Around the Bend

Oregon Coast: Thea

Montana Nostalgia

If you're ever in the area, Polebridge MT is a truly special place. Although at least 1/5 of the town is portrayed within this frame, I assure you its well worth the 15 miles of dirt road it takes to get there. Just to give you an idea of the laid back earthy attitude that permeates the place, my brother and I were taking refuge in the shade of a nearby yard as we waited for a hitch into the NW part of Glacier national park. When the women who lived there walked out on her porch I apologized for sitting on her lawn, to which she responded "if its a good place for you its a good place for me." Wow.
And the baked goods at the mercantile are delectable.

Portland Lowlands

Feeling blessed with great old and new friends.

Far and Away

Hello, again. Please excuse my long blog absence. During my month and a half in Glacier National Park, I had very little internet access (rather nice, actually). And to think, I subsisted without constant snacking on those little tidbits of web simululacrum we're all so hooked on. I worked, I walked, I met and photographed interesting people, and I breathed in the bigness of the Montana sky.
My project on the Blackfeet Indian Tribe is still very much a work in progress. I've got pictures to show, but I really don't want to post them out of context on this blog. It looks like I'll be going back to continue work on it next summer, and possibly even this winter. We'll see. Feeling good about the interactions, but less so about the photos. Thats OK.
As for now, I'm on the road again visiting friends. Missoula MT, Bellingham WA, Portland OR (now), Eugene OR, Zion NP UT, Carbondale CO, Boulder CO and back home to Chapel Hill NC. Somehow enamored with the NW in a way that I wasn't when I lived here. Its probably just the people I'm spending time with. Lots of nice moments.

Back to Montana

In brief: I'm done with my internship in IN, just came off a wonderful roadtrip with my brother toby (shown above catching a hitch in a truck bed in Glacier National Park), and now I'm working at a cafe on the border of the park which I used to work at in college. I'm splitting my time between hiking, working on a project on the nearby Blackfeet Indian Tribe and spending time with the wonderful crew here at the cafe. Oh, and working. That too. This is the good life. I would write more, but internet is $3 per 15 minutes here. So for now I'll just include a couple more pictures.

Dog Show

At the Zoo

There's a tube that goes right through the otter tank at the Evansville zoo.

Ruthless...

but,
he cannot escape his kharma.

Kanna's Fight

I had a pretty neat assignment over the past couple days to photograph a model who's training to be a mixed martial arts fighter. She's struggled with being hearing impaired from a young age, and she's sees her training as a way to sort of overcome that. A really cool person.

Kid Leisure

Shadow Chorus

Grief Camp

These pictures came from a 2 day long grief camp. It was designed for kids who have lost a family member to get together, share their experiences and to let loose and have fun. I did get some fun pictures, too, and thats what ran in the paper.

Little Dragons

This is from a photo column I shot and wrote about a tae kwon do class for 4-6 year olds. Actually, it was mainly about the hard-core martial arts instructor who taught the class. "I'm not your baby sitter, I'm your martial arts teacher," he'd tell those little guys. Damn strait. Put 'em in their places.

Buddy Ball

A couple things: 1) I just finished my multimedia project on Buddy Ball, a T-ball league for kids with special needs. 2) I also just finished my portfolio website. You can find it at sergegiachetti.com
Take it for a spin and let me know what you think. The interface makes it really easy to adjust the site content, so hopefully I'll be replacing and adding content to the site frequently. If you care to to take a peek at my buddy ball piece you can find it on my website under multimedia. After photographing these kids for a few sunday's, I'm hoping to get out there and volunteer to be a Buddy in the next couple of weeks. I already miss going out there.

Safe at Home Base

Graduation Weekend

I photographed 3 graduations this weekend, two of them back to back. Fun. Tiring. Good practice for the high school graduations I'll be shooting next week.

Hurdles

Mattie

I've got a little mock portfolio setup to show others what I'm thinking about submitting for The Eddie Adams workshop. 100 newish photographers get accepted every year and are treated to an all expenses paid workshop with a lot of tops people in the industry. Feel free to comment if you have preferences on what I should submit. I'll let ya'll know how it goes.

Rain Feature

Just when I was resigning myself to the idea that I'd have to go back to my editor with a pretty standard umbrella weather picture, this girl with a super cool transparent umbrella walked by. I guess they designed it so that the dome could come right down over your face and you could still see where you're going. This girl was one of those people who seemed ready made to be featured in the newspaper. It turned out that it was her birthday. No hesitation, she said, "well if its going to rain on my birthday, I guess I'll dance it." How cool is that?!

A Hula Natural

This kid was a total hula natural. He spun 7 hoops at once, and he just picked it up for the first time. And since his name is Jordan, I'm gonna go ahead and say that he's the Jordan of Hula-Hooping.
...................
Correction: After further research, it has become clear to me that she, and not Jordan, is the true "Jordan of Hula-Hoop."

Peripheral Primaries

Yeah, at this point, thats how I feel about the primaries too.
Or, like this.
But, I'll end on a more hopeful note.

Where's Waldo: Deluxe Photographer Edition

This from tonight's Obama rally in Evansville. Funny story from tonight: about half way through Obama's speech a reporter who was doing video came up to me urgently asking for one of my memory cards, so I gave her one that I hadn't used yet from my pocket, thinking that she had run out of memory. After the speech I went back to the Courier table where my editor was submitting remotely from a laptop. He asked me why there was no Obama pictures on the card that the reporter had retrieved from me. What I thought was a request for a card to use, was actually a request for Obama pictures to update the website with. Whats funny, is that while there certainly wasn't any Obama pictures on the card, there was some left over personal shots, such as my photo collage panorama of sauteed veggies.
A couple weeks back while cooking up some fresh vegetables I couldn't help but notice how pretty the vegetables looked, partly sliced red, green and yellow peppers splayed out across my wooden cutting board, with some already in the black pan (you're just going to have to trust me on that one). So I took like a 40 small macro shots of different portions of the scene, to eventually combine into one large photo collage to put on my wall. The thought of my editor frantically looking for Obama pictures to post online, only to find dozens of arty macro shots of sliced veggies just makes me laugh.

Clowning

As I've mentioned to some of you, this job tosses you into some pretty strange and otherworldly situations. I count bowling with clowns as such a situation. Trying to have an earnest conversation with a clown in character can be a little tricky (not quite as tough as mascots), but engaging in an activity for a couple hours with like 6 clowns is a different matter entirely. So, instead I just did as clowns do, and celebrated with gusto, acted deeply dismayed at small failures, and just generally smiled a lot. I had a great time and even got an honorary clown nose on my way out (I wasn't even going to try to say no to a clowns nose). I got invited to go out to dinner with the group, but unfortunately I was on deadline. Next time, right.

Playground

Chicago: Under the Bean

Whew...after roughly 2 1/2 months of visiting friends and family across the country, I'm finally getting settled in for my new internship at The Evansville Courier & Press in Indiana. Thanks so much to all you generous people who helped put a roof over my head and for your excellent company. As I just rented out a new apartment, I'd be glad to return the favor for anyone who might pass through the area (or if you just want come visit me in E-ville). My new address is: 950 S. Spring St. Apt. C, Evansville, IN 47714. (My apartment is in the house with 2 red cars parked outside the garage.)

Chicago: Evan Online

NYC: Park Trees

NYC: MOMA

NYC: Subway Moves

NYC: Chris

Chapel Hill: Courtney