in a grove

shoot.

2011-11-09T20:21:00.000-05:00

trick... or... treat...

2011-10-28T22:43:00.000-04:00

out tonight

2011-10-28T13:26:00.005-04:00

"darcy made the same picture, but better"

for funsies

2011-10-25T20:50:00.000-04:00

it is fall

2011-10-15T19:49:00.000-04:00

dirt racing

2011-09-24T10:19:00.000-04:00

so last week for our advanced photo reportage class aka picture story... we went out to a one day event, and had to shoot 100 frames, with a narrative... ver similar to the 72 frame one-day-shoots i did in scotland, but that didnt make it any easier... i met chris stotts, also known for his fight for the right to bring a strip club into athens, ohio... he has been racing for twenty years, and this was him home track...

moo cows

2011-09-11T22:44:00.000-04:00

back in ohio

2011-09-11T22:41:00.000-04:00

first weekend shooting in ohio in the fall means fairs. here are some images from the albany fair.

slightly out of focus

2011-08-22T09:34:00.000-04:00

so we took a hike up to salisbury crags for one last view of the city ... what we did not anticipate was the drastic change in sunset times when you are so far from the equator ... when we first got here the sun would not set until 10:30 pm we got to the crags around 9:30pm and had almost missed dusk ... i did not bring a tripod ... as we hiked up some of us separated and all i could hear as i climbed the steep hill was my own breath and the wind the city lights took on an eerie silence ... and though i wish i had a tripod i feel these images might work better to capture the strange silent mood of sitting above the city on a quiet and chilly sunday night

gratuitous puppy blog

2011-08-21T04:50:00.000-04:00

so i have been having a lot of great shoots finishing up my classwork in scotland. but the thing is this country is full of adorable and mostly well-behaved dogs, which for me are hard to photograph. here are a couple pictures of some dogs that belonged to a gamekeeper who took me out on his estate the other day!

sikhs in scotland

2011-08-18T05:19:00.000-04:00

for one of my stories i found a sikh gurdwara, in leith (edinburgh). everyone was very welcoming and kind, and it was wonderful to sit in on the sunday diwan service, as well as an information session they had to educate people about their religion as part of the festival of spirituality, and their guru ka langar (communal vegetarian meal). the one thing i have left to do for this story is visually set it in scotland.

wasted at the royal mile

2011-08-17T15:55:00.000-04:00

in the shadow of hume

in the rain

2011-08-17T15:31:00.002-04:00

waiting for the train

2011-08-17T15:29:00.000-04:00

one day shoot: sterling

2011-08-16T17:53:00.001-04:00

so it might sound easy, but it can be kind of overwhelming... every thursday we have our 'one-day-shoot' where we go to a random town, find a story and shoot it in 72 images... that means that 15 photojournalism students are swarming a town, in this case sterling, on a rainy day in scotland asking for someone to let them in and make some photos... after having no luck at the cemetery or churches in sterling, i found a great group of guys at infamous ink tattoos and piercing... here are some of my images (the last two were not part of the 72 story, but it was just fun to photograph a piercing)

artists 2

2011-08-15T18:25:00.000-04:00

and there is so much more than just music and street performers at these edinburgh festivals (it is not one but many festivals descending upon the city)... one of my favorite places here the forest cafe is hosting and event titles 'i am not a poet' in their gallery space. i got there just as the poet who goes by the name seekers of lice was finishing her installation around three in the afternoon, she had started he work around 10am

artists 1

2011-08-15T18:20:00.000-04:00

so edinburgh festival time is crazy... the royal mile is crowded full of tourists and buskers vying for their attention and spare change... it was a little calmer out on the grassmarket where i found ronnie rootsie singing the blues in his rough scratchy and soulful voice

burry man 2

2011-08-15T11:52:00.000-04:00

if you want to know more about the Burry Man, see my previous post. this was such a cool event to watch: from the fact that i was seeing a man covered in burrs paraded through his town from about 8am until 6pm to watching the people looking from their windows and gathering on the streets to watch him. children's expressions of curiosity fear and excitement (overhearing one mother say, "no it's not a tree, it's a man"). as a child who was scared of department store santa's i cannot imagine what this must have looked like to young eyes! i also overheard the children's parents reminiscing about how they had grown up watching the burry man, and seemed so happy to share the tradition with their children. and john was wonderful always stopping to pose for pictures with people of all ages. his family also added to the tradition of opening up their house to a lunch party on the Burry Man's route serving food and drink to celebrate their son, the Burry Man.

burry man 1: dressing

2011-08-13T05:56:00.000-04:00

The Burry Man is a South Queensferry Tradition, as one onlooker, Scott Liddell said, "It's not a Scotland thing, it's not an Edinburgh thing. It's a South Queensferry thing." The tradition has not always been annual but literature on the event says that people can trace the event back almost 900 years. No one quite knows what it means but that it definitely says something about the town's relationship with the countryside. John Nicol, who grew up in South Queensferry and now lives in Leith working as a graphic designer, has been the Burry Man since 1999, and this year was his last. Being he Burry Man is a physically demanding job. Family and friends dress the Burry Man up in over 11,000 burrs from the fields surrounding South Queensferry; and two of his close friends parade him around town with young boys ringing a bell shouting "Hip Hip Hooray! It's the Burry Man today!", through neighborhoods with people standing outside to greet him or pose for pictures, others waiting with a dram of whisky for him and his friends. They start dressing him around 7am, and he is covered in burrs until after 6pm.

Here are some images from the dressing:

on a hill

2011-08-08T17:32:00.000-04:00

editing... and going through my images of the past week... this figure caught my eye while we were atop the salisbury crags overlooking edinburgh

on a broke bus...

2011-08-07T16:05:00.000-04:00

the bus broke down on the way to the Moy Highland games outside of Inverness, to the amusement of the old people on the bus, i documented the event.

in a fog

2011-08-04T15:19:00.000-04:00

we traveled up the salisbury crags in holyrood park, edinburgh for a beautiful view of the city which was soon totally enveloped by a fog that rolled in from the water.

edinburgh night 3

2011-08-04T15:14:00.000-04:00

the close

2011-08-04T04:50:00.000-04:00

i walked down an alley, a "close", and took pictures of other people's pictures...

bass jammin

2011-08-02T09:20:00.000-04:00

on the royal mile edinburgh

highland games at st. andrews

2011-08-01T08:31:00.000-04:00

yesterday we went to the famous golf community of st. andrews to experience and photograph their highland games. i had read that way back in the day they had used these games for the kings to find the strongest people for their armies, another book said they were for the clans to promote and display the strengths of their warriors. today they are carnival like events with the expected bagpiping, highland dancing, hammer and caber tossing but also running, cycling (road bikes on grass!) and the most intense games of tug of war i had ever seen. here are some of my images from the games...

oh, and i will take a moment to brag... i did place in the highland games, they had a visitors race. one of the other students i traveled with participated in the 400m run around the 'track', and i placed in second in the women's race, winning 5 pounds!

they row

2011-07-30T17:31:00.000-04:00

had a slow moving day today and got to the beach town of portobello just in time for the last two rowing races in their regatta. here are a few images of the people i met there.

wasted at the beach

2011-07-30T16:35:00.002-04:00

edinburgh night 2

2011-07-30T06:51:00.000-04:00

musselburgh night 2

2011-07-30T06:49:00.002-04:00

the train

atop the law, north burwick law

2011-07-30T06:48:00.000-04:00

no, i don't know why they call it a law... but it was a wonderful climb and awesome views

musselburgh night 1

2011-07-28T18:26:00.001-04:00

edinburgh night 1

2011-07-28T16:11:00.000-04:00

first of what will probably be many walks home from edinburgh in the beautiful glow of dusk (you know 11 pm) when there is light here the golden hour lasts for hours, it is pretty amazing... however so far there have either been no clouds in the sky, or the sky will be full of clouds, very little in between...

edinburgh graveyard

2011-07-28T16:04:00.000-04:00

on one of our first days of the scotland field school terry and lyntha sent us out in groups of five with disposable cameras to find different notable locations throughout edinburgh weaving up down and around the royal mile, rose street and up calton hill for amazing views of the city... the scavenger hunt gave us the opportunity to navigate the city, interact with the people there, as well as enjoy a rare beautiful sunny day... we took a moment to wander through canongate cemetery burial ground of such notables as Adam Smith, and Robert Burns's love Clarinda

sunset walk to the sea

2011-07-25T18:02:00.000-04:00

musselburgh, scotland
day 1
wandering through the town towards the sea

amsterdam randoms

2011-07-20T10:07:00.001-04:00

from the water: amsterdam boatride

2011-07-20T09:33:00.001-04:00

what a beautiful city. amsterdam is so much more than the stereotypes, and am so happy that we took many people's advise and hit the water. took a guided boat tour at dusk (10pm) here are some of my images from the water. and oh, how i adore the crooked buildings!

homeless

2011-07-09T00:37:00.000-04:00

recently i have been thinking about home, and have come to the conclusion that i really have no place to call home. when people ask where i am from, i kind of stumble. sometimes i am completely honest and tell them that i grew up in maryland, spent the last 10 years in florida, and am now going to school in ohio. but that is a mouth-full, so depending on where i am or even what mood i am in i will usually pick one of the three...

when doing work in some small towns in ohio, i realized it was easier for some subjects to relate to me if i told them i was from maryland (even though i hadn't lived there for more than a couple months in the past decade), but it was close enough to ohio that it made kind of made sense to someone who rarely left the county he or she was born in. but if they pressed and asked about college or recent employment, yeah, i was from florida. and then there were the questions of how my family could stand me being so far from home.

but the thing was, i never saw maryland as home. i hated so much of the culture that i saw as attached to the area where i grew up that i wanted out. sure i have always loved my family and would call it going home when i left florida to visit. and, despite my generally negative view of this area's culture there are still aspects of it that i adore and take pride in. but calling somewhere home comes with a feeling. and though i definitely feel a sense of comfort when i visit my father who now lives in a condo littered with memories of our past, home does not seem like the right word...

on a recent road trip south, traveling with two eastern european friends, i found it amusing when people would ask where we were from and we would just respond 'ohio.' it was true, we had just spent the last eight months of our lives there, but it kind of reminded me of the old coneheads skit on saturday night live - they were clearly aliens from another planet but they just told everyone they were from france....

i realize that though these places have most definitely shaped me, i have never used them to define who i am (only which sports teams i root for!). i often think of the cliche, 'where ever you go, there you are.' there is this myth that people find themselves when they travel, or have these life altering experiences. and yes, travel can open people's eyes to many new things. but there were times when i knew that i needed to change things in my life, but i realized that it didnt matter where i was, if i wasnt happy with myself, sure a cool place could distract me for a bit, but once the newness died down, i would still be an asshole with issues to work out...

so the thing is that i travel and i wander and i photograph because that is what makes sense to me. though i have places that i love and people who i love there. i have no place to call home because i don't need to. so when people ask i will stick with the simple answer, france.

walkin in memphis

2011-07-07T15:47:00.001-04:00

views from the backseat III

2011-07-06T13:46:00.000-04:00

i heart lensflare

2011-07-02T23:03:00.000-04:00

unveiling art

2011-06-29T15:53:00.000-04:00

long doc project

2011-06-07T11:58:00.000-04:00

here is the layout of images that i made from spending time at the Good Earth Farm

on fire...

2011-05-29T11:52:00.000-04:00

here are some fun portraits i made last night at a campfire at the good earth farm

farming

2011-05-27T01:39:00.000-04:00

morning at good earth farm

2011-05-25T17:49:00.000-04:00

in my documentary photography class i decided to use my long doc project as an excuse to continue shooting at the Good Earth Farm. what captivated me the most about this place was not just the organic farming but the faith and dedication of the people who live and work there, and i have been working and struggling at times to illustrate that convergence with my images. for this project i had to basically create my own assignment. i wanted to work to slow down my shooting and really focus on light and detail, as if i was shooting with film. since i did not have time to process film, i decided to try and replicate the idea by only bringing one or two 1gb cards, ad not "chimping" (looking at the LCD on the back of my camera as i shoot). it has been a challenge and i have occasionally broken the rules. but i feel that in this struggle i am coming back to some aspects of the shooting style i had lost when i switched to shooting color and digital.

i longed for film when i had 2 hard drives crash on me losing more than half my work, but i have since recovered it, and will begin chronologically blogging my work. i made these first two images after staying up all night and then heading to the morning prayer at the farm. i was so captivated by the morning light and the fog, as it had been so grey and rainy for so long (even though it was May and there was frost on the ground!). i was also slightly delirious from my lack of sleep that i feared i might have been to hasty with my shooting and not made any good images. but i was happy with these two images.

light painting

2011-05-24T22:39:00.000-04:00

in portrait class one of our last assignments was to work with an alternate process. there was a time when digital was an alternate process for me, but that's another story... i decided to try light painting with models, i had done it before in the studio and with strobes in a cave. i knew i had to work faster with subjects that could move, but I also wanted to show a bit of the movement and grain so that i did not just produce something that i could have done with strobes. i shot at ISO100 f5.0, it is the combination of two images, the one of michael in the front is a 55 second exposure and the one of kyle in the back is a 49 second exposure. thanks so much to michael seiser and kyle grillot for being awesome models, and also to mark dawson for lending me the shutter release and my dad for always buying me flashlights.

slacklining

2011-05-10T18:30:00.000-04:00

i had to do on location lighting for my portraiture class. dan had mentioned that he is really into slacklining, so i thought that could put a fun an interesting twist on the assignment. i decided to stay within my comfort zone and shoot with cannon strobes with a remote transmitter, but of course, even when I am comfortable with the equipment it will still find ways to misbehave and confuse me. despite the challenges i was able to play with different lighting setups as well as motion, and here is the three image series i turned in for class. thanks to dan olson for once again being an awesome model.

the river

2011-04-30T12:21:00.000-04:00

as I mentioned in my previous post from the Forget the PR race director Rob Powell works to create a challenging course, not just to torture the runners, but to give them an even greater a sense of accomplishment (than just running 17-30 miles) when they cross the finish line. i made this photograph looking down from a beautiful covered bridge while the runners battled the ice cold currents of the river (many viewed it as a refreshing ice bath to numb the pain from the miles before).

portraits

2011-04-26T18:35:00.000-04:00

here are my last two portrait assignments. still focusing on the fitness theme, and shooting in the woods in natural light. on top is a non-facial diptych, and below is a north light image. thanks to Alexandra Goresh and Mike Pond for being awesome models.

forget the PR

2011-04-20T11:43:00.001-04:00

I had an awesome weekend shooting the Forget the PR 25k and 50k trail run. I had been looking to shoot an ultra (and hopefully one day run one), but the only way I could rationalize it was if I turned it into a homework assignment, and as it happened it coincided with my audio-slideshow assignment. It will be another couple weeks before I get the whole thing together, so until then I will post some singles from the race. This was not only my first time shooting an ultra, but also my first time juggling photography and sound which I am sure, forced me to sacrifice some quality on each at times. But that's how I learn! Race director Rob Powell works to keep the course through the Mohican State Park challenging (apparently too many people hit a their PR (Personal Record) last year).

i see drunk people...

2011-04-13T12:15:00.001-04:00

For my Documentary class we had to do a short documentary project with a non-photojournalistic approach. Inspired by photographer Tom Sperduto’s images of ultra-marathoners before and after their race, I decided to photograph people going out to bars on Court Street in Athens, Ohio, home of Ohio University, currently ranked as the #2 party school in the country. I set up my camera outside of a couple bars on Thursday night and Saturday night, from 9pm-11pm and 1am-3am, in order to see if there was a visual difference between people at the beginning of the night and people at the end. I didn’t want to make people feel uncomfortable, or make the bars feel like their customers were being harassed so I only took photographs of people who approached me about what I was doing.

You can see for yourself if there is a visual difference from the shifts, it was not as drastic as I had expected. What I did notice was that less than my classmates and I expected, people wanted to have their photographs taken, especially for the earlier shift. Also, less girls approached me for the earlier shift. Everyone was quite fun and friendly. I had planned on just doing individual shots, but how could I turn down a buzzed partier who wanted a pic with his/her friends?

If I do this again, I will probably spring for a bigger and more stable background. I had a great time, and it was pretty interesting to see Court Street from this angle.

Thanks to everyone who participated!

Thursday 9pm-11pm

Saturday 9pm-11pm

Thursday 1am-3am

Saturday 1am-3am

christina and the key-tar

2011-04-08T21:24:00.000-04:00

Our first assignment in Portrait class was to photograph a classmate who our professor randomly assigned to us. I was to photograph Christina, and undergraduate commercial photography student. We had interview the student and make a portrait that showed something about the assigned student that the rest of the class did not know about.

Christina told me that she loves music, she loves Star Trek (she might go to a convention but she does not dress up). And then she told me that when she gets frustrated with school she will write a song about it, and play it on her key-tar. Sometimes she will take that key-tar out with her on Court Street to play and see the reactions of the passers by.

Since I am stronger at photojournalism than portraiture I decided we would do a semi-candid shoot with her and her key-tar out on Court Street. I would set up lights, she would play, and I would shoot. As I was setting up I asked her her favorite color - green - so I threw a green gel on the strobe just to play. I got a photo of her rocking out with a friend walking behind her that I was happy with, though I wasn’t happy with the color, which I found distracting, so I made it black and white to focus more on the expressions in the image.

But there was another image that I made which I felt was more her. I was about to reposition the light when I saw her in this weird stretch, I snapped the picture, and kept going with another idea. But later when I was going through the images, this one caught my eye, but there were a handful of things that did not work about it, our bags, the backs of the guys heads, and I wanted to add a but more neutral light as well.

Since this is portraiture and not journalism we went back to that corner and reshot. It was next to impossible to remake the candid expression of the last one, but I wanted to focus on body language and the interaction of the passers by, which I think ultimately created a stronger image which captured a different aspect of her personality.

almost but not quite there...

and so we went back...

the process...

2011-04-08T20:57:00.001-04:00

I didn’t quite fail out of Pre-Calculus my Junior year in high school, but I remember my teacher letting me know that I should probably not stay in the class, because no matter how hard I tried I could not comprehend the stuff enough to pass a single test. So I switched into a class called Far Eastern Studies. It was my first look at Asian art, history and philosophy, and for some reason the stuff really resonated with me. In college I had the opportunity to study this more in-depth, as well as spent half a semester traveling through Asia. As an art student the Zen philosophy that art is more about the process than the finished product was a huge influence for my work at the time which was abstract but totally personal and therapeutic.

Now, almost ten years later I am back in school studying photojournalism, and I have realized that I still embrace my process almost more than the photos I make in the end, especially in this early stage in my career as a photojournalist when I am constantly learning and my work improving. My process is about building relationships with my subjects so that I can best tell their story with my images. I am here not just because I am curious about how other people live their lives but because I care. I care about people’s stories, I think they are important and I want to be able to tell those stories in a compassionate and respectful way.

In some ways this terrifies me, that I might misrepresent someone, and I know that not everyone will understand or share my vision. But that’s no reason not to keep going, to keep trying, working and improving. I like to listen to Rusted Root, and Mofro and other music with high energy to get me fired up before I shoot. I run and I ride my bike to clear my head and process everything I am experiencing. I am so happy and thankful to be where I am. I am surrounded by some incredibly talented people which can be intimidating at times, but mostly inspiring. I am embarking on a pretty heavy load this quarter, but all on projects that I am so excited about. I look forward to writing more on my blog, so that I can be open about my process as a way for me to personally meditate on it, but also to share it, and hopefully open a dialogue. So feel free to comment and share this creative process with me.

spring break boston...

2011-03-25T15:19:00.001-04:00

teen lock-in shawnee church of christ

2011-03-07T16:09:00.000-05:00

theatre portrait...shawnee

2011-03-02T13:23:00.000-05:00

practicing with multiple strobes... thanks lauren and katie!

strobe motion

2011-02-21T22:45:00.000-05:00

working on stopping motion, and blurring motion. look forward to going out when the conditions are better to keep practicing. thanks Michael and John for being such great sports!

flashing

2011-02-16T14:29:00.000-05:00

shawnee... windows and mirrors...

2011-02-07T12:53:00.000-05:00

shawnee... some of the kids...

2011-02-07T12:50:00.000-05:00

unicyclin' ... off camera flash...

2011-02-07T12:23:00.000-05:00

throwin' the disc.. fill flash outside...

2011-02-07T12:21:00.000-05:00

still life antique

2011-01-30T22:17:00.000-05:00

the last time i saw sunshine...

2011-01-29T22:01:00.000-05:00

shawnee, so far

2011-01-24T00:06:00.001-05:00

in my photographic essay class i am spending the quarter documenting the town of shawnee, ohio. shawnee was founded in 1872 as part of the coal boom in southeastern ohio. it played a large role in the history of labor unions in the united states. with a railroad going through it, shawnee once had a population of almost 3,000; according to the 2009 census shawnee now has a population of about 600. the main street on shawnee looks like a ghost town with most of the buildings crumbling but there are efforts to restore these buildings as well as to preserve and document the town's rich history.

in my journey i am learning the town's history but also documenting its present, learning about the people who live, work, pray, eat and play there. so far i have met some pretty great people. here are some of the images from the beginning of this project

run anna run

2011-01-20T00:09:00.000-05:00

we had to do a bounce flash assignment for our small systems lighting class. i am working on building a portfolio of fitness images. i brought anna to the indoor track, and she was such a great sport running back and forth while i messed with the flash and focus. so here's one of the images from that shoot.

good morning

2011-01-18T08:21:00.002-05:00

snowflakes

2011-01-15T14:18:00.002-05:00

cold sun on the farm

2011-01-13T16:24:00.000-05:00

baconfest at the union bar

2011-01-09T15:02:00.000-05:00

winter...strouds run...

2011-01-08T20:14:00.000-05:00

let it snow...

2011-01-08T11:33:00.000-05:00

becoming a morning person...

2011-01-05T14:17:00.000-05:00

baby it's cold outside...

2010-12-22T23:45:00.000-05:00

boston dusk...

2010-12-21T19:20:00.000-05:00

rear windows...

2010-12-16T18:21:00.000-05:00

the christmas house

2010-12-02T22:41:00.000-05:00

for the past 33 years a family in st. pete, fl there is a house with a 1/2 acre light display. they use over 609,751 lights and the electric bills can be as high as $50,000.00.

the fam

2010-11-29T12:39:00.000-05:00

football fun

2010-11-10T03:32:00.001-05:00

tuesday eucharist at the good earth farm

2010-11-10T01:42:00.002-05:00

dan doing his evening chores

dan and cora

margaret, ted, katharin, lynn, paul

rev. bill carroll

mary, cora and maggie

kelly and iris

gifford and sara

morning at the good earth farm

2010-11-06T01:11:00.001-04:00

here are some images from the good earth farm this morning.

morning prayer

morning chores, milking the cow

morning meeting, discussing what needs to be done for the day

my first halloween in athens, ohio...

2010-11-01T22:39:00.000-04:00

here are some images from the famous block party on court street in athens, ohio...

rock house yoga

2010-10-26T08:23:00.002-04:00

here's a peek at my portrait shoot at the rock house in hocking hills state park. thanks to my awesome models, anna and dan.

bike shop

2010-10-20T22:03:00.001-04:00

we had a deadline assignment in class today. one hour to shoot work or study. i chose work and went to the bike shop cycle path on union street. katsu tanda who is a senior at ou was kind enough to let me photograph him working.

bike path project 1...

2010-10-20T19:42:00.001-04:00

when i left florida i left the path that i ran on for five years along tampa bay. i had no idea where i was going to run in ohio. i found a wonderful bike path along the hocking river that i can run and ride on.

for my editorial class we have a portrait assignment, so i thought i would take to the path with my camera, and shoot a portrait of anyone who would let me. between class and getting to the path, i had little time before the sun set, but here are the people who we kind enough to stop and let me take their picture. i plan to make this an ongoing project.

kate southwall, and her dog lucy, from athens ohio

im not in florida anymore...

dave butcher from washington, west virginia

mike pond, ohio university grad student from bellingham, washington

randoms...

2010-10-17T19:15:00.001-04:00

here are some images from my first quarter so far here at ou

drag show at the union

rodeo in bellville

tornado witnesses the plains, ohio

pawpaw fest

rock house, hocking hills state park

homecoming... ou vs. akron...

2010-10-17T16:58:00.001-04:00

this was my first time shooting football, and only my second ever college football game. it definitely took me a minute to get the hang of it, but i had fun and look forward to going back, hopefully with a longer lens.