Yearly Archives: 2010

Christmas & Cowpies

December 26, 2010

Christmas Skiing on the farm.

There is no classy way to explain this. I'm bored and my family is occupied playing Bananagrams so I'll explain this nonsense.

What you see is not fake. The man skiing is my cousin (in law) Kent literally skiing down a slight incline on a cow pasture. That cow is really standing there thinking, "what the hell is that moron doing." We roll it right here in Alabama.

In short, we finally had a white christmas and my family was not about to let it slide. My uncle James is an avid skier, though his opportunities to hit the slopes are slightly less as we all get older, so having snow ON OUR PROPERTY is not a thing to waste. We've now created a company called Ski Hurric'n Valley that offers such things as: dodge-the-cow-pie while skiing the Mooguls (wah wah), panoramic views from the top of the main, double-black slope, and personal ski lift by way of a 4x4 truck.

My sister and I are in process of creating a proper brochure (seriously) and I'll post that when it's done.

Keep in mind the slopes are only open when we have snow on or around christmas here in Berry Hollow, but a 10-year lift pass is only 75 bucks.

(These are phone photos, though I did take some proper film shots too. Will undoubtedly post those when they are ready)

Below, my uncle James—primary proprietor of and part-time-ski-lift-driver for Ski Hurric'n Valley—sit atop Cornelison Crusher ( ♦ ♦)

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Papa Caleb

December 14, 2010

My buddy Caleb dropped by to help me out on a shoot the other morning and I grabbed a couple of shots of him. For some reason it makes me think "Papa Caleb", which I chalk up to being the jacket, pipe, and the fact that his wife, Laura, is pregnant.

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Matthew Mayfield shoot

December 13, 2010

I've been shooting some of my friend Matthew Mayfield's promotional material off and on for a few years and we got together again over Thanksgiving to make some more images.

I couldn't be happier with what we created. He has some ideas about the mood he wanted to create for the images based on the sound of the upcoming album we were shooting for. I brainstormed a while on how to capture the ideas he'd talked to me about and we ended up jumping in the car and heading out to the ole family farm. We shot there most of the day and did a couple more locations when we got back into town.

I always feel like there should be some super cool story or behind the scenes video or something but the reality is, the whole process was simple and straightforward. Go to place. Figure out what place has to offer. Make photographs. Leave.

Yada yada yada...on to the photos.

Above is a shot of Matthew shooting pool at the Plaza here in town. Below is another shot of the disgusting bar (aka perfectly nasty) and one from the farm.

Really excited about everything we made. I'm splurging and posting these but the rest will have to wait til something like March when the record comes out.

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Outtakes

I've got a few stories in the December issue of Birmingham Magazine and thought I'd post some of the images that didn't run that I like the most. Above is a poorly scanned tear from the issue and below are some outtakes. I tried to do things a bit differently on these shoots..the biggest change was lighting. I've been lighting more and more for editorial work (despite my heart's protest...so in love with available light) and it's certainly growing on me.

The images in this post are from the story GENEROSCITY about different local charitable organizations doing good work in the community which also provide opportunity for every day people to volunteer. The groups covered in the story cover a vast swath of needs—from medical care, food, housing, and even help plugging people into the community for work.

Seen above is Drew Langloh, president of the United Way of Central Alabama, along with just some of the volunteers who help raise money for the United Way's annual budget.


From the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama (HICA) is Johanna Alvarez.


Scott Douglas of Greater Birmingham Ministries with an additional outtake of Drew Langloh.


George M. Thompson, Carolyn Foster, along with Scott Douglas, all from Great Birmingham Ministries.

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World AIDS Day

December 1, 2010

Today is World AIDS Day and I thought I'd give a couple of shout-outs to people helping out.

A wonderful friend called Sarah Koch is a co-founder of an organization known as Development In Gardening which has a simple, Genius goal. They go into developing nations, find people groups affected by HIV/AIDS (or groups otherwise at risk), and teach them to garden. It's a modern day version of the whole teach-a-man-to-fish thing.

The deal is...these individuals with HIV/AIDS...the better they eat..the more nutrition they get, the better their body can fight the disease. Of course, there is the ironic relationship these particular people have: the good food and doctors they need, they have almost no access to. A ton of places DIG service are remote (REMOTE!) villages where the situation is even more dire. Myths and propaganda and religious pressures keep many of these people either ignorant to real solutions or cause them to be outcast from their community (often times just for HAVING the disease even if it wasn't their fault!).

DIG rolls in with tools, seeds, and a mission. They reach out to communities in need and teach them about the importance of nutrition and teach them how _they_ can help _themselves_ achieve it. They, DIG, empower the community to not only provide for themselves but teach even more people about how tangible a home or community garden can be!

It. Is. So. Simple.

Absolutely brilliant.

And they're just getting better at what they do. Sarah and Steve (the other co-founder) started this lovely project while working in Senegal for the Peace Corps and have now moved on to have projects in 7 countries—Senegal, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Namibia, Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua.

I had the privilege to travel to Uganda a while back (thanks to Simon Cyrene, a local design firm who took on DIG is a client) and meet so many of these lovely, thankful people.

Below are some of the persons DIG is impacting. Don't forget...You can help!


Above: Two Sarahs. One, a co-founder of DIG (right), and the other, DIG volunteer and beneficiary.

Another AIDS-related project I'd like to mention is called CARE For AIDS. I don't know a ton about this organization, but my friend Bob Miller has done some beautiful work for them in their mission to help those in Africa who suffer from AIDS. I've seen a lovely print piece he did with David Blumberg that I'd love to show you (but have no means to off hand) so instead I'll embed a video he also produced for them.

In whatever form it comes, I am happy to see help arriving for these people so in need. I bet there is a way we can all help more, even if we feel removed from a problem so many miles away.

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Grandmother’s classic biscuits

November 30, 2010

Thanksgiving was great. It really was. Hard to explain how or why, exactly, but spirits were high and the food was great. We continued our tradition of bringing a friend to the farm for our family time. Last year it was David (who just recently put out a new album (which maybe I mentioned?)) and this year we had Jill in tow.

Grandmother gave us a treat Friday morning; her classic, killer biscuits and gravy. We went up early to watch her make everything from scratch. Dammit. Now I want to eat them.

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old shots of Damien

November 18, 2010

I love stumbling through memories. Digging around in a drawer full of old polaroids, I found this [left] shot of Damien which made me re-explore the sheet film scans and I found yet another photo of him [right] that, somehow, I didn't fall in love with immediately. It's kind of fun to go through the archive and find brand new old images.

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Thanksgiving horse

November 17, 2010

I'm digging through files all over the place working on the new edit I mentioned a couple of posts ago and ended up in a folder with last year's Thanksgiving images and thought I'd post a random shot from those images, what with Thanksgiving fast approaching again. GEEZ THIS YEAR HAS FLOWN.

Thanksgiving this year will be especially, ahem, thankful. My grandparents have been in and out of the hospital, with my granddad being the one visiting most. They're both a billion years old and our family is fortunate and Quite thankful to have had them around for so long. Hospital visits are rarely fun (sort of by definition) and this years' illnesses are making us all that much more joyous to still have the family unit we have. This isn't meant to be somber. I just want to encourage everyone to appreciate what you have while you have it, including myself.

Go love somebody!

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Brian T. Murphy

November 11, 2010

Had a shoot today in Brian's now-native town of New York and he was kind enough to come out and help me. He hurked around a billion pound light case with no shoulder strap a thousand miles in the snow with blistered feet.

The trip left him dazed and this is what I saw when we made it back to the studio setup.

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like an accident, i’m waiting to happen.

November 8, 2010

There's a wind of change in air. I haven't yet been happy with the images that are on this site, at least in the sense of how they represent me as a photographer. I've been wrestling with my identity and philosophy as an [gasp] artist (which sort of sucks, by the way) and I also recruited my friend Jared to immerse himself in the images I've made and curate them in a way that made sense to him. It's a very personal and vulnerable thing (on both sides, I think) to make such a request and he really came through with a series of images that I could never, in a thousand years, have put together. My brain just doesn't think the same way as his—all the better in this case. In the next while (week? month? I don't really know) I'm going to have a new body of work up here that is a collaboration of our minds. He gave me such a great starting point and I cannot wait to get everything in order and finally present images that explain my head better than I ever could with words.

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