eight seconds

Nykki & Brandon in the backseat / December 2010

Girlfriend and boyfriend sitting, texting and smoking cigarettes for eight seconds. So much of this between them. Plans for the night, staging a fight, forwarded jokes about men and women to their flip phones. Its electric in how mundane it is.

fotovisura

The winners of the FotoVisura grant and award were announced today. The whole contest and entering thing are very new to me, so this experience, while within the same realm of being a young working photographer, is a new one as compared to CPOY for example.

FotoVisura is a great platform for community-based sharing of work. This year, I entered a more recent edit of the work I've been doing on the girls and was selected as an honorable mention. The selected work is a diverse and evocative selection of projects and its pretty sweet to have even made it to honorable mention considering the caliber of the winners, including my favorite photographer.

Don't know how many other of these I'll be participating in as I'm still feeling out what I'm trying to do. The main focus right now is to finish this dang master's project. Made some strides that I'm pretty excited about recently, but wrapping it up is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do with my work, both financially and conceptually.

drive

Jess / Thanksgiving 2010

Feeling like a sedan in a land of pick-up trucks, you know what I mean? Soon enough it will come together.

outside

smoke snake / glouster, july 2010

Found this in the middle of the pile of images from my last year in Glouster. It was in the summer time when the Chili Pepper Festival was going down and I couldn't get myself together enough to actually catch any of the activities, but hung out with these boys while they released lots of sulfur-smelling trails outside the high school.

Been cooped inside for a while. Its going to drop into the single digits here in Ohier soon which means the people I'm photographing will also be inside for the next few weeks.

but i'm trying to show the stillness and light

glouster / dec 2010

from jameska's window

roxy's lunch

While spending some time with some of my favorite people, my camera battery crapped out on me sixty frames into what was a wonderful day. The moment left me unusually dissatisfied with seeing and not shooting. I made a few things tangible with the help of my awful cell phone camera.

watching mason

sammy on the roof

free go

Click screenshot to visit

If you haven't already, please visit the Free Go facebook page where you can learn about how you can hopefully help the effort to free photographer Go Takayama from Cambodian imprisonment. Go is an OU alum and a friend to many friends. People in the community have been rallying for his release. He was arrested while photographing a project for the Angkor Photo Workshop, read the details here.

stacking days and ways

Supermarket / Athens, Nov. 2010

The holidays are coming and the snow is starting to happen. Signs of the end of the year take place and I hope that this calendar will mark other things ending also.

isolated

Dirt on Z's door / Thanksgiving night 2010

Her hairbrush / Thanksgiving night 2010

The drain / Thanksgiving night 2010

Gin and tonic / Thanksgiving night 2010

seeing past

One perspective / Eclipse Company town, 2010

we can hang our discontent on the cheap hooks of reason. they will buckle and rip leaving a dark gap we can't stop looking into. the reality is and always will be that our roles are decided. we can only author what we control and we can't control others.

spare time, spare change

Robert & Leslie's wedding / Nelsonville, OH (nov 2010)

Shot a wedding for the family a long lost friend of mine photographed during his first-year of grad school. It was a long day full of kool-aid powered kids, seven-layer salad and appalachia's finest force cooking up the whole party: the ornery matriarchs.

Of course there will be more pictures to come.

legacies, manifest destiny and the black hills.

If you haven't seen this yet, you should set 16 minutes aside now for a bone-chilling history lesson from photographer Aaron Huey.

warm and real

our bed / athens 2010

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."

sage advice from everyone's favorite ira glass

(via michael rubenstein)

jordanspiration

fear of failure? listen to mike.

artifacts

Post-flood corner / Ottawa, OH (2007)

Its important (and maybe self-absorbed) to look back through the past and remember what the photographs say about you also.

persistence

Miranda's hair / © Maisie Crow

(probably my favorite photo ever)

This year's World Press Photo Masterclass galleries are up and have so much inspiring work. It was great to see stories relating to issues regarding women, including abortion in Kenya, their roles in a still-struggling Liberia and marginalized lives in a trailer park in Athens (a story Maisie shot this summer that I'm very close to). There was also beautifully shot personal work and important news stories (one shot by a girl reppin' El Salvador like a boss).

------

I'm sitting in front of the shack with the cats psyching myself up for my first trip to New York for editor meetings. This is a very small step I'm taking to making a full-on commitment to trying to make it in this life doing the photographic work I'm alternately inspired and intimidated by. My own personal persistence waivers in the face of limitations often. But with nothing but breadcrumbs in my checking account, I've decided that tomorrow I'm taking my half tank of fuel in my gas guzzler and going to Glouster to finish what I've started.

recently

confrontation / athens, sept 2010

Recently I've wanted to have fun with my photography again, so I put down the camera I took out a few loans for and have been spending time with a plastic Yashica point and shoot I found at a thrift store in Athens. Recently I've survived solely on the love, attention and help of great friends. Recently I've doubted, succumbed and hid from myself. Recently I started diligent list making.

First item: Quit being so crazy

home/road matters

Waffle House on Halloween / Indianapolis, IN

Brad and I abandoned Athenian Halloween rituals this year to head to Chicago for his twin nieces' baptism. 20 hours in Chicago/16 hours in the car/1 Waffle House/1 IHOP.

somewhere in Indiana

Madison

missouring

group photo time via the yashica p&s / macon, missouri

Back in September, I had the opportunity to attend the 62nd Missouri Photo Workshop in Macon, Missouri and was awarded the Mary Clerc Scholarship to cover tuition. It was an amazing time that taught me a lot about giving and taking. The environment was nurturing and inspiring in a way that continued to push me even beyond all of my grad school hang ups. A lot of that had to do with the fact that my faculty members Chris Wilkins, from the Dallas Morning News, and Peggy Peattie, of the San Diego Tribune, were constructive and kind in their approach.

The story that resulted goes to show that. The edit of my 3.5-day shoot that we came up with, along with help from Team E, is up on the website and is a playful embrace of my strengths in storytelling. I put up a larger edit on my portfolio site.

My story focused on three kids who shared an apartment in town. I met one of them hanging out on the street and they were incredibly receptive quickly. I was worried after having the gift of access and rapport in Glouster for so long, I would have trouble working on a new story. Korie, Jackie and Timmy were a blast to hang out with and were always surprisingly generous.

Here are some outtakes:

Korie and Jackie

Jackie on a Kit Kat run

Late night TV

Tyler and Dustin in downtown Macon

The gang looking at my photos at the workshop's photo exhibit for the community (a really brilliant idea).

the strange return

Logan Fair Demolition Derby, Sept 2010

Finished grad school at OU in June. Athens life since then has consisted of a serene decompression period tossed with sharp-edged reality of few plans and resources. Still pursuing my master's project these days (more details later) and navigating how to get that done. For now, I'm just going to be sharing the photos that have happened along the way :)