Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Obama

Barack Obama is like a rock star, and what differed from Hillary Clinton's rallies was the diversity and furvor of the crowd. An inspirational speaker.




politics

Hillary Clinton learns from a campaign staffer that she's just lost Wisconsin, but works the crowd and perhaps waves goodbye.



Saturday, February 16, 2008

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Photos lie the way you want them to

I love the medium of photography, for with
its unique realism it gives me the power to
go beyond conventional ways of seeing and
understanding and say, "This is real, too."
-Wynn Bullock

A great video by Tom Waits with the photography of Danny Clinch

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Some things don't change for the better

"Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced pyschosis of war hysteria and an incessant
propaganda of fear." - General Douglas MacArthur c1950

some pix of my day







For a short time yesterday, light came through the window of my studio, and if i framed it right, i could almost imagine we were not in the depths of winter. I came in touch with signs of birth and rebirth though.

a good song

Monday, February 11, 2008

"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit."
-ancient Greek proverb

my wife




My wife, Beth, 17 years, 3 kids, a big old stack of laundry, dealing with me...wow.

Sunday, February 10, 2008



For the next couple of days, I'd like to show some photos of individuals that people should know about; people that I've been fortunate enough to meet and spend some time with.

My dad.



Punxsutawney Phil is the worst weather predicter I've ever known. What is remarkable about the large rodent is that his audience stretches to the far reaches of the planet and he is the generator behind a $10 million economic stimulus package to a small, rather obscure town in rural Pennsylvania. I don't think that Phil has much respect for global warming climate models. In 122 consecutive years of weather prediction, Phil has pronounced an early spring only 5 times.

John Leguizamo




I haven't had much interaction with actors, but after a summer shooting stills on a movie set, John Leguizamo impressed me as someone who has reverance for his craft.

Bob Schneider






Bob Schneider is most notably a musician based in Austin, TX. He is a father. He is a painter. What seems most remarkable about him is an ability to marshal a complete concentration in the moment. I'm pretty sure he would have been a great fighter pilot in the days of the Red Baron...or maybe tightrope walker. More importantly, I frequently witness people from the ages of 5 to 65 gravitate to his music. His songs, hundreds of them, have long steady legs that will eventually walk into everyone's lives.
www.bobschneidermusic.com
www.myspace.com/bobschneider

chris hondros







Chris Hondros, 2-time Pulitizer Prize finalist in the past 4 years, a great friend,graduate school roommate and world-class storyteller. The first photo was taken this week during a stop off in Pittsburgh before heading to Kosovo. The second was taken after a return from a week covering the war in Afghanistan. Chris has taken money from his own pocket to send former Liberian child soldiers to high school, eaten lizards in the jungles of Sierra Leone when he ran low on Snickers bars, and loved some of the finest ladies to grace our planet.

a quote from wikipedia:
Hondros's images from Iraq, especially a January 2005 picture series detailing the shooting of an Iraqi family by U.S. troops, have been published extensively and garnered worldwide acclaim and criticism.
On January 18, 2005, an Iraqi family was travelling in a car which failed to stop at a US checkpoint in Tal Afar. US troops opened fire, killing both parents, Camille and Hussein Hassan, and injuring one of their five children sitting in the back seat. Racan, 11, was seriously wounded in the abdomen and lost the use of his legs. As a result of the worldwide interest in his case generated by Hondros's pictures, Racan was flown to the United States for treatment in a Boston hospital. Hondros won dozens of international awards for the images.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
In an interview, Hondros stated:
“ Almost every soldier in Iraq has been involved in some sort of incident like that or another, I would say. Their attitude about it was grim, but it wasn’t the end of their world. It was, “Well, kind of wished they’d stopped. We fired warning shots. Damn, I don’t know why the hell they didn’t stop. What’re you doing later, you want to play Nintendo? Okay.” Just a day’s work for them. That stuff happens in Iraq a lot. That’s why it’s such a damn mess, because almost everybody’s had something like that happen to them at the hands of U.S. soldiers. [8] ”
The Editor and Publisher reported that Hondros' photographs of the children were widely distributed to United States papers -- but few newspapers published more than one photo. By contrast, Hondros states, the same photographs "seemingly dominated the discourse in Europe, where they were run in full over multiple pages by many important papers there."[9] "These pictures are going unseen because editors don't print them. And they don't print them because readers don't want to see them."[10]