As 2011 winds down, I’m happy to have my head above water with this being my first year working as an independent photographer. The challenge of balancing personal work and hustling for assignments has been one that I’ve welcomed and surprisingly enjoyed. With the coming year I’m looking forward to building on the progress that I’ve made in 2011.
These pictures are my favorites- they help me recall how I felt during those moments over the twelve months. Though this is a batch of unrelated images, the sequence makes sense to me and conveys my feelings and mood throughout 2011. I’ve started to move away from single images to thinking about how photographs work together in a sequence.
In October 2010 I started work on a personal project looking at the city of Martinsville, Virginia and how the community is coping with the scar that the departed industries have left behind. This year I decided to stay close to home and immerse myself in the community. If I didn’t have an assignment or a commitment then chances are I was in my car heading south on highway 220 en route to Martinsville. I’ve learned quite a bit from the people this past year but I realize that I’ve only scratched the surface. I’m looking forward to continuing this project in 2012 and learning even more from the people in the community that have invested in me as I have them.
This year assignments and personal work allowed me to explore my home in Southwest Virginia along with neighboring communities in the central part of the state as well as Richmond- the capitol city, Paris, France, Baltimore, Maryland, Kansas City, Missouri, Raleigh, North Carolina, Oakland, California, Atlanta, Georgia, Western Pennsylvania, the Arkansas Delta region, the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, the Mississippi Delta and the coast of Oregon. Seeing this list of places makes me smile- even though I consider myself a homebody, I really enjoy the travel.
My sincerest gratitude goes to each of the clients and publications that trusted me with their stories- they made the above paragraphs possible. Those that featured my work in 2011 were The AARP Bulletin, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Marguerite Casey Foundation, Equal Voice News, Bloomberg, Guardian UK, Global Post, The National Post, Getty Images, and Bay Path College. Many thanks to all the editors I had the privilege and pleasure of working with this year- your assignments have helped fund my personal work and for that I’m grateful.
Also, a big thank you to all my friends, family, mentors and colleagues.
I’ll see you on the other side of 2012.
Happy Holidays!
