Daniel Sohner | Columbus Ohio Photographer

West _ End Of The Line

2012-02-01T11:23:00.000-08:00

When we got the car back and weren't all that surprised when we saw the bill. The trip ended in a VW dealership in Denver. We were still on an adventure when we left Alma, when we wandered around Denver the first night, when we pumped fists and marched through the city with Occupants, but now, now that the transportation was back and the money was gone, there was no reason left to hang around.

From Denver, we drove 70 to Kansas City and called a good friend JP who was living there for the time being. We hadn't seen him in a while, so we were all perfectly content as everything resumed the same rhythm as when we last hung out. Honestly, it was under the same basic circumstances, broke, unshaven, dirty, sitting on some floor drinking coffee and eating some concoction we had made with whatever was half opened and near its labeled expiration date. Mike and I stayed there two nights to abate the return, but mores to see JP for a while. He had been such a great friend, that there was something comfortable about being around him on a return we never saw ourselves making.

The final push to Columbus ended at 9 in the evening, under the same soft dark which the trip began. Mike and I said our goodbyes, but that was about the extent of the conversation. Mikes shoulders hung just a bit lower than usual. I could tell he felt as it there was something he should defend. As if this was his fault, or there was someone to blame.

Not at all. This was just one of those things. Just one of those things that happens in the course of a normal lifetime. It would be unfair to see it as a failure, a misstep in judgment. We had a good time. We learned something, we got out and explored a bit. We did something. We took a chance, followed a hope, a notion of a dream that happened far from what we knew. Mike took everything he had and put himself out there. Now, if he goes again, he will truly want it. I know he's thinking, plotting the next move. Thinking about there, out there across all that land to where the sun shines off the pacific, where the sun sinks into the great blue void. Out there in the smell of pine and in the thunder of the wind as it comes down from the highest parts of anything we can know. His truth is somewhere in all of this, but still such a long way to go.

Just Another Day

2012-02-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

I have had these images sitting in my desktop for a little while now. They aren't really related to each other in any way other than being images from the last three months of my life.

WEST _ Part Four

2012-01-24T10:11:00.000-08:00

The drive back to Denver took roughly an hour. The entire time, Mike later confessed, he was praying for the tow truck driver to take one of the corners as he had been doing (full bore) and dump the Jetta into a ravine, thus presenting a better chance for more reliable transportation through the good graces of insurance.

The driver's name was John, which was fitting. I asked if he was from Wisconsin after he told us the dangers of the Kenosha pass in the snow. It was in the way he said Kenosha and he had moved from Wisconsin almost 15 years ago.

The truck was belching full bore echoes through the narrow passes. "She's not much in a race, but once it gets going, get the fuck out of the way!" he said of the truck as we asked how his day was. He had made the trip from Alma to Denver some 600 times as if this was supposed to help us relax. Again with the calming words, "This thing probably has better handling than the Jettta".

With Travis out of town for the weekend, we were stuck in a strange sort of limbo. Homeless kinda, but with means. Upon leaving the VW dealership the first night, we made it to the first bar we found. There, an incredibly talkative and friendly Japanese lady ranted and raved about anything she could think of. We were the only ones there. We ordered food, drank beer and tried to stay positive. She brought us bowls of stir fry which she proclaimed as her specialty. She told us everything she knew about the area and got around to asking why we were there after she realized we were from Ohio. We told her the story and she immediately offered to get us into get us into a strip club up the street for free. We had passed it, Shotgun Willie's, on our way to the dealership; the tow truck driver had pointed it out actually. There were Range Rovers and Porsches out front. Men in suits were hob-knobing around outside. They smoked cigars. We hadn't showered in 5 days. All our clothes were visibly dirty. "If you go to the hotel and change," she said, "I can get you in for free." Change into what? It wasn't worth the hassle of going to a strip club broke and smelling like we were broke. That night, we stayed in a hotel. It was strange, sad even. One night we figured. No big deal.

We waited for the call for two days, wondering around Denver. We went into the art museum which seemed to only be interested in art from the Woody Guthrie vein of American expansion West. Build no more dams. I remember one painting that stuck out of a Pony Express rider riding past men installing telegraph poles. I hurt a bit in that strange moment. Seeing the very comparative instance when the world shrank just a bit, when the void Mike and I had crossed was tethered together by one lonely sting of invention. After that little moment, the rest of the imagery held more weight. The West was no longer a destination or a tangible place, but now a theory, an idea, a mindset, a larger concept I was just stepping into for a while. I wanted more.

The next day began with a big breakfast in Cherry Creek where the host of the restraint ignored us. Backpacks and all. We found a park and waited over here and waited over there. There was nothing to do but wait for the shop to call about the car.

The next adventure landed us at occupy Denver in the heart of the city. It was exactly where we needed to be. It seemed like the day happened in strangely well thought out succession. When we arrived, I immediately started shooting and mike immediately went to the nearest drum circle. We made friends and hung around while everyone shouted about everything.

I picked up on a few basic principles. The 99% was angry. They didn't want to pay for college. They wanted the troops home. They wanted a fair distribution of wealth. They wanted an end to tax loopholes and they wanted a banking system they could trust. I also learned that I am the 99%. The police are too. As with any publicly visible protest, unless you are well versed on the source of the grand issue at hand, you see nothing but a bunch of anarchists chanting "Down with the media", "Down with the government", down with almost everything, really. This was one of those situations where the context of public demonstration was convoluted by anyone who could make a sign so almost every response to inquiry I received was completely different.

Also, as with any publicly visible protest, there is a certain energy which escalates and declines in a proportionate value based on chess like moves by protestors and those assigned to protect the public interests (interests of the public?). This ratio of determination and righteousness began to escalate once the city informed the protestors that having a tent (The Kitchen) was in direct violation of the rules of the park and must be removed. The protestors, for no rational reason other than to be staunch and irrational in their methods of message delivery, adamantly opposed the removal of the kitchen. This, I told mike, was the beginning.

Around this time, mike received the phone call we were anticipating. In short, the cost of the repairs necessary were nearly equal to the amount of money mike had saved for the four months he was to be living jobless in San Francisco. quite unfortunate. I found him smoking a cigar with his back to the action staring off into a deserted part of the park. He looked like he wanted to simply start walking. My first thought when he told me the news was, "you should have just started walking, man. I would have been fine." I kinda had the feeling that was what he had wanted to do.

Mike has a wonderful way of not taking his anger or frustration out on others. Some would call it passive aggressive, but this is not Mike. You can't tell he is mad. He is not snarky; he responds as normal when addressed and holds the same facial expressions as always. His problems are his and he will ask for your help if he wants it, which is hardly ever. His focus turned from San Francisco to the accumulating frustrations of the protestors and police.

The police were patient. Very patient. They initiated with a calm address via speaker. "You are in direct violation Blah Blah Blah. Please disperse." The protestors responded by walking into the street and sitting down. It was at this point which the entire plot of the occupation changed. It actually became an occupation. It was no longer a public forum to air grievances and entertain the local media. It was now a full blown occupation of a public place. The signs were dropped and the main discourse was one in which the demonstrators reminded the police that they were on the same side and the police reminded the protestors that there were laws adopted by an elected democratic representation of the people aimed at providing the greatest good to the greatest amount of people. This is the point at which a demonstrator becomes a protestor. The animosity in the clever signs and catchy chants was now physical and in a sense, personified. Here was some sort of abstract proof, the demonstrators thought, of why we are so angry. The ones who define and control authority are simply not listening thought the demonstrators. We can't help you, someone else told us to kick you out, thought the police. No one was at fault, it was just something that happened.

The rift tightened slowly. A few steps here and there. There came a point, one I would experience again, where I felt a hand on my arm thinking it was a demonstrator only to realize that the police line had advanced up next to me. It was an amorphous blob which swallowed an unruly black-clad kid every so often. The police passed over a line of demonstrators sitting on the ground and pushed everyone out of the street and onto the sidewalk. From there a few lashed out and some shoving and jostling occurred. It looked playful almost, more along the lines of a mosh pit at some concert in a basement. Those left sitting in the street were systematically arrested or led back to the group to be interviewed by a particularly rabid tv reporter. He, I learned, was also the 99%, but a bit less so since he served to perpetuate the agenda of the 1%. Maybe a 33.3% or something like that.

Once the sun set, the pepper spray came out. Things escalated, but never truly hit the point at which laws were broken. The night would never make it past the 11 o'clock news. The protestors shut down traffic for a few minutes and it seemed that after this, all the police went to bed. Mike and I followed the mob out into 16th street where we made passes up and down past the restaurants and night clubs. Some people took pictures others just looked away. After a few laps, the energy dissipated. All the police had to do was leave the mob alone for a while. Everyone simply went home; it wasn't even 10 pm yet.

The next morning I sat on the floor of our hostel room while light slowly gathered outside. The car won't be ready for another day and we have no more money. We are going home, we're going to just turn right back around and head back in to the sandy void of Middle America. The placid rolling expanse of numbing, rambling nothing. It didn't feel like failure, it was just dealing with life. It was no ones fault, just something that happened.

WEST _ Part Three

2012-01-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

Back on the road, we drove north to Denver to spend a few days with Travis whom we had met at OU. His house was situated in an older suburban area in a modest part of town on a quiet street with large, overhanging trees. He welcomed us with a classic, "WHUDDDDDDUP!" and led us in. That night, the three of us went into Denver proper to meet up with Jeremiah, another friend of the same breed. Jeremiah was just passing through on his way to the South Pole, "The Ice" as he called it, to predict weather and just zone out for a few months in general. We met at My Brother's Bar which was, we were told, was a frequent spot of another believer in the Road. Meeting with these guys was good. They both still hold true to a wild and red-eyed product of too much boredom and freedom. They come and go as they please. Conversation was unruly and anything but tame. It was dirty and vulgar, hilariously offensive with a witty and intelligent disregard for societies narrative structure.That night, Travis tried as best he could to set us up with ample destinations for the next few days as he finished his work week as a social studies teacher. Even with all his local zeal, we still decided to try it on our own and in the morning headed to toward Boulder.

Both Mike and I were fascinated by the wonderful ease of finding hiking in the area and, oblivious to anything but the prospect of trails, we jumped into the first one we came to. We just wanted to get out and walk around a bit. The hike was intended for nothing more than to calm the brain and take stock of the trip so far and this it did. Somewhere on the top of the mountain, overlooking boulder and the void of Middle America all the way home, Mike came to a certain realization that I had expected as would anyone in our given situation. In its most basic form it was "I don't know if I want to do this." In its more complicated form, it was "I don't know if I want to do this, because…" The entire premise of this trip was to take Mike to San Francisco for an unpaid internship in the music industry. He had worked really hard to make it to this point, but over the past few months he had come to the conclusion that the industry wasn't for him. Thus, this trip would be rendered useless. The trip had taken on a new meaning even before Mike voiced his doubt. At its core, the goal now became doing IT. The great, undefined energy of IT-ness which, for as relative and personal as this is, it is a universal energy. The longing desire to move, to sustain motion. The need to redefine, explore, contemplate and hurt. This much I understood. It was a kick, a push in a different direction. It was a new hope, a new possibility. It was something to do, somewhere to go, some reason to get up in the mornings. It was no longer about the internship or even San Francisco. It was about four wheels, windows down, a new sun, the smell of the ocean. It was about Ramen noodles and peanut butter and calls home across 3 timezones. It was about How and Where, and a great hearty "I just don't know, man." Anything physical, tangible was now just there to facilitate something Mike and known he was going to do for a long time. GO to IT.

We came off the hill and rolled into Boulder, bought postcards found food and tried to live. I don't remember talking much to Mike for the next few hours. It was up to him to make the call, but he never even eluded to letting the realization take hold. There was just to much to do and see and we were already half way there. Travis came home later that evening and simply nodded at the description of our day, ambling and meandering along as if he had been on the hill with us. We left him the next day and pointed West then South to Alma, Colorado.

Alma is not hard to find. It's not hard to get to. It sits in the heart snow country, along HWY 9 and grassy fields that dead end in the Mountains. Inside the town itself, roads are limited in a sense to:

1: The main road

2: The road that shoots off the Main Road before town

3: The road that shoots off the Main Road in the middle town

3b: The road directly across the Main Road from the road that shoots off The Main Road in the middle of town

4: The road that shoots off the Main Road after town

That may be oversimplifying a bit, but I will say that there is one hotel, one computer repair shop one bar (Alma's ONLY Bar) and a general store coyly named Al-Mart. It is quiet, quaint, clean, fresh. In a technical sense at 10,500ft it is the country's highest (elv.) incorporated town. We arrived to find the dirt access road we needed to be blocked by construction and impassible until about 7pm that evening. With two hours to kill, and only one option, we walked into the Bar.

You have been to this bar before. You walk in, the bar is to your right, the stage is immediately to your left. Along the left wall are dart boards and Budwiser posters about fishing. The pool table hangs under the brightest light in the establishment, set way in the back. There is NASCAR on the flatscreen TV above the cash register directly in the center of the behind-the-bar area. The bartender has his back to you when he works with money, but watches everything in the mirror directly in front of him. There are two guys at the bar named Dave and Ed. They sit there vaguely interested in the TV while the bar tender leans his right elbow on the bar half talking to Dave and Ed half watching the TV. There is another guy at the farthest end of the bar with a beer and some sort of edible something. He isn't looking at anything but his food. No one really cares that you are there because you aren't a regular or the band. The bartender is a nice guy. he doesn't have an attitude and knows that you're there for one, maybe two drinks because you have been to this bar before.

We made it about half way through a game of pool when we were approached by a complete stranger. He stood burly and unshaven. His pants were dirty and he wore two flannel shirts. He had a grey knitted cap that covered long, greasy hair. His eyes were opened wider than the average human's and from them was a bright and strangely contagious energy. He was smiling kind of like Ray Charles does when his hands are electrified gripping his thoughts and slamming them to the piano keys, back arched, face toward the sky. He had a powerful hand as he introduced himself as Mike. He was 32 and today was his birthday. He would remind us at what seemed like regular, calculated intervals. He was strangely excited to see us, as if someone had dropped us off as a pre party activity exclusively for him.

As the sun finally pushed its last remnants out over the land to brush the tops of the trees across the valley below us, we talked about the glory of living in the area, about the glory of road-tripping and about life in general. It was more an exchange of energy than it was an exchange of any formulated ideas. Mike's friends started showing up and we started to remember why we were there in the first place. We thanked Mike for his time and headed back to the car and a 6 mile dirt road.

In the dark, standing in the dirt, the road didn't seem so bad, but driving an overloaded Jetta, it seemed pretty bad. We grunted and bounced along, stopping every so often to check the traction through snow or to measure the depth of a puddle. Considering the circumstances, we made it up with a delightful ease. We spent the night hidden from the wind as best we could, but it was still too strong to ignore.

The next morning, we woke before the sun came up and headed uphill. we were already at 11,000 ft and for two boys from Ohio, the altitude was noticeable. For six hours we worked our way uphill faces to the wind which thundered straight through us. There wasn't much to talk about and only a grand expanse of mountains around us. We watched as a muted Iron and brown choss blanket turned golden in the wake of the first rays of sun. At some point before reaching the top, with our backs to the wind, barely breathing we decided that we had gotten what we came for from the experience. There was no agenda and nothing to prove, we just wanted to get out and walk around a bit.

Back at camp, Mike fell asleep and I wandered around. I sat near a small creek with a clear view of the gnarled summit we had just come from. Patches of snow are the only indication of a rise or fall on the face of the mountain. The full sun was more than enough to warm me when the breeze died. There is a hollow thunder sound every time the breeze came off the mountain and through the trees. I really could get used to this, living each day to look out over the next day's adventure. Clouds from the backside of the mountain crested the ridge above my head and were forced above the peak before settling calmly to the altitude adjustment. They looked like giant avalanches flung to the sky by the momentum of their immense nature; suspended masses which could easily burry everything in an instant.

We hit the point at which we figured the construction would have ended and started downwards to Alma. Because of the grand ease the evening before, we figured that there would be little issue in the decent. Wrong. It was the first serious rut in the road that gave us a fairly solid jolt. Enough so that we decided, unanimously and without words, that further inspection was necessary. I don't know much about cars, but know that you need to reconsider your plan of attack when you hear a noticeable hiss and find oil leaking from the underside of the car.

We tried to play it safe for the next 4 miles, unsure of the true nature of the damage. we made it to Alma and immediately shut off the engine and called several mechanics. The word was the same all around. Tow it.

WEST _ Part Two

2011-12-07T08:45:00.000-08:00

The sun set just about the time we reached the road to the Great Sand Dune National Park. We drove for a while down it, now engulfed by the flanks of the Front Range. In the dim glow of a full moon, their white peaks seemed to drift gracefully over the car. We took a few passes at what we thought were access roads looking for a place to spend the night, but only ended driving up half-mile driveways to hidden nowheres with ten foot fences. The scree lining the road was relentless in its unwelcoming grip on the moon washed ground. We considered cutting the loss and sleeping in our car for the night when, without warning, the car was engulfed in the one lane opening of a massive wall of dirt hidden in the night and, we would later find, somewhat camouflaged in the day.

We parked in a large, flattened parcel of land that would easily dwarf a football field. We got out of the car slowly, careful to shut the doors gently and simply stood for a moment. From a point roughly fifty yards in front of the car the ground rose and didn't stop until it reached the top of the mountains in front of us. It was from here that a violent and brittle wind was dispatched and came down to us from all directions. Other than that, there was no noise. I imagined without the wind we would be able to hear a perfect nothing, the optimized G the earth is said to emit. We moved about the space careful to stay silent and amply aware. We climbed one of the mounds of dirt, sticking to the shadows and realized that it was compromised of a very fine sand, presumably a leftover of an excavating operation taking place below us. Out across the flatland, we could see the horizon light up with orange nodes of humanity, like some sort of far off wave strangely stagnant, shimmering an orange glow. Everything else was the pale grey-blue of the breath of deep night, shapes and spacial differences defined by variations in this tone. We sat, silently applauding ourselves for escaping The Wave and finding our own hill, backs guarded by the Front Range. It was on top of this pile where we decided to lay our bags. We found recesses in the ground long enough for our bodies and wide enough to cradle our shoulders. We took brush and lay it at our feet so that we were able to see the car, but our figures would be broken up from the road and indistinguishable should someone arrive to find a humorously out of place Jetta with Ohio plates. The night passed colder than I had expected. We woke in the same listless light that we began in, got to the car and drove the rest of the road into the park.

Breakfast was quick as the morning sky erupted bright pink above us. It wasn't a color I had ever seen before and was unsettlingly beautiful. It disappeared to the blue morning clouds before I could fully understand it.

We hiked across the wash at the bottom of the dunes and started up an incline over frozen sand, pausing every so often to measure the scale of ourselves against the mountains. At some point, the sun officially crested the last spire of the front range and followed us the rest of the way to the top. Hiking up the dunes was slow progress. The sand would hold its for at first, a frozen viscus of sand and water, then giving way, sliding downward and engulfing just enough of our feet to make the next step a bit more strained. We took our time getting down, exploring the variations in the dunes. Some of the indentations in the mass of earth sank a hundred or more Feet. there was no form to it at all. It was as pure as the breeze that brought it there. Any snow that may have been on the ground was covered with a fine layer of sand and would appear in our foot steps at the strangest moments of incline. The sand, out of place cradled in the shadows of Granite peaks, was actually from the West coast. Over millions of years, we would later find, it had blown from pacific beaches and been dumped in the same spot.

We stopped at a hot spring In a lonely expanse called the San Luis Valley. We rubbed the skin from our feet and hands and faces and dug our fingers into our oily hair. There was a meditation in this, a traveler's baptism. I sat in the hot water and felt my hair succumb to the cold just inches above the water. A cold breeze cut through the emptiness carrying with it the sights of the first snowy hills voiding the horizon. All we had to think about was the presence at hand. The immediate nature of the trip was never more present than it was here. All we had to do was make it across the country. All we had to do was take it all in, explore the space and gravity of expanse. Here we were, It was the land people had forgotten about on their push West. Acres and acres miles and miles of land, potato farmers, bee farmers and hopeless romantics who had moved here from Boston or Maine and never left. We listened to the stories from people who lived in the area of summertime mountain passes past snowmelt lakes still clean and pure. Granite, snow and wind. It all sounded just like the land we had come for, like the face of the void we had expected to find at the end of the Great Plains. The high, lonesome sound of a country still wild in spirit. We had arrived.

WEST _ Part One

2011-11-30T11:09:00.000-08:00

This isn't one of the stories that ends the way you think it is going to. In fact, it ends in basically the same place it began. once I start explaining everything you'll see that it was all there. The setting, characters, storyline, plot, even a bit of mood. There was a fire burning deep within a longing heart. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. There was a bonding experience and wild adventure to find. There was rising tension and a climax and resolution, but none of it was what you would expect. It's not better or worse. There are no regrets and very few consequences. No one is at fault.

The plan was to move my good friend Mike to San Francisco for an internship. I had tried as hard as I could to convince him to stay just a bit longer so that I would be able to go with him. Two weeks, two friends a cross-country calling and the great American road. See what I mean? Perfect.

We left in the early morning calm, through slowly wakening neighborhoods and soft green grass. The clouds were black against the muted grey sky. There were no plans at this point. There were never plans at this point, it was all just GO. we were familiar with this mindset though. Mike had a strong belief in serendipity and we were both accustom to changing plans instantly. Our friendship had been tuned on these principles. The unyielding sense of adventure we shared was channeled through last minute climbing trips to the New or the Red with a few close friends of the same breed. Early mornings and late returns. We discussed briefly the best way to Denver. It was all flat. It was all faded yellow. It was all highway and in the end, it was all windows down, chasing the Western sun and visions of the Rockies. It was all loud music and had rolled cigarettes, a jar of peanut butter and the impressive mileage on Mikes Jetta TDI. We had time to enjoy it all. I had just finished a book on the dust bowl in the thirties and really wanted to see the passive expanse of scared land. It was a nothing I felt I understood more so than other nothings we would find.

As the sun started to rise behind us, we could see that the leaves were just changing and the muddled browns, yellows and oranges were beginning to sparkle in the fresh sun. The scenery was distinctly Midwest. Field, field, wooded area, denser wooded area, field, field with a lone tree in the middle of it, exposed rock from where the highway cut through a hill, field, wooded area, field with deer in the middle of it and so on. South and East of Ohio there is more rock and less field. North there is more wooded area and less field. Somehow, we found the corridor through land that was humorously identical to that of Ohio. We crossed through state after state of the same exact thing. There was a twinge of wild energy in Mikes voice in the morning, as if we were going to emerge from the early morning and be able to sense our progress West by changing scenery and broader views of the horizon. It became apparent that the Midwest would not relinquish if control of our view for some time, so with the energy nearly drained we took turns sleeping and driving. The monotony of the expanse of our current settings carried into the evening and into a rainy, dark Oklahoma. The rain falling on the windshield was slow to move along the parabolic arc of the smooth glass. Lights from oncoming traffic lit the drops of water from behind, bright and forceful at first, then fading back to the deep set night. The whole thing reminded me of fireworks exploding and fizzling in the sky.

The first stop was Chickasaw State Park, right on the edge of the dust bowl. We arrived in the dark, in the rain, tired, hungry, sore, excited. There was one road in and a gravel parking area at the end. We slowly crunched down the road and unloaded ourselves when the road ended. We stretched and took stock of the surroundings, hiked briefly over an embankment and down into a flat black void where the sheen of a few standing bodies of water of different sizes were the only things to signify ground from sky. We set up camp and let the wind hammer the tent while we tried to sleep and dry off.

We woke to soaked pants and shirts and a most uncomfortable cold, humid breeze. In the grey of the morning, we saw that we were actually camping on the edge of a severely dried riverbed. It was all very stark and terrestrial, the kind of place where you start walking and end up farther away from where you had started than you thought. We wandered along the river bed catching toads the size of dimes and exploring the foot deep cracks in the previously parched soil. They were of a magnitude we had never been exposed to before and a sure sign of months without water.

As we loaded the last bag into the car, a familiar white and green-striped suv pulled up slowly behind us. The driver, an early thirties something ranger got out and in true inquisitive fashion, sauntered over with raised eyebrows and thumbs tucked expertly into a familiar place on her government issued utility belt.

To camp illegally in any state park would render the campers a fine that someone or someones, such as Mike and I, would uncomfortably be forced to pay and would have to tighten an already stringent budget. It was with this unspoken premise that the conversation quickly passed obligatory greetings and landed straight on the topic of the morning: "you boys know there is no camping in this park, right?"

We didn't. There were no signs posted anywhere. It was too late to care when we set up camp the night before.

"No mam," mike answered, "didn't know that."

I closed the trunk and politely asked where we could find camping for the night. She gave me a few very detailed directions which we both knew I was forgetting instantly. She paused and with a bit of a smirk, asked if we had camped there in the night. Mike answered with a "we just got here". There was a pause and, coerced by a lack evidence, she excused herself politely and drove the suv back the way she had come. We later arrived at the conclusion that she wasn't really in the mood to bust us for camping there. She seemed to know what was going on after she saw the Ohio plates on the car. She could have very easily taken a walk 50 feet into the river bed and seen the footprint of the tent and then asked us where we had camped that night, but she did neither of those. We later learned that Chicasaw State Park is the smallest State Park in the country, so she was probably just excited to see people hanging around after such a terrible summer.

Oklahoma in the morning was an awakening and a jolt of energy, surprisingly. What were once deciduous trees cradling the highway now gave way to longer and longer expanses of land with only small pockets of hearty, short scrubby trees and plants. Low grass clung to red clay on the side of the road. We had an inkling of being in the 'West' when we passed Youkon Oklahoma, the home of Garth Brooks. The breeze became colder than the day before as we drove through what was quickly becoming an expanse void of trees. The sky hung weighty, low and grey with only slight variations and undulation in depth, tone and texture. It reflected the meandering gradients of the land beneath it lazily lobbing their way along the horizon line. Ironically, the sun emerged somewhere before Gray County, Texas where we stopped to make lunch and listen to the expanse of what was now obviously the Great Plains stretching all the way up through the Dakotas. The placid expanse of land seemed undisturbed, but it was evident after reading a few historical markers about the XIT ranch that the shrubs were just filler hiding eighty year old scars. The clouds bubbled along with their weightless sense of time, seemingly unaware of the stiff breeze below. The expanse made it seem possible to walk in the shadow of clouds moving slowly towards the horizon and out into the world.

The Texas towns that followed looked burnt out and haggard. There were cars and exercise equipment in front yards of homes whose paint had been stripped long ago. Dead grass and dead trees, dry fences and evaporated kid pools. Rusted scrap, siding and litter from the highway blown and stagnant along chain link fence lines. Everything was a rusted blood red color.

Near Dalhart we passed nothing. No more telephone poles, houses, roads, billboards. In the distance, separated from the road by a considerable expanse of dirt was what looked like a lonely chemical plant. They must have been all the way out there for the sake of humanity, doing the kinds of things that required a gaping expanse of land for even the smallest mistakes.

I suppose the real story begins about 80 miles from the Western boarder of the Texas Panhandle in the pink mist of a setting sun. The hay was stacked in two story blocks close to the road and was burning with the autumn yellow of the afterglow of a dry, hot Texas summer. Mike had been pulled over for going 5 miles per hour over the speed limit. We were the only ones on the road. The officer that stopped us expressed great interest in our destination and origin. We weren't so surprised when he pulled Mike out of the car to question us both separately. Drugs? no. Guns? no. Where you going again? San Francisco. Drugs? no. That must be what we get for taking an overloaded black Jetta with tinted windows across Texas in a hurry. With him in our wake, we followed the sun over the horizon and into southern Colorado.

We sang our favorite forgotten Dylan as the first range of the Rockies gnarled at the bottom of the calming sky. There it was, the West, and with it, the next great step.

Bouldering

2011-11-30T10:46:00.000-08:00

Coopers Rock State Forest, West Virginia

Bike Path

2011-11-14T10:30:00.000-08:00

Chicago

2011-11-09T08:20:00.000-08:00

New York

2011-08-03T10:54:00.000-07:00

Pennsylvania just may be the longest state in the union. I have driven through the dusty salute of Texas, through its wandering washes under the sun of suns. along red dirt roads of no consequence or destination. I have driven through Kansas and South Dakota and Wisconsin. Through flawless Wyoming and the eerie burn of Utah and Arizona. Not one of these drives felt nearly as long as the weighty traverse through the Pennsylvania turnpike. I attribute much of the deterioration of time to the longing possibility of the next curve, the next winding set of green hills producing a familiar word on a generic road sign. My exit. My town. The next step. Just through these trees, the crest of this rise; you can only see a few hundred yards in front of you, so, propelled by sheer optimism derived from being denied a view of the next few miles, the brain simply makes distance up and is usually wrong.

When we left Columbus, I had entered the destination and time into my brain for processing. New York, roughly 10 hours. By the time we made it to our destination just outside the city 8 hours later, I stretched my frame to a setting sun and watched my shadow reach from the point where I was attached to a Jersey suburban sidewalk. We spent a night with Janelle's aunt, her husband, their three boys, two girls, dog, two baby chickens, and a few rabbits of such size that I had to believe in some serious inter-species cross-breeding. They greeted us warmly and with vigor, ironically, generally reserved for the Easter bunny.

Off in the morning with the next three days of our lives on our backs. We boarded a train and rode through every Springsteen song I have ever heard. Ambiguous forms of a subterranean American language rode shattered windows and the vast walls of buildings seemingly built for a singular application, then abandoned when the shrubs and thorny vines obscured the view of the city skyline. they stared back at our train with gaudy poise, shallow and empty. Remnants of industry gone to a who-knows-where part of the world.

From our train, we connected directly to the subway without coming up for air. After a short rendezvous with a friend, the train led us back, headfirst, into the city. At whichever stop, through the underground city of the cities underground, we climbed a flight of stairs and slowly emerged into Times Square. We moved as best we could, eyes everywhere in a place created before color anything. It was by good fortune and an even better friend that we were able to crash for a few nights a few blocks from the Square; in the heart of a pulsing drone of form over function.

The first night and day were the same as the last. As it presented itself, it was timeless and ambiguous. There was hardly a definition of time other than a primitive response to hunger. Without that, the sun would have never set and I would have never had to sleep or stop walking in any given direction.

China Town was as it was in my head before I got there. I wasn't surprised in the least; tired faces peddling hand bags and sunglasses. Hundreds of people reflected in hundreds of plastic, tinted lenses. The shop keepers herded people as one would coral fish or sheep. The goal was not even as complex as to usher people inside the shop, rather to just get them pointed in that general direction. The mood of those visiting was feverish as if they were compelled by some unruly, unnatural force to keep moving and never stop, they were propelled by some sort of go-drive that was only there as a rumor, as some excitement they had heard of. It felt like the shop keepers has simply woke up that morning to take the stickers off a few mangoes, shine the sunglasses, put a few exotic fish in bowls and sit in the yawning recess of a storefront. The people walking by would do the rest. They looked tired and uninterested, diluted by the throng of visitors diluting the flow of true customers. block after block of the same thing. a collective sigh and shrugged shoulders at another beautiful day somewhere else in the world.

In Little Italy and Hell's Kitchen, We ate dinners at restaurants where we were treated under the premise that we could have a room at the top of the tallest tower at the top of the world. We were made to feel as I had expected we would. We were treated as though we would come back the next day and the day after but they still would have no idea who we were. The pace had slowed, but the energy was still there. Here the sun set slowly in long strides along the streets. people rode bikes while traffic calmly congested itself. waiters paused patiently for people on the sidewalks to pass before serving.

As we walked back in Times Square, a handful of people offered what seemed like game ending rates on bus tours through the city or free drinks at that one comedy club where that one guy from that one episode of SNL may stop by sometime in the next month. Every third or fourth person mistook us for Germans. I took some money from some Caribbean island I had to a hole next to the Hard Rock Cafe to check the rate and have it exchanged. It was promised to me by the homeless man back in Columbus whom I gave twenty bucks to that the bills were worth the same amount. They were given to him, but he could not exchange them. It was a gesture rooted in faith in a complete stranger. After some brief light hearted and well meaning conversation with the teller about our wonderful trip to the Caribbean, she handed me a crisp twenty. I turned around back into the billboards and marquis aware now more than ever that not a single thing was as I thought it was and that this could directly apply to me.

They came in waves, the blasts of inhumane illusions, the intimate but convoluted introductions to others lives. the smells change in the width of a footstep, the overheard conversation sprayed into the fray, just above heads. The attitude adjusts itself when glances meet. no one wants to stand out in such terms that would render them a tourist. This is where the confused are drawn by the light shone high against the buildings. Just to look, just to run a hand over the rough grit and see if st feels like it did in their heads when they were younger and had no other option but to believe in anything they wanted.. Just to see if the tops of the buildings really are just out of reach and to see if the people, the true natives, really do brush it off as a smudge on their sunglasses. But it is New York, a city built before color, monochromatic stone swathed with billboard blankets of succulent hues. Buildings solemnly strung from the sky, hanging down like chunks of ice. It seemed like an almost childish pilgrimage spawned from some list full of 'some day' adventures.

is that the point? to be completely immersed in humanity otherwise lacking from daily life? the possibility of being anyone as assumed by anyone possible? A great hollow born of ambiguity; feverish nodes of a humanity critical of itself, people living vicariously through their own reflection, falling in love with complete strangers? I was told it was more than that. It was described to me in a taxi one night in such terms. Everyone here wants to be here. there is something here they are fighting for, something that can only be in this place, on these terms in this given swath of time. It can only be felt with this energy. They are here because there is something they believe calls to them in such a pure form of honesty that there is absolutely no other option no other way out. There is a bond. There is a common understanding of this truth. Everyone is all in all the time and believes so strongly in themselves that they can somehow see past the lights and present and the tone of the city. The sidewalk hum of a thousand possible outcomes at just as many destinations. To them, it becomes not New York but The City, it becomes The Possibility and in that, Home.

All I can think of is giving the fast paced dervish a go one more time. All I want to do is watch the people again, to walk the street with the destination of self. I want to give it more time. I want to pace quickly through throngs of those trying to make it or just see it or trying to get in or trying to get out or just dying to live. I didn't get it… at all, but I felt something. An inkling of devastatingly simple possibility. That thing that drives people to think that today will be the day. Today this will happen. Today the time will pay off, today I will find the meaning of being found. Today I will feel at Home.

2011-05-10T17:37:00.000-07:00

2011-05-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

'Off The Grid' at the Wex. Off the grid? why couldn't they just call it like it was? Super-loud-and-flashy-dance-party-with-art-and-young-hip-20somethings. As poorly thought out as the name of quite possibly the most grid-dependent event I have ever seen was, the event itself was a lot of fun

2011-04-22T06:23:00.000-07:00

Recently had the opportunity to shoot Tony Reynaldo for a climbing clothing company called Frixsn. He is a new addition to their team and is the owner of Kinetic, a small bouldering gym here in Columbus. You can get a feel for the gym HERE.

2011-04-19T12:37:00.000-07:00

Rap group from Columbus called Fly.Union. Very humble guys who knew how to be themselves. It's always fun when you don't have to direct...

2011-04-14T06:44:00.000-07:00

Athens, Ohio. It will never change.

2011-03-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

Same basic assignment, just a different crowd for a different publication. It's been interesting trying to shoot with the same style, but give a completely different vibe based on the audience.

2011-03-23T07:07:00.000-07:00

So, I don't really 'get' it. It was entertaining, sure, but there was just too much that didn't surprise me...

2011-03-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Two very different images from today.

2011-03-17T05:30:00.000-07:00

I'm not too sure what to say about this post. I woke up this morning and thought, "Damn it, I really need to update that blog. I have had some cool opportunities in the last few months."

I would like to make the excuse that the reason I haven't posted images here is because I was working on a serious in depth story. One that can only be found at the edge of the earth perched on the very cusp of human emotion born from necessary evils and perpetual evolution of modern man. A story so great, so poignant, that its mettle captivates the conscious opinion of the very people that govern us, rises them from their monotonous depths and harkens them to the call of a just cause.

No. Not this time around.

To be perfectly honest, I just didn't think I had anything worth sharing. Since the mid summer, I have been working for niche publications at the Columbus Dispatch. There are two other extremely talented photographers here and in all honesty, I don't fit in, visually speaking. They have an established style which is very different from the way I think. It is very polished, very clean, always in focus. Everything is lit with something other than natural light. They are portrait and food photographers. They do all the things I never took the time to learn at OU, they do them well and they do them effortlessly (or so it seems).

The other day I was in the Dispatch studio. All I had to do was shoot a glass of Killians Irish Red in a pint glass. Over the course of about 45 minutes, the assignment went from a simple thought devoid of complexities to a ravaged and raging testimate to just how much I thought I knew compared to what I actually know. This pint glass was the most confusing thing I have had to work with while I have been here. What?! How can this be!? Why am I reflected in the glass no matter what angle I shoot from?! Why is one side way over exposed?! Why is the background ( a piece of perfectly white paper under normal circumstances) 219 different shades of grey?! Why does the beer look black on my LCD?! Where are those shadows and odd reflections coming from?!

At the peak of frustration, I had 5 studio strobes and two reflectors trained on the glass. It was about this time that my photo editor, Will, walked in. The exact opposite of what I wanted to happen in the situation. The conversation went something like this:

Will: "Whatcha doin?"

Me: "Wasting time."

(awkward pause. Will knew right away that the Killians had the upper hand.)

Me: "I..."

Will: "If you want to light that beer, you need to light the background."

(awkward pause... then I turn off all the strobes except for one, crank it to full blast, set it directly on the background and fire away.)

It took six exposures to get it. Zen master Will left quietly for me to celebrate and let this sink in.

How about that? I learned something. Small and very specific victory, but I learned something. This has happened on several occasions and it always comes from either being forced into a situation I never thought I would be in or trying something a thousand times and finally figuring it out.

After a conversation with another photo friend at a Lady Gaga concert, I realized that I'm not really an employee, but still a student and probably always will be. This is still school. I make mistakes and victories, small and large, and keep learning. Some things, like the beer, hit me right away. Other things are hiding somewhere in my head and will present themselves when they see fit. I have gone from not even owning a flash, to using multiple unit setups daily and am just starting to figure it out. The important parts are these small victories, otherwise known as "lessons". They may not be serious in depth documentary stories like I aspire to pursue, but they are important in a personal sense and I am growing from them.

2010-11-05T08:14:00.000-07:00

For the past week or so I have been able to follow around the Libertarian Congressional candidate for the 12th Ohio district Travis Irvine. When I first met him, I really couldn't take him seriously. He was young, not overly energetic and spoke honestly to me. I really didn't get the sense that he was running for an office of any sort or that he had experience working in Washington. The fourth image from the top is Travis giving the "Third Finger" to the current two party system. Over the next few days, I came to appreciate this. Travis is a really intelligent guy and not once did he try to impress or convince me of his merit. He calmly and patiently laid out his platform by beginning, "I'm not a Republican or a Democrat - I'm tired of both of them." You can read an excellent story about Travis by Alive writer John Ross here.

2010-11-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

Here's a pretty random image I made while following the congressional Libertarian candidate door to door. Out of all the "Hey man, take my picture" images, this one may be my favorite.

2010-10-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

Old mining towns usually die. They usually melt and return in all glorious irony to the earth they are from. They are lost to the grey afternoons and sinewy fat leaved vines. They disappear, slowly. No one wants to return because there are a thousand towns just like that one. Kelly's Island must have been saved by Erie and the good graces of the drunks and day trippers. By the crisp lake breeze and long afternoons. By the nautical mystique and midwest charm. Half of Kelly's Island is hidden in the tall grass; hidden behind No Trespassing signs nailed to old trees. Behind the remnants of stone walls and old wineries. The other half sits at a bar stool and on the beach. In the small town square and rides golf carts. It's something about the water. Something about just being an Island. Something about the ferry ride over that changes your mindset. Something about the stiff breeze from the North West that smells exactly as you would expect it to and how half the roads are still dirt.

I have been hanging on to these images for a while now, and I can't exactly find a reasonable answer to why. I think it is one of those situations where I went expecting to have the same experience I had been having for the past 20-something years of my life and ended up with something entirely different.

2010-09-29T08:05:00.000-07:00

2010-09-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

The other day I stumbled upon Columbus firefighters and Girl Scouts creating a First Responders memorial at the Statehouse. I couldn't resist a little B&W...

2010-08-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

Images from the past few weekends of climbing in the Red River, KY. If you've never been, it's worth a trip even just to look around.

2010-07-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

A few older images I recently remembered I had from a trip to California...

I also put together a piece of mainly B-roll and the like which can be seen here.

2010-07-08T20:53:00.000-07:00

Columbus. Boom.

2010-06-23T06:26:00.000-07:00

It has been a little while, but here are a few recent images.

2010-03-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

2010-02-18T11:18:00.000-08:00

2010-02-12T11:33:00.000-08:00

2009-09-12T11:43:00.000-07:00

Out of Texas and back to Athens

I kind of do miss Texas. Where the country anthems cut softly through the dense roar of cicadas, and you have to loose yourself in the twangy cry and mellow, fluid voice of radio cowboys singing the sun. The boys in jeans growl and guzzle their trucks high off the pavement with windows down, always. The wind carries what earth it can steal and like a breath from the divine, people turn their heads to face it. They close their eyes and breath deep tasting everything since the coast. sensing all that raw land. Everything is being cooked, burned alive. facing the sun, lying on its back in the dirt. and the pavement that was on fire at noon is on fire long after the sun sets. The heat becomes ambiguous and everywhere and everything, but such a great pride and love for this dry dirt keeps people from complaining because this is Texas and you have to die here to understand it. You have to have the sweat sucked out of your body as you feel the grit on your tongue. you have to burn everywhere, always. You have to watch the grass fires eat the yellow and blacken the earth and unfold smoke high up into the air where it drifts to another far off place just like the one it came from. You have to pray for rain for the sake of Texas and stand in the storm when it finally comes, marveling at the wind while the sky deteriorates and falls to the ground. You have to drive for hours on end just to see the same thing in a too-big plane of perfect cliche. And you hope it will go on forever, and most of the time it does.

I can smell bbq everywhere I go. Voraciously lathered in every secret sauce from here to the end of the world. Never have I had such food. And everyone has the best of it, and no one cares why i am there, they're just content if I sit and eat with them. 10am 2pm 5pm midnight, always eating, always spilling my soul story to strangers with double-handed paper plates bleeding the juices of the afternoon cookout. Fat men with bed sized grills smile their toothy grins high on the heat. They ride the mesquite smoke through the backyards and out into the fields and capture all essence of the moment. The life of everything around them is seared into the meat and you can taste the entire day. Women in low cut tops make sure I am comfortable and let me take care of myself and I know there is always more in the fridge, if I want it. They touch me lightly on the arm and never break their eye contact and their nails are painted the color of the Texas wine. It feels like they are trying to keep me there after the food is gone and long into forever, just listening to the music and cicadas and church bells call in the hours. And everywhere is the same face, sweating in the sun staring out and knowing the expanse of it all; from the ocean to the hill country to the high plain desert.

And big men holler their even bigger greetings at assignments where I shake calloused hands and am given a front row seat to the lives of perfect strangers. I am offered beer at ten in the morning and they assume I have declined their offer because I'm from Ohio, not because I work for the news paper. They sweat and all try to talk at once and feed me and tell seemingly irrelevant stories until I forget why I had come in the first place. Where football is religion and religion is life and America is their country, but Texas will always be their land. Where nothing will ever be diluted and they take pride in doing things like racing turkeys and putting out wildfires and cooking the best barbecue and drinking beer at ten in the morning.

And now summer is over and I will not get find what it looks like here when the leaves fall and the grass gets green and it rains more than twice a month. I stood under the afternoon suns on cloudless afternoons with everyone else doing our best to ignore the sweat. I drove out to the flattest of the land, out to the farms and fields of cattle to cover the fires that burned quickly following the wind. Where smoke shrouded the people trying to save their homes with garden hoses and where the flames left me smelling like I had my head in a barbecue. I photographed more baseball and football than I thought was possible and now have a completely different view of the sports all together. I went to the church camps, the summer camps, the art camps and the camps at the library. I flew in a helicopter and spent a day with a 4 time cancer survivor. I went to a deep sea fishing tournament and shot only one rodeo. I was in the grip of the daily and tried to fill the space. I spent the entire day waiting for something to happen and feel like I missed the things that were truly important.

This is it. That tearing transition just when I've gotten comfortable and started to take it all in; just when I have started to understand it all. Just when I have seen some far off reason for coming, other than the obvious. But it is back to that north country; the place no one in Texas could seem to figure out why I had left, yet still maintained that Texas was a better place to be. I'm starting to get that sensation that I haven't explored hard or far or long enough and that the true reason I came is still left untouched. That it is still out there in the food and the fields and the culture of the past hundreds of years. Out where the orange dirt roads take their paths in seemingly ambiguous directions quietly cutting through the landscape. Out where no one really knows where the path ends, but has probably been there anyway. Out there, in the Texas I never saw, of quick-draw cowboys who don't even know they're movie stars, just going about the tiny towns as they always have; in the Texas that is simply too real to exist. It's that feeling that I'm not finished and, worse, don't know when I'll be back. and I hope that nothing fades, ever. I hope the light stays the same way in the afternoons. That it falls in its slanted columns through the baseball field on the edge of stadium light Fridays. And I hope it still rains when no one expects it to. I hope that the rain falls under the cold, blue flashes of light in the storm's evening sun. I hope the pickup trucks always ride excessively high over the streets for no apparent reason at all. I hope the radio stations stay half in Spanish and half in christian and that the majority of the people here remain the good-hearted, hard working, honest, gun toting, red necked Republicans I left them as. I hope the orange gravel roads, named something different to every person, still hide the land they lead to. I hope the whole place stays the same.

Back to Athens where the roads hiss and bend to the will of the hills. Where there is just green and I can look out my kitchen window over the river and just over the tops of the first few foot hills of black coal Appalachia. Back to the humid nights with only the faintest breeze pushing you along. where the masses gather on court and don't give a damn about anything. and it is only in Athens that the whole thing comes together again; friends perpetuating the madness and long black nights filled with blue grass anthems. A world of brick and crooked pitched streets and tiny trails wandering off into the green hills. I am ready to go back. And just like Texas, it does seem to go on for ever. It seems to constantly pull you just to the precipice of familiarity where you can see the vague outline of something just past that next dip and curve in the road, something you can only understand by being among it. It's that point when you realize the significance of the things you haven't found yet and can feel them waiting just out of reach. And some of my best memories happened while racing, windows down, headed to the journey at hand, trying to understand a land where the clouds seem to hang just out of reach. Finding peace in the most spontaneous moments and breathing deep in nights with true friends simply being ourselves, when days change and no one notices or cares, unified by the same vague outlines of conscious understanding.

And while I met many Texans who weren't gun-toting red-necked Republicans, they were all good-hearted and they were just like people in any other place I have been to.

2009-08-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

2009-08-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

The paper here has this thing about only covering wildfires if they threaten homes. By the time we get there, it's nothing but a charred field...

2009-08-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

2009-07-23T22:17:00.000-07:00

2009-07-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

Went to shoot the Poco Bueno Blue Marlin fishing tournament yesterday. There were supposed to tons of people and, yes, Blue Marlin. Hardly saw either. Decided to shoot a guy filleting Snapper. I'm still trying to decide on what image I like best...

2009-07-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

A few images just for fun.
That first image looks very similar to something I have seen before... Scotland maybe?

2009-07-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

Went to shoot a semi-pro wrestling event. It was great to listen to these guys talk about their families and how they wrestle "to show the kids that you can reach your goals", then make threats to each other with chairs and fists.

2009-06-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

Here is a little bit of the music scene in Victoria, Texas. Needless to say, there's not much going on with it.

I'm not usually that interested in Triptychs, but I think the final image works.

2009-06-28T06:43:00.000-07:00

For a story on fireworks safety.

2009-06-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

2009-06-20T19:52:00.000-07:00

I spent some time with Jon Fuller today. Recently out of the Army, he bought two helicopters and has been working odd jobs with them. Most notably game control and cattle herding...

2009-06-20T19:42:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised this one came out. He and I collided about a second and a half after I took this.

2009-06-18T20:47:00.001-07:00

A frame from the annual Crop Tour. 70 pick-up trucks, about a hundred cowboy hats and thousands of acres of soybeans. Doesn't get much better.

2009-06-18T20:35:00.000-07:00

Texas in the summer time... great idea. It has been an interesting few days here. I haven't had the luxury of exploring the surrounding area much, but should be able to steal away from the paper soon and explore Texas on my own. Until that happens, here are some images of Douglas Roddie, a rice farmer and four time cancer survivor who I spent a few hours with the other day.

2009-04-22T07:14:00.001-07:00

Ok, spring break was a little while ago, but here are a few images anyway.

2009-02-22T13:57:00.000-08:00

Here are a few recent frames from The Gathering Place here in Athens. It is basically a place for people with mental illness to go and talk or just be in the company of others who understand what they may be going through. I feel very invested in this as I have made many friends through the opportunity of shooting there.

2009-01-26T18:32:00.000-08:00

When I sat down and tried to think about what I had been witness to and this is what came out.

It could have been any Saturday in February when I first made my way along the National Mall three days before the inauguration. The masses showed little interest in taking a leisurely walk through the nation’s capital on a day when heads were bowed in the face of an unholy, frozen wind. There were no tourists, no police, no peddlers and no energy. It was a dead tundra devoid of everything but history. It was simply somewhere I felt I should have been, but didn’t exactly have an explanation other than that. It would have been valid to assume that the next few days would bring nothing but more grey, more cold and more shadowless afternoons.

I spent Sunday at a flea market on the north side of town where the normal market items were given the face of hope and sold for abnormal prices. It was mad and feverish and full of capitalistic potential. There was almost no attempt to contain the ravaged shirts, hats, socks, sunglasses, and bottles of perfume in conventional containers. His face was partially hidden and revealed in intricate and spontaneous form in bulk boxes and on what floor space was available. “Change” was now a business.

I became a vagabond wandering familiar streets as more and more the city was graced with a common purpose. Even among wild-eyed button salesmen and thirsty peddlers flying shirts like flags of a new nation, there was a calming serenity; a sense of meditated excitement and understanding. People wandered peacefully among other true believers through the market that was Washington D.C. Elevated from its daily formalities, the city became a sanctuary for those looking for something to believe in again, something to reunite them with the promises of fundamental America. So badly, it seemed, they wanted to live and laugh and love in the progress of a nation dedicated to something larger than itself. A sweet breath of unity had replaced the frigid wind. I heard spontaneous excerpts of MLK junior’s speech float effortsly above all of this; in truth, all he helped create. His vision, one step closer to realization.

On Monday, I found myself on a small bench on the Mall. It was about noon and I had a clear view of the capital from where I was sitting. John Williams’ string quartet was being eloquently blasted through the dry air while the snow came and went as it pleased. I watched The Americans patiently make their way towards the Lincoln Memorial like factory workers after a shift. They were the same stony-faced prisoners of complacency they had been before they arrived in D.C., but some void had been filled and now they had a new understanding, which didn’t necessarily need to be adamantly expressed on the surface. It was in the way they moved with each other, so patient and respectful. By walking the mall they seemed to be crossing a gap that was once without purpose. They weren’t just going to some free concert; they were choosing to assemble under white stars in a blue sky for something that had not promise, but potential. Something was found and nurtured and held high in the air in a clenched fist; put on display as a testimony to the length of thousands of nameless lives that fought for the impending transition. The concert the day before the inauguration brought depth to the passion and was, I can only hope, a subtle hint at the next four years. It was a grand display of how diversity can be celebrated and ignored at the same time.

On Tuesday, January 20, 2009 I stepped into Washington, D.C. with absolutely no expectations. I walked through placid, blue streets in diluted morning light and watched the clouds explode as the sun rose behind the buildings. The closer I came to the Mall, the closer I came to the thousands of other people that packed the streets. We moved possessed by a comforting divinity. There was no tension or hostility at the checkpoints to get into the parade route. I joined in the chorus of a mob rendition of “Lean On Me”, which was an obvious joke at how compacted we all were. Even members of the D.C. Police and the National Guard sang and smiled. Once I was through security, I couldn’t stop moving and finally made my way to the Lincoln Memorial with families, students and old ladies dressed in their Sunday Best fur coats and hats who had come out to hear the Word.

When the time finally came, I held my breath with the million or so others as Barack Obama addressed the audience. The intake of oxygen and following silence left a tranquil ambience on the mall. There were no surprises at this point in the process, and the ritual was met with a quiet awe. It was a sense of relief, a sense of completion and gratification that left the crowd in a state of perpetual anticipation for the years ahead. This was opportunity for endless possibility and a true belief that something or even everything is about to change. When he finished his speech, you could feel the collective sigh of relief; it is time to begin again.

In the end, the sun set on the same D.C. on which it rose. The afternoon light filtered through a fine dust stirred up by a mass exodus and hung as a golden mist over the Mall. The monuments and memorials and museums stood as they always had; granite faces towards an expanse of ever-changing America. The country pushed ahead onto the Metro, back into the city and back to the Main Streets cutting through all that land somewhere outside of D.C. They pushed ahead with a new privilege to believe, a bold new definition of themselves as a whole.

There is no reason it cannot stay this way. There is no reason to become shy and timid or to forget our place in history. There is no reason to sit back and watch because, “For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.” There is only so much Hope can save, and while it may save spirit, ultimately, we are responsible for Change. I think we’re up for it.

2009-01-19T17:58:00.000-08:00

After 3 days, it seems everyone is ready. The majority of the people here are still wandering around the greater D.C. area, but with a sense of purpose. It's hard to describe the emotion or combination of emotions, but whatever it is, I can tell it is shared by all. I have no idea what to expect tomorrow...

2009-01-18T19:18:00.000-08:00

2009-01-17T16:02:00.000-08:00

D.C. was rather tame today, all things considered, and there was constant conversation about the next few days. Things are about to change drastically.

2008-12-08T18:56:00.000-08:00

Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, Duluth, Georgia

It was a weekend of thumbing through books then talking about them, showing portfolios and talking about them, listening to speakers, talking about them and trying to understand the world of photojournalism and talking about that. I drank coffee, sat on my hands, listened, believed, took a frame here and there, drank more coffee, rode the elevator up as it stopped at floors 2,6,7,9,10,11, 14 and 16, realized I was supposed to be on the 12^th floor, rode the elevator down as it stopped at the 15^th and 13^th floors, took a frame of the setting sun from the hotel room which I’ll never use for anything, and rode the elevator back down to the lobby while it stopped at the 11^th, 9^th, 7^th, 6^th, 4^th and 3^rd floors. Shutters fired ominously in the dim, yellow light of the hotel rooms and among confused Georgians at Waffle House. We made jokes about how strange it was that so many people carried cameras around a hotel lobby, but did it anyway because it felt comforting or right or honest or something.

My revelation didn't come. Big surprise. But I learned, thought and set personal goals. I sat through reviews of my portfolio by accomplished photographers and listened to the advice they gave, which often covered topics I didn’t know I should be concerned about. One told me I was doing very well and should follow my heart and develop my personal vision. One told me my photos look like a tourist took them. I’m not sure what to do with that. I took in the lectures and know for a fact I see photojournalism and storytelling in a different way now. The hard part now becomes putting what I think I know into a practical application and telling stories effectively.

After the weekend, I felt alive to return to the place where I live. We headed north through the drying air and peered out through fogging windows. As a setting sun left that familiar and coveted afternoon hue across the highway, we five photographers, as if tethered together, all turned our necks admiring a weathered yellow house sitting in the golden wash. Yes, we wanted to get out and shoot. I got home and played all the music I could feel and believe and love and yell and sing to. All the stuff you play when you want to feel good about the larger picture and the future. The songs you want to sing as loud as you can but produce an unintended lyrical debauchery undermining the entire reason you love the song in the first place; the songs you can sing with a merciless out-of-tune yodel that sounds more like a cry for help because it feels comforting or right or honest or something. That something is what I have come to live on.

2008-11-30T19:07:00.000-08:00

My last few days in Athens before the break were basically spent listening to what some would call excessive amounts of Dylan. It put me into an interesting mood and had me reflecting a lot on all I have seen and done this quarter (not to mention gave me a refreshing desire for a trip to Summersville or Kaymoor). But as I looked back on everything I learned I realized that I learned more than I thought I would, yet have much farther to go than I thought I had. I'm not sure what happens next. If I had things my way, it would be a great vague revelation regarding life or something larger than that so charged with a new found knowledge that it would send my photographic vision into a realm inconceivable at this point... That could happen... or I could keep chuggin` along following every little hunch and listening to every piece of advice given. I could keep looking for those things I don't fully understand or have never experienced; just keep growing as the opportunities come, and I think they will. Just hold on to what I have now and look forward to that next great adventure, big or small. No matter how subdued or excessive things may seem in the future, they will all have their opportunities embedded; that next moment, or person or perspective that will alter the world I'm in, whether minutely or drastically. This will be the next step. So for now, I visit friends, hang out with mom and dad and chase dinosaurs. I know that when I get back to Athens the important people will be the exact same but have new understandings of their own, and something that I won’t be able to adequately describe will have changed, the world will be a little smaller, and I’ll see opportunity everywhere.

But that’s how it always begins.

2008-11-05T10:39:00.000-08:00

“You need something special all right, you need something special to give you hope , but hope's just a word , that maybe you said, maybe you heard  on some windy corner 'round a wide-angled curve

But that's what you need man, and you need it bad  and your trouble is you know it too good  'cause you look an' you start gettin' the chills  'cause you can't find it on a dollar bill  and it ain't on Macy's window sill…

And where do you look for this hope that you're seekin'  where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'  where do you look for this oil well gushin'  where do you look for this candle that's glowin'  where do you look for this hope that you know is there  and out there somewhere…” – Last Thoughts On Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan

Congratulations Barack.

2008-11-02T11:26:00.000-08:00

For whatever reason, this year seemed to be a lot more relaxed. It made for a much more pleasant evening, if an Athens halloween can be such a thing.

2008-10-15T22:21:00.000-07:00

2008-10-13T05:37:00.000-07:00

This is where I spend my weekends, in these old valleys and in the wake of coal mining. At the gas stations and restaurants of back roads and the quietest of all Main Streets. Taking in air in the deepest breaths and experiencing everything I can. Watching blue skies and the outlines of black hills. 33 to I-79 to I-77 to just about anywhere and feeling confidence in being vague. Going again and again because there is so much missed and experiencing life out there yields more reward than copious amounts of alcohol in some irrelevant modern American collegiate night. Feeling the dusk and knowing the dawn without any distractions and waiting for the next great moment in this slow forgotten part of the world. It does a mind good. Watching the sun burn holes through the trees and change every time the wind blows; it floods into the valleys and creeps up and down the sides of the hills that seem untouched. And everywhere you go people really do mean it when they say, "you're welcome" and the songs they sing about coal and the valley and whisky and hard times are all true because you know that they are singing the same songs their fathers and grandfathers sang to them. Life feels like it has more meaning because it moves slow enough to find the things that are truly important.

And as I live vicariously through something I already am, I stay ready for the next attempt at understanding this world. With my camera, a will to explore and friends whom I can only assume feel a similar motivation, I lean forward to the next time I find myself under an empty blue sky on long dark roads cutting through nowhere Midwest America.

2008-10-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

This is a more vague edit of a story I am working on for class about Cy.

I'll try to let the images explain....

2008-10-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to be able to photograph Berdine's Five and Dime in Northern West Virginia for Southeast Ohio Magazine. Karen Harper, the store's current manager, brought so much life to the shelves of the 100-year-old store. "I won't let anyone leave without something," she told me. Weather someone left with pillow cases, yarn, nails, mouse traps, tin toys, porcelain salt and pepper shakers (ones shaped like bananas were my personal favorites), various random 5 cent nick-nacks or a piece of 1 cent candy, she held true to that statement. Most of the items were of practical application for home and health, but she also sold candy and numerous toys similar to those found in the plastic eggs of 25 cent machines. If I were about 48 years old the nostalgia would probably be overwhelming.

2008-09-22T09:58:00.000-07:00

And just like that, I find myself in the most farmiliar of situations. The people I know best still know themselves and nothing has changed. That seems to be a common theme of may of my experiences over the past two weeks; just picking up a part of my life that had been on hold for a while.

2008-09-19T19:34:00.000-07:00

I finally broke down and shot my first conventional sporting event. It really wasn't as bad as I thought, but still not my first choice of subjects.

2008-09-15T06:12:00.000-07:00

While hunting for features, I came across the PawPaw Festival at Lake Snowden. It felt good to shoot something like this after Scotland and see just how much of what I learned there I retained.

2008-09-09T09:58:00.000-07:00

On a whim, Gunnar, Mike and I decided to drive Casey (Mike's visiting friend) back to Rochester, New York. Long story there. On the way home we decided to spend a few days in the woods at World's End State Park in Eastern Pennsylvania.

2008-08-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Who can replace Dan Proudfoot?

2008-08-16T06:47:00.000-07:00

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?- it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies." - On The Road, Kerouac

2008-08-09T01:58:00.000-07:00

Inside the Ferguson Group yards in Port Glasgow. Not as many sparks as I had expected, but you can't beat the view from 110 feet over the Clyde.

2008-08-09T01:55:00.000-07:00

More from the documentary on the Clyde. This time, the Glenlee built in 1869. Great piece of history.

2008-08-07T15:59:00.001-07:00

Photographs taken simply in transition from one point to another, just for fun. Sounds like the reason I got into this in the first place...

2008-08-07T15:57:00.001-07:00

A small sample of my documentary project on the Clyde river. Images of shipbuilding should be coming soon.

2008-08-07T15:48:00.000-07:00

Here is the rough edit of a story I am working on. It turned out a lot better than I thought it would, and I am very pleased with how it is going so far. Her name is Izabela. She came to Scotland for the Fringe Fest from Poland. An absolutely wonderful person.

2008-07-29T23:25:00.000-07:00

Not much is better than Edinburgh at sunset, except possibly a man with a flaming whip.

2008-07-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

Here are a few random singles from things I have seen and things I have been working on. Most of the stories I had planned have fallen through, so I am having to reinvent projects as I go along. The Scottish people are very welcoming so I'm not too worried about it.

2008-07-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

It is amazing how different the country looks after one week. So far I have explored Edinburgh relentlessly, went out with a sailing school in North Berwick on the Firth of Fourth and hung out with "hooligans" in Dunbar. The real work begins with week two.

2008-07-19T17:02:00.000-07:00

Day one in Scotland has ended. After delays and layovers, we made it. Here is my first impression.

2008-07-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive." - Fortune cookie

2008-07-05T13:34:00.000-07:00

Fourth of July fireworks. I forgot a tripod, so I tried something different.

2008-07-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

2008-06-29T18:51:00.000-07:00

ComFest and the Pride Parade. Color. Life. Energy. Passion. People. What could be better?

2008-06-23T09:25:00.000-07:00

Back in Hilliard. While it may not feel like home, it is familiar. I have come back to find that the people I thought would change for the worse have gone in the opposite direction. Fancy that...

2008-06-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

2008-06-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

The Solutions Rock Gym had their first competition the other day. I am glad that we have the Rice family, who devote so much of their lives to promoting not only the sport, but the culture of climbing in Athens. Tim and Jamie are very dedicated to creating a solid foundation for the next generation of climbers to build from and I have a feeling they are going to do very well with their plans in the future.

2008-05-30T05:53:00.000-07:00

Here are some images from recent trips to West Virginia. I can't remember the last weekend I spent in Athens...

2008-05-19T06:05:00.000-07:00

I spent a few hours backstage at the opening of "The Compleat Female Stage Beauty". I wasn't sure what to expect from the opportunity, but came away with a lot of new lessons, mainly how to stay out of people's way.

2008-05-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

Brother Micah and his posse were in Athens this week. I have no doubt I was giving them what they wanted by photographing and by simply being there. I wish I had a better understanding of who these people are and what exactly they were trying to accomplish, but every time I tried to ask I got nothing but a fairly consistent explanation of why I am probably going to hell.

"Considering all the people they say are going to Hell, it might be a lot more fun than Heaven"

2008-05-04T19:18:00.002-07:00

Mike Reisch

Molly Clarke

Dan Krauss

Katie Tolerton

Maria Farinacci

Sara Smith

JP Politz

These are a few of the people who I call my friends. If you see them, give them a hug. They'll understand.

2008-05-01T19:31:00.000-07:00

2008-04-25T17:06:00.001-07:00

Spent an afternoon at the dirt bike track with Dan, James and Mike. This is how I saw it.

2008-04-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

Adventures in Athens this time.

2008-04-12T18:20:00.000-07:00

I photographed the Sakura festival for the Post this weekend. One of the events was Kendo, which, I was told, is the study of the way of the sword.

One of the hundreds of reasons why I'm glad to know Sara. Thank you Sara.

2008-04-09T11:02:00.000-07:00

West Virginia never seemed so unforgiving; it was a weekend of puddles. After the huge success that was Rocktown, we decided to head to Hawk's Nest in Fayettesville, West Virginia for some sport climbing. While the climbing was top notch, the camping situation was not. The rain made its way into everything giving everyone a very wet morning. While this may not have been one of the best trips, it certainly was one of the most telling. I was glad to find that the guys I have been traveling with really are as relaxed as I had thought. We, as a group, have the unique abilities to make almost any situation work, but more importantly laugh and learn when when things don't go as planed. While there were things we could have done differently, not one of us regrets this weekend.

2008-04-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

Spring break was in Georgia this year at a place called "Rocktown". Spending 8 days in the woods is great, but spending 8 days in the woods with no one else around was quite an experience. Rocktown is located an hour's drive from La Fayette, Georgia, in the Crockford-Pigeon wildlife area. We hardly saw any people and climbed some of the most unique rock any of us had ever seen. I never though living independent of modern society could be this easy.

2008-03-10T19:25:00.000-07:00

I went out to Ray's today to finish a project I have been working on. I am staring to figure out what happens when you truly get to know people and the places they feel comfortable in. Today I was able to take a good look around and not just focus on Ray. There is a lot to be done at that church.

2008-03-05T07:02:00.000-08:00

Nice light is nice light, and while it may not have been the best light ever, it was still better than what we have been seeing. It was one of those days when I just wanted to shoot, I didn't care what. Dan and I decided to head out to the skate park and see what we could make of the whole situation. To simply stand, attached to no circumstance or previous engagement as everything turned to gold and the very slightest breeze came and went as it pleased reminded me why I am glad to have some of the most basic things. It all just made sense for a few brief moments.

Dinner was at Sarah's that night. Pizzas on "Dad's Crust". We again took advantage of the situation at hand to jam on the pourch. Thanks Sarah.

2008-03-03T06:56:00.000-08:00

There was a cycling event this weekend in conjunction with the Arnold Fitness Classic in Columbus. It had a better turnout than I had expected. Half way through the event the Governator showed up to give the cyclists some words of encouragement. He didn't seem to know much about the sport, so he just kept telling the cyclists about their 'beautiful figures"...

After that I decided to go to the Classic. Tucked away in a corner, far from the power shakes, carb bars, scandalously clad women and neck-less men I found one of the most intense 15 year olds I have ever met. He seemed to be a smaller, frailer version of the bodybuilding consensus in attendance. "Brandon Morris from Toledo," he said when I asked his name and if I could photograph him before his 'bout'. That was really all he said. Nice kid though.

Obama Rally at OU

2008-02-29T20:20:00.000-08:00

I found myself at the Obama rally on Thursday where Michelle was speaking on her husband's behalf. It was pretty cool to be part of the "media". As interesting as it was, many people have told me it gets old after a while. I can see that being true.

Hello

2008-02-29T19:53:00.000-08:00

Hello

I figured I'd start a blog to put some of my work out there. I always appreciate feedback...