Well occasionally it happens. I am no 6x6 junkie... but it seemed to work for a storm photo this weekend.
Workers at Calumet Lubricants struggle with a football field-sized tarp during a storm that battered the area on Saturday morning.
Hip to be Square
Here goes
So here it is... finally a photo-specific blog. No more digging through Myspace or Xanga.
This blog is an outlet. Not really for images that don't make the paper, because my paper, in print or on the web, publishes nearly everything I shoot.
The images may be outside what I would normally shoot. They may be something I wished had gotten better play. They may be something I want to do better next time. But above all they are images from my own world and of my own vision.
Basically, I have found I shoot more and more exactly what the paper needs, but it doesn't always satisfy the shooter. Hopefully this blog will provide some of what is missing.
Who Is Sitting On Your Couch?
New homeowner Geraldine Smith wipes tears from her eyes and clutches a Bible signed by every volunteer who worked to build her home during the Fuller Center for Housing blitz build in Shreveport's Allendale neighborhood. (Shane Bevel/The Times)
OK, so I've been a little busy the past few weeks and I haven't had time to write much. But I wanted to tell you a little but about one of the things I have been doing.
The Fuller Center for Housing started less than a year ago building low cost housing in Allendale (the most impoverished neighborhood in Shreveport). Less than a year from the beginning of the project the group will have built 20 brand new homes that are replacing uninhabitable shotgun houses from the 1920s and 1930s.
The center uses the same format as Habitat for Humanity (in fact, Millard Fuller founded Habitat) to build low cost housing and guarantee a zero interest loan for the homeowner, who has to also work 400 hours on their own home.
I won't take up enough space and time to tell you about all the cool experiences I had this week and last. All the great people I met both covering and volunteering for the blitz build were great and the homeowners were even better. Overall, the volunteers built TEN houses in 4.5 days!!
But I will tell you about Friday night when I got to listen to Millard speak to a crowd of volunteers from all over the country who had come to build houses here in Shreveport. I watched as a joint choir of a predominantly black and predominantly white church sang together on the same stage. I listened as homeowners and volunteers told stories about working side by side. But the one thing that impacted me the most was what Millard himself said:
So many people pray to God. They say "Lord! What has happened to these poor people; surely there is something to be done? Help them Lord." Then they get up off their knees and they go and sit on the couch and watch TV. When they ask where God is.... what he is doing… why he hasn't helped the people, I respond… God is right next to you… sitting on the couch… watching TV.
So, as I sit here dirty from a day of work at the site… I ask you… who is sitting on your couch? Is there something to be done? Is there something you can do to make the world around you a little better for yourself and others?
Probably so.
Take the initiative. Get your God off your couch and into your community. Shine him up and show him off a little bit through your actions. I promise its gonna make your day better. Not to mention what it will do for someone else's.
If you or someone you know have any interest in working on the housing...please let me know. There is a ton of work left to be done. Anyone can help.
Timeless
I like timeless things.
Objects, people, ideas, concepts, philosophy, motorcycles, cars... and love.
The list goes on, but you get the point. Timeless is a requirement for me. I am not into the newest fad. I am not into the trendy thing. I am not into reality TV and the awful music on the radio. Its all tolerable at best. But true beauty lies in the classics. The things that will always be with us. Its true... I have and occasionally still do listen to my fair share of pop music, or watch a movie purely for dumb entertainment. But for the most part give me the Delta blues singers and a copy of a Faulkner book and I couldn't be happier.
So give me some khaki shorts and a white t-shirt and let me be....
Writing....
Coffee and white gravy rush through my veins and feed the thoughts in my groggy head. Its Friday morning. I haven't slept much and here I sit drinking black tar, digesting my biscuits and trying to write something eloquent. However, it seems I haven't got it in me this August morning. Too many things on my mind? Not enough? Maybe just one? Who knows...
Hell... maybe its the heat.
I write and delete a lot. Just now I have started three different blog entries and deleted each one in its entirety. Maybe I should start putting pen to paper instead of fingers to keyboard. It would surely preserve whatever horrible first paragraphs I write. Then I could compile them.... keep a list of sorts to read through when I can't figure out what to write. It would, at least, keep me from starting something I couldn't finish in the past.
Well three flights scheduled in one week and all three cancelled. The pilot didnt show for one... "The Guvnah" canceled the next and the plane wouldn't start for the last one. Maybe God doesn't want me to fly this week???
I was ok with it today anyhow... below freezing at ground level equates to frozen digits while flying with the windows open at 2000ft and 100mph.
On another note, I only have NINE more days this month that I will be in this hell hole of a city. Speckled Trout in Sargent... Lunch in Houston... Parties in Dallas and quail and hog hunting for 7 days on my family's place in the high plains.... Not to mention Christmas with the family... I can't wait to leave here....
Well... could it be any weirder? Mr. Whitaker... the publisher here, has requested that I accompany him to New Orleans to make a helicopter flyover of the area with Gov. Blanco...
It will be good, but it will also be strange since I have to drive with him all the way to Baton Rouge and back in ONE DAY. Eight hours is a lot of car time for anyone much less a peon photographer and the Big Man.
Beautiful or Significant Things
Several people have asked me to see my "art" photography. Often I wonder what they mean by that. After all, is that not what I do everyday? Is my documentation of life not in fact my art? Well I decided to look it up in the dictionary and there are several different definitions. Here are a few.
ART n 1: the products of human creativity.
2: a superior skill that you can learn by study and practice and observation.
3: photographs or other visual representations in a printed publication.
But my favorite has to be this one.
4: the creation of beautiful or significant things.
So with that in mind I will post a few things that I find beautiful if not significant. These are the things I enjoy shooting. Quiet moments that strike me. A child wearing his father's coat being carried out of a football game in the pouring rain. A laborer working alone under the hot sun. A dedicated wife adjusting the collar of her Alzheimer's-stricken husband before a photo shoot. My sister during her bridal portrait sitting... squatting to rest her legs like she did when she was a young girl.
Portrait of a Young Survivor
Children run through the halls of a French Quarter Catholic school while nuns in flowing white habits try to slow the excitement. The warm, humid November air blows off the river and through the courtyard filled with basketball and four square courts. Guided by the enthusiastic cheers of Sister Mary Rose a group of children unload donated supplies and toys from a truck with Indiana plates while a young survivor gives an interview in the corner.
Earlier... a toilet overflows in a bathroom and a nun tells a group of children they must use the one down the hall because this one is flooded. Moments later a young girl no more than five tugs on the sleeve of the glowing white drape. In a worry-filled voice the girl asks "Sister Mary Rose... how high will the water get this time?" My heart breaks.
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