Sunday, January 30, 2011

bent, not broken


i've started a photo column that are images stemming from the wake of the recession.

Here's the picture and Carolyn's story.

Carolyn Goodman wipes a tear away with
one hand and cradles the phone in her other.

“The only thing I hate to ask you is...” Carolyn
trails off then adds, “We're really low with gas
money. We're on a half a tank, and we have to
get back to the shed.”

She pauses, then asks humbly, “Is there anyway
you can help us?”The hum of a hotel heater
grinds the silence. After a few moments, she sighs in relief.

“I appreciate it.” She fingers the telephone cord.
“So, you'll call me sometime? Tomorrow? OK.
You too. God bless,” she says and then hangs up.

Carolyn is sharing a Virginia Beach hotel room with
her husband and daughter. Financial problems have
dogged them for awhile, but they thought things were looking up.

Her husband had a job and they were saving what they could.
However, he recently lost his job and unpaid bills mounted up.

Now, they're selling their possessions to pay for the hotel,
which is the only kind of housing they can afford, while
her husband looks for work. “I'm hoping we can get out
items to an auction in Chesapeake, that's our last ditch
effort to get some money – but it's hard getting rid of stuff.”

“Right now everything is tight. We're not sure if we're
going to have enough money for next week,” says Carolyn.

“I'm a fighter, I'm not going to shed tears. We're going to beat this.”

Saturday, January 22, 2011

portrait


from a portrait session the other day.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

teacher


this wonderful teacher dresses up as characters to help better teach her students.
unfortunately i didn't know about this until a quick deadline and we weren't able
to be there when she actually teaches in costume so a portrait had to do.

here she laughs as we talk about what it's like for her to dress as a chicken.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

field hockey state champ coach


sportrait of a coach who led her team to the state championship.

Monday, January 10, 2011

new blog

I wanted to give a head's up on a new blog I've started which takes a look at images and the psychological approach to making it. It's to be a weekly feature - one week we'll deconstructed one of my images, and the other week we'll "spotlight" a photographer and an image of theirs.

check it out and don't hesitate to contact me if you want me to spotlight somebody and interview them about an image!

Friday, January 07, 2011

bball time


reaction from last night's odu win over george mason university