Blog
A Breed Of His Own
A short, fun multimedia piece I recently made. Click here to watch.
D.C. Street Photography
Photographs inspired from Ernesto Bazan’s “Cuba” work. Scanned B&W darkroom prints made for a “mentor” assignment in my Fine Art Photo class.
Interview with Larissa Leclair
I was recently interviewed by Larissa Leclair, a D.C. based photography writer, curator, and collector. You can read my interview on her blog:
Larissa Leclair’s Photography Blog
Becoming A Man (in progress)
James Parrish’s life goal is to prove to his dying mother that she raised a man. With over 24 years in prison and years of drug abuse, James, 51 years old, is convinced he has lived his life merely as a juvenile. “If I were to have listened to anything my mother said, I would have been close to an angel,” he said. After completing a 14 month prison sentence for violating his parol by visiting his mother, James, in hopes of turning his life around, enrolled himself at Gospel Rescue Ministries in Chinatown, Washington, D.C., in September of 2009. As a client at GRM, James is under the control of strict rules and daily routines, as if confined between the walls of yet another institution. Although depression, anger, anxiety, and fear are still a part of everyday life for James, GRM has become his new home, “safe haven” and “positive environment.” Although the road will not be easy over the next months, James will rely on the power of God, his GRM councilors and floor-mates, and his heart and soul to find the strength to become the man he so desperately wants to become.
James stands in a back alley behind GRM during a designated cigarette break. “When I first entered Gospel Rescue Ministries, I was more afraid than when I first entered prison. Because how can you condition yourself to live a positive life when you’ve lived a negative life for fifty years? I always look for excuses to leave, but that wouldn’t help my situation out. Men have to stand up on their own feet. I can’t have people carrying the load for me my all my life. I have to do something to make my life better. I want to do something to say, ‘I did it. Me and God.’”
James peers out at the world below from of a stairwell window near his fifth floor bunk. “I wish I could make amends to everybody I’ve ever hurt,” he said. “Because guilt and shame hurts me personally more than any pain I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve been stabbed, hit with bats, but when I’m all alone and I was laying in that cell, and I was thinking about the people that I’ve harmed, including myself, I’ve cried a many nights…believe me, a many nights. And I don’t ever want to ever feel that again. I don’t ever want anybody to ever feel pain because of me.”
James raises his hand in praise during evening chapel at GRM. “I would like to take the easy way out and run every chance I get, but the man in me and the god in me makes me stand fast and do what I got to do now. This is as close to God as I’ve ever been, and I like it. I ran from God for fifty years, and of all the places to end up in, was in house of God. I ducked him, and ducked him, and ducked him, till I ended up right in his house. That’s like…the devil in the church!”
James stops to look at a jewelry display at a holiday crafts show in Chinatown, a few block from GRM. “They’re so beautiful,” he told the merchant. James wishes he could give his daughter a gift for Christmas, but he currently has no money. James recently called his ex-wife to ask if he could visit his daughter. When she refused, James said, “I just heard my daughter start to cry in the background.” In December of 2001, after completing a prison sentence, James beat his ex-wife’s husband with a handgun and slashed his car tires. He sites his jealousy with his daughter’s step-dad, who has become the father figure in place of James. “I acted like a fool just because I was mad at the world.” James accepts what he has done and hopes to move forward in life. “If I do something I’m not going to deny doing it. That’s not what men do.”
James’ shadow is reflected on the side of a GRM building. “This is not a good neighborhood. They smoke crack in the alley. Prostitutes walk up and down the street. It’s still in my face constantly. I’m still weak, I’m still sick. I’ll be an addict the rest of my life, just a recovering addict, and I can only take it one day at a time. I try to do today what I did yesterday to stay clean. It’s a day-to-day struggle.”
During a halftime cigarette break from the Washington Redskins football game, James, right, and two of his closest friends at GRM, chant, “Oh when the skins, oh when the skins, oh when the skins come marching in!” Many of the GRM clients look up to James for support and friendship, siting their trust for him and the compassion he has for people. “I try to give back in the little ways that I can,” James says. “That’s why I’m still up here on this fifth floor trying to help these men help themselves, and help me in the process. They get on my nerves sometimes, but it’s all worth it. If one of them comes to me and I can help them, that’s a great joy. It’s worth more than any money I could ever have in my pocket.”
James sits silently next to a closet of his few possessions as he ponders the choices he is facing in life. By agreement with the GRM staff, James was only supposed to be in GRM’s treatment program for thirty days. After this time elapsed, he would be moved to “Ready to Work”, a GRM program that provides payed work for six months to a year. On day 64, however, James is still in the treatment program. Feeling betrayed by the GRM staff, James questions whether he would be happier leaving GRM to live with his mother in Capital Heights, MD.
After being convinced by his councilors to stay at GRM until he enters “Ready To Work,” James remains confused about his future and the decisions he has to make. James wants to get a small apartment and pickup truck and live his life with dignity and purpose, but cannot do so without any money or job. “I could easily get money, I could get drugs, I could get whatever I want. But that would defeat the purpose of everything I’m trying to do. I’m really trying to do the right thing,” he said. As for when James will reach his goal of becoming a man, “I’ve haven’t a clue,” he says. “But I know the exact time when I no longer was a boy: when I made up my mind to become a man. So it’s an uphill struggle from there.”
Paris Self-Portrait
Just for fun…
France
I was lucky enough to spend some of my winter break in France with my girlfriend and her family. Together, we stayed in a town called Avignon in southern France, then to the Alps for some incredible powder skiing. My girlfriend and I then went off on our own to Aix-en-Provence, Marseille, Nice, and Paris (for one day). For the most part, I let my camera take a vacation, too. I had it with me all the time but was mostly just taking vacation snapshots. Below are a few images from what I’ve gone through so far.
Seeing Sam
My fine art photography final project, “Seeing Sam”, is an examination of how I communicate with my girlfriend over a three week period of time. Although Sam was 561 miles away from me for nearly half of the project, I was still able to visually see her through Skype, an online video messaging program. Using a keyboard shortcut to capture screenshots of my video messaging screen, I was able to photograph my girlfriend as if she were only inches away from me. When we finally did see each other in person I was able to photograph through my rectangular camera sensor, rather than my rectangular laptop monitor.
What I discovered through this project, and attempted to show in my images, is that seeing my girlfriend on Skype is much more than just seeing her – it’s being with her. My love for Sam was able to transcend the technology barrier and place me with her in a virtual world that only her and I exist in. For some, the pixelated surfaces of the Skype images are a distraction to frame as a whole, but for me, it’s a reality I encounter almost everyday, and have grown to see beyond it. When together in person, the pixels are replaced with grain, and the images become clearer and crisper. Although more senses are present when physically together, distilling Sam from reality is still a subconscious part of my relationship with her. I filter the world to see my girlfriend, and although I may not always be with her physically, I am with her in one reality: my reality.
Street Photography
Some street photography images from my color photography class. Taken with Kodak Ektar film and printed in the color darkroom. More images from my final projects to come!
Yoga Steam
On Thanksgiving morning I was commissioned to shoot the first class of a new yoga studio in Westerly, RI. After the room heated up and the session began, my camera lens had steamed up, and kept steaming up, regardless of how many times I wiped my lens. Soon enough, my camera sensor also was completely steamed up. I stopped, took a breath, got some creative yoga vibes and decided I would use the steam to my advantage. I staked out two places in the studio, one in the back corner of the room, and the other behind a glass door (which was also dripping with steam). I ended up going for a painterly effect in my images, and below are some of the results.
Banana Chronicles
One banana’s two-week life span, taken with Kodak Ektar film and printed via color processing. It was the first assignment for my Color Photography class, and the idea was basically to explore one object in the world of color. I want to thank my banana for being a very cooperative model – sorry for throwing you off a roof…
Fine Art
Some recent fine art work I’ve done in and out of class.
Mix and Match
A random assortment of summer photos from some of my internship assignments.
Miss Connecticut
Miss Connecticut and Miss Teen Connecticut. Enough said.
Surfs Up!
I had a surfing assignment and a rip tide assignment, both of which resulted in me walking through The Day newsroom with soaking wet pants and sandy feet. Definitely two great assignments, both on beautiful summer days, which, as evident in my photos, was spent chilling out with surfer dudes and hanging in the life guard towers! Rarely, but sometimes, photojournalism is just that simple…
Flash Floods
It was raining hard, real hard. As my girlfriend and I were sitting at home on my day off from The Day, the two of us cuddled in blankets watching rain smack the sliding glass doors, the last thing I thought of doing, or wanted to do, was go outside. But when my dad, who works at the aquarium, called me almost in tears telling me his car was half submerged in rain and drainage water, along with an entire parking lot of other cars, I immediately threw on about five layers of clothes, grabbed my camera, and was off. When I got to the aquarium parking lot, my jaw dropped as the first thing I saw were two tourist scooping buckets of brown water out of their Porche. “It won’t start,” they told me in a monotone voice. I pulled out my reporter’s pad and jotted down their quote, until, ten seconds later, my reporter’s pad was about as dry as my rain-jacket. Shit.
Hours later, I had accumulated hundreds of shots, but literally not a single one of them had any emotion or reactions captured. Frustrated in myself, I finally stopped and looked around, realizing there were no emotions to be captured. People were just standing there, just looking out at a sea of sunken cars as if they were watching a boring TV show or the trees swaying in the wind. Shocked. I decided to shift my attention to the employees who were showing lots of emotion. Actually, they were having the time of their lives! “This is the best day of work ever!”, I remember several of them saying as they swam in the oil infested waters. Although they were having their fun, it was well deserved, because for maybe four or five hours, they worked non-stop pushing peoples’ vehicles to dryer areas of the parking lot. Their professionalism and kindness was appreciated all around.
Below is the “winner” image from my take. I was actually really disappointed by my results, but in a way I was happy I was. It’s easy to flip through those “Photos of the Day” that are on different news sites and criticize each image, saying, “Man that photographer was at an earthquake or a flood or a fire and all they could get was that crappy photo!” In reality, sometimes the most seemingly easiest events are the hardest places to make good images. I guess my flash flood experience was a time to learn that first hand. In the end, the photo below ran on a few of those “Photos of the Day” sites that I always am so hard on. Irony!
Mystic Aquarium employee Emily McCabe attempts to move a visitors flooded car to a dry area of the aquarium’s parking lot on Wed. July 1, 2009. McCabe was one of dozens of employees who spent several hours helping visitors retrieve their cars, some of which were more than half submerged in rain and drainage water. (Tucker Walsh / The Day)
Mike Reagan
Was commissioned to do some shots for an up and coming hip-hop artist, Mike Reagan. He’s a hilarious, goofy kid, but insanely passionate about his music. Check out some of his work at: http://www.myspace.com/mikereaganmusic
North Stonington Fair
The earliest assignment I had for The Day (7am I think) ended up being one of my favorites. Basically I had to hang out with some family farmers and their cows and watch the golden sun come up over the empty North Stonington Fair Grounds. Pretty awesome in my opinion!
Powwows and more powwows…
Shot three or four different powwows this summer for The Day. They took place at the Mohegan and Mashantucket tribal areas and made for some great shooting, except for the time I took a photo using a small fire pit as my foreground (fire = sacred = no photos). Whoops 
Anyways, here are some of the shots that ran.
Friendship, Maine
This past summer I was fortunate enough to spend a beautiful week in the humble town of Friendship, Maine. Together with my girlfriend and her brother, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and dogs, I took a much appreciated break from a hectic summer! I shot with a small sensor Sigma 30mm lens that, when between f/1.4-2.8, will give you a beautiful, someone natural vignette, if using a full frame camera. I’m already looking forward to next summer and another week in heaven…
