Athens County tornados

I got a call from Dustin Franz Thursday evening, telling me I needed to get down to Athens as soon as possible. (For those of you who don't know, I recently relocated to Columbus after graduating.) Having planned to go to Norfolk, VA the following day, I figured I might as well knock a little time off the trip and come down Thursday night to see the extent of the damage, and plan to wake up early on Friday to work before I continued on to Norfolk.

I made it into Nelsonville at right about midnight, on the dot, and pulled over to talk to a really helpful AEP employee in the Kroger parking lot. She was buying snacks for the crews, and apparently Kroger was the only food store in town that had electricity. She directed me towards an area outside of Nelsonville that had been hit pretty hard, so I headed in that direction. The officers on-site were extremely helpful and allowed me further down the road while it was being cleared.






Afterwards, I went back and edited with friends, then got to bed as early as possible, so I could get up and head back out to the families I had met the previous night.







All things considered, everybody I met was in a good mood. I think the understanding that things can be replaced and people can't struck a chord with those affected by the disaster.

Recent

Another from Brew Week

Recent Glouster

7/22/2010 Glouster

Help a fellow photographer

Hey guys,
My friend from Chicago, Daniel Shea, crashed on the futon this weekend while working on his project titled Plume. Prior to this, Daniel spent some time in the area working on a project called Removing Mountains.

To all the Ohio kids- make sure to check this work out. It's about our area, but very different from the work we're used to seeing. Lastly, he currently has a print sale going on, so check that out, too. The money is being used to further the project, and there's some really great work for very reasonable prices.


And here's two of mine from the weekend.

She Bears hit the road.

Headed up to Columbus last night with She Bears to see them off on tour. You ought to check them out, they're probably going to be playing somewhere near you in the next few months. I saw all of my friends climb into a minivan and drive away, so I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do in Athens now.

Regardless, here's a picture of Maddie, who was also able to make it out.

Palmerfest

Recent portraits

I ended up turning these images of my friend Abby for my representational portrait assignment due in class last week. I'm not quite sure they fit the bill, but I liked the images well enough, and I wanted to turn in something very unique and really try to push myself with the assignment.

Wanderings

West Side Elementary wrestling for The Athens News

Chris Riley of Athens, Ohio

for Ohio Magazine

Over summer I did a portrait of a local guitar builder, Dan Erlewine, for Ohio Magazine. It was nice because I didn't have to travel--Dan lives just outside of town. Had I still been in my old house, I could've walked to the assignment.

portrait

Portrait of a guy I met in Chillicothe over the weekend.

Home sweet home

[Chillicothe, OH]

Hartman's

I swung out to the farm I shot at for 392, Hartman's Dairy in The Plains. I've been working on a story about the economy for my magazine writing class and I figured (rightfully so) that a farmer would be going through some tough times right now with grain prices, fuel prices, and most importantly milk prices.

Ron, his mother and father, and his son Abe were all working. They've been buying a lower-grade sawdust to save money and lately have been spending time filtering it through a homemade filter (read: fan housing and chicken wire.)

It was really good to see them- I haven't been out there for a few months. They're always happy to see me show up. Ron and I took a ride out through the pasture on his Gator to see a calf that was born at 6:30pm last night. Riding along, wind blowing in my face and all, it just felt really good. I can't really explain it, but there are a lot of good things happening.

Smoking pictures are cliche

I should stop putting them online?

Snow day

Speaker

Here's the last frame I shot for the ANews this quarter. It's pretty boring, but I guess I'm happy that I found a slightly different look on a speaker picture. It even reproduced halfway decent.

Soul of Athens

Soul of Athens went up today... a bit late but no worries, right?

Here's a link to my piece:

The Gathering Place