Above All Things Boy, Be A Man

If you are expecting an Art of Manliness post, you're in the wrong place.

I've known Mike Grosshandler of The Velmas for quite a while now. We met via the internet back around 2004-ish when we were giving The Velmas coverage in Paragon Music Magazine. One very big thing that we (Lisa and Myself, and Mike) had in common was our devout love for Type O Negative. We'd share stories of seeing them live, interesting news pieces that we'd find on the web, even some rare MP3s that circulated the web.

Mike had recorded an acoustic version of "Die With Me" which you can find here: http://tinyurl.com/y6w67fc

Being from the Albany, NY area, and us from quite a few hours south in Northeastern New Jersey, we didn't have very many chances to meet in person, or to get out and see the Velmas perform. One night, The Velmas played in NYC and had invited us out. We almost couldn't make it because of a prior obligation on that night, but Mike convinced us further by saying they were planning a surprise for us. Well, you can't turn down a surprise, right? Especially when you're told it's kinda for you; you pretty much wanna be there for something like that.

So in true DIGImmortal fashion, I lug my gear out to the City, along with a new audio recorder that I had wanted to try out.

The surprise Mike had mentioned was a nice one. They had practiced a Type O Negative cover and wanted to perform it that night since it was the first time they'd played the area since Peter Steele passed away. They played "Todd's Ship Gods (Above All Things)" in their own signature style and it sounded great. I was standing by with my recorder to make sure I got the whole thing on tape...err...digital...

Two days later when I went to retrieve the file, wouldn't you know I had some kind of card error. It took months of searching for a decent free rescue tool to get the file back. I finally came across Disk Drill which did the trick!

I put the audio together with still shots I had taken earlier in the night and made a nice little slideshow out of it. It's not exactly a Hollywood production, but I think it came out pretty good for spending a very short time putting it together amidst other projects going on. You can watch the video below, but I'd recommend going to the YouTube page and watching it there to get the full quality of the photos.




More soon,
-Rob

Scent of a PromGirl

No, no, it's not a new Al Pacino movie. I was recently asked to photograph a new perfume that PromGirl put up for sale on their website. It's the company's official scent which it describes as such:

The official perfume from PromGirl is a signature scent for every girl! It 's a fun and flirty fragrance that will compliment your prom look perfectly. PromGirl perfume is light enough to wear everyday but fragrant enough to last you all through your special event. The main component in this scent is fruit top notes, floral heart notes and a combination of cedar and vanilla base notes. The perfect combination for prom perfection!

You can see some of the photos I submitted, as well as purchase the perfume here 

Hit the jump for shooting specs: