canal fishin'

weather feature attempt that yielded unexpected enjoyment, but not the best photo. i sat with joe watson for almost two hours only to watch all of his bait get eaten by the sneaky fish in the wilton manor canal. he chewed on the stem of a black and mild and swirled around the last of a miller high life in his bottle while he talked to me about the fish he's caught, the ones he wants to catch and how at any second he was going to catch another one.

POV - schoolyard b-ball

Two photos --- the editor ran the bottom one as a feature. Nothing new, but it was fun.

alberto

Alexa Siegel, 15, helps pack the sketch pad into her teacher Al Baruch's walker at the end of their animation class at the Tamarac Rec Center. Siegel has been studying animation with Baruch for three years. Baruch is a former Disney animator who has been teaching kids since his retirement in the late 80s.

When a spinal disease made him too sick to travel, he had the kids come to his Tamarac condo. Last winter the association sent him a threatening notice to cease and desist. So since January he’s resumed teaching classes at the parks and rec dept. run by City Hall. But he’s also had two car accidents on the way there, and fallen twice. He’s desperate to resume his free classes at home. He said he needs to teach kids to draw to feel alive. “I don’t like to be alone,” he said. “It gives me another life."

light and texture with karen conde's face

strobe and telephoto dillydallying while shooting during an interview with the seamless transition coordinator at the veteran's affairs office.

Roy G. Biv

After an assignment, I was rushing to find a wifi connection and praying that my poopy brakes would hold up on the slick roads, when I looked up and saw a lovely rainbow. It was especially vivid when I first noticed it, but in my rush, I kept talking myself out of pulling over and taking the photos. The more I drove, the more I was convinced I was getting closer to the end of the rainbow. So I stopped and snapped. Giddy on the magic, I hopped back in the car to continue my wifi search and realized that a second rainbow was hiding in the mist. It was faint, but still beautiful.

work it out

mi casa

the sky is back. i got home from work at the same time as my mom yesterday. it was the first time in the day i had actually realized how pretty it was outside.

i also realized that my car bounces some crazy light. it was like 90 degrees yesterday so i was sweating when i got out of my jeep and took my stuff out of the back seat. the furrowed brow is a result of squintyness, not emotional or philosophical searching.

la lucha!

Soundslides! South Florida rallies: Demonstrators organize local rallies for immigration reform

lazy hazy

on a bike ride to the heart and beat of the grove, i stopped at my spot only to look out and see haze.

this is a three o' clock sky on the bay in miami? oh brushfires, you're killing me.

so i shot some very intro to photo class stuff instead.

mama's day

de un lado al otro: yo, ale, papi, mami, gati y tia.

my mama really enjoys photos. none of that crazy grainy magnum photo stuff or that artsy conceptual stuff that student-ish people like me admire. she likes the kind of photos she can stick into the plastic sleeves of the dollar store photo albums she likes to stock up on. she's a cheap skate like me, so when she hangs photos in our house, she likes to put them in whatever plastic frame she finds on clearance.

her bargain basement curating skills aside, this mother's day we scrubbed our faces, had a tasty breakfast and set up a strobe in the corner of the room. what started as the set up for a nice, formal family portrait quickly evolved into two hours of photographing cholo chaos.


i'll spare you all the photos that only we could appreciate, but these are just some of my favorites. i think she was happy with her present, despite my inability to hold a photogenic face.

mobilization

Before the immigration reform marches at the beginning of the month, we were invited to sit in on the planing meeting of the local leaders. Not much visual variety, but lots of faces to focus on.

arturo sandoval jazz club

This is how out of touch I am sometimes -- initially, i was bummed out that I had received such a late assignment at the last minute, despite the fact that it was something as cool as shooting at the Arturo Sandoval Jazz Club in Miami Beach. After about two seconds of being there, I promptly took my head out of my own ass.

The Negroni trio greeted people in the lobby of the Deuxville hotel.

curb art

noon sun beating down on hot concrete. mm. the kids at the ft. lauderdale art institute painted the all curbs in one of the campus's parking lots.

clean sweeping

this clear blue sky obsession i've got is getting kind of obnoxious.

hula!

i went to little girl's hula class for community news. once again emphasizing my immaturity, i had way too much fun joking around with sassy little girls.