Three Dogs I've Met Recently

I've been spending a lot of time with a fellow dog-lover. We notice these guys.

(Bra, Italy)

(Goreme, Turkey)

(Bra, Italy)

Abandoned School (Ruse, Bulgaria)

This school in a Roma neighborhood in Ruse, Bulgaria was closed when there weren't enough students to fill it. Within months it had been raided and destroyed. People stole everything that had any resale value-- even ripping cables from the walls. Now the building lies in ruins, and sometimes neighborhood boys go there to cause trouble. The students have been moved to another school nearby.



This is a slideshow. Click the arrows at the bottom left to navigate.

Special thanks to Georgi Kehayov for taking me here, for introducing me to all of the photographers in Ruse, and for being a neat person to hang out with in general.

A single mother backpacking with a 2-year-old

I met Georgina Brooks last month, volunteering on an organic farm in Palamartsa, a village near Popovo in Bulgaria. She's a 23-year-old single mother from Fremantle, Australia, currently backpacking Europe with her 2-year-old daughter, Nina Golden.

Georgina's parents are British and Australian, and they met while backpacking. She met her ex-husband (Nina's father), who's British, while backpacking, too. Now she's convinced he was using her to get Australian citizenship. He's still in Ozzie, shacking up with one of her former best friends. She didn't really want to hang around all that, so here she is. She said she's convinced it's all part of a fairy tale with a happy ending, she just hasn't gotten to the good part yet.

Bless her heart.

Fish in a Barrel

"Sorry, I just got this Macro lens so now when I see fish in a barrel I just have to shoot them."

I blame Katie Barnes for my recent macro kick. It would have been near-impossible to shoot along side her for four months and not want to capture some of those tiny little details.

A fisherman's bait on the Galata Bridge. Istanbul, Turkey.


Neat little fly in Ana's grandparents' garden in Fagaras, Romania.


Odd spider inside a flower in Ana's grandparents' garden. Fagaras, Romania.


Buttons in an abandoned house. Palamartsa, a village near Popovo, Bulgaria.


Wild strawberries: the best strawberries in the world. Palamartsa, Bulgaria.


Make a wish! Dandelion in the same field as the wild strawberries. Palamartsa, Bulgaria.

Tales of Tourism: Istanbul

Here's my piece from the Foundry Photojournalism Workshop. I did a story that is completely different from anything I'd ever shot before. My instructor, Guy Calaf, has a very different vision from my own, but we care about many of the same things. He encouraged me to make pictures that are more suggestive than literal. It definitely pushed me outside of my comfort zone, and I lost a few arguments over the final selection, but was a really interesting exercise and a heck of a lot of fun. I learned a lot from Guy, and I think we developed a really brilliant working relationship. I hope to have the opportunity to collaborate with him again in the future.

I feel as though I grew ages over the week of the workshop. I was shooting nearly every waking moment, and I took pages and pages of notes during classes, presentations, and panel discussions. I met dozens of creative people who care about the world. On the last night of the workshop, I was interviewed after accepting a really cool award. They asked me the most important thing I learned during the workshop. I thought about it for a while, and then said (with the articulateness of a Foundry student who hadn't slept in a week) it was that, as a photographer, my voice matters.

Up until now, I'd been trying to make myself small in stories, even trying to make myself disappear and letting my subjects speak for themselves. But I learned that it's important to express myself using photography, and to spend my time on work that exploits my knowledge, interest and talents. It's important to step back from the conversation, listen, and think about what I am adding to it.

I don't know if that's exactly what this piece does, or even if it's step in that direction. But, for me, it represents an important step towards thinking about my voice, and thinking about the bigger conversation. Thanks for watching.

Portrait of a New Hampshire Shoemaker

This was a story I shot over a couple of months, and finished up during my last few days at the Concord Monitor. It ran in the Sunday paper about two weeks ago. If you get a chance, I strongly recommend you the Mathews' studio in Deerfield, Nh. Besides having gorgeous property and a workshop straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, Rob and Barbara are lovely people who I am happy to call my friends. Enjoy.

How to Survive a Romanian Wedding (Part 6)

One of several wedding traditions: a chicken smoking a cigarette. I don't know if this is Romanian or Transylvanian or specific to Fagaras, but Ana (who has a bird phobia) was repulsed by it.

Wedding dance in the spot(ted) light.

Cuties.

Ana's parents, being happy and adorable.

Photographing the token cute kids.

Watching the traditional folk dance performance.


This was taken around 5 a.m. Ana's parents and brother look appropriately joyful and exhausted.