USA Fieldtrip: January 31 - March 14, 2004

My first large-scale photo fieldtrip was a success: Six weeks on the road covered much more terrain than anticipated. I met wonderful people, discovered new places, and shot a wide range of subjects, from protests to baby portraits, aerialists to drainpipes and rugby players to jewelry. Now I'm starting to plan for my european fieldtrip in late April through early June. Read on for an account of the trip, then reload the page for a new set of images.

Jan 30 - The midwest fieldtrip kicks off tomorrow via NYC to Chicago (i think). I'm having a bit of a nervous breakdown with trying to figure out the logistics of this whole thing, (picking up a bunch of freelance jobs right when I was supposed to be planning this all out didn't help.) If anyone has any suggestions as to how I could find funding for this grand project of mine to hire an intern a tour manager, I'd love to hear it. :) More details as I make sense of it all...

Feb 01 - Greetings from New York- the trip started off with a bit of excitement as my friend Earl had a falling out with his cousin. (I was supposed to hitch a ride to nyc with the two of them and then continue on to Chicago with the cousin) - Since the ride fell through, Earl and I took the commuter rail up- and by chance ran into my friend Chloe at 30th St. station and then 30 seconds later ran into Emily, so the four of us had a lovely ride up. Much better than driving with quarrelling cousins! I spent a quiet night in nyc catching up with old friends Amanda and Marian, and further stressing about how the logistics of this trip will come together. That's the story of my life though, lots of frantic running around and then things come together in wonderful and unexpected ways. So I should be getting into Chicago tomorrow morning, and we'll see what I find to keep me busy there. (ps - Just ran into Chloe again while waiting around for a delayed train at Penn Station. What are the odds of that?)

Feb 03 - I've made it to Chicago after the craziest train ride ever (it started off two hours late, and was further delayed by a medical emergency, a knife-wielding madman, a deraillment and a few slow freight trains ahead of us, among other things) - A preliminary walk through the city gave off a really lovely vibe and I feel like this is a place that I'm going to want to come back to many times. Since I didn't plan this trip far enough in advance, I don't have much lined up except for shooting for GroundUp Theatre tomorrow night, and so I'm going to focus on catching up with friends and trying to plan a little bit more for the rest of the trip. Interesting things seem to be cropping up every day and I wish that I'd sent my mass email out a few weeks before taking off rather than a few days. So it goes.

Feb 06 - I'm about to take off for Lakewood, WI, to shoot Karmal and Kevin's wedding. After that, here's the tentative itinerary: One week in Minneapolis until Feb 16, where I'll be shooting for the Xelias Aerialists, the adventurers of Action Squad, and members of Philly's own New Paradise Labs that are there working with the Minneapolis Children's Theatre. Then a week in Omaha, where I'll be shooting for Yoga Instructor / Veterinarian Tippi Denenberg, doing a few family portraits for assorted folks, and hopefully lining up other projects. Then on to the Detroit/Ann Arbor area where I'll catch up with a few old friends and shoot some rugby. From there, on to Louisville to rendezvous with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers again. I'll document their Taco Bell Truth Tour to Los Angeles culminating in a protest in Irvine, CA. If you know anyone in any of those destinations, please send them my way! While in Chicago, I did catch the GroundUp Theater show and also took assorted portraits for friendly folk-

Feb 07 - Karmal & Kevin's wedding was my original pretext for heading out towards the midwest. It was a lovely day; turns out getting married in the dead of winter in northern Wisconsin wasn't quite as crazy as it originally sounded.

Feb 08 - Right after I thought I had worked out a semi-solid itinerary, the plans changed again, and I hitched a ride down to Madison to hang out for a few days. Before driving down, I got a little bit of a tour of the area around Lakewood and Mountain. Romping through knee high snow, crawling into frozen caves, riding an innertube down a snowy hill onto a frozen lake and playing with horses and chickens are all things that I don't do enough of on Philadelphia.

Feb 10 - After spending most of my time camped out in Michelangelo's coffeehouse editing wedding photos and burning archive disks, I had an excellent time photographing a party mostly comprised of Madison's drag kings. Some of the photos might be used in a fundraising calendar.

Feb 11 - I got into Minneapolis in the evening and ended up going bowling with the kids from Philly's New Paradise Laboratories at the Bryant Lake Bowl.

Feb 12 - Lifetime photojournalist Flip Schulke happened to be receiving an honorary degree at Macalester College so I checked out his talk and slideshow which was really good to hear. This was my birthday, the big quarter century one, and I spent it traveling, meeting wonderful people, discovering new places, and taking fun photos. Can't really complain.

Feb 13 - I spent the morning hanging out in the Xelias Aerial Arts studio, which is a fantastic place. It's fun hanging out with people that hang from the ceiling. And they make it look so effortless.

The evening was spent back at the Bryant Lake Bowl, where Dykes Do Drag was holding it's monthly cabaret event. Good fun!

Feb 14 - After the aerial adventures came some underground ones, as Ben and Jake took me to explore some underground tunnels. I hadn't been crawling around in tunnels since early highschool, and it was a great time. Apparently there are even cooler tunnels with giant helical cascades of water dropping down hundreds of feet; maybe I'll check one out next time...

Then back to the Xelias kids, who were performing at the Loring Pasta Bar. It was a hellish place to shoot in, really tough, dim light and very visually cluttered, but I still had a good time and got a few shots out of it.

Feb 15 - After spending some time with Kim, a photographer/dancer from Eau Claire that I'd been corresponding with who happened to be in town, I finally caught up with the New Paradise Labs kids where they were rehearsing with the Minneapolis Children's Theater. I only caught a bit of their rehearsal, but the show that they're working on looks like it's going to be a lot of fun.

Then I dashed over to the Southern Theater where I caught a performance by Deborah Jinza Thayer's Movement Architecture. The show was fantastic, and as with most dance pieces I wish I'd shot it about five more times to get some good shots out of it... so it goes.

Feb 17 - I just got to Omaha after some time in Minneapolis - haven't updated anything since the 10th, but dammit, I'm a photographer, not a blogger. I'm going to go back and add in entries and pretend that I'd uploaded them on a regular basis. :)

(added) Staying with the Denenberg family in Omaha has instantly turned me into a baby photographer. The cutest 15month old twins in the world, Rebecca and Levi, became my instant favorite subjects and I took waaaaaay too many cute baby picutres during my time there. To avoid redundancy those are all gathered under this entry (don't forget that this page has a bit of a random element, and if you hit the reload button on your browser you might find some new photos.)

Local singer/songwriter Mike Harvat had contacted me about shooting an acoustic performance for him, so that was my first night out in Omaha. I met Andrea and Eric there, whose jewelry business I'd go on to shoot for later on in the week. And from that I ended up shooting for a new Omaha art gallery as well. Funny how things work out like that.

Feb 18 - Word of mouth can be a crazy phenomenon sometime, and I went right out to shoot some more cute baby photos and family portraits for some family friends- and from there did a bunch of other similar shoots for other local families during the week, Those are also all grouped here to avoid rendundant entries. Photographing kids is so much fun, but just like with weddings I have to make a point of getting people to promise to refer me to other jobs than just more babies and weddings otherwise I'll get funneled into doing those full time :)

Feb 19 - A middle aged woman saw the movie "Calendar Girls" and decided that she wanted some nudes as a gift for her husband. I don't usually shoot nudes but it worked out well and everyone was happy with them- but even though they're quite graceful and tasteful we're not posting them online to keep it personal.

Got some good press in the Omaha World Herald today-

nudes censored to honor client's privacy...

instead, check out Michael Kelley's column about my adventure.

Feb 22 - I met up with local musician Rimzilmoon DeBlanc, and we went around Omaha a bit to take some portraits for his website and promotional stuff.

Feb 23 - More family portraits and relentless documentation of the twins (this was every day mind you) and then I had a real quick shoot with members of Working Class Heroes, another local music group. I also spent some time teaching some digital photography basics- Teaching isn't something that I did a lot of on this trip, but I'd be happy to do more in the way of little workshops while traveling in the future.

Feb 24 - I met up with Andrea and Eric of Love Beads Factory to shoot their jewelry; They'll be starting to sell their work online soon.

Then off to Tippi's yoga studio, to take some photos for their site as well. After 3 hrs of shooting in ridiculously dim light and barely able to focus through the sweat on my glasses (this was hot yoga) we did a few more posed light painting shots with Theresa.

Feb 25 - The morning was a bit of post-production hell, as I'd way too many photos to deal with and CDs to burn for folks and not nearly enough computer time. In the afternoon, Kristae and Lissa, owners of the Avenue Gallery in Dundee, asked me to take a few portraits of them for their website.

After dinner I squeezed in a few more photos for Mike Harvat and the Love Beads Factory kids, and then spent the rest of the night staring at my computer.

Feb 26 - I hopped on a Southwest flight to Louisville to rendezvous with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, where they were planning an action as part of their cross-country Taco Bell Truth Tour. I'd met the CIW folks while traveling to Immokalee with the Prometheus Radio Project, and was pretty impressed with their work and their cause. On a sidenote: I love Southwest Airlines and can't wait until they open their Philadelphia hub. Anyone have a clue as to how I could get them to sponsor my little Photo Fieldtrip project?

Feb 27 - The CIW led an 8 mile march from downtown Louisville to the headquarters of Yum Brands (the parent company of Taco Bell) to protest at their gates. It was a gorgeous day for it and everyone had lots of fun. Of course, it would be much more fun if farmworkers didn't have to travel cross country to fight for justice. Do you realize that there have been 5 convicted cases of slavery in southwest florida in the last six years?! I didn't until I met the CIW. Make sure you know where your food comes from, because we should be ashamed of such things in this 'land of the free' See the CIW's report for this day.

Feb 28 - An update has been long in coming, and I'm uploading from Oklahoma City. It's been a long day on the tour bus with the Coaltion of Immokalee Workers. Their daily reports page has a lot more of my photos than I'm putting here; I'm focusing efforts on getting photos to them for their press so another update here might not come until March 6/7- See the CIW's report for this day.

While driving along the highway, there's always random blurry pictures of trees to be taken- although it's harder while packed into a bus w/o being able to roll down the window.

Feb 29 - After a long day of riding on the tour bus, we were got an extremely enthusiastic welcome from a crowd in Albuquerque, which was exciting. After dinner there, more road time until midnight or so to spend a short night in Flagstaff, AZ. See the CIW's report for this day.

March 01 - We arrived in Los Angeles in pouring rain (which is less than ideal when you're planning on marching 44 miles over the next few days) but spirits remained high. While most everyone went to bed early after dinner to rest for the next day's actions, a few stayed up late into the night preparing a banner for the march.

March 02 - Day One of the march on Taco Bell Headquarters with the CIW. The rain cleared; we were greeted by supporters, press and a police escort at the start site and began our zigzag course southeast towards Irvine. It was a beautiful day, and the march went off without a hitch except for my own personal trauma when my fancy new camera died during the last beautiful hour of sunset. For some reason, I had neglected to pack my backup camera body for this trip (my bag was already so jam packed, but that's no excuse. I learned the lesson the hard way.) After a bit of panic, I managed to arrange for a rental to keep me in the game while my backup camera got Fedexed to me. See the CIW's report for this day.

March 03 - Relieved to have a comfortable camera back in my hands, it was another day of marching through the streets of LA. Except that once we hit Annaheim, conservative voices dictated that the march must stay out of the streets. This seemed a little bit of a pointless insult, as a march on the sidewalk took just as much of a police presence and disrupted just as much traffic- See the CIW's report for this day.

March 04 - The last full day of marching brought us to within 3 miles of the Taco Bell HQ in Irvine. The march kept growing as supporters came out in full force. We ended up at the Centro Cultural de Mexico in Santa Ana where we celebrated with a good meal, music and dancing. See the CIW's report for this day.

March 05 - The last few miles of the march were quickly accomplished, and the day long rally began. Speeches by community leaders and supporters were interspersed by musical acts, and the day felt like quite a success. Of course the real success will only come with real social change for the farmworkers, but there's no doubt that they succeeded in making their voices heard loud and clear. See the CIW's report for this day.

No time to rest, I hopped on a late night plane to Las Vegas to rendezvous with the San Diego Surfers Women's Rugby Club. Editing the days photos while on the way so as to be able to set up the CIW's last update, which you can find here.

March 06 - Shooting the rugby game was particularly tough, as I hadn't shot any action sports in a long time- and was feeling particularly awkward readjusting to my backup camera which isn't nearly as suited to sports shooting as the d2h which was off for repairs. I'll have to do a bit more sports shooting to get back in the swing of things... After the game came a night out on the town with the team, which was a good time. After a long day, the revolving doors of the Bellagio Casino were particularly amusing-

March 07 & 08 - My time in San Diego was pretty relaxed- I spent a lot of time camped out in the Living Room Coffeehouse archiving photos and catching up on emails, and spent some more time hanging out with the rugby kids.

March 09 - With the ocean to my left and the mountains to my right, the train up the west coast from San Diego to Santa Barbara was a beautiful ride- The beautiful light coming through the fog made me wish that I had time to hang out and wander the coast and pretend to be a landscape photographer...

In Santa Barbara, I met up with my long lost friend Rose and hung out with her housemates.

March 10 - I spent much of the day hanging out in Rose's office at Direct Relief International. They run a huge warehouse operation where they accept donations of all sorts of medical supplies and then ship them all over the world as needed. A few weeks prior, I hadn't expected to be headed to California at all. Let alone ending up way up in the air on the top of a forklift in Santa Barbara.

Mark and Mel of the Beehive Design Collective had been with us on the march, but I hadn't realized that they would be in Santa Barbara- but through some good timing I managed to surprise them and catch their presentation on the FTAA.

March 12 - After an evening catching up with friends back in Los Angeles, I met up with Zach, the other half of twobeardedguys. He'd been out backpacking in Joshua Tree, and we went back out of LA to spend one night camping in Cleveland National Forest.

March 13 - Waking up early and covered with dew high above the cloudline, it was time to head to the airport and back to Philadelphia. After six long weeks on the road, I was looking forward to sleeping in my own bed, but also a bit sad that the adventure had come to an end. But the success of this trip, thanks to the support of many wonderful folks, has me pretty excited about the potential for future adventures. Hopefully the variety of work that I did on this trip will help show people that I really am looking for all sorts of projects, and with a little bit more organization maybe I can keep on doing little trips here and there helping folks out for the rest of my life. Now that wouldn't be a bad thing, would it?