unobserved depression

I recently spent the day at Columbia Healthcare Center making portraits of residents and asking them one question: "How do you feel about living here?" The portraits were to illustrate a story in illumination magazine about depression going unobserved and untreated in elderly care facilities. Growing up my mom worked as a CNA at our local nursing home. This meant two things. One, we lived on a very tight budget. And two, I spent a lot of time roaming the halls of the nursing home, getting to know the residents and searching for the rooms with the best candy jars. It never occurred to my young naive mind that any of the folks that I encountered on a day to day basis were unhappy. That reality didn't become evident to me until my grandma was moved from the farm house, where she lived for more than half a century, to the nursing home, where she died in less than two years. I know it was not the move that eventually took her life, but I could feel it in the blank stares of her final days that she missed being in her own home.

My grandmother's story is not an unfamiliar one. Many elderly people are faced with the challenge of being taken from their homes because they are unable to care for themselves. I saw that same blank look that my grandma had in several of the folks that I photographed at Columbia Healthcare Center. Hopefully this aging in place method will catch on, especially by the time I'm unable to take care of myself and Cohen is deciding where to take my senile ass.

by the skin of my teeth

The stick that Bob the dog is hanging from in this photograph is how I have felt of late about my personal photographic vision. It's real, and it's in my grasp, but i'm clinging to it by the skin of my teeth, all while outside forces are trying rip my teeth out.

Personal vision is just that, personal. Something that comes from within. Creating a personal photographic vision means throwing your soul, guts, motivations, fears and experiences into a blender and funneling that very pure, yet very volatile concoction through the viewfinder of a camera. What is then rendered to film is personal vision.

I think the key to finding that vision is to be entirely true to yourself. I'm sure that's what all of the great photographers throughout history have done. The Avedons, Winogrands and Parr's of the world were unflinchingly true to their own way of fracturing reality into the rectangle of a viewfinder. I can just imagine Winogrand feeling his vision all the way through to the nerve endings of his index finger as he clicked the shutter of his Leica M4. You can see it pulsing through every snapshot of Parr's genius depiction of the everyday. And It courses through the vains of every portrait Avedon made in front of his seamless white backdrop.

It has been a struggle ever since I picked up a camera nine years ago to purify my photographic vision. My goal has been to know right after clicking the shutter, not hours later in the editing room, that I made a Nicholas Benner photograph. I think to many contemporary photographers create their personal vision while sitting in front of a monitor applying photoshop filters, and not standing behind a camera. I'm guilty of this, too. Especially when I am shooting for clients and not working on personal work. Sometimes we need to remember the real tools of the trade. Our eyes and our guts and our instincts and forget about megapixels and frames per second and action scripts.

So as I dangle in the air, trying to inch my way up the stick of personal vision, I realize that I need to attack every image that I make with a fierce honesty and realize that clear vision comes from inside, not out.

Do you (self) realize?

My favorite kind of wedding is one that I am not hired to photograph! It was nice to spend time with friends I don't see often enough and step away from the camera a little bit. I was in Southern California though, so I couldn't completely put my camera down, right? This shot was taken at a popular surf spot called Swami's, in Encinitas, CA. Swami is a Hindu term meaning religious teacher and the beach was named after Swami Paramahansa Yogananda, because the grounds and hermitage of the Self-Realization Fellowship ashram, overlook this reef point. The group states its mission is to foster a spirit of greater understanding and goodwill among the diverse people and nations of the global family and help those of all cultures and creeds to realize and express more fully in their lives the beauty, nobility, and divinity of the human spirit. I would say that if the world was this beautiful in most places, there would be a lot more understanding and goodwill amongst the people and nations of the wold.

Football preview

Sometimes matching pictures with words is easy. Sometimes it's not. The latter was the case with MIZZOU magazine's fall football preview. Writer Marcus Wilkins' story about Coach Gary Pinkel's recruiting success was not an easy one to illustrate. The article spoke specifically about how Pinkel has closed Missouri's borders to retain the best prospects in the state, as well as his success in nabbing great players from the fertile recruiting grounds of Texas.

After brainstorming we came up with the idea of a geography classroom setting, with key players from both states interacting with maps of Missouri and Texas respectively. Great, we had our concept, now all we had to do was find maps big enough to not be dwarfed by our lineman sized models. After coming up empty in a campus search, we ordered a couple of maps online. One problem, the only affordable maps we could find had to be laminated. This would not make lighting the scene easy, but it was our only option.

So we had the concept and the maps, now we needed a location. I new I didn't want just a regular classroom. I wanted it to have a vintage feel to it. A room with character. So, after scouting campus for several days, I found a lecture hall in Lefevre Hall that wooden floors, and real slate chalk boards, not dry erase boards. I knew I found the right building when I saw two vintage desks in the hallway, just asking to be used. Everything was falling into place. The only thing left was to convince athletics to bring the players to a location other than the athletic training complex, which was originally offered to us. After some lobbying, I convinced them to bring the players to the Lefevre Hall location.

We did the shoots on two separate days. Missouri players first, Texas players the following day. The Missouri shoot was more complicated. It was going to be the double truck lead image and included 5 players. We decided to keep it light hearted and fun by having Mizzou kicker Grant Ressell kicking paper footballs through Brad Madison's finger uprights. The Texas shoot was more simple. We used the opportunity to get new quarterback James Franklin front and center. Coming into the season the team had been guarding Franklin's contact with the media, but since he was a secondary shot, they let us photograph him.  Franklin was all smiles, but I was unable to coax Michael Egnew and Jacquies Smith out of their "we mean business" stares.

In the end, I'm happy with the results. There were a lot of factors that went into this shoot, and it's always rewarding when it works out. Special thanks to Blake Dinsdale, Rachel Coward, Allison Olsen and Marcus Wilkins for making this happen. Check out a behind the scenes video shot by Rachel, and produced by Blake.

Joe boxer

Riding home from an assignment photographing at the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture's urban farm (photos to come later) I came across Joe at Field Park off Rangeline Road. I watched as he weaved and bobbed down the street throwing calculated jabs into the gut of the cool autumn air. As Joe began to spar with his iron giant, the basketball goal, I decided to stop and make a few frames.