For the past year or so this blog has functioned as a venue to share my assignment work. As a working photographer, I believe it is important to show that I’m able to find visual solutions for clients and that the work is showing up in their publications. However, I also believe that it is just as important to share personal work because it provides a window into why I am a photographer.

Last month I traveled to Hawaii for the first time in 7 years to celebrate my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary and to reconnect with family. It’s hard to believe that so much time had passed since my last visit. Back then I was just getting serious about photography and I didn’t really put the care into making photos of my family because I assumed that I would just be back for a visit the next year. With everyone getting older it is apparent that I need to be more present and active in their lives. 7 years is too long a gap between visits.

During my visit in February, my Auntie Denise asked me why I was taking so many photos and I responded by saying so that I could remember everything. These photographs are for me, they help bring me back to how moments felt. I can smell the salt water. I can hear the laughter in my grandparents’ backyard. I can feel like I’m in the living room surrounded by my cousins. I’ll keep revisiting these photos until I’m back on a plane to Oahu.

Memory is becoming a significant influence on my photography and I want to explore this in both my personal and assigned work.

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!

Last month the Marguerite Casey Foundation commissioned me to work on a couple stories in rural Arkansas. I’ll be posting links once those stories publish on the Equal Voice site. Until then, enjoy a few photos from the road.

This fall I decided to put together a direct mail promotional piece with the goal of building a working relationship with specific editors and art directors. I wanted to do something beyond a 5×7 postcard but at the same time I didn’t build a piece around novelty items that would distract from my photography. After a few preliminary sketches and countless hours of on Google researching materials, I decided to put something together that convey authenticity and honesty- two ideals that I value in photography. With that I kept it simple. The promo piece would house a few recent frames from the Martinsville project along with text to give to provide context.

For a few weeks in the summer I was a regular at all three hardware stores in the area. I now know which of them will cut Plexiglas and which has the best deal on spray paint. Though measuring and cutting prints was at times frustrating and mind numbing, it did feel good to spend two weeks away from the computer working on something with my hands.

Many thanks to David Wright for making time to print these photos and to Michael Sink who helped with the stickers.

Back in April, I decided to start the second chapter of my project on hip hop culture in Roanoke, Virginia. I’ve met a couple new people in the scene and received some advice on how I can build on the previous body of work. Here’s a few frames with Blizz, a 20 year old rapper living in Roanoke County that I just started following this Spring.

I’m trying to get used to the idea of travel being a part of my new life as a freelancer. June was a blur filled with ticket counters, couches, hotels, maps, and many late conversations with friends.

I will be taking a break from blogging for the next month or so to concentrate on work in Martinsville and to prepare for Review Santa Fe this coming June. Normal posting will resume this summer with a recap from Santa Fe, followed by an overview of my latest promo piece along with a few dispatches from Martinsville. Until then enjoy this frame from Chico, California.

Upper Bidwell Park | Chico, California.

Over 100 Romanian Roma are living in the woods near Villeneuve-le-Roi, a suburb of Paris, France. Of the 25 families most hail from Craiova the sixth largest city in Romania. I spent much of my time at the camp playing ping pong and talking with the teenagers about American rap music. Communication was difficult since my Romanian is limited “good day” and “good” but through broken French and English we were able to get our messages across to each other.

Roma encounter daily discrimination from locals and receive threats of deportation from police. In addition to that they also face many challenges including finding clean water, keeping shelters warm during the winter, and enrolling their children in school just to name a few. To view a wider selection please go to my archive by clicking here.