It’s been a banner year, and I’m so very grateful. Putting together this highlights reel was a bit cathartic– almost surreal– as I thought back through all of the projects and places that this year has taken me. Dozens of shoots, 13 countries (if I’m counting right), and a broad range of stories. Frankly, I’m overjoyed and humbled. And I’m so excited for what 2012 has to offer.

90% of what you see in this little piece are from the last 12 months.

Here’s to another adventurous, inspiring 12 months!

It’s a drizzly morning here in Hamilton Heights on this tiny over-populated island in the Northeast. Bryan John Appleby is the quiet morning soundtrack.

If you’re like me, and busyness is an instinctive state of being, quiet seasons are what you long for – and at the same time what you dread. For five years I’ve worked myself ragged to get my business to more or less thrive. And now I sit in the aftermath – in limbo, still and anticipatory. Stillness is necessary for the human soul to thrive. But sometimes, especially when I’m out of practice, tranquility can be restless and even terrifying. It takes practice, and believe me I’m practicing hard these days, to find a balance in the quiet. To not collapse on your inward thoughts or your forward ambitions.

I’m certainly not complaining. I’m loving it. Coffee, t-shirts, paint on my hands. Music, laundry, rain. Contemplation, fiction-reading, and conversation. I love it. I’m up for the challenge. So much has happened. This year alone… Uganda, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Yemen, Uruguay, Colombia, Samoa, India, China, Italy. Much of that time spent alone, wandering but not lost (as my cousin Melena says), filming and absorbing. Sometimes the feast of life stuffs me full and puts me into a Thanksgiving-like food-coma. It’s hard for me to slow down enough to peer over my shoulder and process it all.

But here I sit in quiet. Still but moved. Staring forward, peering through the curtain if only for a hint of what’s next but working with every muscle in my inner being to sit tight so I don’t miss one second of this gift of silence.

Oh yeah… here’s some stuff from China with my dear friend Nate. We were there for a shoot but had a few days of the travel. Hope you enjoy. The great olive/leather bag you see Nate & I with is my new favorite piece of luggage. Ernest Alexander. Get some

A Brief History of the World / A Love Story from Loose Luggage on Vimeo.

This is a fun little film I made for my best friend about the day of his engagement. Hopefully not your typical “engagement video.”

MUSIC BY
Cloud Cult
Josh McBride (Lucky Wilber), Emily Weiss (MLE), & Josiah Johnson (of the Head & the Heart)
Simon & Garfunkel
Bob Dylan

FILMED BY
Adam Sjöberg http://www.vimeo.com/looseluggage

ADDITIONAL FOOTAGE
Archives

EDITED BY
Adam Sjöberg http://www.vimeo.com/looseluggage

I recently had the pleasure of hanging out with Arthur Hitchcock and his devoted friend Anthony here in the city I love. Arthur has a pretty remarkable story that I can hardly do justice in a few words here.

Last Sunday he walked into the Atlantic Ocean near Coney Island after a 5 month journey on foot from Long Beach, CA. Arthur is one of very few modern men to accomplish such a task.

The journey began months before he set foot outside of his home town. When Arthur was only two years old his father, a photographer, passed away very suddenly. Since then he and his mother have been each others world. In September of 2010 she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. One month later she passed away. With both of his parents gone, Arthur began preparing for an epic journey across the United States entirely on foot. It was a funeral march, of sorts. A chance to think, escape, move forward… one step at a time… and honor his mother’s spirit as a passionate adventurer and his father as a photographer.

In a few days I’ll be heading to Augusta, Maine to see him complete his journey. He has a million stories to tell, so I’ll leave that up to him. Check out his photos and stories here and help support the fight against breast cancer here.

Photo 2 down is Anthony. Read the article below (and stay tuned) for more info on Arthur’s story.

Arthur, you inspire me.

I recently worked for the incredibly innovative More Media alongside photographer Eric Ray Davidson on a behind-the-scenes shoot for Mr. Porter & Details magazine. Check out these videos and then head over to Mr. Porter and buy some clothes! We interviewed Jackson Rathbone (of 100 Monkeys and the famous Twilight series), musician Gary Clark Jr., Marc Kushner of Architizer.com, and Max Lugavere & Jason Silva of Current TV.

See more at DETAILSInsider.com/MRPORTER

Thanks to Lane Wood for his producing efforts.
I worked closely with photographer, Esther Havens, on this project.
Thanks to Neil & Dave from Warby Parker for bringing me in on this project.
Music by Balmorhea.

Head over to Warby Parker’s site to buy pair.

At the end of my trip with Warby Parker to New Delhi, I took a pre-crazy-season vacation in Kerala, India. I spent 5 rejuvenating days on the cliff-covered Southwestern coast. While I was there I contemplated my upcoming months of work and had to use restraint to hold down a feeling of panic at the busyness that awaited me. Now I’m sitting, at 3 in the morning, fresh off of a plane from Beijing… and though I’m exhausted, I feel a tinge of relief that I’m over half-way done. I’m behind on work, but the time of being caught up is just ahead of me. Or… maybe it’s not. It always seems ahead of me but never seems to arrive.

I’m thankful. But tired. The last day I was in China – 30 minutes before I left for the airport – I went to a barber and had him give me a straight-edge clean shave off of a 6 week old beard. My good buddy, Nate Pelz, who was along with me on the trip, took a picture of me at some point during the week. We laughed when we looked at it because I looked about 20 years older. It was the light in the room, the beard, and tiredness all wrapped into one. But I looked older. It seems silly that I thought anything of it. But it made me a little sad. I mean, I don’t think I actually look that old. I wasn’t sad over my appearance in the picture or in general. But I thought of myself as aging– which was new.

When you’re young, it’s incredibly easy to ignore the fact that you’re getting older. And I’m far too young to be having a mid-life crisis. But I am getting older. We all are. And although I don’t want to waste too much of my time worrying about it… it did give me pause. My days are numbered. And like it or not, every day I’m becoming someone. Every decision I make – regrettable or otherwise – slowly makes me the person I am. My choices today intrinsically effect who I’ll be tomorrow. And nothing tends to happen overnight. Little by little, decision by decision, I am becoming someone. And I don’t want to one day be old – truly old – and look back and see how all of those decisions, little though they were, made me something I wasn’t created to be.

Sounds dramatic. But those are the things I think about at 3 AM when I’ve been staring at computer screen for 18 hours. Maybe I just need another clean shave.

Well, I’m still releasing this today but definitely at (literally) the eleventh hour. I’m up in the mountains for a shoot and thought for sure that I would have had Internet before now.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. This project was born in late January of this year. It took a month and a half to plan, a single day to shoot, and now six months to finish. In a lot of ways I was exercising creative muscles that I’d not yet used and it was an incredibly rewarding growing experience to make.

I was overwhelmed from the beginning to have such amazing talent- Tyler Riggs and Suvi Koponen. Go ahead, google them. They’re rockstars in the fashion world and were incredibly versatile actors. As I mentioned, it was a one day shoot which is a very short time to shoot such a breadth of content and they were fabulous– braving the freezing cold Chelsea piers and sitting in lukewarm bathwater for an hour and a half. Not to mention they were a delight off camera.

Also a million thanks to Janelle Wible who produced this with me. Without her selfless efforts I never would have finished it (or started it for that matter).

Below are the rest of our amazing crew. I will add links to all their work when I have better internet but in the mean time please google them because they all have amazing personal work. Thanks a million to all of you! Without your belief in this project and selfless dedication the day of, it wouldn’t have happened.

Enjoy.

Talent: Tyler Riggs, Suvi Koponen
Executive Producer: Janelle Wible
Music: Son Lux, The Silver Boys
Stylist: Dawn West
Makeup: Virginia Linzee
Second Camera: Nathan Smith
Assistants: Evelyn Rivera & Lily Fan
Set provided by: Andrea & Ira Lippke
Wardrobe provided by: Vera Wang & Native Son
Additional wardrobe provided by: Sonia Rykiel, Quail, Apolis, Lekuin, Okuta, Velvetine, & Mina Ro Mina
Special thanks to: Next Models, Red Model Management, Medium Concepts, LuxCartel

This post is a little self-indulgent… It’s not that I assume every image in this post is going to blow your mind (ha) they just represent a collection of images from my weekend under the towering redwoods with my good friend Eric and I couldn’t sacrifice any of those moments. So deal with it! (Double-ha)

My life is loud. Most of it, whether in New York or not, feels New-York-paced. Often I catch up on sleep in planes, taxis, and trains. E-mails are answered in transit, and much of my post-production happens while burning the midnight oil. With September and October comprising the busiest season of my year, and this year being the busiest I’ve yet had, I cherish any moments of rest I can get.  Sometimes these times of rest fly by all too quickly. I think it’s my state of mind. If I sit in silence and let my mind go wild with what I could be doing and need to get done, rest is anything but restful, and speeds past me before I can shut my eyes and feel the breeze.

However, last weekend after a shoot in Napa I drove my rental car (convertible – yay!) down through the valley, past the Bay, and up into the beautiful Santa Cruz mountains. My 48 hour hiatus with Eric was exactly what I needed and we filled it to the brim with laughter, soulful conversation, delicious food, and time around the fire under a blanket of stars. Because it was so deeply restful and I released the rushing world that I live in, it crept by slowly and sweetly.

While I was in India a few weeks back I had the opportunity to have a similar time of rest. While relaxing on the cliffs hanging over the waves that crash against Western India, I read 100 pages of journals from the last 4 years. I meditated on my journey, the Goodness of the God I believe in, and hope for the future. Thought I’d share a few words from 4 years ago in Southern Thailand if you care to read. Otherwise, skip to the goods below…

“Outside the gray clouds shove their way greedily over the blue jagged mountains of the southern Thailand. The Krabi airstrip is desolate, surrounded by lush vegetation that extends for miles in all directions.

Meanwhile, here I sit. My California home is still an eternity away. I am completely isolated. I imagine myself as what I am—a tiny, organic speck, like a bacteria or microbe, squirming about on the giant face of a huge blue-green sphere that pummels through a black darkness like an orange being tossed into the night sky.

I arrogantly assume the trophy position of the modern human: independent, free-standing, mobile. Mobility is my pearl of great price. It is my loftiest treasure, my trump card, my fountain of youth. My island-of-a-self slides carefree across the planes, mountains, and oceans of the globe. I absorb what I can of the cultural atmosphere around me, mostly I just watch. I peer, as though my body moves without my will, through two blue-green eyes. My legs cover ground, my hands exchange money and purchase bus and boat tickets, my feet grow calloused and brown in my sandals, my shoulders peel from the unrelenting sun, and inside this shell I continue to examine the world that I’m crawling across.

The whites of people’s eyes slide across my retina. Their bodies—of many varying tones—are a blur. Their garments simply swim around the sea of eyes as though they’re being painted onto the canvas around me. Each set of eyes, blinking, determined, aged, have seen a lifetime. The rise and fall of the sun, daily. The pain and joy alike boil in the stew of glistening pupils. Each eye is its own tiny planet, sliding through the universe of our smoggy world, gathering the dust of the past millennia. They rest daily, wrapped in skin and eyelashes, if only for a break from the data-flow. If only to ignore the dirt and grime of humanity long enough to become sufficiently numb to it, to reawaken anew, and then gather more information. A death here, a massacre there. A birth in India, a slaughter in North Korea. A kiss in Laos, government collapse in Sudan. A loving whisper in Denmark, a car bomb in London.

Can I please shut my eyes for longer than one-third of it all? Let me sleep infinitely, awakening only long enough to gaze into an orange sunset, or a star-filled sky. Let me light my view only with the sweetness of things, and collapse my window shades at the faintest chance of an eclipse of my golden sun.

Or should I stare weary-eyed always. Sleep only when death forces it. Stare red-eyed into the filthiness of it all and never blink. Will my mind allow it? Will my eyes dry with the raw air of human suffering?

Will grace allow me to gather these thoughts, this wisdom, this darkness I never should have seen, and sort each vision, like an encyclopedia, bringing forth each page, one at a time, to examine it under the finest of microscopes. Will I find, after my sight is blurred from staring day and night at those twitching microbes, a hint of beauty and hope under each membrane?

Science or Religion, whichever brings me the proper answer. Or maybe something in-between the two. Something I can’t put into words because if I did it would slide readily into either end of the spectrum.

If science were prose, and religion were poetry, each on violently disperate ends of a long rope, what great work of the human psyche would occupy the center? A song? It would be too much poetry. An equation? It would be too much prose.

If making the choice between the two, I choose the indecipherable. I choose it not because it isn’t unknowable– it is very much knowable. But it isn’t knowable like something you read in a book. It isn’t something calculable. It’s like the flutter of the heart at the sight of a lover. It’s like a long and beautiful sorrow—gray like a rainstorm, with silver light around the edges. It rises and falls like emotion, and shutters, twisting and turning, like a kite in the wind.

It comes and goes, because it’s ever-presence would numb you to it. It is a whisper. It is a deep rest and an infinite un-rest. It is tension and contraction of the muscles of your soul at work, unweaving the great and terrible mystery, pouring light into a dark void, and, when you’re blinded by it, dimming it so you can properly see the visceral and tangible reality around you.”

I’m short on words that can describe my recent trip to Samoa. It was simply an incredible experience.

I was raised in a family where the girls watched football while my dad and I took naps on Sunday afternoons. And when football was watched, it was all about the green-and-gold because my mothers family is from Wisconsin. But this recent trip with Troy Polamalu and 40+ other football players, coaches and family has made a lifelong Steelers fan out of me.

Troy was returning to the land of his family after 10 years of absence. His reception in American Samoa was not different then what a beloved King returning home from exile might receive. The week was filled with football camps, banquets, cultural ceremonies, and Island adventures.

For me it was definitely an exhausting trip – and I came home with over 30 hours of footage. But it was also exhilarating and emotionally moving.

One of the highlights of the trip for all of us was the players singing hymns in a 600-strong Samoan choir– songs that would break out unexpectedly throughout the football camps. Below this text you can listen to a clip of it. So moving.

Other highlights include an emotional trip to the Starkist cannery, and jetting around the bay on skidoos filming a longboat race.

In this post is a grip of stills I grabbed from the piece I put together for ESPN alongside Wild Hair Media. That piece is also below, or you can watch it here and check out the photos taken by Chris Baldwin as well as the story written by Carmen Thompson for ESPN the mag.

I’ve had an amazing week here in India so far filming for Warby Parker along with founders Neil and Dave, as well as good friends Lane Wood and Esther Havens. It was great to see Esther in action and work in partnership to put together a great story of Warby Parker’s sustainable and dynamic relationship with Vision Spring. Warby Parker provides high-end quality glasses for just $95 and works around the globe to provide a pair of glasses to people in need for every pair purchased through their site. And the great thing is – they’re doing it in a thoughtful way that is sustainable and stimulates local economies around the world.

Within this post are a smattering of shots taken off-the-cuff throughout our time so far. Below is a video I put together from a day Esther, Lane & I spent shooting b-roll in Delhi. More photos to come – and of course, a finished piece from Warby Parker in the months to come. Please check them out and buy a sweet new pair of specs or shades!

4K4HRAJ9DFTS

In the mean time until I can post images from this trip, please take 12 minutes of your time to check out this mini-documentary I’ve spent the last few months piecing together. It’s not as polished as I would have liked but, well, I’m in India and there’s really not anything I can do about it at this moment and I really wanted to release it this week. I’ll update the link as soon as I’ve created a finished cut of it. This little doc is sort of a “behind the scenes thesis piece” for Shake the Dust. I hope it will give you a little window into my creative process and my heart behind this project.

Oh… and a little video about dancer Antonio Bukhar in Uganda.

Well, I’m not complaining because I realize the rest of the country has been in the same state… but it’s HOT. And in my neighborhood, that means all of the fire hydrants get opened up for a daily block party. These photos were all taken in Hamilton Heights in Harlem on different blocks.

Also of note (but unrelated): Check out this TED talk by Nadia Al-Sakkaf where she chats about “Shake the Dust.” Nadia is the Editor-in-Chief at the Yemen Times and an important interview/voice in my film.

I love it when worlds collide. In fact, that has been the focus of my career over the last four years: to document irony, and the juxtaposition of seemingly disparate ideas.

I spent this last week in American Samoa with Pittsburgh Steelers Safety, Troy Polamalu, along with his family, and a mixture of NCAA coaches, NFL players, and Nike reps. Troy made a splash on the island as it was his first time returning to his homeland in a long time. The week was full of football camps for the local high schools, and a stack of other events that left us all completely exhausted by the time we left. Although I was brought on to create a documentary about the trip (which will be forthcoming), I did take a few photos here and there. Literally what you’re seeing in photos are pretty much all I took. However, I captured about 30 hours of footage, and am so excited to begin piecing it together.

I recently ventured to Bogotá, Colombia for a 7 day research trip for “Shake the Dust.” It was such a great experience– I LOVED Colombia. And I really hit it off with La Familia Ayara, with whom I’ll be filming in August. Through graffiti, break-dancing, MCing and DJing, Ayara works with at-risk urban youth in Colombia to keep them off the streets, and aware and proactive toward a better future in Colombia.

I wasn’t really down there with the purposes of filming– just research. But I put together a little piece (below) from some of the stuff I shot off-the-cuff. Such talented kids!

Well, it’s been a while. Silence… sometimes it’s a good thing, right? Today I’m excited to share something I’ve been sitting on for a couple months now… As with pretty much everything I work on, it has taken me about 5 times longer then I expected to get this project wrapped up. And I’m not totally done yet – but I’m close enough that I’m ready to start leaking some fun images. The project (in a nutshell) …

_________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

The amazingly talented Tyler Riggs (of RED) and Suvi Koponen (of NEXT) paired up for a short fashion editorial film by photographer and filmmaker Adam Sjöberg. The power couple honed their acting skills in a small-scale production short film based very loosely on the filmmakers own experience with two of his close friends, a young husband and wife, who spent 6 difficult weeks in the hospital that tested their relationship and faith. Tyler and Suvi, a couple themselves, were a perfect match for this project and brought an enormous amount of freshness, talent, and honesty to the set. Both exhibited an incredible knack for acting and for channeling their own experiences to create what is sure to be an intimate, beautiful, visually compelling story of loss and forgiveness. Sjoberg had an incredible crew working with him including make-up by Virginia Linzee, Styling by Dawn West, second camera unit by Nathan Smith, producer Janelle Wible, and generous loans from the closets of Vera Wang, Native Son, and Apolis Global among others.
_________________

I have a bunch of people to thank. Deep breath. Here we go. First of all, to Janelle Wible, my dear friend and free-lance producer who took on way more then she bargained for. Suvi and Tyler were both incredibly good sports (Suvi sat in lukewarm bathwater for 2 hours and stood in the freezing cold wind on the west side in March in just a dress and light jacket). Tyler clearly has such an incredible natural talent and instinct for acting and it was such a pleasure to work with them both.

My dear friend, Nathan Smith, was combination PA and second gun on the shoot and shot some of the stills you see in this post as well as some of the behind-the-scenes shots I’ll be posting later. He’s a rockstar.

My team: make-up and hair by Virgina Linzee. Styling by Dawn West. You ladies are both rock stars. Thanks to the Lippkes for letting us use your beautiful space for a good chunk of the filming and as base camp. And thanks to the following clothing companies for generous access to your closets (I’m sure I’m missing someone, so sorry in advance): Vera Wang, Native Son, Apolis, Quail.

Such an amazing and stretching experience. I’m still wrapping up production (ahhh! I’m so swamped) but will have more updates and the final film very soon.

Below is a list of film stills. Soon I’ll have a grip of production/behind-the-scenes shots. Enjoy.

-A

Music. Well, that’s the video below. Publicity. It’s been a good couple weeks for me – with a New York Times shout-out, an interview on the BBC program “The World Today,” Glamour Magazine, Vera Wang, and Martha Stuart. And then work. I’m always busy but always aware that I’m blessed to be doing work that I love – and with great people (images below and above are of Nate Smith and Denise Cermanski at a recent shoot in Tribeca).

The videos I’ve been posting of “Fauxchella” are a part of a long-term project – a music film tentatively called “The Sound and the Wind.” Not sure when that will be wrapped up, and I don’t feel any pressure to set a deadline on it as I’m just too consumed with all the projects at hand (including a short film entitled “Stay” which I’ll be sharing about within the week). In the mean time, enjoy the consistent leaking of videos until the final piece is put together. You can check out additional videos on my Vimeo album for the project here.

Just spent an incredible weekend in the California desert (Joshua tree) with some of my closest friends (and a few great new ones) making music and putting another notch in a 4-year running tradition. I’m really excited about all of the footage that has come together from the last 3 years of music-and-merry-making. Many thanks to everyone and especially Laurel Dailey for all the hard work that has gone into this event.

You’ll be seeing more footage throughout the next year as I begin to piece everything I have (including a grip of interviews) into a music-documentary, but in the mean time, check out the small clips below and then head over to Laurel’s blog for more great photos and the whole story from this years festivities.

Still has a few kinks to work out, but there’s definitely a short video on there that you need to check out.

I’ve seen the sun rise 3 out of the last 6 nights. I sortof feel like I’ve been living in a cave (with the exception of a crazy night out dancing Friday night… my legs hurt). But it’s been good. Cathartic. Coffee is keeping me going, even though my eyes are burning from staring at a computer screen.

It could be reminiscent of my time in Art School when I would be up in my studio going just a little bit coocoo making Facebook pages about my sweatpants to distract myself from finishing an overambitious, last-minute projects (or staring at photos in the darkroom literally forgetting what time of day it is). But it’s not. For some reason I just feel really motivated… I have a lot of deadlines and they’re all basically… next weekend. So. Here I am. Tired but thankful.

Check out this video… every year a group my friends gather for a weekend of music-making. Two weeks from now we’ll do it for the 4th year in a row. So excited:

As we near the finish line for the new official “Shake the Dust” website and the teaser from Yemen, I got a little distracted (as I did in Yemen) with a sort of “side story.” I’m not sure how much you all know about the situation in Somalia, but it’s pretty tragic. As such, there are Somali refugees all over the world. I saw/met them in Uganda, Egypt, Yemen and even down the street here in Harlem.

I’m still trying to decide if this is tangential to the original “Shake the Dust” storyline, but in the mean time I thought I’d post a little footage from Hada in Sana’a, where many of the Somalians live.

If you can’t catch the lyrics in the video, here they are:

The problem at home, the difficulties at home
And my brothers, my people
The land of my grandfathers
The land of my ancestors
Where I wasted all my youth
Line up in front of me / Listen to my rap
Nigga SO legends Somali is my home
Hey world repeat after me what I say
My man AJ Yemeni, Arab
My blue flag like the sky when the sun shines
From the middle east Imma free ya’ll
My people killing, children dyin’, nigga, for what?
Somali, Somali, muslim, Arab
Run after power, no one lives forever
“I advised, I warned, but you ended up dead” – (somali proverb)
Heaven of earth, in the corner of Africa
Somalia, forever.

I have a “misc” folder that contains close to a thousand images from “off-camera” at various shoots. Some of them are funny moments that I maybe shouldn’t keep, but can’t bear to get rid of (none of the images here) and a lot of them are test images where my assistant or second gun is stepping in. Some are just crazy in-between moments. I’m sure I’ll post more out of this folder in the future, but for now here is a smattering. The first and last image was taken by Dave Tosti. You’ll see Nate Pelz a lot in here because he was my primary assistant/post-production-guru in 2010.

And I feel like I need to address something unrelated really briefly: The Yemen footage is still being sorted and pieced together! I promise I’m not just holding out on everyone. But I’m also waiting to release the official “Shake the Dust” website at the same time I release the Yemen trailer. I know, I know. I said I wanted to finish it by the end of February, and it’s now almost mid-April… but sometimes I’m just unrealistic about my time-line. Don’t know what I was thinking on that one. Can’t wait for you all to see it though. And can’t wait to head to Haiti in May!

This morning there was a pile of mutilated trash bags in front of our apartment from early morning scavengers and it was cold and generally rainy and wintry and, well… blah. Which means I’ve had a slight case of the blahs today in general. And on days like this, when life suddenly seems unnecessarily complicated, I sometimes just walk outside with my cup of coffee and look down the hill of our street toward Riverside Park and up at the sky and let out a deep sigh and remember that life really isn’t, at least as far as I can tell, ever as complicated as it feels.

A few days ago when I was doing just that and was staring up at the sky I saw what I thought was an Albatross. Well, it turns out upon some research that they don’t exist in the North Atlantic. But nonetheless, this bird was just floating on top of the wind. It didn’t seem to be going anywhere at all, didn’t seem to have any purpose. It was just hovering, waving gently, in the wind. Totally free– and not free like the birds we see all the time that are soaring about with places to go and crumbs to consume, but really just (seemingly) care-free. I don’t know what kind of a bird that was– but I think we could learn something from him (or her).

Okay, I have a lot going on… and only a few things I can currently share.
(1) My friend (and talented poet) Aaron Belz has a new book that you should buy. His previous book was “The Bird Hoverer” interestingly enough.
(2) Vera Wang’s front page today=me.
(3) 2 weeks ago I, along with an amazing team of people, worked on a small production- a short film I wrote entitled “Stay.” I’m so excited to share more with you about that– we had 2 incredible actors working with us, whom I also can’t wait to share about. All in due time…
(4) I don’t always advertise this widely everywhere, but sometimes I shoot documentaries for people’s nuptials if the story/location is right. Check out the “rough cut” of my current wedding reel and see a few moments of footage from Yemen.

Also, I went with a group of friends to Delaware this last weekend. Just a few photos from there…

I just got home from seeing Lupe Fiasco perform at Webster Hall in New York and my heart is still racing. His new album, “Lasers,” is officially available in stores today. Please do yourself a favor and check it out.

Well, I guess a little update is in order. Recently I’ve been plunging myself back into sorting through all of the “Shake the Dust” footage that I brought back recently from Uganda, Egypt and Yemen. And as I get closer (and closer) to finishing the brief teaser from Yemen, I thought I’d take the time to share a little about (and give some mad props) to the people that have been rallying around me through the course of this project. I feel a paradox of pride and humility to be able to add these people to the growing list of credits that will roll at the end of the film.

I first need to mention all the b-boys and b-girls. To all of the Breakdance Project Uganda crew– including the “star” of the recent Red Bull film “Bouncing Cats,” Abramz, along with all of the beautiful family of people he’s surrounded by. If I started listing all their names I would inevitably leave people out and misspell names, but I’m picturing all your faces as I write this and, seriously, thank you so much. And thanks to James Pearson of Ember Arts for lending his talents towards shooting the big jam in Acholi Quarter (many of his shots were in the Uganda teaser).

To all of the Yemeni bboys– Rockn City and Blast Boyz, Yemen’s very first two bboy crews. To Mohammed Almana, my man, Yemen’s very first bboy (from Iraq of all places). Also to AJ – Yemen’s first and biggest hip-hop artist.

A big thank you to Laura Kasinof, New York Times reporter, sole American journalist residing in Yemen, and regional producer of “Shake the Dust”– and more importantly, friend. Laura kept me sane when I was burning my creative wick down to the bottom at the end of my trip. To Faris Sanabani, President Saleh’s press secretary and owner of the Yemen Observer who backed me from my first full day in Yemen and whose support I’m incredibly grateful for, as well as his two sons. Also a quick shout-out to Tom Finn, who made the story of “Shake the Dust” and break-dancing in Yemen national news.

To Ruyonga, formerly knows as Krukid, the amazingly talented up-and-coming MC from Uganda whose has already generously donated his music towards the final feature film, big ups to ya.

To the talented Shay Grabowski from Alegria who is working on motion graphics, as well as Jonathan Newberry and the Love in Stereo crew who are helping me out with web design. Also, a shout-out to Harlem’s very own KR3Ts who believed in this project one and a half years ago when we shot at the Grafitti Hall of Fame as well as the Scott boys and their crew with whom I shot in LA.

And the list of friends and family that have been cheerleaders for this project from day one– THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. I’m so excited for what is to come with this film this year. Please keep coming back to Loose Luggage for more updates and enjoy a couple of random photos and clips below and above.

KR3Ts:

(Above: Laura doing a screen-test for me… Standing in for AJ)