when you catch me wide awake

time and all you took

time and all you gave.

old film.

rooftop, lower east side.

I've finally bought a film scanner and have been scanning some rolls of film from the last year.

Expect more soon.

memorial day wedding

From a wedding I shot over Memorial Day weekend.

rocket man.

blurry obscurity.

The window is open
And moths are clinging to the screen
Somewhere there is sleep
There is hunger
There are lovers
And poets crying themselves to dreams.
Somewhere there are wheels
And skin
And the ability to speak.
To you
To me
Your lines are blurring
As you drift farther away
From me
God speed
Dear friend.

I run my hands around the edges
and feel
hazy
blue
mountains fading into memory

I can’t seem
To shake
This blurry vision
These blurry words
Those blurry lines
And I can’t seem
To close
These heavy eyes.

grooming.

blind photographers.

What blindnesses do the sighted suffer?

this is amazing.

cherry blossoms from springtime

...

hello again my friend

Many apologies for my time away.. It seems that my life has been broken up into three months chunks of uprooting, readjusting, settling, uprooting and on and on. The blog is the one thing that is most easily neglected and maybe the most obvious reflection of these three month stages that have guided to me to where I am. I'll continue to do my best to share regularly after this. I am currently back in southeastern Ohio; this chunk of time still feels quite transitional but at last i find myself feeling some sense of roots and home, even just a hint. I've been reflecting deeply on this last year and feel as though i've been led exactly where i need to be, and that i'm on my right path. I've dove back into the world of academia and am currently completely swamped with constant work- i'd like to reflect many more thoughts soon. For now, I'll just say that life is so beautiful and I wake up every day amazed and overwhelmingly thankful. My eyes feel bright and my heart is so full of hope for what is to come.

ps. I'm currently living in an old cabin in the woods, and my wonderful father came down to southern ohio to help me move after vermont... you can't see the cabin from the road, but he saw the blue van in the last photograph across the road when we pulled in and said "oh god, you're living in a van down by the river. well... could be worse." ha.

andrew c.

native vermont pancake eater.

winter, fading.

So here I lay, in the snow covered hills
nake and pale
I whisper to you of my love you do not see,
with such delicate a breath
the sound may not reach your ears
until you are an old man
withered and grey
Because then you will see all that I was
and gently, all that I was not.



*****

I'm starting to wrap up my time in Vermont- just three more days left. I'm ready, for ohio, for spring, for loved ones... Winter is starting to break here and spring is creeping its way in, but a few small snow flurries here today reminded me that it's not quite spring yet, and I'm still here. so be here. I'm starting to sort it all out- the photographs I've taken, the things I've written, the things I've learned, the things I've felt... So I think the next few posts are going to be catching up on some of the work that I've done in my time here and lessons learned. I'm not sure why sometimes I really love to post little personal writings with open-ended-pictures-without-people... I hope it's not too annoying or dull, and I'll try to post some more pictures with people in them. I swear I take them often.

lawrence jones, 1800's military band man

spring heart.

Driving up winding roads, hard dirt, deep ruts.
"Mud season" is on its way (so they say)
Fields covered in snow, cradled by these mountains,
dance and tangle with the sunflower fields in my mind.
A tender spring heart waits inside this pale winter flesh, ever patient.

I dreamt of a woman; her old oak soul, her sapling heart.
Gentle footsteps caressed the hills, and her breath,
a traveler's wind, moaning through the twisted roads;
As twilight's inky murk bleeds, so too her black hair grows long
into the shadows of crooked trees.



field notes: I was driving home the other evening and i heard these birds clamoring wildly from a field... as winter is just finally starting to melt here, I've been hearing a bird here and there, but hearing this really made my heart leap.. spring is just waiting at the door.

pieces of inspiration

These are a few things that I've come across recently that I thought I would share.

stunning, haunting beauty... by Vincent Moon:

The Escape (Chinese Requiem) from vincent moon / temporary areas on Vimeo.
(This one is reposted from Peter McCollough www.petermccollough.com/blog)

A newly rediscovered film of Bas Jan Ader:

also:

hiding in the stairwell

Town meetings have been the big news happenings here recently- I never knew about this classic form of local government that still happens here in parts of New England until I started the internship. Interesting stuff. I'm going to share more pictures later but for now I just wanted to put up a few pictures of these girls.. even though I only photographed them for a couple of minutes, they really made me laugh and made being at a budget meeting so much more bearable- they are really sweet and awkward 8th grader who are best buds- they were forced to go to the meeting to sell snacks in order to raise funds for the 8th grade trip so instead of working they sat in the hallway and giggled loudly about boys outside the window. They were wearing almost identical outfits, and even their names rhyme; Chelsea and Kelsey. I love awkward young teenagers. maybe I should do a documentary on the awkward years? Blending in would probably be no problem.. I mean after all, I still get asked while photographing high school events what grade I'm in.

de jaune dans l'hiver

Golden memory.

It was a day in late July. Humidity hung thick and tired like the low necklines that clung to sweaty teenage collarbones. Heavy tangled hair flowed in messy rivers over red, peeling shoulders. Fields sprawled out for miles, hugging Ohio, loving their elderly tenders, forsaken by youth with better things to do. Rural teenage wasteland. The car rolled slowly out of the driveway, tires sinking in the melting tar, rolling, moving forward, nowhere to go but going. Late afternoon, the day’s last stifling, clammy sigh… I drove to where my mother had told me to go, just a few miles down the road, with my new camera in hand; it had been a birthday present for my 18th birthday and besides pushing the button I hadn’t a clue how it worked. Tires roll onto the flattened dirty grass on the side of the road. And there it was… acres of sunflowers, glowing brightly in the golden sunlight. I remember standing on the hood of my purple car, looking out over the land. The flowers were golden, the sunlight was golden, my heart was golden… I remember feeling like I could die right there and then, and I would die happy. For the perpetually anxious and fearful teenager that I was, it was one moment where I was quiet enough and open enough to feel the soul of the universe come rushing in, and be one with it all. I pushed the button a few times, hoping that I could remember that moment with a photograph.

Since then, I’ve pushed the button thousands of times. Maybe hundreds of thousands of times. And, to me, this is one of the most meaningful photographs that I’ve ever taken. It’s by no means a “good” photograph… No composition, no technique, the light is not utilized well… but it was a moment in my life that filled my heart so completely, that to look at the photograph and remember that is amazing. The picture has followed me everywhere that I’ve moved around to in the last few years- it’s a reminder of home, of love, of warmth, of youth, of that golden moment, and most of all why I keep pushing the button- for the love of life, to try to capture in some small way the beauty of that moment, the bittersweet tragic beauty of being human and being aware and being alive and being one moment closer to death, and what a miracle to be able to hold onto a moment visually, and if the universe happens to explode with enough life and connection at that moment and you can actually FEEL something while looking at the visual record of that moment… my god. Looking at this photograph makes me want to keep trying, hoping that eventually I will be able to tell a story of life, and of the beauty of being human, and make other people feel when they look at my photographs. Also, it always amazes me what we bring into a photograph- how the beauty we felt at that moment in time changes the way we see, and will continue to see that photograph… And it can be such a mystery how someone else will feel when they see that very same picture. It’s just amazing what our experiences bring into our perspectives.

Oh sweet memory.
Oh sweet sight.
Oh sweet desire to share beauty and human connection.

There’s an old saying; One man’s shitty picture of a sunflower field is another man’s golden treasure.

somewhere between now and sleep.
or sleep and dreams.
or is it in the mountains, the hills? the snow coated spring that hides deep inside?
or somewhere between the pale green and blue.
somewhere between october and now.
somewhere between the place on the back of your neck or was it your knee, or the back of your mouth, or maybe your heel...
somewhere between how i saw you that night, covered in blue, breathing fire, drowning in your drinking water, rising from the abyss.
somewhere between dreams.
somewhere between waking.
somewhere between.

blurry blues.

There is only one photographer scheduled for Sundays, and for this month I'm it.. I had to find two features before shooting a college hockey game at 2. So.. after a lot of ridiculously slow driving and gawking out the window at anything that moved, I decided to wander around White River Junction. There's something really charming about that town.. Slightly run down but with random bright colorful art and artist communities.. I started snapping some pictures, and they seemed blurry, but after working 12 hours yesterday and not getting enough sleep, I thought maybe I was just going crazy... I started taking pictures of a guy, andy, working on his truck in front of his bright blue house... blurry. blurrier. I start to get a headache looking through the camera and trying to focus it.. and then I look down at my 28 mm lens, and realize that it is broken, literally, and about to fall into two pieces. And this makes me very sad.

Sometimes I can really judge how I'm feeling by what lens I keep on my camera... It's almost always the 28. Especially when I'm feeling healthy, happy, courageous, and truly loving with the people around me. Most of the photographs that I've taken so far that I truly feel connected with, were taken in a situation as mentioned above, when I wasn't afraid to keep on the 28 and be within range of reaching out and touching the people in the pictures. I feel myself gravitating more toward the 50 when I'm feeling a bit shy... It's strange. Anyway... here's the progression of blur.






waaaaamp wamp.

wicked weeble wobbles, chowda, and moose. or lack thereof.

one of the best parts about going to a completely new place is the chance to make observations and notice things from an outsider's point of view.. the observations can be random and unfounded, sure, but hell... i've got nothing to follow that statement, actually.

so, some random things i've been noticing...

-new england loves Dunkin' Donuts. I've never seen so many Dunkin' Donuts in all my life... I was told that it is the biggest coffee distributor in the world, which I couldn't imagine, because I had only ever seen a few in my whole life... but now it makes sense. This place feeds the beast. This is also ironic to me, because Vermont was named the healthiest state in 2008. Doughnut anomaly.

-cops love using big snow banks to their full advantage.

-cops also love targeting young girls with ohio license plates. I actually had a police officer ask me, 'why the hell are you this far from home at this time of year, young lady?' uhh...

-I think the moose have all run away. I see moose crossing signs everywhere, and yet, no moose. And I think this is really a shame.

- there is a mentality of fitness among young people that is really widespread... I regularly see 12 and 13 year olds that could whoop me, and high school students that look like semi-pro athletes.

-Being organic and green and local is all the rage. More than anywhere in this country that I've been to. Which is awesome.

-The snow here doesn't melt. It just builds. and builds. and builds.

-Not knowing how to ski is like not knowing how to walk.

-I was offered chowda, and it was one of the happiest moments of my life.... chowda exists, even in vermont.

-Whoever designed the highway system here, loves unreasonably short merge lanes.

-"Wicked" is to New England, as "Hella" is to Northern California. The first time I heard it here, it was when a 5 year old told me about this "wicked cool" weeble wobble playset she has.

orange to blue.

This time of day. My heart smiles like a bell and embraces this prize.
This time when the sun starts to touch the horizon in its heavy descent.
It lasts maybe 15 minutes. Maybe 10.
The last deep breath of orange before the dive.
The glow that goes beyond seen surface and resonates from within.
Twenty shades of glowing light.
The exhale of today.
It’s like the sun making love to the earth.
And I wish I didn’t have to feel it alone.

And today, yesterday, tomorrow,
through dirty windows stained by salty winter roads,
I watch the orange turn into blue.










"Oh, what mighty wind did bend your little limbs?"

low-lying clouds and the beautiful impermanence of twilight.

I’ve never, in all my life, felt as quiet as I do now. Maybe this is how traveling hushes your heart, or solitude quiets your words… I’ve always felt like I listen in between communicating in some outward way, but now it seems reversed, like I communicate in small bits in between large stretches of listening. It’s like the universe has quieted me deeply, and this is simply my time to listen, to everything, in every way. It’s almost been a challenge to communicate in any outward way, verbally, visually… Like my thoughts are grounded so deeply in my heart and mind, I can’t even get them out. Sometimes I feel like I’m swallowed in a low-lying cloud.

I wonder if, when my time here is over, I’ll really have something to say, in a way I didn’t know how to before.

Some of the most blissful and alive moments I’ve had in my time here, have been when I allow myself to get lost on twisting rural roads. They always take me exactly where I need to be, and see exactly what I need to see, be it a herd of deer at twilight, a farm with old red buildings up on a hill, a dog running along side me, horses with their winter shag poking their heads out of the fences, a tree with twisting, knotted fingers… Sometimes I will just drive and drive, always winding further into the beautiful unknown, and suddenly I will find myself in a clearing on top of a mountain, with the beautiful snow covered Green Mountain’s peaks in view and not a trace of humans in sight. I am working the morning shift this month, so I’m done with the workday at 5. This translates to me driving toward home when the workday is done, but before tiredly finding my way home, I find a new dirt road to get lost on. I drive and watch twilight descend and bleed into nighttime… and I think this is when I feel the most alive… Twilight has a way of reminding me of the painful, bittersweet beauty of impermanence. It reminds me of the natural flow of all things and of my own impermanence… my own twilight. I always hear this voice in my heart cry out to the twilight, ‘Stay. Just a little longer. Stay this moment. Stay this milky blue. Stay this day. Stay.’ But it won’t. And that is beautiful.