Serving Kingsbury

For some reason, nothing from this assignment ever saw the light of day. I don't know why, but here's my favorite one.



(right to left) Madison Salach. on a mission trip for First United Methodist Church from Tulsa, OK, Katie Foster of Fellowship Memphis and Brooke Greene of Makeover Memphis spray a new coat of paint on some chairs at Kingsbury High school for the teacher's lounge. Fellowship has had a 5 year partnership with Kingsbury with volunteering time, money and service to the school. Fellowship worked with Makeover Memphis and a youth group from First United Methodist Church from Tulsa, OK to give the teacher's lounge a much needed makeover.

Technicolor or Monochrome Mormons?

Yesterday, I was covering Elders Matthew Reed and Caden Scott of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for a story the Appeal is doing on how Memphians, outside of Mormon culture, view that faith. Reed and Scott are serving their two year missionary time in Memphis walking around door-to-door sharing their faith with a focus on Hispanic neighborhoods. I learned about this when I first tried calling Reed and discovered his voicemail was in spanish. My first thought was, "Okay...I hope this is the right guy because I didn't hear a name in there and I hope he understands and speaks English too; otherwise, I have no idea how I am going to make contact with him." We had a good chuckle about that when I met up with them.

The fever of heat Memphis has suffered the last week or so finally broke with some much deserved rain. I was a little concerned that no one would be around when the elders would be doing their door-to-door sharing, but the rain was light, and there were quite a few people out enjoying the cooled off air that we came across this group of hispanic men.

I'm a big fan of layers in my images, letting my eye bounce around the frame, and usually I don't like shooting from behind someone in my work. I find eye contact between people in the frame give a greater sense of story than not, but I find the body posture of the man in the foreground to be interesting enough to dust off that photo class on faceless people from my memory. Also, I like how the guy on the far right is framed in the arms.

When I get a photo from an assignment that I am satisfied with and concerned putting up on this blog, I do like to make a color and b&w version of the photo. I'm a really big fan of old-school, b&w white photojournalism and with everything I do for work being shot in color, I enjoy the variety and the simplicity of storytelling b&w can offer. All that to say, this image has stumped me as to whether it should go on here in color or b&w, so I'm putting up both. Ultimately, I think color would win because of the repetition of blues in the frame and the faceless man's posture stands out a little bit better. Still, I love how this composition looks in b&w and I like how the wrinkles and raindrops on the faceless man's shirt stand out and again, just the simplicity of it.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

Agro Tech

Farmers from across the country tour the fields of the Agricenter farm and listen from wagons to various presentations about experimental crops from companies the Agricenter provides space for research projects. Mike Saxton, a representative from Syngenta, explains to a group of the visiting famers about their genetically modified corn that has a trait to reduce insects ruining crops during the annual Ag Tech Field Day.

Swim Meet

Jack Zanone dives into his lane during a freestyle swimming heat at the 2011 Memphis Summer Swim League Championship in which 23 swim teams from across the city and county met at St. George's Independent School for the end of summer swimming season. About 590 children competed with ages ranging from 4-18 years old. The championship was hosted by the Memphis Thunder Aquatic Club.

Ooh, the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'

I don't know where I'll be tomorrow.
Or where I was yesterday.

So, I started with this first photo, thinking "oh, I should blog this." Then, I called it quits 13 photos later. For some reason of late, I sometimes have a hard time remembering what assignments I shoot in the past, even as recent as the day before. I'm going to chalk it up to some kind of tunnel vision as I churn out photos for assignments then mentally move on to the next and so on. As I was putting these together, I couldn't come up with a real cohesive theme to tie these together. I was originally going to call this post "slices of memphis summer," then I cleverly thought of one of the three Journey songs I have on my iPod. I guess what I like about this arrangement is that it's simply life happening and not completely the tradition summer fanfare of kids running around swimming pools or bbq competitions or whatever.



Haley Sanders of St. Louis gets her horse, Pas De Deux, energized with lungeing exercises before competing in the pre-adult hunters competition, a jumping competition that looks at the aesthetics of the horse while jumping, at the annual Germantown Charity Horse at Franklin-Morgan Woods-Cloyes Park. This is Sanders first time to the horse show.



Some detained youth exercise to a dancing video game during recreation time at Shelby County Juvenile Court. Even one day in lockup can be detrimental to teens, national studies show. So, finding alternatives to detention has become a growing national trend. Shelby County Juvenile Court has made enough strides that it will likely win a coveted designation Friday as a Casey Foundation site, meaning free resources from the Baltimore-based private organization to further help youth. Memphis would become one of the largest urban juvenile courts in the country to win this designation and would become a model for the rest of Tennessee.



Aaron Jaffe, a diabetic, streches before hitting the Wolf River trail to train for an upcoming triathalon.



Maysa Sem, a Memphis College of Art sophomore, works on a billboard painting that will hang along the cliffs of the south bluffs in demonstration against off shore drilling as part of the second annual Hands Across the Sand demonstration that will take place at Tom Lee Park. Hundreds of the Memphis chapter of Hands Across the Sand will link hands to join a global symbol of drawing a line in the sand in protest of off shore drilling.



Mary Eason tries on a pair of magnifying glasses to help with reading during an event hosted by Mid-South Access Center for Technology at Orange Mound Community Center at the Orange Mound Community Center, which aims at helping people with disabilities to learn about high tech and low tech solutions to help their needs.



(left) 4th grader Rishi Dubey, 10, battles robots with Spencer Scardino, 11 at one of Harding Academy's week long Leap Camps where the students learned programming concepts with Lego Mindstorm robots. Harding's Leap Camps are open to the public all summer focus on areas including sports, science, reading and music for grades senior kindergarden through 12th.



(center) Nokie Taylor, (right) Joe Hollingsworth and other musicians from around the city gathered to jam with friends and family of Rudy Williams, the Mayor of Beale Street, during musical tribute service in honor of Williams at the NJ Ford Funeral Home.



(left to right) Shai White-Gilbertson and Anna Santos play with Irish, a pit bull mix rescued by The Street Dog Foundation, at Hollywood Feed at 2015 Union avenue as part of one of their bi-monthly adoption days. Street Dog Foundation is an organization that helps dogs, usually found in the street, get adopted. They function 100 percent through volunteers and about 70 dogs currently ready to be adopted.



Gladys and Ram, dogs rescued by The Street Dog Foundation, sit at Hollywood Feed at 2015 Union avenue as part of one of the organization's bi-monthly adoption days.



9right) Stilian Kirov conducts the Memphis Symphony Orchestra during the annual AutoZone Sunset Symphony at Tom Lee Park.



(right) Joe Kent relaxes with his family at Tom Lee Park to enjoy the annual AutoZone Sunset Symphony.



Simone Patton tosses pebbles into the Mississippi River while playing along the banks as the Memphis Symphony Orchestra provides a musical background during the annual AutoZone Sunset Symphony at Tom Lee Park.



(right) Delana Turner kisses on her 8 month old daughter, Delajah Turner. For the past year, Delana has been a part of the Agape FIT, families in transition, program that helps early 150 homeless, pregnant women and their children in transitional housing by providing mentorship, life skills and counseling services.

Eat your heart out Norman Rockwell

July 1, 2011 - (left) Ret. Marine Jim Brown helps (right) Selby Hancy, 6, with preparing a care packages for marines serving in Afghanistan. The summer campers at St. Agnes Academy-St. Dominic School and members of the Marine Corps League will plan to fill 50 boxes that will include toothbrushes, sunglasses, protein bars, cookies, coffee and other snacks, along with notes, prayers and letters of support. This is the second year the groups have worked together to fill boxes for Marines in Afghanistan as one of the weekly service projects campers participate in throughout the summer at St. Agnes-St. Dominic.

Head Shots

Did some last minute head shots for my friend Natalie in my office this evening. The white background is courtesy of the window in my office that has a paper window shade, which I discovered today is awesome for portrait work.