I’ve been spending the last few days shooting an independent project on the border of Mexico, tying in to our masters program new group theme of “borders”.
I’ve joined the minutemen of Texas to document part of their October round up. It’s an interesting mix of people with a variety of motivations. The main event is night watches along the border, watching for travelers (aka illegal aliens) and reporting any findings to border patrol. It usually is a group of people sitting in the dark with walkie talkies, night vision, and beef jerkey until midnight.
The picture here is from my night vision from my current post.
I’ve been shooting this project entirely with a medium format range finder, the mamiya 6. It’s been an inspiring switch back to film, having to slow down, make each image count, and putting much more though into the whole image making experience.
I’ve also been doing some audio capture for the first time so I’ll hopefully be making a multimedia presentation soon.
It’s nice I can blog from my iPhone, maybe that means I’ll finally make more regular entries.
Well I’ve got another 3 hours on my post here so back to “protecting the border” I go.
local jewelry designer, anne kiel, has also been keeping me well employed with new product and portrait photography for her latest line of silver jewelry. i was also recently recruited to design a fresh and clean new website for her.. check it at: www.annekiel.com
Alrighty, looks like I need some discipline on habitual updates. Today’s update is what I’m currently preparing for printing. It’s an image I shot in 2005 on an urban neighborhood street in Christchurch, New Zealand during a five month journey across Southeast Asia and Australasia. It was shot with a classic 1950′s Leica M3 camera.
I’m having a standout mounted print made for Austin Art Garage’s Political Action Art Auction. You can read more about the cause, the event, and how to win this print here.
with only 36 hours in paris, there wasn’t much time to myself. with the little time i did have, i found some interesting images around the eiffel of the mostly african immigrants hawking their souvenirs
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the assignment for central college is to document their 6 european abroad sites, mainly for promotional usage. much of my shooting involves working with students at their universities, dorms, city areas, etc. here is a sampling from the first day in paris
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with inspiration from some of the great photojournalists we’ve been studying in the masters program, i’ve invested in some nice fixed lenses by canon. as opposed to zoom lenses, i have less flexibility in changing the composition in one location; but i gain a consistent view, an expected result, and tack-sharp images with a beautiful bokeh.
here is a recent shot on the college abroad assignment with my standard 50mm on f/1.2
and here’s one with my fixed wide angle 24mm on f/1.4
hard to believe it’s been over 3 months since an update.. apologies to any brett’s blog aficionados. it’s been a busy time of my life for a few reasons:
- I quit my job at the Austin Business Journal, as my freelance work continues to dominate more and more of my time
- I bought a house in Austin! and moved. it’s a tall modern box of a house and i’m enjoying being a homeowner so far, although it seems like another full-time job at times.
- I’m continuing my work and studies for my masters in photojournalism through the london college of communication
- i recently landed a contract for central college to photograph 6 of their european abroads over 3 weeks (paris, wales, vienna, granada, netherlands, and london)
i’m currently in granada and will share some images shortly.
so don’t fear, the updates will continue once again. stay tuned for some of my recent work and travels.
a while ago i found an extremely well presented and powerful illustration of consumption in america, the story of stuff.
i was reminded of it while going through some of the photographic work of chris jordan, who put’s our consumption into a visual scale. one of his huge prints shows almost half a million cell phones, equal to the number of cell phones retired in the US every day. others illustrate breast augmentations, plastic bottles, cigarettes, incarcerations and more.
if you haven’t already, check out chris’ running the numbers and watch the story of stuff here.
With the opportunity to shoot some spot news, I tried to find some interesting relationships during a restaurant fire. Apparently, the Short Stop hamburger joints are prone to grease fires. The manager later told me that one started 8 months ago but they were able to put it out quickly. This time the flames and smoke forced everyone out and eventually caused the hood vent to drop through the building. I arrived before the firefighters to find the manager’s daughter, who was working at the time, and a co-worker taking pictures with a cell phone and holding a piece of chocolate cake they rescued from the fire.
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The 2nd relationship I focused on was a group of homeless people near my neighborhood. It was a mixed reaction when I approached them with my intent. Fortunately, I started speaking with the woman first, who was originally from Honduras. (She left her country with an American man who quickly kicked her out upon arriving to America 20 years ago) Since I had spent some time in Honduras, she was enthusiastic to hear about my travels in her country. One man wanted cash, the other didn’t “give a f*&$” if I photographed them. I offered food, but no money. The greatest concern from them seemed to be that they didn’t want it published in a newspaper, I was told that hypothetically some homeless people are on the run from the law.
I was grateful that they let me shoot, and they quickly continued on with their conversations, trips to the gas station for beer and cigarettes, and toilet stops behind the bushes. They all were talkative and friendly toward me, telling me some of their history and daily struggles. The shoot ended when another homeless man ran up and told us a hamburger joint was on fire. It was 20 yards away and that fire turned into my 3rd relationship exercise.
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