Friday, May 13, 2011

Islam in Northeast Florida: Women on Eid

These portraits are part of a personal project I started last year about Islam in Northeast Florida. After spending much of last summer in the Islamic(/secular) countries of Turkey and Bosnia, I was shocked to return to my hometown and learn that an angry evangelical pastor was threatening to burn the Koran right in our backyard. I thought back to the one Muslim girl I knew in high school, and to the rhetoric she had to endure as we discussed the War on Terror in our US History class shortly after 9/11. Although I'm unfamiliar with Islam, I am all-too-familiar with feelings of alienation and religious discrimination. I decided to shift my focus away from the controversy and anger in Gainesville. Instead I spend some time with Muslims in Jacksonville during their annual Eid festival (which is delightfully redundant), marking the end of Ramadan. The celebrations were full of color, joy, gossip, and family. Here are pictures of some of the girls and women I met. I'm not sure what's in store for this project after this post, but it was time to start sharing these images.


Thursday, May 12, 2011

Nature Photography - Beautiful Trees of Sedona, Arizona

I did some hiking in Arizona's Sedona desert earlier this year, and I couldn't get enough of the wildlife. Sedona is remarkably green for a desert, and so full of life. I was also really inspired by the quality of desert light. Anyway, here are some pictures of trees. Some were alive, some looked pretty dead, and some of them had bark peeling off of them in fascinating patterns that were either symptomatic of disease or simply part of their life cycle. I was hiking, not reporting.











Monday, May 9, 2011

Clay County Fair - Green Cove Springs, Florida

Here's a bit of eye candy from the Clay County Agricultural Fair out in Green Cove Springs last month. It was the first time in I-don't-know-how-long that I went to a fair for fun instead of work. I made pictures and talked to strangers anyway, but possibly not as many.