Thanks for the Funk!

On Saturday afternoon in Augusta, Ga., the world said goodbye to a true legend. James Brown, the "Godfather of Soul" was sent off with four hour long "Home Going" memorial service presided over by Rev. Al Sharpton, and Rev. Jessie Jackson, in the soul singer's hometown. Seeing the number of people who showed up at the James Brown Arena in Augusta, was a sight to behold. It was amazing to see how many people Mr. Brown's music and message touched. Throughout the day tens of thousands of mourners passed by the casket of this amazing human being, each paying their final respect to the "Godfather" in their own way. Some passed by with a look, others wept and could not even face the sight of their hero lying helpless in his 24 karat gold casket. From time to time, the line would be stopped, and a celebrity friend of Mr. Brown would be escorted to the front of the room for their own private moment.

By 11:45 the arena had reached its 8500+ person capacity, and the doors were shut, yet hundreds still gathered outside, behind orange barricades, to listen to the service to loudspeakers wired into the arena's public address system. The following hours are still a blur to me. Remarks were made by Brown's family, and close friend Michael Jackson. M.C. Hammer, was so moved during a performance of "Like a Sex Machine," by Bobby Byrd that he broke into dance on stage, to the cheers of thousands, however by the time Rev. Al Sharpton proclaimed the famous words "Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust" those in attendance made their somber exit of the building, having paid tribute to a legend.

As I drove home I couldn't stop humming the hits of the "Godfather" myself. This will definitely be a story to tell the kids one day. May you rest in piece Mr. Brown, and as one mourner put it "Thanks for the Funk!"

Change of Pace...

For the past three weeks I have been following home school families associated with the Forest Acres Christian Educators association, as they prepare for their first annual Fall Heritage Ball. To the students this was more than just a regular fall dance. Since they are home schooled this is the closest that many of them would get to attending a formal dance that resembled a prom. For the parents the evening marked one more victory in their quest to provide an education for their children... on their terms.

After months of planning, shopping, and rehearsing the formal dances like the Virginia Reel, Postie's Jig, and several Waltzes, the night finally arrived. However unlike most proms the was no blaring hip-hop music, no gyrating bodies, and no skimpy dresses that left little to the imagination. As one parent stated, "if its not for sale, don't advertise it. As the sounds of a traditional waltz made their way out of the stereo, fathers danced with daughters, brothers danced with sisters, and friends danced with each other.

This story has been a nice change of pace for me, and its also been a fun opportunity to learn more about a part of the community that I didn't know much about. Even though I'm sure we have a lot of differences in ideals, morals, and religion, these families were absolutely wonderful to me. They allowed me complete access to anything I wanted, and thanked me for being there every time I showed up. It is stories and experiences like this, that recharge my batteries for photojournalism, if only I could do more of them.

high school sports... its a love-hate relationship

High school sports... bad light, coaches who could care less, officials that give you a hard time, and parents who seem to do nothing but complain, for all the difficulties... every now and then a nice fram slips through the shutter.

The art of Hurry up... and Wait...

Seven and a half hours of waiting, for six seconds of excitement... That is what Saturday boiled down to. It was the classic scenario of "hurry up and wait... and wait... and wait," where all I was told was that "We know this is going to happen some time today, but we're not sure when," but when didn't really matter it was the what and why that made this a fun hunt.

The movie "Death Sentence" is being filmed in Columbia, and on Saturday they were going to drop a car off of the top floor of a parking garage in the middle of Main St. In LosAngeles, the fact that they were doing a movie stunt wouldn't have even gotten a blip on the radar, but in Columbia, S.C. its big news, so I had to do something big with it. I talked my way into the South Carolina Health and Human Services building, which sits adjacent to the parking garage, and picked my location, the 9th floor mens restroom. As the crew was setting the car and cameras below me, I began placing remote cameras in the windows, covering the lenses with gaffers tape to cut down on glare, and making sure everything was set. Its one of those shots that you don't get a second chance with, so no screwing up.

Reggie, the head of security who had let me into the building, poked his head in the door around 2pm and said "They just called the 30 minute warning." After seven-hours of standing around on the street corner, the parking lot across the street, and in the mens restroom, every movement on the parking garage below got my coplete attention. Through the tinted windows I could hear the director call "Stand By" and a few seconds later "Action". As the car began to roll I fired both cameras simultaneously, and didn't stop until I heard the car crash on the asphalt below. See the Sequence I guess there is something about dropping stuff off of high places that excites us as people, not to mention the fact that when the movie comes out, I can say "hey I saw that happen" and I have the pictures to prove it.

Peace

Sometimes the pictures you don't take seriously are the ones you need to be taking...

Lately I've been taking my job a little to seriously, and it is becoming something I do to have an income, instead of something I love to do. But then again lately I've been taking life a little to seriously. I suppose that is the curse of making something that you love to do your career. In some ways its inevitable to just take something lightly as you get older, because you begin to realize that you need to be able to make a car payment, rent, insurance, food, etc... But when you worry about all of that stuff you tend to forget why you really started doing this in the first place. Perhaps its just time to stop taking everything so seriously, and start having fun again. Maybe then things will just fall into place. Who knows how everything will work out in the long run, and if we did know that... what would be the fun in living life. Its time to get up off of the couch and go explore the world, have some fun, and see what happens. Its time to take the point and shoot out, like I did at the beach the other day, because its more about the journey than the resullts. In that moment when I wasn't thinking about shutter speeds, f-stops, and iso, so I get to remember the sunrise, instead of how I photographed the sunrise. I think the line from the movie is "Don't take life to seriously, you'll never get out alive."

Peace

Its a small world after all....

Last night I got to shoot an event that I never thought I would see, my alma mater (WKU) taking on the University of South Carolina in the first round of the NIT. It was a completely surreal experience. I don't think I can count the number of times I've covered WKU at Diddle Arena in Bowling Green, Ky. as a student, and USC at the Carolina Coliseum or their new home the Colonial Center, as a freelancer.

On one hand I have spent my entire life growing up around the Gamecocks, and on the other I have spent the last four years of my life, eating, sleeping (or lack thereof) and breathing the photojournalism program at WKU. So needless to say both schools are very near and dear to me.

The first two things I saw when walking on to the court made me do a double take, first the all too familiar red towel, and second a very good friend of mine from WKU, Tyler Pelan, whom I hadn't seen in over a year.

It was nights like last night that make me thankful that I am able to be a photographer, because of the relationships we have with each other, the love we all share for making photos, and the ability to be in the situation where you don't have to pick a team you are pulling for because you have to stay "neutral" to document the assignment.

Aside from all of of the business stuff I am finally shooting again. Enclosed are two of my favorite shots from the game.

The Front Page Trifecta

Ok, so the financial pay out isn't as high as it would be at the horse track, but the feeling of accomplishment is even better.

When I woke up this morning and checked the paper as I usually do, I saw something that I haven't seen in quite a while, if not ever. My images adorning the dominant location on the front pages of the three major sections (Front Page/A1, Metro/B1, and Sports/C1). What makes this even better is that when I woke up on Monday morning I had no idea that I would even shoot an assignment. But all of this didn't come together without some planning and extra work.

At about 2pm, two minutes after I left the news room from turning in photos from an assignment I shot over the weekend I got a call on my cell phone from the director of photography at The State, "Before you get too far away turn around and come pickup the reporter," were the first words out of his mouth. Arriving back at the paper a few minutes later, I found out that the Metro centerpiece had fallen through and we had to go on a feature hunt to try and fill it.

This is when having the idea book that I always carry with me, really saved our butts. The assignment was to find what high school kids do after school on the first really nice day of spring, and the first place we tried turned up no kids. I guess these days kids just go home to play video games, check email, IM with friends, or participate in after school activities, because after 30 minutes of driving around we couldn't find any kids out and about. So referring to my little black book I found that I had jotted down the words "Owens Field Skate Park?," and we headed in that direction. Thankfully we founds some really awesome kids that we hung out with and shot photos of for about 45 minutes, which turned into a nice spring day slice of life.

After that was turned in, I overheard that University of South Carolina head coach Steve Spurier had called the first day of spring football practice a day early, so I headed over to the practice field to just shoot some photos for myself, or stock of what was going on. Having also overheard that access was really tight and the staff photographer who was already out there hadn't gotten much, I planned on just shooting some nice fan features. But when practice ended the gates were opened and a media frenzy ensued.

Seeing the rush of media, encircling the key players after they completed practice, like vultures circling a dying animal I decided to hang back and see how the players reacted to this, and that moment of pause paid dividends in the moments that I got. After leaving the practice field, knowing in the back of my mind that the staff photographer hadn't gotten good shots of the players faces, and really thinking that the media circus was actually the real visual story, I called the director of photography at the state again, and let him know what I had. After some quick, and tense moments of editing and captioning on deadline I walked out knowing that I had something that they were looking for, I walked out of the news room for the third and final time on Monday night.

Even if I didn't get the sections fronts, I knew that I had put in the extra effort and it had paid off in my personal satisfaction with a job well done, but now is no time to get over confident, and rest on my laurels, because my small victory today, will most certainly be forgotten or on the bottom of the bird cage by tomorrow. So I'm off to make calls and find out what else is going on so I can hopefully have another victory to add to my tally in this battle I have going with photography.

*note* this post is a few days behind schedule do to some issues I was having with the blogger interface on my computer. All is taken care of now, and more posts are soon to follow

We've turned the corner...

Spring is heading this way, and nothing can stop it, not that there won't be a few dreary days to come, but thats okay. For the third day in a row I've walked outside to take a smoke break, and have been greeted by sunshine and 70 something degree weather, but today there was something different. As I stepped off of the porch, I was greeted by the sound of birds chirping and the sight of flowers in bloom and green leaves returning to the trees.

Say all you want about January 1 being a time for new beginnings, and starting all over again, but in my opinion that is just chronologically speaking. For me, spring is more symbolic of the chance to start anew, as everything wakes up from its winter slumber, and starts to thrive once again. Perhaps the surfer in me, is always wishing for the "endless summer" where everything thrives, and keeps on going without taking a break. But I welcome the chance to every year see things start all over again. I think it goes back to the quote "without pain, you would know no pleasure."

On the photo side of things though, it has once again been a week with minimal picture taking, and more taking care of business. I'm currently neck deep in re-designing my website, to better promote myself, but rather than looking at it as something negative, the change in climate has encouraged me to look at it as a chance to hit the reset button and start over again. As I look at the work I have done over the past six years to create my new website, I have convinced myself to see it as a way to learn from my mistakes in the past, and a way to set goals for my work in the future. Now if I could only have that mentality all the time, I'd be in business.

Pixel Withdrawl

I knew this week wasn't going to be fun when it began. Sadly enough its that time of year when we all have to take action on the worst five letter word ever created, TAXES, and to make matters worse its that time of the month when I have to deal with submitting invoices, burning DVD's to archive the images made in the past few weeks, dealing with copyright infringement issues, and filling orders for reprints. I haven't even touched my camera in six days now, and I'm going through withdrawal. I feel that I have become more of a business person than a photographer, but if I want to continue to do what I love, I have to make sacrifices for the greater good. If I get more clients which pay better, I'll have to shoot the stuff for money with less frequency and get to spend more time working on things that matter to me, and hopefully one day can only shoot the things I want and still make a living.

With all of that out of the way now, as I look back on the past few days the one word that has become the theme for this week is litigious. But I'll save that for the next post. I have come to the realization that the idealistic view I had of being a freelance photojournalist is quickly vanishing. Instead I find myself more closely looking at the reality of the situation, and the fact that I have become part photographer and part businessman, and its not a fun thing to realize.

While sitting in the waiting room at Wal-Mart while getting my oil changed the other day I came up with the breakdown of how I actually spend my time.

25% Taking Photos
10% Researching story ideas
10% Traveling from point A to point B to make said photos
35% Dealing with business issues, such as filing invoices, keeping up with taxes, keeping up to speed on legal issues such as copyright and contracts which can directly affect me, making sure all of my equipment (car, cameras, computers) are in proper working order, etc...
10% Working on self promotion, to increase the amount of assignments I get
05% Archiving (Burning DVDs), cataloguing, and keeping up with all of the images I shoot, so hopefully if I get something of importance, that can be sold later I'll be able to find it.
05% Saying to hell with being a freelancer and applying for staff positions

So now that I see freelance photojournalism isn't all I thought it was cracked up to be, why the hell am I still doing it? I don't even know the answer to that. Maybe one day I'll learn, but until then, time for me to go make some calls, about a story idea I've been kicking around in my head for the past six days.

Here goes nothing...

Its 3:22am, here in Columbia, S.C. and hopefully my first "blog" will actually work when I click the post button. It has taken me a while to become sold on the idea of "blogging" actually. I'll admit that I am a pretty private person, so the thought of journaling out my life for everyone to see didn't strike me as something I wanted to do, and it took me even longer to be sold on the idea that a blog can be journalistic in any way. After doing some thinking recently I came up with an answer though. The only thing that seperates individuals from publications is accountability. So with this forum I am going to hold myself accountable to standards of ethics, impartiality and accuracy that would be expected from a journalist at any major publication. I hope, that through this medium I can share my images, and stories to enlighten other phtographers on what I went through to make the photos, an inform everyone about the issues, causes, and most importantly the people that I photograph. This should be an interesting journey, that I'm looking forward to. So if at any point I begin to ramble incessently, or go off on a tangent please forgive me, I'll try to catch myself before I go too far. I really don't know how to end this, but I will just say thanks for reading, and hopefully I'll have more to say soon.

Cheers


"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar." Edward R. Murrow