A better way to fly

When I fly, I normally like to take a combination of dramamine (drowsy version) and red wine. This cocktail, combined with sleep deprivation, helps me pass out and avoid the anxiety I usually feel during takeoff and landing. On one flight home from college, however, I found myself in the unfortunate position of having lost my last drink coupon. Thus I was stuck awake and, rather than scanning through the latest offerings of SkyMall, decided to entertain myself by drawing what I saw out the window as we were departing Hartford. I used the "Brushes" app to draw this on my phone.

Absent, but not gone

Still making artwork?! Having this interobang laid on me over and over for the last three months, I hope here to lay the matter to rest. Yes, art is still being made by me, by Henry, by Sebastian and (indirectly) by Kirk. But some people named above have also been busy starting a company. Said company is called Atto and focuses on web design in the service of education. All of my work, of late, has been channeled toward this effort and I'm thrilled to share it below.

Readers can look forward to future posts by me including: Re: Branding (competing globally for the identity of Gabriel Diaz via google search results), more recent work updates, and some show updates!

For those of you who have gotten this far down the post, Thank you. Please note that these designs are available on T shirts at the Atto shirt store if you are really moved please CLICK HERE.

The real me?

Whenever I look at a picture I've taken with a group, my eyes dart immediately to myself. I'm not sure why this happens; I suppose it has to do with checking to make sure I approve of the way I look (I have no clue what I'd do if I didn't approve... snatch the photo from its owner and tear it to shreds?). But the thing is, I always look exactly the same. In my many years of experience being photographed, I've perfected the artificial smile that is guaranteed to convince my future self that I was indeed having a joyful time at whatever event some person had decided to document.

Or maybe I'm intrigued by photos of myself because they're different from the way I usually see myself. When I normally look at myself, I see a mirror image. This isn't what the camera sees. And my face, like most people's, is not perfectly symmetrical; hence the very cheerful Henry I see in the photo is different from the groggy and disoriented Henry whom I see staring at me every morning. The photographed Henry is the one that the world sees, the one they know. But they're deluded; they aren't seeing the real me, rather a very slighted tweaked version of me.

Only by staring at my reflection can you learn who I really am.

This is a Mistake

Just as soon as Ken Baldwin jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, he realized that he had made a mistake. He didn't want to die. Baldwin was rescued by construction workers who witnessed his jump, and later that night, he was slipping in and out of consciousness in a hospital bed. The doctor told his wife that he had a 50/50 chance of surviving, "depending on whether he wanted to live." He's now one of the eight million living Americans who have attempted suicide.

Only about one in forty people survive the 220-foot fall into the San Francisco Bay. Most of those folks report having an experience similar to Ken's, in which they regretted the decision immediately after leaping over the rail.

I learned about Ken's story when listening to an episode of Radiolab. Also see this story from the San Francisco Gate.

Small Town, Florida

By Henry Agnew

THE first time I went on a photo shoot with Gabe was during my freshman year. We had met on the Yale lightweight crew team—both of us were walk-ons, he a year older than I. My first impression of Gabe was that he was a little eccentric, very friendly, had a great big smile, and didn’t really seem like a typical college rower. In reality, Gabe Diaz isn’t a typical anything.

When we went on our first shoot, we were in Florida on a Spring Break training trip with the crew team. I know going to Florida for Spring Break sounds pretty awesome, but when we weren’t rowing, the trip consisted mostly of sitting around the hotel pool and thinking about when our next meal would be. Between the morning and afternoon practice sessions, we had plenty of free time to walk around and explore the area. There wasn’t anything very exciting to see. But that didn’t mean we wouldn’t be able to take some cool photographs.

So one day after practice Gabe asked if I wanted to go take some photos with him. I had nothing better to do other than work on my tan, and Gabe seemed like a cool guy to hang out with, so I happily went along. I don’t remember exactly how it went down, but we probably just began walking towards no destination in particular, with Gabe stopping every now and then to take a shot, explaining why he thought it made for a great picture, what with all the light and the angles and so forth. (Gabe knows a lot about photography and he is always super-excited to share his knowledge with interested folks—that makes him a really great teacher).

Pretty soon the camera was in my hands, and Gabe told me to take a picture of anything I wanted. He taught me the basics of using the camera—how to focus, how to click the button to take a picture—pretty complex stuff. I even learned how to load the film! The first shot I took was of an air-vac machine at a gas station. Later I took a sweet shot of Gabe standing in a wooded area near the highway eating a loaf of Amish strawberry bread. Three years later, I still have the black-and-white printouts of both of those.

After an hour or two, we had to return to the hotel, either for practice or for dinner, I don’t remember which. It was a fun afternoon, but at the time, I didn’t think it represented anything more than that. What really happened that day in small-town Florida was something special—a partnership was born. And a very unlikely partnership it was! I had never had much interest in photography—when I did express myself artistically, it usually involved spending a couple minutes during lecture making drawings in Microsoft Paint. But over the next three years, taking photos with Gabe has created some of the most fun, memorable, and questionably legal experiences that I’ve had during college. I look forward to sharing lots of those memories on this blog.