The Life and Times of Sooz

I’ve got a new website for my work as a freelance Boston photographer at Sooz Photography. There are more photos to add but you can wade through what’s there now — an assortment of photos capturing the world around me: animals, flowers, events, people, conferences, life in Boston, concerts, awesomeness, etcetera. What started out as a hobby taking concert photos for several years has transformed into work as a freelance photographer.

Photo Prints, Merchandise and Digital Downloads

Many of the photos are available in high-resolution format that can be purchased as prints, merchandise and digital downloads. Like flowers? This photo of a pink and yellow rose on Newbury Street would make a cool print.

Create your own photo site with SmugMug

I use SmugMug to power Sooz Photography’s galleries and shopping cart. If you want you own SmugMug account, visit their website and use my email address (sooz-at-soozmedia.com) or enter coupon code o9aWQOBGrBkjw when creating a new account and you’ll save $5.

If you are looking for a photographer in the Boston area to work with, I’d love to hear from you. My expertise is capturing candid, uninterrupted moments.

Cassavettes celebrated the release of their second full-length album, “Shake Down The Sun”, downstairs at The Middle East on November 6, 2009. Here are videos for the songs “Ordinary Girls” and “Lights On” that I filmed that night. The entire album is spectacular but “Lights On” is definitely my favorite song on the new album. Buy “Shake Down The Sun” at iTunes.

Watch more music videos on Sooz TV and join the fan page for Sooz TV on Facebook.

I am taking the train to/from Nebraska via Chicago. I left this morning and return to Boston on December 3rd. Hopefully in time for Sloan’s show at TT’s that night.

I am posting camera phone photos and other travel tidbits at etc.sooz.com.

My Google Calendar of recommended events and happenings around Boston has a new spot on sooz.com. You can also subscribe to it if you use Gmail. The calendar includes my picks for Boston concerts, networking events, tech events and other interesting happenings around town.

It’s an annual tradition for Boston bands to perform Halloween shows covering bands they love or just feel inspired to cover for the night. This year I got some great performances recorded on video: John Powhida and Chris Cote as Robert Palmer, Preacher Roe as The Replacements, The Luxury as Duran Duran and The Lights Out as Phil Collins. You can watch all eight videos in the playlist below or watch each individual Boston Rocks Halloween video on YouTube.

Enjoy watching the videos? Join the Sooz TV fan page on Facebook!

My Free Agent Jungle project took a little break over the summer plus an extra month or two. The monthly Boston networking lunch for freelancers is back with the next event on Thursday, November 19th at Tavern In The Square (Porter Square, Cambridge.) If you work on your own as a freelancer, free agent or consultant in the Boston area, you’re invited to join us. It’s not just for people working in web, tech or social media worlds. People from diverse backgrounds attend the lunch: writers, publicists, architects, technologists, attorneys, graphic designers, marketers, engineers, etc.

Learn more about the lunch on the Free Agent Jungle website. Let me know if you have any questions.

I was an instant fan of Avi & Celia the first time I saw them at the Lizard Lounge a few years ago, sitting in with the always amazing Session Americana. Since then I’ve seen them a few times playing their duo show of sexy, soulful, rock and roll. They’ve stepped things up and are now playing with a full band with a new name: Hey Mama.

The Rock Out Boston Club that Annie Burns and I co-host is meeting up tonight (Tuesday, October 20th) at Cambridge Common at 8pm for drinks and then we’ll head downstairs to the Lizard Lounge for Hey Mama who are playing a Tuesday residency throughout October. Tickets are $7 at the door. It’s a small, cozy club (105 capacity) so getting there early to join us for drinks first is definitely a good idea.

Cambridge Common and the Lizard Lounge are at 1667 Mass Ave, a short walk down Mass Ave from either Harvard Square or Porter Square. Get there early enough and there’s parking behind the restaurant. The 77 and 96 bus will also get you there, too.

If you can’t make it tonight, join The Rock Out Boston Club’s fan page on Facebook and we’ll alert you when the next rock and roll outing happens in November.

iTunes’ Genius is an awesome way to rediscover music you already have but may not have listened to in a while. Yesterday I told it to make a mix based on “Born” by Over The Rhine. The result was a perfect mix for a moody, chilly Sunday afternoon. It includes songs by Over The Rhine, Patty Griffin, Great Northern, Gillian Welch, Calexico & Iron Wine, Nickel Creek, Dar Williams, Ray LaMontagne and Sarah Harmer.

View the mix on iTunes.

When vegan friends were coming over for dinner a couple months ago I wanted to make a dessert that they could eat. The first thing that came to mind was sorbet. I found a simple recipe for coconut sorbet on Epicurious and decided it needed a little rum in it, too (instead of the rum extract that the recipe called for). Recently my roommate Chris suggested I use some of his fresh basil and dark chocolate crisps. This photo is the result!

This is the sort of thing you probably don’t want to make more than a few times a year — and very tiny portions. There’s a lot of fat and sugar in this dessert. The recipe is very simple: one can cream of coconut (not coconut milk!), one cup of ice cold water, one tablespoon rum. I use a stick blender to make sure the consistentcy is smooth. Pour into a 9×9 glass baking dish, cover with plastic wrap and place in the freezer then stir every 30 minutes for three hours. Thanks to the cream of coconut, the sorbet will never entirely freeze so you can keep it in the freezer for a while. But the chances of it lingering for more than a few days are unlikely. Especially for a dessert that was referred to as “sex on a plate” at a recent party.

I haven’t updated sooz.com in a while but I’ve definitely been busy with other websites and work. I recently set up a new site at www.soozmedia.com for my freelance work for event planning, social media, web marketing, photography and website project management. Sooz.com isn’t going away of course but will be used more as my personal blog.

Speaking of work, for the past six months I’ve been working on a project with Pearson Education as their website project manager on the redesign of their marketing website for MyMathLab, customizable online courses that integrate interactive multimedia instruction with textbook content. My work also included recommending a content management system and hiring a web developer. They selected Drupal as the CMS and hired Andy Milk Interactive for the web development work. And of course, you can now follow MyMathLab on Twitter.