Puerto Rico, Dark and Light
There are rainbows around the moon in Puerto Rico. There are many fences and gates and dogs. There is much diffuse golden light and soft coral sand. It is a place between places and I went there for my birthday last month with my man and a camera. I stayed up all night with cans of [...]
Archive Crawl
I’ve recently been asked to submit work based on a theme for a couple of upcoming group shows. This has put me in the new and interesting position of going through my archives with fresh eyes and a fresh purpose, attempting to assemble a cohesive essay from hundreds of thousands of disparate moments. It hurts [...]
A Birthday Party at Build-A-Bear
My niece recently turned 5 and I found myself at another one of her birthday parties. I don’t have children of my own, so these gatherings are rare for me, unlike the parents in attendance at this party who seem to go to one or two every weekend. You may recall I photographed Emerson’s 4th [...]
Farewell to Thee, Instagram
HONEYMOON I got my first iPhone in January of last year. Instagram was pretty much the first app I downloaded and I immediately fell in love. I loved its ability to connect me to others visually and I began to quip in pictures. I loved the way the images looked on my phone and I [...]
Questions? Answers.
[did somebody say hats?!] I will occasionally receive emails from students or photographers just starting out on their professional or freelance paths and I always try to be helpful and answer any questions they might have. Lots of folks have helped me out over the years and I’m happy to do what I can to [...]
Pursuit
Between hotel conference room shoots last week, I decided to take a walk around DC to get some fresh air and clear my head. In the middle of so much concrete and looming federal buildings I watched a drama play out in the sky. The birds flew past me and towards Capitol Hill and I [...]
A Birthday Party at Chuck E. Cheese’s
My niece recently celebrated her birthday at Chuck E. Cheese’s. The dark, dank den of arcade games and animatronic entertainment that I remember fondly from my youth has been replaced by a much brighter, more sterile franchise. The lighting is what kills me. The best part of 1980s Chuck E. Cheese’s was that you got [...]
This Year on the Road
I wasn’t on the road this year as much as last, but here are some frames from my travels through California, Wyoming and New York. Next year I’m looking at trips to China, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. I haven’t been out of the country in almost 4 years and it’s time to [...]
My Business Cards – A Sentimental Journey
Back in March of this year, I decided I needed to rebrand. I’d always been pretty haphazard with design, preferring to do it myself to save a few $$, but I am a terrible designer. I decided to commit to doing it right, so I met with the ultra-talented design professional Jill Brunner and began [...]
Ryder Jack Golden
After a harrowing pregnancy, my nephew was born last week. His name is Ryder Jack Golden and when he grows up, he will play baseball.
In Memory of Chris Hondros
There’s a quote from the movie Apocalypse Now that always stuck with me, when Willard speaks of Colonel Kilgore, the surfing colonel- “He was just one of those guys with that weird light around him. He just knew he wasn’t gonna get so much as a scratch here.” All the war photographers I’ve ever met had [...]
Universal Studios
Got free tickets to Universal Studios, the local attraction featuring a couple of outdated 3D theater experiences and a cheesy but fun studio tour. Seriously, Terminator 2 3D is laughably bad. 3D Shrek made me motion sick. King Kong 3D was admittedly kinda badass, but that project was helmed by the man himself, Peter Jackson. [...]
Up in the Air
I recently got a new point and shoot camera, the Canon s95. I took it on a trip to San Jose last weekend and enjoyed myself. There’s no effort or thought or care in the photos that I take with it. It’s the perfect vacation/party camera. I don’t want to have to think about photography [...]
Interview at This is the What
I’m excited to share a recent interview I gave over at photo editor extraordinaire Kate Osba’s “This is the What” blog. It covers a lot of bases- pretty much anything you might ever want to know about me. For those of you out there wondering if I’m a natural redhead or if I can eat [...]
2010 – Part 1 of 4 – Personal
The following images represent the most significant personal events of my year, from the death of my grandfather, to my Lasik surgery , to meeting my remarkable boyfriend and moving to Los Angeles.
Out to Pasture
I’m currently undergoing a major SEO overhaul of my primary website, melissagolden.com. That means I’m also getting around to clearing out the back room shelves of pictures that used to be featured but are now just collecting dust and taking up space on the servers. Before I take them down from the shelves and chuck [...]
Free Fallin’
[Visible in this picture: The Kodak Theater, Hotel Roosevelt, El Capitan and the downtown LA skyline. Not pictured but part of my view: the Capital Records building and the beautiful hollywood hills. Click on the picture for a larger view.] I know I said I was going to post every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and [...]
Venice Beach
I spent the month of August in LA. Went down to Venice Beach to check out the scene. Pretty colors, interesting characters and so many dogs. A nice gentleman who lived on the beach invited me to enjoy natty lights with him on his porch. I met another nice gentleman who was taking his creations [...]
Forbidden City
Here’s another picture-heavy post from another amazing warehouse party in Brooklyn. The theme this time was The Forbidden City. Most party-goers and art installations kept with the theme, but others loosely interpreted. Either way, there was a lot to see.
The Seagull Incident
[Kara and Adam] My dear friend Adam was my very first magazine photo editor. He left the photo industry for the much sexier entertainment industry a few years ago. He’s doing quite well for himself out west where he’s found good work, good friends and his beautiful girlfriend, Kara. When I went out to LA [...]
Campfire
Kevin has been one of my dearest friends since we met in high school in Atlanta. He’s a true renaissance man who throws elaborate, bacchanalian parties when he’s not doing things with computers that I can’t even comprehend. He invited me up to New York City in June to photograph and enjoy his latest extravaganza, [...]
A Very Good Morning
Anyone who really knows me knows I’m not a morning person. If I had my way, I’d stay up until 4am and sleep until noon every day. Trouble is, lots of things happen in DC in the morning. I have a problematic commute that involves either getting to the metro station before 7 a.m., after [...]