This organ is so beautiful! On Sunday, I went inside the Wanamaker building in hopes to listen to the beautiful music, but it seems that the schedule fluctuates on this day. Meet me at the eagle statue at 5:30 for my very own super secret street photography fight club. Register via email today: dante(at)dantesisofo.com

Grip strength as the ultimate determining factor of somebody’s strength? I am starting to think that grip strength is everything. Having no grip strength is the ultimate sign of weakness. I have been doing farmers walks everyday with heavy dumbells as a way to stay physically strong. Without tenacity, I can imagine that you naturally lack courage.

te·nac·i·ty
noun
the quality or fact of being able to grip something firmly; grip.”the sheer tenacity of the limpet”

First ride with my new E-Bike! I am so pumped about this thing. It can ride up to 150 miles on a single charge using this dual battery system. Uh-oh! How far will Dante go?

The largest working pipe organ in the entire world! Who needs a Spotify account? Come and meet me at the Eagle at 5:30 any day of the week and join me in this Philadelphia ritual!

“Reading Terminal Market opened its doors in 1893. The new Market was approximately 78,000 square feet and held nearly 800 spaces for merchants, each positioned in six foot stalls. The Market was laid out in a grid system similar to the streets of Philadelphia. There were twelve aisles and four avenues. It was the perfect location for easily receiving and shipping goods.”

In the spring and summer of 1776, the Second Continental Congress gathered in Philadelphia to debate declaring independence from King George III and the British Parliament. 

Join, or Die. by Benjamin Franklin (1754), a political cartoon commenting on the disunity of the Thirteen Colonies during the French and Indian War. It was later used to encourage the colonies to unite for the cause of independence during the American Revolutionary War.

I remember sleeping on the floors of many different mosques in Jericho City. I travelled throughout Jericho with an Imam named Hirsham. He was a very kind man that showed me the ways of Islam. He taught me Wudu, how to pray Salah, how to eat, how to sleep, how to live in the ways of prophet Muhammad, and ultimately converted me to Islam after a two week journey throughout the city. I was very curious at the time and allowed my natural intuition to follow Hirsham throughout the city. We gathered people everyday to come and join us in prayer and feasted in the evenings.

Jericho is the lowest elevated city in the world- the city of the moon. I even saw the sycamore tree where Zaccheus climbed along Jesus’ path! Jericho is an incredible city filled with rich history and a beautiful place to learn about Islamic culture. After reading the Quran, I connected to the aspects surrounding agriculture and fasting in the second chapter, Al-Baqara.

I think it’s important to learn about all cultures despite your personal beliefs. I have always been a very curious and open minded person. I think it’s important to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and submit to God.

Allahu Akbar

Al·la·hu Ak·bar
exclamation
a phrase meaning ‘God is most great’, used by Muslims in prayers and as a general declaration of faith or thanksgiving.

I share a story about courage, photography, and my journey throughout the past decade of practicing street photography while riding my bike uphill in Philadelphia.

Some of the bravest and noble men in Philadelphia are the firefighters. They are the defenders of this great city that I admire. It takes a lot of courage to do what they do. I was taken back to my time spent on the frontlines of conflict in the West Bank with this scene!

LI-DAR
noun Electronics, Optics.
“light detection and ranging” or “laser imaging, detection, and ranging”. It is a method for determining ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. A device similar to radar in principle and operation but using infrared laser light instead of radio waves and capable of detecting particles, distant objects, and varying physical conditions in the atmosphere.

The power of Artificial Intelligence and 360 photography! This Insta360 X3 is such a cool camera! It seems like this could be an interesting solution for a variety of applications from 360 video to LiDAR photography and scanning.

One day I was skateboarding at Paine’s Park in Philadelphia and stumbled across this group of people playing with these very interesting Japanese toys called kendama. I approached the group and wound up learning how to play and was gifted my very own kendama! I have been practicing with it everyday since I received this gift as a form of meditation. This toy gives you a way more powerful dopamine hit than any video game I have ever played! Super nice of them to let me play and will keep going back to practice and learn with them in the future.

When you treat life as a video game everything becomes more interesting. Instead of leveling up and getting stat points in game, why not do it IRL? We can increase our charisma, our charity, our strength, etc. in the real world. Doing these things digitally is a huge waste of time. There is nothing better than being in the real world and interacting with other human beings. We need to all stop being so afraid of each other. We need to handshake each other and look at each other face to face when we talk… Not through a cell phone or through a comment section or an email. Meet me on the street! Believe me, you will find me out there! I am always walking, wandering, and looking for the next level to play.

I can’t help but smile when I walk around the streets of Philadelphia. I try my best to share joy through my interactions on the streets with strangers as much as possible. I think in life the goal should be to tinker with the world around you like a video game. How many different interactions can you have in one walk through the mall? A new street photography challenge: talk to people!

I used to spend so much time as a kid playing with nerf guns. I remember modifying the guns to make them shoot further and faster. I miss those days! Tinkering with my toys, shooting guns, and playing. I think we should never let go of our inner child. I want to be like a big kid that innovates and plays on the streets. I think nowadays people fear each other more than ever, but I believe we should ignore this idea. Life is the ultimate video game!

In praise of child-like fun fitness!

Muji slim notebook with small prints from the Canon SELPHY CP1500
Always keep a sketchbook on you and delete your Instagram account!

How to make a new school of photography? I think some simple thoughts is using a Ricoh GRIIIX, Small JPEG and High Contrast Black and White is a good start… but what’s next? It’s not just an aesthetic choice, but it’s a mindset. It’s simply the fastest way to make pictures. There’s no BS, no editing, no cropping, just straight out of camera magic. Perhaps the goal is to make billions and billions of photos? Who cares if you can compose a beautiful picture of a dynamic scene anymore anyways? The goal is maybe to simply remain curious. To keep making photos. To keep going until you die at age 120?

NPC

A non playable character