A photo I shot last summer is finally going to press as the cover of a poetry book titled When My Brother Was an Aztec. I shot this photo for our friend Natalie Diaz. This is her first published collection of poems, and I am very excited for her. The poems are very personal, many of them centering around her family. The man in the photo is actually her brother. He was awesome! Natalie and I started with some loose ideas of photographing her brother in a headdress and incorporating other symbolic objects. The real challenge for me was to use light, location, and gesture in a way that captures the surreal nature of some of her poems.  I was lucky enough to get a preview of the book for our photo shoot, and some of the themes of the book that I could experiment with visually were family, alcohol, loneliness, Christianity and identity. It was important to Natalie that we try and hint at her mixed Native-American/Spanish identity. Natalie told me, “My dad is Spanish and my mom is Native, so I’m pretty much the epitome of conquest/colonization.” We shot this in the Mojave desert. It’s my understanding that the Mojave tribe does not use head dresses like this one, but for the photo we took some artistic license. I believe this headdress is Aztec, which fits the title of the book. Below are some other outtakes from the shoot. I think they chose the right photo for the cover. It includes family photos, the figure of Christ and the headdress. It was one of the last locations that we photographed. You should pick up the book and see if I did the poems justice!

I have been very absent from the blog this summer! I have quite a few things that would be fun to post here. I’m going to start with the cover I shot for Old Dominion University’s Magazine called Monarch. It’s an appropriate time to post this photo with the hurricane that just went through Norfolk and flooded many parts of the east coast. The cover story is largely about how rising water levels will impact the region.

The school used to have two separate magazines, but recently combined them into one. This issue is actually the inaugural issue. The creative director gave me these rain boots and total creative freedom. We took the photo on a stormy day, and slowed down the shutter speed to capture the movement of the water. My assistant and the model were really good sports about the rain and slipperiness of the surfaces.

Here is another photo I took while waiting for the TV crew to set up its shots on the Ed Show commercial. We were at Colonna’s Shipyard in Norfolk on a real work day. The place was so loud! Metal banging around and people welding. I approached this gentleman, and through some basic hand gestures he agreed to pose for a portrait. We tried talking but it was so loud. I wish I had gotten his name. It was so interesting to be around people working with their hands in the outdoors. So much of my photography revolves around people in offices.

Back in August I photographed Amanda Gift for Financial Planning Magazine. She is a Managing Principal and Vice President at a local firm called Signature. This is a magazine that goes to Financial Advisers via subscription, so it is only now that I learned they used my photo on the September 2010 cover. Below is an image of the cover and the inside spread. I photographed her in exactly the same spot with natural light only. I simply moved her around, adjusted the shades and changed the exposure. Click to see larger.

This is one of my favorite photos from the Haiti trip about a month ago. This guy watched me take landscapes of the Artibonite River Valley for about 20 minutes until finally I asked him if he would pose for a photo. There was almost no light left, but I had my tripod and was able to make a long exposure that captured him on this rocky hillside where the goats feed. If you look closely, you can see he is wearing a t-shirt from a Sun Sentinel party. It’s just amazing the leftovers that end up on a goat-herder in the Haitian mountains. This photo is also featured today in a Wonderful Machine blog post.

Given the reports I read, I was expecting the apocalypse. But from a few thousand feet above the ground, Port-au-Prince looks a bit like the outskirts of Lima and others cities in the developing world. It’s greyish brown. The color of unfinished cinder blocks sprinkled with dirt. Nine months after the earthquake Haiti does not feel like hell…not for some.  It’s probably not something you read about often, but in the hills above Port-au-Prince there is money. Lots of it. The money is behind 10 foot walls and iron gates guarded by men with shotguns. My first night in Port-au-Prince, I dined on Spinach Ravioli with a pomodoro sauce. You read that right. This place was too fancy for tomato sauce. The menu stated “pomodoro” in Italian. It was better than the pasta I ate the night before in Norfolk. It cost $16. I’m told that the average DAILY wage in Haiti is $2-$5.

Scene from the Sean Penn Tent City in Port-au-Prince.

I have seen the divide between rich and poor before, but for some reason I was surprised to find it here, too. I just assumed that in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, everyone would be poor. A pretty stupid assumption now that I reflect on it.

I could go on with anecdotes, but there is real reporting out there that is much more helpful. I was there to take pictures for Physicians for Peace and my mission was to show the positive effect of their work with amputees. Their core mission is to provide training to local health providers so that when they leave, skills are left behind. It’s a sustainable approach. However the need is so great in Haiti, that the Physical Therapists are doing more hands-on work than training at the moment. Below is one of my favorite photos. This woman is a double-amputee and her spirit seemed unbreakable.

A patient celebrating after a strength training exercise.

While the above photo might be inspiring on the micro level, I found a quote from a recent Mother Jones story that sums up the situation in Haiti at the macro level.

People forget that the day before the earthquake there were more NGOs operating in Haiti than any other country on the planet and it was still an unmitigated shithole and a horror. The idea that this will turn around in your lifetime is a fantasy—and a crime of gargantuan proportions.

This dark picture does not mean people should stop giving or helping. I think it means we should focus on giving to groups that are providing training or are performing a sustainable development function in Haiti. One last anecdote. On my flight, I met an electrician going to build houses with a mission group. The group spent thousands of dollars to fly labor to Haiti. One thing Haiti has plenty of is unemployed labor. Why not use that money to send down two or three very skilled organizers and teachers, and pay $5/day to a Haitian to work and get on the job training. Perhaps I am naive. Here is a Nov. 1, 2010 story about the current ineffectiveness of charity groups.

A view of the Artibonite River Valley, where the cholera epidemic is thought to have begun.

I photograph one or two assignments per quarter for a local glossy magazine called Distinction. Below is the photo that ran and two other images I liked. The image that ran in print was shot in front of the Jewish Mother restaurant, a local institution that was torn down a few weeks later. Craig Beecroft at Beecroft and Bull provided the clothing and the sweet Vespa. I love Vespas.

I was a featured contributor in the Fall/Winter 2009 issue of Distinction Magazine. It’s a relatively new, high-end magazine in Hampton Roads. It’s a beautifully bound, glossy that will be inserted in newspapers quarterly. It seems to be very targeted, which I think is the only way for a magazine to be successful. I photographed two well-known, local chefs during a convivial interview. You can see more at distinctionhr.com

I discovered a new trick today. You’ve probably seen those big light boxes on which doctors view x-rays. Well this office, had a huge panel of 6 of these light boxes on the wall. I turned them on to discover they make a nice side light and they are color balanced with the overhead fluorescent lights. No need for strobes or gels! After I got this tight portrait of Dr. Britt (right), we did one more photo outside the entrance to Eastern Virginia Medical School. It was a pretty dreary day, but the cloud cover was light enough to create a nice soft light. The assignment was for Health Leaders magazine through Getty Images.

The day after the Nov 2 election German magazine Der Spiegel hired me to photograph a nice Virginia man who normally votes Republican but voted Democrat in this election. He works for a home renovation company that has this great wood paneled meeting room with a tiny American flag tucked into a ceiling tile. Unfortunately, I don’t think the magazine ever published the story. Germans probably would have gotten a kick out of this little sign of American patriotism.