Christmas '08

Some photos from Christmas 2008...


Mom having to much fun cooking with Nana and Jordan on Christmas eve.



Mom and Dad opening their gift on the morning of.



Julie passed out after opening gifts. What a doll-



Chef Dad cooking up some bacon for breakfast. Yum.

Chirstmas part 1

Looking out our back window I woke up to a fresh 4 inches of snow on the ground which made for an interesting drive later on because the city decided not to plow, or so it seemed by the conditions of the roads.

This is on that drive that should have taken about 30 minutes but ended up taking about an hour and thirty because of the snow. So here is Dad enjoying every minute of it.



Everyone made it safely and a good time was had. Yay Christmas.



As bad as our drive was Grandma and Grandpa had a whole 17 hours of crap weather driving up from Florida and boy did we hear about it. "We left 70 degree weather for this!" said Grandpa, more than once or twice.

Exercise in Paradise

Ah yes, Life in paradise... Otherwise known as christmas time around the mall.

And this is how Mom deals with it. Wii exercise.

Home Sweet Home

A last minute lack of funding sent me back to Chicago instead of down to New Orleans to shoot a frat that was supposed to be doing some relief work down there. It was a welcome surprise to be able to come home early and to be welcomed by about 4 inches of snow. O how I missed it here.

Tim and...

Church. One of the chapters in this story is going to be about Tim and his church life. He has told me about the relationship that he has with his preacher and how much apart of his life that he plays in it. They talk a lot on the phone and Tim goes to church every Sunday. He knows all about Tim's favorite pastimes and his home life, so it sounds like it will be pretty cool.

These are from last Sunday. First time I went to church with him. I was asked if I went to church by the preacher... that went over well.

Presenting...

Here is the final story on Tim for class. By no means does this tell the whole story but I am going to keep working on it and there will be more to come later. So far this has been a blast to work on and I have learned so much from the story and everyone here at school. Enjoy...

Campus Diversity post #2

Post number two from the diversity shoot. This is when they were hanging out at the bowling alley on campus. They were a fun group, and boy did they love their bowling.

Diversity on Campus

These are from an assignment I shot about the diversity on campus. They might not say as much about the story but I thought they were more fun than the others so that's whats going up for now.

Story Time

Tim went over to the pool to brush up on his diving skills tonight. He was on the dive team in High school and was still pretty darn good. The photos on the other hand...

Best of the worst

I went and shot the Basketball game against Georgia tonight. It was a good game, but yet again I found myself more drawn to the crowd than the game it self. Shooting up by the jumbotron provided some cool light mixed with the arena lights. This guy had a cool reflection in his glasses too.

This shot is kinda a let down for me. I had a bunch that were better but I just was killing myself because they weren't sharp. Some were just way off and some were almost there but not enough. I like this one its just there were better. O well, Live and learn I guess.

Thanksgiving in the B.G.

So this year Thanksgiving was brought to me courtesy my family. I wasn't going to be able to make it back to Chicago so they decided to make the trek south and I couldn't have been happier that they did. We had quite the feast at my apartment of all places, with Uncle Jerry, Aunt Cathy, Scott and his roommate attending. Kelly and Dempsey even made an appearance. It was the best that apartment has ever smelled. Then on Saturday we went to Mammoth Cave to spend some "quality time" as the loving dysfunctional family unit we are. We go to a big, dark, wet hole in the ground to spend family time together.

Anyway, here's the Family as they walk mafia style up to the cave entrance. sopranos eat your heart out.

The cave was pretty cool. Unfourtunatly we were with some people who thought it a good idea to bring their kid who couldn't have been more than a year old on the tour. Look, if your child can't sleep at night without crying, chances are they aren't going to like being in a pitch black cave with 100 other people.

Bet you didn't know metal stairs were made by mother nature.

Julie Powers- Ladies and Gentlemen... Making her modeling debut.
See, at least she gets it honestly. I'm thinkin we just got ourselves a christmas card.

Bonita Joe and the hot dog man

These are some shots from Bonita Joe's barber shot down the street from me. We had to shoot a feature photo that was off campus and I had been in here once before but nothing happened so I decided to give it another shot. She was nice and her and the lady that owns the shoe shine parlor next door always hang out when it gets slow so hopefully there will be more from her shop too.







This is Rapid Rick Malek. He had the brilliant idea to set up a hot dog cart outside two bars downtown and sell hot dogs to hungry drunk people as they stagger out of the bars at 2:30 in the morning. He was pretty cool, he has been doing this for two years now and says that he makes a killing doing it.

Love and Guns

First off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULIE!!! The big 18, like I said, You will always be my LITTLE sister.

These are from the crazy last weekend that was spent mostly with Tim. A lot happened so I didn't even look at them till Tuesdayish. I think the story is going along well. There is just so much that I could focus on that I need to narrow it down and pick one thing or else its just going to be a big mess.

This is at the end of the last show on Saturday night. It really has nothing to do with Drag queens or the story but I kinda liked it.


Tim babysits for his church a lot and tonight the kids decided to make a fort to shoot at each other from behind. Tim was trying to get them to clean up and it wasn't going so well.

Obama Rally multimedia

I found Obama's speech that he gave in Chicago on his website so under the suggestion of my teacher, Brian Mask, I put it together with some of the photos I took that night. Here is what I came out with.




You can see a bigger version on my website HERE

Ah...free time

I finally had a chance to sit down and catch up on all the stuff that I have been shooting. This post is today and yesterday but I have a backlog if stuff I still have to go through from this week. This Volleyball game was against Troy and we won 25-13, 25-9, 25-20. I had to leave early to go shoot Tim but managed to come away with some decent action. Ive never felt I am a really strong sports shooter so it is something that I really need to work on.


This is kinda how it is going to a school that has a great PJ program. and this wasn't the half of them there.
This just made me chuckle. As this girl walked by the cops all whirled around and just gawked at her. O I love photography.

And Ms. Inus Nash. I went over there again today to hang out and shot a bit more. Shes good company and reminds me a lot of Nana.

Scott the Painter

This is for a story that the yearbook is doing on construction on campus, but the paint crew that we were supposed to shoot didn't have any work on campus for a year so I went over to an old gas station that they are making into bathrooms for the nearby park to shoot Scott painting there.
It was really fun to shoot because it was lit by one huge window and then a smaller one up high but the walls were still light gray from the unpainted drywall so the light was really nice. Im not sure if I used it as best as possible but it was a nice surprise anyway.

Wings, walls and fishnet

Here is just an update with some photos from the story I am doing on Tim. The last few days have been really crazy with school and shooting but there will be some cool stuff coming soon so keep an eye out. I have gotten some good feedback about my images from the Obama rally in chicago and figured I would try to do something different with them so as soon as its done (hopefully) I can get it up here so you guys can see it.


Tim was trying on on possible outfit for his Christmas show. It includes angel wings and a wedding dress cut in half.
These were from the last show I was at. This one isn't Tim, it is another queen from Nashville. Those walls were just so cool I couldn't resist.

This is a photo I am actually really proud of because it is not something I normally see. I would never have even taken this photo a couple of months ago but I really like it.

Wow. I need to shoot more faces.

Wine and Exercise

This morning I went back over to Ms. Inus Nash's apartment down the street from me. She told me the other day that every morning she wakes up and drinks her a glass of wine and does her exercises in her kitchen. They consist of holding onto the counter top and kicking her legs back, swinging her arms, etc. Richard Simmons kinda stuff. The doctors told her that she needed to start doing this stuff after she had her 19th surgery. She is really nice and has some really cool stories to tell and is more than happy to share them with anyone to will lend an ear.

The people you meet...

This is Inus Nash. She is from Russellville, Ky but now lives in an assisted living home down the street from me. I stopped by today to take some photos but ended up just talking with her for three hours, yet it seemed like only 10 minutes. It is amazing sometimes how much someone will open up to you if you just give them some time and honest attention. At first I was antsy because I was worrying about a bunch of other things that I had to do for school but got so interested in her story that I just kinda forgot about all that and just listened.

I learned early on the value of viewing the world from some elses's perspective, maybe it was those fishing trips when I was forced to curb my enthusiasm as Pop trudged up the path behind me, but just slowing down, watching and listening to someone else, especially from another generation... I just learn so much.

Here is Tim again. He is rehearsing for a show on Saturday night. I think the story is going well, he seems to be more comfortable with the camera and his family seemed to open up a bit too so hopefully things keep going well.

Today was another one of the those days that while I was shooting Tim I thought about how cool photography is, how people just will open their lives up to tell thier story to you, how I can cross paths with so many people just because I am carrying around a hunk of metal and glass. On the same day, within an hour I was shooting an 86 year old woman wondering when her time would be up and a 19 year old drag queen who cant wait for his time to come.

I was talking to Ben about the rally on Tuesday and he said that would be the last place he would want to be. I thought about it and realized that if I wasn't shooting that I wouldn't have gone near downtown that night, but because I was going to document history, that is the only place I really wanted to be.