Red

I've been stuck on my couch, recuperating from a pretty gnarly burn to my leg, and I've looked through pretty much every picture I've made since 2009. Some got lost and are now finding new company with pictures from other place, other times. More to come.

The Return of Cynicism Can Suck It: Warrior Games

When you’re 21 and spent months in bed after being shot and now you can say something like: "When you think, 'Hey, I can't do that'... there's always a person next to you that's worse off than you. We all have realized now that the only thing that could stop us doing what we're doing is death." 

When you have two kids and a wife and have just been diagnosed with cancer, and you think, "I have the spirit of getting up and fighting," and you chose to train every day that chemotherapy allows.

These are the reasons that being a newspaper photographer is worth all of the bullshit and stress and boredom and struggle. You get to make portraits (yes, lit portraits with a portable backdrop) that show people (in this case, athletes competing in the Warrior Games, a competition for wounded, ill, and injured service members) with tremendous spirit in the best possible way, and then their stories are shared with hundreds of thousands of people. Your so-called struggle is thrown into sharp relief. What are you bitching about anyway, really?

I’d like to give a shout out to one of my team leaders from Eddie Adams, Stacy Pearsall who, on top of being a remarkable photographer, will also be competing in the Warrior Games. I always knew she was bad-ass, and this just takes her to a new level.

Get out there. Fight the good fight. The only thing stopping you is death.

Little League and, what is it all about?

By some accident I came upon Marcus Yam's website this morning, just as I was waking up thinking, "what defines me as a photographer?" He writes that his interests involve "everyday social issues that define the American experience; immigration, poverty, marginalization, provincialism, and faith." Damn. Just like that.
There must be more to a conception of myself than "newspaper photographer." All around me, I see successful photographers in tune with what moves them, what resonates with their experience of the world. For a long time I thought rural life and Americana were an intrinsic part of my way of seeing, but I'm feeling increasingly unfocused, longing for a thread of narrative, or an exploration of theme, that make it all make sense. Does it ever make sense? It's a daily challenge.