Tuesday, July 21, 2009

I'm back! Woo Hoo


Sky Harbor Phoenix. View from my window as we were being pushed out.


The brown landscape I have become so familiar with. The black spot just below the wing is Ship Rock, New Mexico.


The Platte River as it meanders through Nebraska.


My father.


My mother.


Sitting and relaxing on a cool morning.


My father wearing vintage wireless glasses we found in the basement.


While on a short photo trip we spotted the ladders curling around huge gas tanks.


I always wanted to photograph this kind of hay bail.


We found this farm toward the end of the afternoon and decided to stay for the magic light.


Looking Southeast.


Looking Southwest


A different view.


Last light. There were clouds on the Western horizon which turned the light flat at the very end of the evening. This is about as radiant as it got.


My cousin Tom with his family. His daughter (right) who is a wonderful soul and is mentally challenged. It was a pleasure getting to know her what a sweet young lady.


Tom and his wife Barb.


Last week I took a trip to Nebraska to help my aging parents with some projects around the house. My parents who are 88 and 87 are in good health but the they don't have the strength and stamina to do the heavy work as much as they used to. Specifically cleaning out Three generations of stuff that has accumulated in the house. The clean up will take a few trips. The house is about 100 years old and was my father's parents' home. As a child, my father was raised in this house and my mother lived down the street. As adults they eventually moved to New York, where my sisters and I were born and raised.

My job was to help as much as I could. Everything had to go through my father before it when into the trash. It slowed the pace to a crawl but it's his life and our historical record. I respect my father greatly so how ever he wanted to do it was fine with me.

While I was there, my cousin Tom, his wife Barb, daughter Anna and I went on an afternoon drive into farm country to take photographs. Being from the desert, Nebraska is a contrast in color. From brown dirt and cactus to lush green plains in Two hours. The soft rolling hills and the giant trees run through the fields like veins. It is beautiful and at the same time foreign to me. With fresh eyes, it was like looking at a post card for the first time. The July humidity and abundant supply of bugs, spiders and everything flying was the only trade off I had to accept. Above is a selection of photographs from the trip.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Time off

I will not be posting to my blog until July 17. I'm taking some vacation time to be with my family.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Picturing Maricopa

Good news I have been selected to be one of 15 professional photographers in the Valley to work on a pretty cool project. This is the info:

The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust is presenting a community photography project called Picturing Maricopa. We hope you will consider participating. Few nonprofit organizations have budgets that allow them to hire professional photographers. Yet, we know that quality photography is essential to “tell their stories” to clients, partners and potential donors. Piper Trust has designed Picturing Maricopa to hire Valley professional photographers to photograph Maricopa County nonprofit organizations.

We hope the project will showcase some of the most talented photographers in the Phoenix area. Piper Trust will hire a group of 15 local photographers, based on the recommendations of an advisory selection committee, and assign each to take photographs of one of 15 human service agencies sometime over the summer. The goal is to capture the essence of each organization’s mission through images.

The project will culminate in a public exhibit where a selection of prints, chosen by the selection advisory committee in conjunction with the photographer, will be professionally mounted. After the exhibit, the prints will be given to the photographed organizations for display in their facilities.

How cool is this! Thanks to the Piper Trust this is a great opportunity to give to organizations that are serving humanity. I couldn't be more excited about this.