Yesterday I was in Danang, today I’m in Hanoi, tomorrow I’ll be in Hong Kong and by Monday I’ll be in Seattle. It’s time to hang with Chase Jarvis & Friends.

My youngest sister Lia married Daragh in Vietnam at the Hanoi International Church with a reception at Puku. It was a lovely (humid) day, after a stormy night. I was pulling double duty playing trumpet and taking a few photographs. All the siblings have been married off and I’m the only one that remains. It’s not quite time to lasso down this free spirit, but for Lia and Daragh the time has come and I wish them the very best in their nascent union.

Love, bro.

This is a tune I’ve been jamming to recently and performed tonight as a medley (just the chorus) at Puku Cafe in Hanoi, Vietnam. It’s just a reminder to pursue your passions and if in doubt, get off your butt and go create, rhyme, converse, paint, draw, photograph, beatbox, scratch – basically feel alive and awake.

fstoppers from michalgarcia on Vimeo.

Feeling lazy got me up and awake to take this short series of photographs. It wasn’t originally for the fstoppers contest, but then I realized I could kill two birds with one stone. The video is just for fun, and I was most pleased with the actual images from the camera.

Model / saxophonist: Oscar Azahar
Also, big thanks to Anthony Miller

Shot in Hong Kong for a contest put on by fstoppers.com

Intro with flashing stills inspired by Hasselblad video Chase Jarvis created

Check out the images for yourself:

The second set is semi-saturated.

We apologize in advance to John Coltrane, who is rolling over in his grave at the sound of my beatboxing

Jing Jiang awaits inside the dark alley. Chengdu, China.

Chengdu, China has killer pandas. Well, it used to anyway – dynasties ago. Today, they’re endangered and most of them are relatively domesticated. If you went into the area where they’re kept in Chengdu, they’d probably ignore you and keep eating Bamboo. They like Bamboo. Very much.

I just returned from an amazing trip in Chengdu, China (home of amazingly good Sichuan food). A friend of mine named Murray James, a former classmate from UNT was getting married there to his lovely bride Liu Liu. Besides a picture perfect wedding ceremony complete with fireworks (indoors, mind you) there was this really fun moment of running up with all the guys at the wedding to “steal” the bride from her parent’s home. A bit old-fashioned, but good old-fashioned fun nonetheless. This is the image I captured of that moment.

Also for your eyes and ears, Li Fan was the photographer at the wedding and Murray James is an excellent saxophonist whose album I’m very eagerly awaiting to hear. Murray James studied under Chris Potter at NYU, so naturally I’m putting his album directly onto my “things that don’t suck” list.

I just heard from a model named Mika I worked with who’s now working in Greece. I just had a friend visiting me in Hong Kong from Finland. Europe must be taking over!
Here’s flashback to our shoot. Note that swimsuit photography isn’t exactly my bag, but Mika has such a bold look in the set, I had to share it.

My favorite act of Hong Kong’s “Le French May” was Wax Tailor, pictured above.

Badex Motion graphics Reel from badex on Vimeo.

Taiwo Badejo, aka badex, a motion graphics artist from Nigeria working in Asia and one of the most talented people I’ve ever met.