thanksgiving potluck at work

© Joselito Briones
lovely people, good food.


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don't you just love it when they get it?

© Joselito Briones

all i said was, you're these bored party people, spoiled brats - they came up with this, from a shoot i did last sunday.  in the photo are diego, michelle, mitchel, and hallie.

photo stuff update:  i guess sales are picking up (and i hope it continues) - bme (best month ever, if you're not familiar with stock photographers' sales talk) for alamy, stocksy, and imagebrief.(well, considering this is my first month)  and tho not bme for pond5, still not bad.

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first sale @ imagebrief

© Joselito Briones

just got my first (hopefully not the last) image licensed at imagebrief.  it's basically a company that caters to specific requirements of companies needing images by sourcing them directly from photographers worldwide. the big draw? they take out the smallest commission in the industry.

the image that got licensed was from the shoot pictured above (tho not this specific image) with scotty, anton, and jordy - taken in maplewood.

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sp2 christmas dinner

the occasion: office christmas dinner of sp2
the place: pierre II at the mandarin oriental
in attendance: mr. joseph fung and his guests: stover jenkins, paul lau, bing kwan, sk kan, nicholas wong, and anita mak; me of course, and the rest of the people who work at sp2: ligaya, david, maggie (with hubby saturday), eric (with wife sally), wing, raymond, carl, danielle, and karen.

stover, joe, nicholas

wing, karen, danielle, maggie, sat, david, eric, sally, ligaya, raymond

joe, paul, bing

tk, sk, stover, carl

anita, wing

karen, danielle

maggi, sat, david

eric, sally

ligaya, me, raymond, nicholas, joe

the usual suspects

 well i did say that i was gonna post more photos. so there ya go.

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BIM BAM!

© Joselito Briones

haha! considering i've never opened revit before early this year, i've learned enough to do a functional BIM of this project, and another one progressing nicely. everything's custom parametric family, too! (families are the basic components of the model)  the great thing about it is that i was able to see possible construction errors while I was designing the project, i was able to get as many views as i wanted from a single model, and when the model was done, it was a cinch doing all the required standard drawings (altho still laborious, 80+ pages of drawings, two colleagues had to help me when it was time to issue them). revit's definitely the thing to use in a small design-oriented offices. now if only autodesk can do revit for mac!

© Joselito Briones

well then, that's it for 3d models.  i think i'll pick up on my video editing now.

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To the devil, you say!

"Spring in Upper East Side, Manhattan"
© Joselito Briones

You notice that new logo on the upper right corner of this page? That's what's new. I've taken so many photos and I've decided to offer some of them for sale for commercial purposes. I'm trying out iStockphoto. It's a slow process, it takes their staff about a week to review a photograph and approve it for inclusion in the portfolio. It's a good thing, probably, at least they're screening carefully.

Now about your photos. Don't worry, I'm not including personal photos. Although am not really sure what non-personal photos are, I'm sure I know which ones are personal. Pictures of friends are definitely personal, I'm not including them even though I have a signed model release that says I can. Well, unless you're an attention ho' like me and you write to me saying you don't mind if your photo is plastered everywhere. Once I put it out there though, there's very little I can do as to control how people use it. Your photo may end up in an advertisement showing the wonders of life, or it may be used to endorse laxatives. Hey!

Anyway, if you just want to have a print of your photo, I'll look for website I can upload high-resolution versions of "friendly" photos, so you can order directly from them.


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US$45 M

© National Properties Holdings Ltd.

This news clip featured a project I worked on for a couple of years, mostly design, when I still worked in Hong Kong for Mr. Joseph Fung's Studio Pantheon II.

The newsclip, from Hong Kong's "The Standard", describes the property, located in 37 Deep Water Bay road, as "Hong Kong's Chateau de Versailles" and reports that it changed hands a year ago for "the astronomical sum of HK$350 millions" (about US$45 millions). Imagine that.


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In Harmony

© Joselito Briones

We dropped by Jane's work in the afternoon, "Hom + Goldman", in East 20th Street, to pick her up so we can go for dinner together, and also to say hi to David (they work together again). We also picked up the extra suit bags that my mom made, my dad brought to California, and my brother Noel sent to Jane's office address in New York (we always seem to go through such great lengths to avoid paying excessive shipping fees). We also met her bosses and some of her colleagues. They all seemed to be excited with their forthcoming company trip to Berlin. It's good to finally see Jane contented with her job - she was really unhappy with the previous one.


© Joselito Briones

Before dinner, we decided to go to the other Osh Kosh address that Diana gave us, to see if they have the overalls. We walked south through Broadway (photos, above, were taken along Broadway - on top is a window dressing of a furniture shop, and above is Grace Church), passing by DSW to see if they have any new shoes (they didn't). When we got to the address, just north of Houston Street and south of Bowery, It turned out that the place was the company's design office.


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Free MoMA!

© Joselito Briones

We got in MoMA for free. That's a big deal, me being the cheapo that I am. I wanted to go there originally this Friday, having heard that entrance feee is waived from 4pm to 8pm Fridays, but what do you know, turned out that Jens now works for a museum (albeit in Boston) and he gets in most museums for free. Company included. How he got to be a museum's resident scientist from being a nano-physicist, I can only wonder. Actually no, I did ask him. He just happens to be one of those smart people who can do plenty of different things. He's taken up bust-portraiture (clay sculpture of heads) recently with impressive results.




The food in the museum cafeteria, "Cafe 2" isn't bad at all either. I had butternut squash ravioli in a very, very rich sauce, and lentl and portobello mushroom soup, both very good. I'd have preferred the ravioli with a simpler, subtler dressing though. The price was just slightly more expensive than the numerous cafe's scattered in the city.


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Astor Place

© Joselito Briones

Missed this one. I've told you all about this one, of course, when I took pictures of it last year, I just thought I'd take more photos of it under different light.


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At what cost?

© Joselito Briones

This month's issue of VF confused me. I immediately flipped through the pages upon receiving my mailed-in subscription copy, and what did I find? The hotel project that I was working on in New York before I moved to London. I stopped working on it when the owners started failing to pay me - unfunded checks, and after so much trouble trying to collect, a discounted final bill, the works.

And now, one of my favorite magazines has a full page spread calling this hotel "sexy", and a couple more pages of photo spreads and write ups about it. W-Wh-What? At first I thought, how could I NOT have gone through a project that VF would eventually call "sexy"? And then of course, upon reflecting back, I remembered that the idea of the project was sexy to begin with - it was interesting - and that was why I was so enthusiastic to work on it in the beginning. A hotel in an interesting neighborhood of New York, starting to get all the buzz, close to the birthplace of punk BCBG, just north of Soho, and south of East Village, to be opened by the same people who own a happening hotel/club in the meat-packing district.

The work I did (basic floor planning and room layouts), of course, by now would've been totally altered, as is common with any architectural projects. Still I wonder if any of it - hedonism being my guiding idea when working on it - remained. It's burning through my head. Do I want to kick myself? You betcha. Would I have done differently knowing what I know now? Absolutely not.

For one thing, I ask myself, "How did they get away with it?" They were extremely tight with funds (or so they claimed) that they cut at all the not-so-visible proverbial corners. The project was basically a retrofit of a newly built students' dormitory, and the carcass was done - exterior finish and all. The image above, taken with my old cell phone showing the dormitory before it was converted to its current condition, is the only image I have of the project now (I thought it tacky to show you a scan of the bounced check instead). Given, it was the ugliest building in the neighborhood when they started, and they wanted to make it fit to the neighborhood character by making it look like an old brick-faced factory. But the way they had it done! They kept the fake finish, and on top of it, stick flimsy fake bricks. New Yorkers are fond of old utilitarian brick buildings gentrified into a new functional, hip, even sophisticated, use. But if a new ugly building was covered with fake bricks, promote it as authentic, and have VF call it sexy... What's going on?

Let's assume for a while that the VF writer who wrote it completely missed the fake bricks. The interiors after all, at least from the photos in the magazine, really look great. Maybe that's what they meant when they say sexy. Maybe, since I was involved with the project, they have changed the fake plastic mullions of the huge windows into real metal ones. Surely VF wouldn't have praised it if they had stood by the window of a typical bedroom and find that the mullions supposedly holding the glazing together is just a stick-on piece of plastic and can be pulled and flicked on the glass like rubber band?

Or maybe it's just true, what another article in the same issue of the magazine discussed - about media manipulation. The owners of the hotel, who were also owners of the hippest SOHO clubs since the 80's, after all, are extremely media and PR savvy.


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"Bed Day"

© Joselito Briones

Have you heard of this holiday before? We don't have school today here in Germany (or maybe it's just Bavaria) because this is supposed to be the day in the middle of the week when you're supposed to just lounge around in bed all day. Am not shitting you, it's true!

Oh well, I might have spent all day in my pj's, but in front of my computer. I edited some pictures, for the brochure. I also did a new version of this photo that I took of Carrie a couple of years ago in New York. I wanted to experiment in high-key desaturated colors.


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Designing stuff

© Joselito Briones

Finally I've thought of something to do with Ernst.

Last night I thought of a way to do a folding stool/side table, that, if I may say so myself, is ingenious. HA! I know, modesty has never been my best trait. As in any clear ideas, it was finished almost as soon as I thought of it. I sketched it in my little notebook, and as even it was too late, I couldn't sleep until I've drawn it up properly, I got up and did the drawings in CAD. So now it's just a matter of refining it, and explaining to Ernst how to do it.

Now the question is, will it work? I'll keep you posted.

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Photo Finish

© Joselito Briones

I could've spent my last day in New York just relaxing and waiting for the time for me to go to the airport. Instead, I spent it literally running around in Manhattan with Eric, who decided to do a hooky today (I'm sure if he had known how today would turn out, he'd have gone to work instead).

I had two last things to take care of before leaving, to go to the bank to inquire about an erratic letter that I got from them, and to go to a notary public to get some documents sealed and faxed. An optional thing I was going to do was to take photos of 1 Astor Place, a project I worked on while working for Ismael Leyva Architects.

A friend, who shall remain anonymous due to his refusal to make public the fact that he's indulging my materialistic side, gave me a digital camera (WOO HOO!) last night for my forthcoming birthday, so I thought, what better way to break it in than to do the optional photo-taking in Astor Place. The memory card that came with the camera was too small though, so I decided to get a bigger one at J&R today. Before we left, I received an email from Mati with a couple of purchase requests for kids in Germany: a pair of trainers and a Knicks cap, with instructions as to where to get them. So a to-do list of 2 items within 2 blocks of where Eric lives became a 6-stop task all over the place. And we had a maximum of 2.5 hours to do everything.

First stop. The bank. Fast walk. Non-conclusive. I was advised to check the internet for answer. 10 minutes

Second stop. Fast walk. Notary public. Everything went fine. 15 minutes

Third stop. J&R. It took 40 minutes just to get there by subway, running to and from the station. Ended up buying a leather case and extra battery for the camera in addition to the memory card. 55 minutes

Fourth stop. Astor Place (Cooper Square). Subway. Missed the stop and ended up in Union Square because I was too busy installing the new card in the camera. Had to take another train back one stop. Running at this point. Click. Click. One photo above. 25 minutes

Fifth stop. Urban wear/shoe store in 34th Street, as specified in the email. Took the subway again. They don't have the shoes, nor the Knicks cap. The sales clerk looked at the photo of the trainers (I printed Mati's email) and looked at me incredulous, as if to say, "Why the hell would we sell such shoes?!?!?". I tried to defend myself by saying that the shoes are not for me, but he wouldn 't hear any of it. He spoke politely though and said they don't carry this brand. 15 minutes

Last stop. NBA store, 5th Avenue. Took the subway. Ran 3 blocks. Ran into Dermot Mulroney. Stared for about 5 seconds, but only because he was staring back, as if to say, "Well, either say you recognize me so just go ahead and ask for my autograph already, otherwise go on along and don't look at me all disappointed because I'm not shaven and my hair is not fixed and you can see all my gray hair and gray beard stubble". I did the latter. I looked back and saw him cover his head with a beanie. Store didn't have the shoes either, nor the Knicks cap. They had lots of Knicks cap, but not the one in the picture. "Must be exclusively an online product from our store", clerk said. 20 minutes

Grabbed a couple of sandwiches and drinks on the way to the subway to go back to Eric's. We were both running and panting and sweaty at this point. Subway took some time. When we got off the train we ate the sandwiches (either they were really good or we were really really hungry) while running to get back to his apartment. 25 minutes

Okay, so we weren't able to do everything in the alloted time, but I think it was still good. I had to hurry collecting all my stuff so I won't be late getting to the airport. I was in such a rush that I wasn't even able to thank Eric properly, or say goodbye properly. I expected him to just give up at this point and be glad to get rid of me, but, good friend that he is, he walked me to the train station.


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What do you get when you google yourself?

I googled my name and one of the top entries was this... from 3 years ago. I'm surprised it's still online. It was a group effort, from when I was still working with Ismael Leyva Architects, in New York. And no, we didn't win the competition.

My online store, tenderware.com, is on top of the google list, and my online portfolio, branded.as is also there. Good to know that if someone wants to find me, all he gotta do is google me.

Anyway, I googled you, and was pleasantly surprised to find a picture of you in Trafalgar Square.


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