How I'm feelin'.

the worms crawl in. the worms crawl out.

Film Noir Detectives

My mother is a bad ass.

...The probabilities would swirl in the corners of my eyes, and if I turned my head quickly, I could catch the future growing behind. Stasis or travel, symmetry of adventure. Why did I never glimpse myself standing there? I found no lines, no planes, nothing flat or straight, nothing simple, nothing set, only arcs of possibilities to enfold myself in...

.claudia.smith.brinson.

Today, my mom and Frank came to visit. I'm starting a new project and they came up to help me brainstorm. Afterwards, we went to lunch, then wandered through an antique shop, an art shop and a used bookstore.
In the bookstore, we were looking in the Dead Guys and Award Winners section when my mom got excited and grabbed a book. "Kendrick! Kendrick! This is it! This is the year!" (I was confused. We weren't looking for anything in particular.)
She flipped through the table of contents of the 1990 The O'Henry Awards Prize Stories book and found her name.

My mom is a writer. Growing up, when I was at my dad's house on the weekends, she would lock herself in her study and type on her typewriter all weekend, pausing only to eat popcorn.
For more than 30 years she worked as a journalist. Most of those years at The State Newspaper in Columbia. Without knowing it at the time, I got my love for storytelling and people from her.

We laughed about setting up a table and having a one book book signing outside of the used bookstore. She bought me a copy of the book because I shamefully have never read the story. (It's embarrassing really, students in college lit classes have read it and I haven't.)

Anyways, this was a bright spot in my day and I thought I'd share.
(For those of you who don't know, the O. Henry award is given to the 20 best stories of the year. Stephen King, John Updike, Alice Walker, Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O'Connor are just some of the people who have been honored with this award through the years. Thus, my mama is a badass.)

Age Ain't Nothin' But a Number

Yesterday, I did a "Senior Fashion" shoot at a senior living community in town.
The women were such a joy to spend time with, very lighthearted and energetic.

Here's one from the shoot: Bunny Davis, 89.
After the shoot, the women requested a group shot. Ruth (left) said the ladies should pretend I was a cute sailor, which brought on a guffaw and the coy body language.
As I was packing up my gear, Ruth candidly told me a recent story about a man caught sneaking out of someone's bedroom at 3am in his pajamas. While she clearly disapproved of such actions, she said, "We're seniors. We're not dead."

A Photo A Day's Geekfest 2008: St. Petersburg, Florida

Baby, It's Hot.

August in Augusta feels much like the inside of an oven. If a swamp was inside the oven. If the 12,600 degree core of the Earth were inside that swamp. And if the hot chocolate I burn my tongue on every December were poured on top of that smoldering core.

Finding people to photograph braving the heat regularly proves difficult. The "heat feature" is the cross us photojournalists bear every summer. Surprisingly, heat is breaking news just about every week.
I finally spotted these girls sweating under the shade of a tree in a playground yesterday.
These images couldn't run in the paper, so I thought I'd post them here.

(i'm not a huge fan of the image above, but the expression on the one face pretty much summed up my feelings.)

Green is my favorite color.

This past weekend I attended APhotoADay's annual Geekfest, which was based out of St. Petersburg, Florida this year. I am so inspired by the energy and talent of passionate photojournalists. I got a kick in the booty to step it up a notch and I got to put faces to names to the photos I've admired.
Here are just a few Geeks, some I already knew, in order of appearance:
Amelia Phillips Ariel Zambelich Brandon Kruse Greg Kahn Thomas Patterson David Walter Banks James Gregg Matt Slaby Luanne Dietz