creepy cousins

Dylan and Emily.

B.J.

This is B.J. Spann, 18. He is preparing to graduate from Gateway Technical High School in St. Louis. His dream is to design cars. His goal is to get into MU. His reality is low ACT scores. I am going to follow him on his journey the next couple of months.

Illustration for Illumination Magazine about teachers receiving performance based pay.

workmanship

My photography of late feels convoluted, covered by fog, tarnished by workmanship. My pictures are voiceless and too careful.

I want to stand on my own two feet with an open heart and see clearly. I want to take pictures that tell the truth. I don't want to be scared. I don't want to bore.

Help....

Mike Wehr's garden

lineup

Inspire: http://www.blakeandrewsphoto.com/lineups/index.html

Donald Peters

I met Donald at a farm sale on a cold March afternoon in Indiana. He was bidding on tractor supplies and I was freezing my ass off. He told me a story about a national geographic article he read once, about windmills in Holland and how they are repaired by a man lowered down by helicopter.

I dream of faces like Donald's. Weathered and contoured like the tilled Indiana soil he has worked for the past 60 years. Donald, 72, grew up during the golden age of photography, and is why, I think he not only allowed me to make his photograph, but did so gladly.

Why are so many people afraid of the camera, especially the people worth photographing? Times are changing, I just hope we are not letting it go undocumented.

the apple of my eye

physics in a bag

boatman

squash my head

This is my attempt at an illustration for an ad in Nature magazine, for the study of plant genomics here at the University. I was instructed to show the University's strong research foundation, incorporating the idea of synergy. I don't know, maybe.

old books

Things this old make me feel naive. Like I'm missing some great truth, or that the hope of reaching said truth has been lost to past eras. I wonder about each one's journey. How they got here, where they have been. And then, think about the journey each one of them shoulders on its pages. I don't know if I would want an eternity of bearing the fall of Troy, but this copy (center) of the Iliad bears the weight fairly well.

funcie

Nostalgia fills my tired shoes as I rummage through thoughts of familiar people and places. I am happy recalling memories of a simpler time and place in my life.

Tana and I traveled to Muncie this weekend.

There is something about Muncie's false sense of confidence that is comforting. I can relate to the smell of its unlit streets and abundance of potholes.

Be well Muncie.

Smoky Mountain hop

Good friend John Klemme and I, as we set out to conquer the Smokey Mountains last summer.

wah wah law school