and falling leaves and shoot where ever it struck us to do so. We quickly ran out of clothes but not nearly out of locations. So we plugged ‘Salvation Army’ into the iPhone and found our way to the next outfit which gave way to the next shot. Over and over again, without fail, perfectly thrifted pieces and perfectly thrifted moments. You can dig a few of them here.

Serendipity, I suppose. And the happiness associated with going out for Cheap Sushi in my old stomping grounds, Los Feliz. This is one of our several traditions we’ve built as a family. One of our acts of forever going out for Adventure! And through each easy daily piece of it my daughters enchant the world around me. Their effects, littered about, make the world solid for me.

When it comes to handling the occasion, my wife does not fuck around.

There’s this incredible library of my life and times that is missing but one component….I am mostly included as Eye. But now I’ve gifted my big CHICK, Bindi, with a cool camera for Christmas. I’ve handed her down cool enough ones, but she’s been hankering for one of her very own. And it’s a damned fine one she’s been hankering for after seeing it in use out and about. I figure if she’s got good enough taste to know a slick little machine when she sees one – girl after my own heart – then she’s sophisticated enough to possess one. And O!, loath to be the photo daddy who denied his girl a camera when she put her foot down and wanted one, and mind you, she was clear about it…… Here’s the very first picture she took with her new machine. I’m right tickled to be included in the family thus.