July 15, 2026

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

You know, sometimes I have to look at my past to forget about the present. The present is a bit too depressing to think about.

I didn’t work for like 30 years. I got paid well to do what I love, take photographs. Above is a cartoon of basically what my life was for 30 years. Sure, I did work my butt off in the morning, but I always had the middle of the day off. You see, I only shot in good light, meaning I would only shoot early in the morning and late in the afternoon. Good light always made for a good photo. You guys should do this now. If you want a good photo, just take pictures in early morning or late afternoon light. You can’t go wrong. Anyway, when I had the middle of the day off, sure I would take a nap, but I would also go for a surf, go for a windsurf, go for a run, have a nice lunch. You know, I basically took advantage of where I was. I have to say, it was a nice way to live. I did work hard, but I also played hard as well. I was lucky. My job took me to some great locations. It always seemed to be near the water. I guess that’s what I was known for, shooting on the beach, near water. That sort of thing. You tend to get pigeonholed in this business, and that was my pidgeonhole - lucky for me. We won’t talk about the skin cancer. That’s kind of a downer, but I guess that came with the job. I did actually think, oh man, I hope I don’t get injured. Can you imagine calling up the art director and saying, “Im in the hospital because I had a bad incident while surfing and it was on your shoot, sorry.”

One time I did get in a lot of trouble. We were shooting up in Maine. The weather was nasty in the morning, so instead of hanging out in the location van, we all decided to hang out in our rooms until the weather cleared. Well, I got tired of hanging out in my room so I went to the movies. Now, while I was in the movies, the weather cleared up. I went and saw three movies and came out after the last moving. I had something like 13 messages. They ranged from a calm “Where are you?” to a frantic “Where the HELL are you?” Well, while I was watching my 3 films, the weather got real nice. Funny, I never worked for that client again. But for the most part, everything went well, most of the time. IT was cool because a lot of the crew were well rested and that’s important on a 14 day shoot. I think I had a brain bleed right on time. I don’t think they do 14 day shoots in Hawaii anymore. I think I hit it right on time. Anyway, that’s about it for this week.

I’m actually gonna leave you with a photo my friend took. I went to see a painting show of my Dad’s artwork. My sister put it together. It was a great show of his stuff. Downstairs was Jasper Johns and upstairs was my Dad’s work. It was cool. Check out his website: DonNice.com Actually, they are nice images for me to look at to forget about the present.

Love and miss you guys. Love, B. Nice

June 24, 2026

Hey everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

I often think about the past to get me off the present. Presently I’m having a rough go, but as they say, peaks and valleys, right? It seems that with a traumatic brain injury the low pressure systems really affect me. Yesterday was a low pressure system and I’m just getting over it. You know how some people complain about ache joints when it rains. Well, I get achy brain. So let’s talk about the past.

You know, I always felt like the big brother on the photoshoots. Most of my team was really young, especially the models. I always felt like their big brother. I think I told you already that I was working with one model who just jumped off the pier into the water. I was doing a cover for Summer Beauty. Well, she forgot to mention she couldn’t swim. I had to rescue her. It was crazy. I asked her why she jumped into the water when she couldn’t swim. She just replied, I wanted you to get a good shot. It was a good shot. Mind you, it was only like ten frames, then we went back to the bar.

This other model I was working with was just right for the fashion shoot I was gonna do in Brazil. Well, we got on the plane (she was sitting next to me) she seemed kind of nervous. I said, have you ever been on an airplane before. She said no. I said, have you ever been to Brazil before? She said, no. I said, have you ever traveled much? She said no. Basically, the poor girl had never left her street. Her eyes were the size of coffee saucers. It was a good shoot, after she recovered from a local bus we took.

But by far, my favorite story is this: I was in Greenland. We were shooting at the base of this iceberg. Well, after our photoshoot, we went out to dinner. Now, imagine this, the dinner is up on a hill. You went down the hill to get to the port. The port was U shaped. Then you went up another hill to get to our hotel. Now, that I have set the scene, imagine this. We’re all sitting at dinner, me and a mostly female crew, when a navy destroyer (ship) pulls into the port. The ship looked rough. It had been at sea for about six months. Well, out of the ship came about 200 sailors. They had been at sea for six months with no alcohol and no women. They came up to our restaurant singing songs, and as they came in, they all stared at my table and stopped singing with their mouths hanging open. I thought, oh my god, I’m gonna die. Well, all the sailors sat down as they stared at my tabled, they sat down quietly. Next thing you know, a round of beers come over to my table. I mean a lot of beer. The manager said, please accept this as a present from the table over there, and he pointed at the sailors. Then the guy whispered, “Please, please take the beers.” Well, we accepted the beers and the minute we took a sip they came over. Well, after a very short conversation, we got the hell out of there. (Now, this is why some people have no brain cells) As we were leaving one of the models decided to give the sailors the finger. This action caused a bit of an argument. Next thing you know, we’re all running. Have you ever run and jumped on a moped. It’s not as easy as in the movies. We got on our mopeds and we had to full speed down the hill. The model on the back of my moped decided to flip the sailors off again. That was all fine cause we were making good speed going down hill, but then we got to the uphill portion. The bikes slowed down and the sailors were gaining speed on us. We just made it to our hotel. We threw the bikes down and ran to our rooms. We rant through the lobby while the manager said, “No running!” Just then, about 200 sailors ran through the lobby. The manager screamed and dove under his desk. It was total chaos. We got to our rooms, locked ourselves in, then it all got real quiet. There was a knock at the door. It was the captain. He said, in broken English, all we want to do is give you a helicopter ride. I said, yeah right, one way trip for me. No thank you. And thank god the military police showed up. We heard noise the yelling and shouting. but all the military police and sailors were gone when we opened the door about an hour later. Never a dull moment. Right? Life was like this for me around 25 or 30 years. No wonder why my head blew up.

Love and miss you guys. Love B. Nice

June 4, 2026

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where talk about my past. You know I often look back at my past to forget about the present

You know, I was always on the road. I travelled for like 30 years. It was crazy. We were always in new hotels every week. Now with new hotels, sometimes there are scary moments. Let me explain.

Sometimes at a hotel you get a weird vibe. For example, the scariest hotel I ever stayed in was in Charleston, South Carolina. I checked in as usual. Went to my room and the minute I walked into the room I got a bad vibe. I didn’t think anything of it. Put down my bag. Went off to dinner with the crew. Well, when I got back to my room, I watched a little news and went to sleep. At about 2 in the morning, I had a lovely wake up call to an entity with his knees on my shoulders and hands on either side of my face, then he was forehead to forehead with me, and growling really loud. Oh yeah, I was not drinking at dinner. Anyway, I screamed really loud, “Get the F… off of me.” sat up and said, I’m out of here. So I packed all my bags, went to the front desk and said to the guy at the front desk, “I am not staying in that room.” The guy said, “Here’s a key to a room in the new part of the hotel. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

At another hotel I was staying in, I awoke to a dog in my room. I was convinced my assistants had put a dog in my room. The dog was rubbing itself at the base of my bed. Back and forth, back and forth. Then it came jumping back and forth over my legs. Then it jumped over my legs through the wall and into the other room. Yes, there was a dog ghost in my room. I didn’t think much about tit. I just thought I was having a bad dream and went off to sleep. Well, the next morning kind of freaked me out. I went to breakfast with the crew and when I walked in, I heard the model talking to the makeup artist. She was saying she had a dream of a dog coming out of the wall, jumping over her and jumping into the next room through another wall. And once again, we weren’t drinking that much that night. That was kind of freaky.

I’ll tell you one more story. It doesn’t have to do anything with hotel rooms, but it’s kind of a freaky story. I was with my crew. We were in Santa Fe. My phone rang and I answered the phone and went outside. We were on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. My wife at the time told me I was gonna be a father. That was pretty cool. I went back to my crew, sat down at the table and didn’t say anything. Now our stylist had been out shopping. She bought a used set of tarot cards. Everyone was checking them out. She shuffled the deck and said to me, “Pull out a card.” What happened was kind of freaky. I pulled out a card. It was a guy hanging from a tree with a rope around his legs. He was hanging upside down. And at the bottom of the card it said, Father. I said, well, I guess the cat’s out of the bag. I told everyone I was gonna be a father. Now that’s freaky.

Actually, I got lots more stories, a lot more, but I won’t bore you with them. Bottom line is I guess I’m kind of sensitive to vibes. One thing I did learn and I’ll share with you, I think it’s important. I learned then that you should always follow your intuition. Now, you might think I’m crazy but your intuition is actually your passed relatives speaking to you. Have you ever done something and thought, Oh man, I shouldn’t have done that? Your first intuition was not to do it, but you did it anyway. Does that make sense? Anyway, always follow that first intuition you have. Don’t ignore it. After all, our passed relatives might know something you don’t. Now I’m gonna go back to my tequila.

Love and miss you guys. Love, B. Nice

May 27, 2026

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

Sometimes I just need to look at the past to forget about the present. My friend here pulls out one of my diaries to look at something from the past. We appropriately pulled out a picture of Paris in a week that had great weather. This week is much the same. It’s been great weather, very much like Santa Barbara, California. Nice, low humidity and hot days. Paris often got like this in late Spring. Man, I miss living there. It was a lot of fun. I spent most of my time at the cafés.

Before I go on and on about Paris, I want to talk to you guys about living with a traumatic brain injury. You see, your first reaction is like you used to be. For example, I said to all my friends, I said, Hey, let’s have a barbecue and cook out. Well… Try to be a chef and put on a barbecue when you’re like this. You often forget you can’t do things like you used to. I mean, I could try to cook, but I don’t think my guests would like the smell of burning flesh (me!). Luckily a friend of mine stepped up and did the cooking for me. All in all, it was a good time though. I just had to relinquish control. That’s it for now. Just wanted to throw that in there. Now back to Paris ~

In the beginning, when I was in Paris, I spent most of my time going out. I didn’t work right away. But the first time the phone rang for work, it didn’t stop. It was like all or nothing. It was a good way to build up my portfolio. I mean, I worked in Italy, England, Germany, Portugal, Spain. It was great central location for work. But, I’ll tell you, it’s definitely a young man’s gig. You’re on the move all the time. Anyway, I won’t bore you with some more Paris stories. That’s about it this week. Hope you guys had a good weekend.

Love and miss you. Love, B. Nice

April 29, 2026

Hi everybody. Welcome to my blog where I talk about my past.

I’m gonna dedicate this blog to my daughter because she graduates in about a week. I’m very proud of her.

I love it when I’m stressed my friend here goes to my bookcase and we pull out a journal from my past. I used to always keep journals to relax. I would draw in them.

The first drawing is called Pooo Parade. I remember quite well what this was all about. My friend bought a new t-shirt store. He was so proud of it. And I used to hang out by the register, hang out and drink beers. Well, my friend had just brought in a new sisal carpet. A big mongrel looking dog (a junkyard dog) stopped in front of the store. He looked at us and proceeded to take the biggest pile of poop I’d ever seen, and then walked away. Now, if this weren’t bad enough, a guy in flip flops came walking by. He looked into the store and didn’t see the pile of poop in front of him. He proceeded to walk through the pile of poo with flip flops on. It was nasty. And then the guy came Into the store. Now you can imagine what this did to my friend’s new sisal carpet. We looked in horror as the guy tracked stuff all over the floor. Needless to say, I helped my friend, after hours, roll up his new rug and throw it out.

The drawing on the right, it pretty much refers to how I lived my life when I was in Australia. I’d often go for a good swim. The water was amazing there. While swimming, I often thought about what and where I was gonna photograph. I’d always write phrases in terms of what would remind me of what I was going to do. I always thought carefully where I was gonna shoot, what film to use, what models to use, what hair and makeup people I should get, etc. It was very helpful. A good example was if I went to a fashion show in Paris, I’d get ideas and be inspired from what I saw.

Going back to Australia, I spent a lot of time in the water. It was a good way to relax. Speaking of relaxing, I’m gonna do just that and not blog anymore because I’m tired. I had therapy today, physical therapy, so I’m pretty wiped out. Talk to you guys next week.

Love and miss you. Love, B. Nice