MOMENTS – The new bi-monthly photography e-zine from SEA/collectiv is out and you can download it here.

Its a PDF and weighs in at about 4MB (20 pages), not too too big – and it is chock full of some pretty nice and quite diverse photography… including a modest and mysterious contribution from the Dude and his little monster Nikon camera pimped-out with a 20mm lens. Think wide-angle and big-picture.

OK, you need more of a tease than that? Say no more, nudge-nudge, wink-wink… here are a few of the photos from my series called Mysterious Little Houses in the Alley that didn’t make it into the magazine. Gotta pay a bigger bribe to the editor for the next edition (Just kidding of course, just kidding… insider Cambodian courruption humor).

I really like my small contribution, which right there is something rather unusual. Most of the time I see all the faults and very little of the good points in my own work. Call me hyper-critical if you like, but that’s just the way it is, generally. But this time I really like the series I put together right in my own backyard.

Just little houses in the alley behind my apartment here in Phnom Penh. No people, just lots of evidence of people. And lots of nice colors and textures and a certian kind of straightforward honesty, but also a bit of mystery.

Like I said, please do let me know your thoughts if you have the time. Thanks!

Ande now, back by popular demand… some fresh-from-the-steamy-hot-streets-of-Phnom-Penh Street Photography.

And my renewed commitemnt to post new photos every week from my semi-big town here in SE Asia.

 From Monday (just two days ago… osrry for the dealy, but I shot so many photos it took a few days to get ‘em processed and sorted)…

Phnom Penh street food vendor.

A kid, his sister on the bike and big brothers trying to ignore all of the above as they concentrate on their Cambodian chess battle.

A very nice kid who ought to be in school, but instead is scavenging garbage with the rest of his family.

Another nice young kid spending her days with her charcoal vendor family.

I’d like to add that these kids are not abused (Better to say that I see no indication at all of any abuse whatsoever) and are cherished by their families, but economic realities being what they are here in The Kingdom, it is very common to see small children doing hard and entirely honest work.

Groovin’ on the Chinese soap operas…

Tah-dahh!

The end.

Heh-heh-heh.

But seriouosly folks, I was out on the street today and it was hot. Real hot. Yow. Hot. H-O-T hot (and that’s seriously hot).

Reminded me of when I came here to live 5 years ago. It was hot then too. Real hot… damnd hot.

This guy wanted to sell me some mangoes, but I was buying it.

I distracted this guy by shooting a few photos and then grabbed some of that freshly chopped garlic. Excellent!

Hey look, here come’s Sunday afternoon breakfast!

Note the Cambodia Daily newspaper from February 15th that I found rolled-up inside my camera bag.

What it is? Fried egg, BBQ pork, Cambodian city pickles, lots of rice and a Coca. The damage? $1.30.

The lady who runs the family restaurant down the street from my place just reopened today after a week off for the Chinese New Year.

What she mostly does (90% of the time would be a conservative estimate) is lounge on a sort of a poolside type of lounge chair up there near the front of the joint. What did she do during her week-off? She lounged around 100% of the time. This is Cambodia!

OK, a small update then…

The Hellhounds rocked the house again last night at the Sharky Bar and while a good time was had by most, The dude managed to solidly break all known records for busted guitar strings in a single night. Four (4), yes four [4] { IV – for all you Roman Numeral freaks out there } strings bit the dust in short order, the first just before the climax of the first song of our first set.

This sort of humiliating show of unbridled incompetence and nincompoopery is about par for the course, so if you haven’t made it to Sharky’s on a Thursday night yet this year, you better get your cute little butt (or whatever) on down there next week. Toot sweet hunny-buns. I got a funny feeling that its gonna be a hoot and a holler and a half. Maybe a holler .75 (that’s 3/4ths for all you fractional freaks out there). Next Thursday, February 25th at 9pm – Sharky Bar in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

On other fronts The M-Dude successfully completed a number of photo-shoot gigs this month and is looking forward to the next week’s publication of the SEA/collectiv’s new PDF magazine rumored to be an every-other month affair with extra-special photographic delights.

Andy Brouwer reports that he is finally finished with his years-in-the-making book To Cambodia With Love, which is being published in a month or two by ThingsAsian Press of San Francisco, my old hometown.

The book is sure to be of the utmost quality and authority due to both Andy's impossibly deep, wide and electrified knowledge and affection for all things Cambodian and to the publisher's impeccable standards and sensibility. Oh, and there's an essay of mine in there too.

They're the folks who published my book To Myanmar With Love. Its not really my book, its their book and it was edited (with contributions by) by Morgan Edwardson, a very good guy I know who shares my love of the Burmese people and culture and who was kind enough to ask me to supply photos for the book. But my name is on the cover and so sometimes – and I believe that you should forgive me for this without hesitation or remorse – I refer to it as my book even though I didn't really do much work on it.

The book also includes a couple of essays that I wrote.

Speaking of which, the book I mean… here is a little mini-review of the book on a cool-assed-looking website called BANG!

In other news, my almost not even embarrassing anymore Steve Goodman Photography website is coming along very nicely and soon (I've got my fingers crossed) I won't have much more work to do except for freshening it up once or twice a month. Then… more time to work on photography projects and not website development projects

It cost me a bundle because I chose to do it myself, not paying close attention to the fact that I really don't know that much about buidling a website using WordPress.

Sometimes, if you really want to get things done, it is imperative that one ignores the facts, even really big important ones, if one wants to get something significant accomplished. After all, if we let our mere lack of experience stop us from attempting to do something where would be be today? Not sitting pretty and living large I'd be willing to wager.

It took a long time with a lot of false starts, dead-ends and an enormous amount of disciplined focus and concentration. I learned a lot and I like that a whole bunch.

Same goes for ^The Hellhounds blog,  which I think turned out nicely as a fun little example of tongue-in-cheek branding and promotion.

Of course these blogs and websites and things like them will always be works-in-progress, owing mainly to my steadfast and deeply-seated beleif that everything in life is experimental and therefore temporary. Its just a glaringly obvious addendum to or extrapolation of a central point in the teachings of the Buddha, which – as you probably already know – was that all things must pass since all things are temporary and consequently unstable (though they often appear to be permanent) and subject to radical upheaval and massive unanticipated change.

Life is full of mystery. Or is that misery? Well, I guess its a bit of both - depending on how you look at it – and naturally here at MythCo Publishing (a wholly owend subsidiary of DudeCo Industries) we're always hoping for the best while still bearing in mind that its all one big amazingly improbable experiment and that everything could just go Kablooey at any time… and often does!

Finally, speaking of mystery, misery and  ^The Hellhounds … please come on out to Sharky Bar on Thursday night to see

^The Hellhounds tear into the BLUES

We're gonna be a-wompin' and a-stompin' and we just might pitch you a wang-dang-doodle all night long (well at least until maybe 11:15 or so).

We had a great crowd again last week, which we really appreciate, and it seemed like everyone had a good time. i don;t know for sure becasue I was busy sweating and trying to not break guitar strings.

But I gotta tell you that its too damn hot up there on that stage.

Can I get a Coke please? Lots of ice. Thanks.

One of the scientists who worked with Hart on the “Rhythms of the Universe,”  project said that "What we did is turn it into sound by slowing down the frequency and ‘stretching’ it into an audio form. Both light and sound are all wave forms — just at different frequencies."

Here's a little video from the article with more interesting information.

If you have the time and interest you can check it out here.

Here's the teaser photo:

Young boy sniffing glue on the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia

That happens a lot and its often how I work. I shoot and shoot and only later, sometimes much later, do I finally discover what the real story is. Well that's life and I'm not complaining. Actually the esential point of this particular story did not reveal itself to me until I sat down and wrote the sucker.

It takes a long time to write. This story is about 1,000 words long and it took me hours and hours. Hard work, not as much fun as taking and processing photos, but quite satisfying once you finaly get the job done. I did git-er-done and there you have it.

And in other news… please stop by Sharkys on Thursday night when The Hellhounds once again take the stage to howl and wail the BLUES.

Should be a real good time with some new songs and some old ones that we repainted and lubed-up at our Sunday afternoon practice session.

So, yes… that means that stevegoodman.com, my professional photography website is not only back up-and-running, it has been refined, reconfigured, rethunk and redone and for the first time I can honestly say that I am very happy with it. Wow.

It took a lot of time, hard work and determination to git-er-done, but it was totally worth it and I learned a lot of good stuff long the way, so the whole miserably goofed-up thing turned out to be entirely positive and valuable. What could be better than that?

In a somewhat related vein, I recently ran across the followng graphic again (I had seen it before and it sprang to mind during a recent conversation with a friend of mine), so I poked aorund on Google and found it to share with my friend (and with you too).

It is at once sad and hilarious and it certainly rings true with anyone who has ever been involved in projects involving lots of different people.

It brilliantly illustrates the many pitfalls of human organizations in dealing with complex problems that are almost always made exponentially worse and more muddled by the vagaries and challenges of human communication.

Let's take a look shall we?

Pretty funny stuff and most people agree that it cleverly captures an all-too-real phenomenon that anyone who has ever worked for a large company or for the government, especially the military, can relate to and validate with their own anecdotal examples.

But that's not why I am brining it up. The interesting and downright pathetic thing is that the gist of the sort of mangled and mismanaged project in the illustration is something that I actually (singlehandedly) did to myself!

It is astonishing and instructive, not to mention being embarassing and profoundly disturbing. Despite all that, I'm managing to take it all in stride and learn from the experience, so just don't you worry about a thing.

Elabloration and commentary is forthcoming and will be published here soon. Unless I can't find the used tire I still need to really finish the job!