A birthday on the 4th of July, originally uploaded by LahDeeDah Lu.

Coming to the US, there is no day that is quite so American and so light as the 4th of July. The whole country has a day off in the middle of summer. The weather was great (well, there was a huge downpour in the late afternoon/evening). Bubbles, a happy birthday girl and a red barn in the background just seem to capture the whole spirit of the day.

Quinceañera and sister in Central Park, originally uploaded by LahDeeDah Lu.

I had the pleasure of shooting a “Quinceañera” party in New York City. A “Quinceañera” is a latino celebration of a girl’s coming of age, at age 15. It’s similar to a “sweet sixteen”, but it’s planned nearly extravagantly as a wedding.

This is my favorite shot from the event. I’ll be posting a full album of the photos in a week or so.

Aerial show at Castle McCulloch Carnivale, originally uploaded by LahDeeDah Lu.

I originally went to the Castle McCulloch Carnivale to watch Guhl play with his band Ankataa in the drum tent, but then some of the organizers of the event asked me to take some photos for me.

The event was great: so much going on and some really great costumes.

I’ve uploaded galleries from the event which can be seen here.

Life around death, originally uploaded by LahDeeDah Lu.

This cemetery is not like any of the others I’ve been to. I had visited it during the winter and decided to show it to Guhl last week.

It’s abandoned. It hasn’t been looked after in years, I don’t know, maybe even decades. You can see human sized dents in the ground. I wonder if the bodies were taken away to another grave or if the earth has collapsed over the bodies. There are nearly no plants growing on the ground, which is full of cobwebs… like stepping stones for very light people. You can sense there is parasitic life underneath. The place was so quiet and it was only before leaving that we realized that there were no birds around at all. The only sign of life we saw was a lonely black butterfly.

The gravestones are marked with dates from the beginning of last century. Most of the gravestones have fallen down. It doesn’t look like vandalism. This place looks like it’s just not visited at all.

I must say it’s one of the creepiest places I’ve been to in a while. It’s a vacuum of death in the middle of this town. The only life seems to be above, from the warmth of the sun.

Road kill and the zombie squirrel, originally uploaded by LahDeeDah Lu.

Ok, so this dead squirrel was on the road right by my kids’ school. I passed it and realized that I wanted to take a photo of it, so I stopped and turned around. Just as a turned around, I saw a squirrel walking very slowly across the road… at first it looked drunk. I thought the dead squirrel had come to life… or better yet, turned into a zombie. You can imagine how excited I suddenly got… but then I realized it was just another very slow squirrel, and that dead one was a little more up the road.

It also made me think that maybe there is a family of very slow and depressed squirrels who contemplate suicide regularly.

That’s my son inspecting the squirrel.