Introducing Charlie Roux

A week ago I got to witness Stephanie bringing our son into the world and be supported by an incredible team of women. Truly awe inspiring. Being able to participate as the partner gave me a profound new appreciation for everything that is childbearing.

Our midwife Lauren (@birminghamhomemidwife) and doula Allison (@bhmborn) were nothing short of sublime. Supportive, knowledgeable, comforting, empowering, calming, relieving, healing.

I can’t begin to describe watching Stephanie through this. Ineffable power and trust in herself and her body.

And apparently now we are parents to a little nugget we’re calling Charlie Roux.

Huge bonus to have my sister Nicole nearby to help us through the first night/morning.

We feel so incredibly supported and loved by our communities.

(Last photo of our little family was made by Allison Miller, our doula.)

Stephanie plus...

We’ve had a wild few months over here and I realized I’d failed to mention WE’RE HAVE A DAMN BABY.

Stephanie is due in like 3 days and we’re pretty ready. I’ve been documenting a bit along the way and one of my favorite photos I’ve made is this portrait of her with one of our dogwoods. As bonus, she took a photo of me in my process (so this is sort of a poptpop situation, just barely off). My dear friend Bryan printed these both for me and they’ll eventually be hanging in the nursery.

As much as has been going on*, I imagine far, far more is headed our way.

*it feels like we’ve done everything. Cleaned everything possible, even redid the siding on part of the house. Converted a guest room / office into a nursery. Our room and bathroom has never been cleaner. We’ve traveled. We’ve had ridiculously generous showers thrown for us. We even had a crawfish boil that also served as a celebration for Steph’s mom finally (really) retiring and Steph’s sister getting engaged….AND her aunt having a birthday. And earlier this week we even took off honey from our hives (bonus photo of Steph at 39 weeks in beekeeping gear below).

We’ll have a name once we meet him, but for now we’ve been calling him Rufus T. Barelysheath (that comes from my 30 Rock, a show I have all but memorized).

Nashville / Shadow

Spent some time working in the Nashville area recently and found myself drawn to interesting shadows, so I made a self-portrait on the ground.

Sam Harley, potter

Working with potter Sam Harley lately and ended up making a couple of plates the other day. Kind and talented dude.

Two projects for Garden & Gun

There’s a great piece on southeastern conservationists in the current @gardenandgun and I had the pleasure of photographing one of them. Jason Thorneberry works for The Nature Conservancy and is responsible for the the fresh waterways in Alabama, and they are working on reconnecting the Cahaba river to the gulf, by way of other rivers. Restoring these water systems could help reinvigorate species that are threatened or possibly extinct.
There’s a lot more great work being done out there and you’d can catch more of it in the October/November issue.
This is Jason in his natural habitat—the headwaters of the Cahaba River in Trussville, Ala.

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I also recently took a trip down to Greensboro, Ala. to visit @eatabadirs / Sarah Cole for @gardenandgun. Sarah has a lot going on in this small arts town, including her eatery that incorporates tastes her Egyptian roots as well as her non profit called @blackbeltfoodproject.
Known for her sweets, she prepared a four-layer lavender coriander cake with delightful little figgy decorations for our shoot.
We most certainly had a good day in her home kitchen.
Thanks to @maggiebrettkennedy and @margaret_h_dominick for sending me out to contribute to this beautiful issue.

Andi Rice, again

Whenever I work with Andi I try to create a new portrait of him. Here are a couple from this week.

Also, he recently had the cover of the Washington Post Magazine, so way to go buddy.

Sid Evans

I recently photographed Southern Living’s own Editor in Chief, Sid Evans, on location at the food studios and the prop room. These are a couple of my favorite from the day.

Josh Miller / Southern Living

My friend Josh Miller recently took a new posting as the Senior Food Editor at Southern Living and we made some portraits to mark the occasion. I look forward to watching this next chapter of his food career.

As a bonus I sneaked in a couple of sheets of 8x10 on my weirdo wide-angle camera.

CityWalk Birmingham

I’m incredibly excited for Birmingham’s opening of @citywalkskatepark. We finally have a proper skate park—one of the largest in the country—and it’s a fantastic facility that will undoubtedly have a massive community and regional impact. I’m sure a ton of folks are behind making it happen, but huge props to Peter / @faithskate for being such an advocate for the local skating community for so long and being an integral part of this park.
Opening day was on Go Skate Day and the place was packed with excited skaters, bmx folks, and lookie-loos like myself. I brought my 3D printed 8x10 camera and experimented with shooting xray film for the first time. Plenty of learning still to go with the film stock but getting images at all is a huge win for me, and I’m hoping for the weekend to bring out the crowds so I can make more of these strange photos.
Congratulations to all of us in Bham. @citywalkskatepark is going to be a huge asset.

Barber, Delhi 2006.

I love the “Gents Beauty Therapy” hairstyle chart.

Manitou Cave

Today I joined @jaredragland, @robculpepper_, and @cwnewell on a trip into Manitou Cave in Fort Payne, Ala. (formerly the Cherokee town of Willstown) and it was an overwhelming and beautiful visit. Annette Reynolds, steward of the cave (and founder of the non-profit that protects it), guided us through stalactites, land bridges, and inscriptions from the last two centuries.
The inscriptions included writing using the Cherokee syllabary, created by Sequoyah and recorded inside Manitou Cave. This syllabary system provided the ability to read and write in Cherokee for the first time and it was officially adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1825.
Huge thanks to Annette.

Below are some scenes from our time in the cave.

Jared also made a post on Instagram about our time in the cave and I thought I’d include his caption here for further context (and better reading).

This week I began tracing the Trail of Tears across north Alabama, and yesterday journeyed a mile underground into Manitou Cave, located at the Cherokee town of Willstown (now Ft. Payne–named after the colonial stockade used to hold Cherokees during the Indian Removal of 1838). Inside Manitou, traces of human activity date back 10,000 years. The cave includes sacred inscriptions written in Cherokee syllabary, which was invented by Sequoyah while he lived in Willstown in the early 1800s. After the Cherokee removal the cave was used as a Confederate encampment and saltpeter mine; by the end of the 19th century industrialists mined the cave for iron and developed the area as a tourist attraction; in the 1920s it was converted into a tourist destination where flappers danced the Charleston in a “ballroom” that featured a wooden dance floor and electric lights; and during the Cold War it was outfitted as a fallout shelter. Through the mid 20th century the site was a roadside attraction but closed after the interstate drew traffic away from Ft. Payne. After decades of neglect the cave is now the focus of grassroots historical and environmental protection directed by Manitou Cave of Alabama, with a mission to “respect, protect, preserve” the cave’s unique geology, diverse biology, and rich history.

Crawfish Boil

I’m always looking forward to spring if for nothing else but the crawfish boil(s). They’re delicious events and also a blast to photograph, and they always make me so glad to have married into a Louisiana family.

New camera experiments

I took a new, sorta weird camera out last year to experiment and have a few things that are interesting to me, if far from “perfect”.

Alabama Road Trip for AAA

We went on a wee road trip around Alabama recently for AAA and got to pet a goat, eat some food, and see lots of pretty countryside. Oh, and I finally got to see Ave Maria Grotto—interesting place.

Here’s a handful of photos from the trip.

Jones Valley Teaching Farm // Center For Food Education

One of my favorite organizations in our area is Jones Valley Teaching Farm and they’ve recently opened their amazing new facility called the Center For Food Education and I cannot wait to see it in full swing.

We spent part of last year working on a new media campaign that will release starting this month and I can’t help but share a couple of photos of two of the folks I photographed for this project.

First is local badass and community partner Ama Shambulia.

Katie Davis is another wonderful human and she’s been at Jones Valley as long as I have worked with them. The longer I know her the more fantabulous I think she is. Persimmons, spider lilies, and smiles.

More about her and the Center For Food Education coming soon, too.

Thanksgivingtime

Spent some time at Black Bayou with some family this Thanksgiving and I’m glad to have that ability. This is Steph’s dad, William. I’ve been connected to Steph and her family for 15 years now and I’m always learning something from them.
Thankful for all my various parents—biological, in-law, and step.

Andi light test

Worked with Andi Rice again today and I always grab a light test of him—hard to resist, really.

Chef Frank Stitt at Fonfon

Chef Frank Stitt in the courtyard of Chez Fonfon. Found these unpublished scans from a few years ago. I’m still glad I’ve gotten to witness these folks behind the scenes caring deeply about the food they make and the customers they serve.

North Carolina

We took a trip up to North Carolina to celebrate another year of Stephanie’s life and boy was it beautiful.

We also got to meet up with my buddy Chris Bennett, a forager here in the southeast, about which he quite literally wrote the book. He gave us quite the tour of Black Balsam Knob.

Took a wrong turn somewhere

We were looking for petroglyphs in the mountains of North Carolina and got delightfully turned around at one point. Very much worth it.