Dispatch from the road: Phoenix.

It's been a busy month and we capped it off with a trip to Arizona to visit family. We're checking off a couple of our to-do items for 2014 on this trip, too, by heading to the Grand Canyon and by Steph learning to make some family cookies. 

It's been a whirlwind of mountains and poptpops and bad vacation photos*. Highlights: Sedona jeep tour, Wukoki Pueblo in Flagstaff, and being totally surrounded by tourists with cameras.

*by bad vacation photos I mean, specifically, us mimicking photos we've found of my grandmother and grandfather. There are so many photos where they are in utterly banal places (parking lots, for instance) just standing there, or in AMAZING places looking totally bored. Stephanie and I have endeavored to create new versions of them on our travels. Each grandparent had little quirks. Grandmother's was to hold her hands in a certain way. Steph has adopted that posture. Anyway...

These last two are from the Wukoki Pueblo area near Flagstaff. THIS PLACE WAS AMAZING. Could've stayed there for ages. 

And here's Kathy, Jessica, Steph, and Libby working cookies. 

One thing I love about making photos is meeting new people. Here is Marsha and Ellery Cummings, team drivers for Schneider National. They have a collective 25 years on the road and more than a million miles with Schneider. Read more about them here. Thanks a bunch to Sara over at Hiebing for the opportunity!

I keep forgetting to mention...I had the great pleasure to shoot for Monocle recently (for the April 2014 issue). I went to world renown architecture firm McAlpine Tankersley in Montgomery to photograph Greg Tankersley and Brendan Boatwright for Monocle's Master & Apprentice series.  Very exciting. Thanks a bunch to Poppy Shibamoto at Monocle for the opportunity and Barrett Austin for showing me around Montgomery (and, hey, bringing life to the photos with words).

I added the above image to my tearsheets which reminds me of how outstandingly out of date they are. The previous tear is from at least a year ago. I may want to get on that.

The March / April issue of Focus Skateboarding Magazine is out and it's got a feature on Birmingham's own hip-hop crew The Greenseed. This is the first shot from the recent promo photographs we made recently. They were such a blast to work with and I'm itching to work with them again, and more than that, for their record to drop. 

Here's a screen shot of the digital issue (but I need to get down to Faith to buy a print copy).

Spring is coming and we're getting excited about bees again. Nervous, but excited. Here's a little group of ladies from our check-in this weekend. 

Oh, and Southern Living ran a little article on our beekeeping things. Check it out.

Made a few portraits for this month's Business Alabama.

Above is the cover girl, Stacy Brown of Chicken Salad Chick. 

Here's Mike Oatridge from the Honda plant in Lincoln, Alabama.

And Jean Marie Thrower, who also works in the automotive industry.

Thanks, as always, to Nedra Bloom at Business Alabama.

Birmingham hosted another BrickFair recently and Steph and I were able to go to make some 4x5 portraits on the Legotron. I haven't made the time yet to develop the sheets, but I took a few digital snaps as light tests and thought I'd post a preview of the event from some of those photos.

I'll save more detail for when I get around to developing and scanning the film. For now, here are some photos. 

Above is a dude named Daniel who was working on building a LEGO diarama of the convention we were currently attending. A bit of meta-genius. What's better is his name tag that reads "I'm wearing more LEGO than you."

Below is Franklin (right) and Bill (left). They were the only two sight impaired entrants in the convention and they happened to get placed right next to each other at the same table. Weird, eh?

And here's Mr. Red. He and his wife drove from Canada to be in this thing. Their setup was HUGE. More on that later.

Here's one of the judges checking his list to see if he needs to grab the "nominee" plaque (made of LEGO, obviously) and / or leave a "winner" plaque.

Here's a guy called Jordan working on his contribution to the convention. Again, more detail later when I get to the 4x5s.

I managed to get out to Veterans Day this year. I had no idea we, Birmingham, have the oldest Veterans Day parade. Crazy, eh? I wandered my way from the studio down to the offices of Big Communications (who, incidentally, handled the PR stuff for the parade this year. They really did an amazing job, too) and made some photos along the way. 

Here's one of the portraits of Nimrod Long I made for Business Alabama.

I worked on an interesting story a while back for the Huffington Post about PJ Newton and her fight to reopen her gay-friendly bar in the small town of Shannon, Mississippi. The town voted to deny her application and that has led the Southern Poverty Law Center to take up a case, with PJ, against the town and its current and former aldermen for unconstitutionally discriminating against gays. 

The article is posted on their website (here) and it's set to come out in next week's print edition as well. Well worth a read.

Here's another photo from the story of the man, Tom Lyles, who owns a repair shop right next door the the bar. More photos available on their site, in the iPad edition, and soon in print.

My year has been light on personal work (which is frustrating) but it's also been a year of new clients (which is great). One new client this year has been Business Alabama, which is, as you'd guess, a monthly magazine about all manner of business in the state of Alabama. They cover the whole state and the full gamut of business news, information, profiles, and economic impacts of what's happening in (and to) our state.

They ran a story on creative people around the state and I had the chance to make a couple of those portraits—one of Birmingham-based landscape architect Nimrod Long as well as creative director of Big Communications, Ford Wiles. Ford ended up on the cover, which I think was their first black and white cover they've run. 

Many thanks to Nedra and Marie at the magazine for continuing to trust me with assignments!

Earlier this year I took photos of forager Chris Bennett for a book he's been writing throughout this year. I finally got around to developing the 8x10 sheets and I'm pretty happy. Here are a couple I like especially.

Looking forward to being able to share a link to his book one of these days. Meanwhile, checkout his ongoing foraging blog over at Garden & Gun. 

I had the chance to photograph Huntsville chef James Boyce of Cotton Row for Food Arts. We had a blast watching his kids stuff themselves with ice cream and goodies—I just hope they avoided stomach aches later. 

Here's an alternate portrait of Chef Boyce. 

I recently made some portraits for Billy Reid's new Journal. Featured here are Chef Frank Stitt and musician Duquette Johnston interviewing each other for the inaugural post in a new series forthcoming on the Billy Reid Journal. 

Photographed on the 8x10 at Highlands Bar and Grill and Chez Fon Fon in Birmingham, Alabama.

William at the house, July 2013.

Munch and his prized racquetball.

some of our swarms stuff from 2013 from cary norton on Vimeo.

Ran across this old photo from Long Island City, 2007. Before the moved the Pepsi sign.

I'm still slowly working on the new section of my site. Here's a photo I like from it.