We Eat Shoots and Leaves, and for $200 We Will Eat, Shoot, and Leave.

matty mc d keeps me young. one too many late nights like a 22 year old at his apartment...his living room has been the site of numerous social catastrophes, love connections, dance offs and kiss offs, wrestling matches, drunken installation art, pesto nights, photo sittings, reality tv show marathons, etc...dunno what it is about the space, but it's like that friend's house in high school where everyone wanted to be all the time...here is the secret genius himself in his natural habitat on a sunday afternoon, preparing for another successfully seamless shoot...he sits close to his bushwick windows and against a blue wall he painted, in those famous house slippers surrounded by traces of coffee and cigs and wires and cables and gigabytes, under the huge, beautiful photo he took this year at the ICP while exploring and growing into this magnificent lil' 4x5 photographer...matty has more potential marriage partners than anyone i know...he's got staying power, you see...and apparently he gets jealous of other photo THINGS (gadgets, lighting technique, actual photos, books, color pallets) but i've NEVER actually seen him get ruffled, nor does he sweat other photographers...i mean, NEVER for their personality, wit, intelligence, or heart...i think this is because matty mc d aka shaqPanda has all of this in spades...it also has something to do with his knowing that photography takes time and money, it's a process, like handling a shoot with a cumbersome camera and hiding under that little black rag before pulling the trigger...he has his own steeze and is content with it, and since he's found something he loves to do, instinctively, he doesn't worry about the rat race...he's in the game, concerned with 3-pointers only, smokin' marlboros and tilt shifting as he pleases...g'head, Shaq...