Mr. HIP HOP & FRIENDS
Christmas 2022

Hip Hop, AKA Raslan, is the adult son of my friend -- I lived with them some five years and took 1,000-plus stills and video clips of my young friend. He was born with Down Syndrome and lives in a different world intellectually than most of us.

Literally -- he is the most natural person I've ever photographed. He is always up for being in my pictures, and, he has the knack for taking them as well. He loves pictures, sending them to his family, and carries his Apple iPads everywhere!

The photo above: I saw Lulu, the female mannequin with orange hair pigtails and Bozo smile, for sale on Craigslist and bought her and the male with blue hair to prop and style a Christmas picture. Batman is Hip Hop's alter ego so I ordered his formalwear, the Batman logo t-shirt, off Amazon.

The threesome was photographed with only a hair of on-camera flash (bouncing off the ceiling) using my Nikon D810 .nef RAW format and edited Photoshop CS6 in 16-bit Pro Photo RGB -- saved for web here in 8-bit sRGB. Most of my stuff of Hip Hop was shot with my iPhones.

The Good Road
The Good Road Goes Places and Does Things

PEACE-LOVE-RESPECT

I had pretty consistant success putting things in words Raslan could understand.

In one hand, I told him, you have the good road -- in the other hand is the bad road -- the good road goes places and does things -- the bad road is like the sad little boy you showed me on Youtube -- he stays in his room breaking sh*t and screaming because no one wants to be around someone acting like that.

Another example, I would ask: Are you a good man or a bad man? A good man helps his Mama and brings Peace, Love and Respect in the house... Raslan would always assure me he was a good man, and loves his mama.

On the Good Road of Peace, Love, Respect.

4-hour Blue-ray project I fell into a year-long binge during COVID producing a personal family movie Blu-ray containing the best of my still and video work -- it turned out pretty good if I may say. I can't share it because of copyright issues on the hip-hop music he loves and the additional public domain images I used to entertain him.

The above background contains a composite of stock images -- the street, the arrows, the sign, the sky -- I relabeled the sign, dropped Mr. Hip Hop in walking with his beloved iPad in hand to make my creative theme statement.

Hip Hop pictured sitting at the end of the boat dock on Miramar Lake.

THIS PHOTO IS MORE MOMENT than pretty picture -- though the subdued mood of the lighting is effective in less dramatic sense. This was the first time his mama let me take him out of the house alone -- he had been stuck at home for months because of COVID and this was a pretty special moment for both of us.

I was a little worried to go so far away from him, but he is a good strong swimmer. This was also shot on my iPhone Pro Max.

Hip Hop posing for a photo in front of an art mural in Ocean Beach, San Diego, California. He is right across the street of Ocean Beach Pier. Glowing neon jelly fish, curious seal, and sea weeds are pictured in the art. I shot it on my iPhone Pro Max camera.

Sunset Cliffs, Ocean Beach -- also shot with my iPhone Pro Max.