Courtney Oliver has worn many hats at Playhouse on the Square after ten years. Currently, the Director of Special Events, Oliver has also been an actress and choreographer with the company.
(left) Eve Pai, 4, listens to members of the IRIS orchestra's percussion section talk about the various instruments and why they play them during a dress rehearsal at the GPAC. For the first time, IRIS turned its regular Saturday dress rehearsal into The Young Person’s Guide to the IRIS Orchestra by focusing on two pieces from the evening program that provide a colorful and exciting introduction to the individual instrumental sounds and collective power of a symphony orchestra in order to get younger children interested in playing musical instruments.
Patrick Dockery celebrates after being declared the winner of the DeSoto County Spelling Bee for the third year row with his winning word, madrigal.
(right to left) Seth Goff and his father, Kent Goff inspect some anitque rifles at the 45th annual Civil War and Antique Military Show will be at the Southaven Arena.
Jon Simpson has run every day behind his house next to the University of Memphis for 39 years. He was diagnosed with polio as a child and credits the daily running to his health and the ability to still use his legs. This August will mark 40 consecutive years of running for Simpson.
Well, it certainly has been some time since I posted on my blog. As the year came to a close, I came off of a slew of weddings, holidays, vacation and life in general that kept my busy. So, now it's nearly February 2011 and I'm finally looking back at my collective work from 2010. I almost decided against posting these photos, because lately I’ve felt that I hit a wall with my photography. I've caught myself switching to autopilot several times in the past couple months as I march off to work. It really bothers me when it happens. So one thing I took away from my experiences this past year was to relax more with photography and return to some of the more simplistic pleasures of making images.
Also, I've been listening to A LOT of Cat Stevens music this past year. If you know anything about Cat Steven's music, then you know he can leave you staring into space pondering life for hours on end.
I was largely insipred to post these images after reading a blog post by my friend, Aaron Hardin and his drive to continually explore with his camera. Aaron's work has been amazing this year, but it was his words that really hit home for me:
"Seeing each image brings back sights, smells, emotions and ever lingering doubts. 'Am I any good at this?' 'Am I getting any better?' 'What defines ‘BETTER’?'”
I don't know if every I saw as put this together brought back sights and smells, but it definitely conjures emotions and frustrations of failed projects, repeated meaningless assignments of fluff and the question of "When did I shoot this?" as work starts to blur together.
Now, before I become a complete Debbie Downer, there were some positive experiences and not every image I made was from a mentally distant place. I wouldn't have called this past year a stellar year for me in my photojournalistic pursuits, but it was a great year with my wedding photography. Also, I helped start a wedding photography business with some friends, Hands Up Visuals. Go check us out. Not only do we rock, but also we really want to tell the story of your wedding day. (A little shameless promoting for you, Brad.)
Now, these photos are not what I consider necessarily a "Best of 2010" slideshow, but rather a retrospective journey I took with my camera in 2010. It was one of those years were I could feel I was growing, except the results were more internal than external. Kind of like a flame getting beaten around by a strong wind, it's not as bright or as hot as it could be; however, it did not go out.
So, I learned to relax a little with my camera and made one of my favorite images of the past year, the lead photo in the slideshow.
“Kyle, before you go, I gotta have a beer with you. I haven’t had a beer with you yet.”
This is what my 91-year-old, great-uncle Dave said to me as I was walking out of his house during an impromptu July trip to New England. Needless to say, when a 91-year-old asks you to have a beer with him, you turn around and go back inside.
I will say 2011 has been pretty swell so far and I can't wait to see what becomes of it.
Sometimes things I find interesting slip through the cracks of a deadline. I saw the shadows on the back wall and tried to make something out of it for the CA, but didn't feel it was accomplishing what I wanted. I came back across it today and did a long crop and threw it in B&W. Whether it works or not, I find it to be interesting and a nice break from things I'm usually shooting these days.
Members of the Collage Dance Collective perform "Abandon-Salvation-Grace: An Evening of American Dance" at the Buckman Performaning Arts Center. This performance marks Collage Dance Collective's inaugural show to present their artistic voice to the city since the group moved from New York to Memphis in 2007. Drawing from classical dance to blend with more contemporary style, Collage hopes to increase diversity on the stage. Collage mirrors this with "Abadon-Salvation-Grace" by featuring a diverstiy of dancing styles in the performance that are connected through a classical foundation.
You know your day is might be in trouble when an editor emails you an assignment and it begins with "I’m not that gung ho...." But that was my Thursday morning. It was Read for the Record day where all across the world, children were reading "The Snowy Day" on the same day to break last year's record of 2 million children reading "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." The gimmick I was sent to shoot was Mayor A.C. Wharton going to Sea Isle Elementary to read to the student. For me that meant some over-exaggerated photo opt by a politician that I had to somehow make look interesting. Usually, when I get these kind of "photo opt" assignments with politicians or other things like ribbon cuttings, the rule is don't shoot the actual ribbon cutting, but what's going on around it. The story was more about the kids reading than the mayor anyways, so I went to my every so ready backup plan of finding a cute kid with a book. Unfortunately, only three preschoolers in this entire cafeteria had books. So, I make a couple tight images of their noses in the books and when I went to get their names, every one starts signing all around me. Turns out these were the hearing impaired students, so I thought "ok, that will be some nice additional information in the caption." The presentation started, Wharton did not read to students because he was behind in his schedule and the situation was visually flat. As everyone was filing out, an administrator made an announcement for all their readers to wait to get their assigned rooms. I thought about the hearing impaired kids and thought, "Hmm, they'll be reading the story too, and it will be more interesting than some tight shot of a kid with his nose in a book." So, my entire shoot was from the hearing impaired classes, and how they are reading just as much as the other students, but in a more visual style of storytelling. I walked away feeling gung ho.
