The order of travelled cities:
Frankfurt ( pink dot ) > Shanghai > Hangzhou > Kuala Lumpur > Perhentian Island > Kuala Lumpur > Mumbai > Dehli > Himachal Pradesh > Kashmir > Ladakh > Punjab > Delhi > Bangalore > Mumbai > Kuweit > Cairo > Alexandria > Cairo > Frankfurt > Hamburg > Copenhagen > Hamburg > Frankfurt > Addis Ababa > Bishoftu > Addis Ababa > Frankfurt > Hamburg > Ildved > Copenhagen > Hamburg > St. Gallen > Frankfurt > Bangalore > Kuala Lumpur > Brisbane > Rainbow Beach > Agnes Waters > Taroom > Brisbane > Kuala Lumpur > Perhentian Island > Kuala Lumpur > Frankfurt > Berlin > Frankfurt > San Francisco > Phoenix > Cancun > Havanna > Vinales > Havanna > Santo Domingo > Las Terenas > Cabarete > Barahona > Santo Domingo ( blue dot )

What a trip. Some might wonder how it is possible to only have that many cities on the map after traveling for 2 years. A lot of people ask me if I went to this or that place to visit and when I said “no” they were always like “why not, you’re traveling to the country and didn’t see this spot?”

The answer is easy. I am not a tourist. I don’t go to places to see things I’m going to places to live them. I stay with the people I work for which automatically means that I am living their lifes. If they go out a lot, I go out a lot. If they work a lot I work a lot. If they drink a lot I drink a lot and if they don’t go out or work or drink at all, I do the same.

It’s not about visiting the sights of a location, it’s all about the interaction of myself with the city I live in and the people I hang out with. Sometimes I assimilate within hours and sometimes it takes weeks to get used to a particular lifestyle.

The bottom line is that I didn’t just visit 36 cities on 5 continents in 15 different countries, but that I lived almost a dozen different lifes within those two years.

And it’s not over yet. What was planned as a 2 years travel has to be extended for a couple of weeks/months. Things happen that you can’t plan and other things happen that you can expect but not avoid. I recently ran out of money. Not a big deal considering the fact that I have the greatest place in the Caribbean to stay for free and living a fantastic life.

I concentrated on doing a small side job for a german company the past few weeks to have enough money to continue traveling. And what a surprise, on my 2nd anniversary the money appears on my account and I am able to finish my amazing journey with the grand final. South America is awaiting me as the last ( populated ) continent to fulfill my task of working on all continents within this trip.

Apart from the job I concentrated on living the life so I started surfing and saw a lot of this chillaxed country. It’s gonna be hard to leave and get back on the road and some random couch.

You’ll here from me
fabsn

Photo © Elena from Ali’s Surfcamp in Cabarete. More surf pictures in the photo section
- click picture to enlarge
Cabarete Surfcamp

Some of you might have been wondering. Where the hell is he? No article for ages, no news.

Well, I’m still on this caribbean island called Domenican Republic. What was planned for a short vacation has turned into an extended holiday including surf trips to the north coast, dance sessions in pit stops, hammock relaxations on the rooftop and quite an amount of the delicious rum they produce here. I’m living the good life!

It propably takes someone to burn all the rum to make me leave.

I’m off for another surftrip.

Gonna publish some more stuff next week.

Xtra Words!!!
fabsn

AMAZING NEW YEAR’S PARTIES ALL OVER THE PLANET AND A GREAT START IN 2012 IS WHAT I’M WISHING EVERYONE WHO CAME ACROSS MY BLOG OR MET ME IN REAL LIFE.

May 2012 be longer than some weirdos predict.

Cheers, Pro, Fisehatak, Salud, Gan bei, Skål, T’chen chen, Apki Lambi Umar Ke Liye, Sanda bashi and Prost
fabsn

Chinese New Year in 2010 – click picture to enlarge

Cuba, home of cigars, rum and some of the greatest world music. The country that made Ché Guevara the martyr he is, celebrated throughout the world as the symbol of revolution. The domain of Fidel and his own definition of Socialism. It’s a place where “business carreer” is a term with no meaning, where lawyers play instruments at night, teachers ride bycicle taxis during the weekends and cab drivers sell fake cigars for an extra dollar. A place where women and girls – doctors, government officials and students – become prostitutes as soon as they see a foreigner to earn a monthly salary within a night. It is a country with free healthcare and education and therefore the country with the second highest education rate ( 99.9% ) on this planet but at the same time with one of the least future perspectives, not due to poverty but to restrictions, intimidation and pre-assembled curriculum vitaes.

The Cuba I knew before I entered was a romantic description of what it really is. And yet, it’s a country of people with warm hearts and sharp minds. People who realize quite well the trapped situation they are living in. Some with lethargy and some with an unbreakable spirit to make the best of a bad situation.

It never happened before during my trip that reality punched me in the face that hard. From the moment we got picked up at the airport, people couldn’t stop talking about their feelings. There was more or less a consensus within the opinion of all cubans. They love their country and not everything is bad but they hate living a life in prison, not being able to cross the border and see the world, to do with their lifes what they feel like nor to speak what they think as long as it disagrees with the authority opinion.

It so happened that a photography/video art project collaboration with Daniel Castro ( who I worked for in San Francisco ) became over night a journalistic project with lots of interviews behind and in front of the camera. On our second night we met two young cuban students who wanted to help us talk to people and find doors for the photography part. They showed us the real life and by the time we finished our project everyone in the area of Old Havana knew who we were – the two foreigners who carry around doors and take pictures of people in front of them in the middle of the street. What they didn’t know was, that we interviewed each of them, asked questions about the situation in Cuba and the personal effect on their lifes. We met people who haven’t seen their kids for years after they were trying to escape to the US on a boat, not knowing if they are still alive. We talked to people who were drowning their sorrows in rum and to people who were exotic dancers and in love with Fidel Castro.

When we started this project we didn’t really understand the gravity of the situation we put ourselves and especially the cubans in who took part in the project. Walking around, filming people saying their opinions is not something the authorities like to see. Everytime we passed a police officer our two cuban helpers had to show their id’s and slowly but steady a mild form of paranoia spreaded in our heads. What if someone gets arrested if they find out? What if we leave, publish the interviews online and the police know the faces of criticism? After our long shoots we were figuring out the worst case scenarios until late in the night, to not lose touch with reality.

My own paranoia culminated two days before I was planning to fly out of Cuba in a situation that illustrated how it could have ended:

Daniel had left to the States already and I spent my last days in Cuba on my own. On that particular evening I was on my way home with a doggy bag of rice and beans for dinner. When I turned into our street, a huge crowd was standing opposite of my house, staring, talking to each other. When I saw what they were staring at, my steps slowed down for a moment. 5 police cars and several officers who shielded the house 2 doors away from the place where I lived. I sped up walking and tried to hide my panickiness, passed the police cars and disappeared in the crowd to stand and watch as they did, with my carton box of food. After a minute of standing the crowd slowly started to get louder, something must have happened. When a man around my age in handcuffs surrounded by 3 policeman appeared in the entrance of that house, the crowd became a mob. Furiously they started to get closer to the man to beat and kick him. The police reacted fast and led the man into the car, saved from the people who were now beating and kicking the police car he was sitting in. Seconds later the tumultuary scene turned again into a normal street scene. People were sitting or standing in groups, chatting over a cigar and a glass of Mojito. My rice and beans dinner tasted like the carton I carried it in after I returned home.

We both consider ourselves as designers/artists and never planned to play journalists…but Cuba didn’t really leave us a chance.

The video will be coming in the near future together with a gallery show in the US. And hopefully those guys will understand one day that the embargo on Cuba isn’t helping anyone.

Belated merry christmas from the Domenican Republic
fabsn

( meanwhile almost 3.000 prisoners were released in the largest mass pardon in the history of Cuba under the Castro regime )

Some pictures that I took during my stay in Cuba without any context to the project
( click to enlarge gallery )

 

farewell party with the crew after the project on our roof terrace.

the project crew on day one

Almost 3 month ago I was a judge in Malaysian Model Contest AIMS International Model Search. When the winners were announced I was asked to go on stage to hand over the award for ‘Photographers Most Favourite Model’. And so I did. Since I haven’t had planned with it, I tried to come up with some smart words should they ask me to say something to the audience.
But they didn’t.

What I haven’t thought about was the words that I was going to say to the winner Stefanie Wong and when her name was announced, I gave her a kiss on the left and the right cheek, handed over the award and then…well, believe it or not, I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say. “Congratulations” would have been the best solution but I was so confused that this word didn’t come to my mind. So I mumbled what you say to people very often when you congratulate them for something.

“Happy Birthday” is what I said and I was kinda happy about the fact that it wasn’t captured on video…until today.

Read my lips at minute 6:06

Still Cuba…

…due to several reasons this is not an update, just a sign of life. More text with crazy stories from this country by the end of the week. I mean, really crazy stories…

Be well
fabsn

Gabriel Angelo is a San Francisco kid like many others. What makes him different is his enthusiasm for old jazz and blues pearls and his instrument, the trumpet.

I met him already during my earlier days in San Francisco when I passed the intersection at Mission/4th close to the downtown area. I couldn’t forget his performance while playing amazing grace, all dressed up like from different times way back. Next to him and open suitcase filled with dollar notes.

Daniel, the photographer I am working with, always wanted to take photos of “the trumpet kid” and I saw this as a good opportunity to shoot a small video about him. Apparently the reason why he’s performing day after day is a very simple one. He plays on the streets to earn money for his music lessons at the S.F. Conservatory of Music and Berkeley Jazz School. And when you see him out there just passing by, it feels like he is a professional and experienced performer. Kind of a grown-up in a childs costume, handing out business cards to people who are interested in booking him for an event. But after I got to talk to him I realized, he’s a kid like all the others but also a kid like no other.

Currently he’s taking part in America’s got talent and after such a long time ignoring this show I will propably follow it from now on.

To give you some news about my Design Journey after a while: This will be the last article from San Francisco. Early tomorrow morning I’ll be sitting in a plane heading down to Cancun, Mexico. Staying for a night in the tourist metropole and heading on to Havana, Cuba, on tuesday. I’ll be staying there for around 2 weeks, traveling and also working ( still kind of a secret ) before I hop again on a plane to visit a friend from my childhood. Nicola, who lives in Santo Domingo, will be my host for a while. What I’ll be doing in the Domenican Republic will be figured out during my time in Cuba but to be honest, I’m kinda fine with going to the beach and having my first surfing lessons for a while. Further plans are pretty rough at the moment. All I know is that South America is going to be my last journeyman stop before I’m heading back to Europe.

A big thanks to all the San Franciscans who took good care of me, especially Daniel. He’s an amazing host and I’m looking forward to spend the next 2 weeks with him down south.

I hope to get the chance to come back to this lovely city very soon.

Grateful
fabsn

Mixed analog and digital.
All photographs © by Daniel Castro
- click to enlarge

Daniel and I had some fun with a little choreography on his portfolio book that we printed during my first week at his place for the NY Foto Show Portfolio reviews. Biggest challenge was to flip the pages on sound ( which wasn’t really necessary considering the fact that everything could have been chopped up in post production but we liked the challenge ) and to include the lazy chubby housecat in the video. We failed on the cat thing but I think we did a good job with the page-flips.

Last monday I’ve been on my first bigger shoot on set and shot a behind the scenes movie. I have way too much material but looking forward to get into the post work. It was a mixed beauty shoot with crazy metal masks and beside me there were two assistants on set as well as the head props designer, a make up artist and the model who flew in from Portland. 18 goddamn hours day of work starting at 7:30 in the morning. What a crazy day.

Big things happening in the near future. I will have to say goodbye to San Francisco and the United States on monday, flying out to Mexico for a day, transfering to…CUBAAAAAAAAAA!!! As much as I would like to tell you about the job I’ll be doing over there, I can’t really give you details. But I will give you the reasons after completion when I have left Cuba. As some of you know, the US have an embargo against Cuba which prohibits any kind of trading where money is involved.

What I can tell, it’s going to be a photography/videography job and I can’t wait to get that trip started.

I hope to be able to go online in Cuba and show you some pictures of me drinking homemade rum and smoking a handrolled Cohiba while dancing to some smooth Latin bar-beats. Can’t f…… wait!

Vamonos
fabsn

studio view – click to enlarge

last shot for the day – click to enlarge

creating giant eyelashes – click to enlarge

left: Daniel Castro at work // right: setup for the Portfolio flip-through movie in front of the housebar – click to enlarge

One of my works I did so far in my job as assistant for photographer Daniel Castro in San Francisco. He had some video footage of a previous shoot ( before my time here ) which I used for a small “behind the scenes” composition.

It’s kind of a test run for another video I’ll be doing next monday, on another big beauty shoot. Gonna rent some gear for that and I’m very excited to use a glidecam with an Eos 5d Mark II for the first time.

Check out Daniel Castro’s thoughts on the shoot and the idea behind it.

hair unleashed © by Daniel Castro – click to enlarge

The other day I went to a great event invented by Mandy, who I worked with in India, and her boyfriend Ben who is a designer at couchsurfing here in San Francisco. It’s called the great waffle-off and is a competition in making waffle creations in four categories:
#basic #sweet #savory #freestyle

“Batter. Extension Cords. Waffle-Makers.
A competition like no other.

See you there bitches! “

My favourite was the fried chicken waffle, the spicy chocolate waffle, the basil blueberry waffle and the corn waffle with pizza topping.

What a great idea!

My days over here are pretty busy and surprises seem to happen every day. Last weekend I had my first two photoshoots with Daniel and one of the models was Leng Yein, the malaysian girl who was also a judge in the model competition in Kuala Lumpur. She was on a US tour and came over to our place for a half day shoot. On second day we had natural beauty Charlotte giving us some Charlie Chaplin moves.

We shot on medium format and 35mm and I will post the final pictures ones developed. For now, here are some digital glimpses from behind the scenes.

Leng Yein behind the scenes – click to enlarge

Leng Yein behind the scenes – click to enlarge

Charlotte behind the scenes – click to enlarge

Charlotte behind the scenes – click to enlarge