California was great. This is a photo of Nate Kaufman. We met Nate on a cold stormy afternoon in Point Reyes National Seashore Park. It's about 45 minutes North of San Francisco. This beach was surly and looked pretty intimidating. The wave sets were really disorganized and frothy and we were sure that it could not be surfed. Lo and behold, two minutes later we see this guy run down the beach and put his board into the foam pile and begin paddling out. The light was fading and we thought for sure he was going to be hammered by the snarling water. We watched as he tried for about 30 minutes to paddle out and get some reprieve from the onslaught of breaking monster waves. Finally, exhausted and spent he came back ashore. It was a brave (crazy!) try. We headed down the beach to see if he was ok and say hi and he told us that his dad had passed away last year and this day would have been his birthday. He had come to scatter his dad's ashes in the pacific and he showed us the film canister he kept tucked in his wetsuit with the ashes. Nate is finishing school and then thinking of going on an extended surfing holiday in the South Pacific before deciding what he "wants to do with his life".  He was cool enough to shoot some photos in the surf and some portraits in the parking lot up on the cliffs. I like this photo especially with the gravity of what this day was and the significance of his dad's birthday. Funny, because had we left the beach two minutes earlier we never would have met.

Happy rainy April. About to embark on a trip to California this week for a wedding and hopefully to photograph a few more people. We were in Niagara Falls yesterday. It's odd how it seems that at every amazing natural wonder, humans have somehow managed to accentuate things with the most tacky and sad offerings. In a place with such wondrous natural splendor there is countless cheap motels and broken down remnants of better times.

So, today, I'm going to include another person I photographed last year. Stan Chedlak lives in Bloomfield Hills, MI. He was originally from the Czech republic. He' a former champion kayaker and still paddles all these insane trips every year in some really gnarly places. I first met him about 12 years ago up in Lake Superior in a November Kayak festival where we all watched from the beach as Stan tried to surf some swells on a prototype kayak he designed. He was repeatedly getting hammered into the beach by the waves but would emerge each time from near drowning with a smile and twinkle like a kid after riding a roller coaster. He also worked as an engineer for many years and even taught at various universities all over the US. He is a guy with a really storied past who went through incredible adversity to come to America. We met up on a drizzly day and spent the afternoon kayaking on a small lake 20 minutes from his house. I shot lots of stuff with Stan laughing and paddling in his ocean kayak..but for some reason I liked this photo..it's odd and he was just talking about his feelings on Michigan and how there are too many people jet-skiing and ruining the "natural" order of things. 

I'm posting a picture from last summer of a woman I photographed in rural Pennsylvania. Her name is Joanne Landis and she's a really intriguing woman. She lived in NYC and garnered some attention for being a promising up and coming artist. As life happens however, she went through some twists and turns. Fast forward to present and she now lives in a really remote area of the mountains in a beautiful area of the state. She lives alone on a wonderful piece of land where she paints and writes. Her house is modest and feels like it's out of a movie set really. It's incredibly eclectic and has the sense of organized chaos. She has no t.v, no computer, no Internet.  Her studio is an adjacent barn across the road where she paints really mesmerizing large canvases. We spent the afternoon drinking coffee and talking about art, music, New York;  Sept 11th and how it really impacted her, the loneliness and solitude of living alone in the woods and the ideas of success and motivation of one's pursuit of artistic expression. She is not someone who likes getting photographed (like most people!) but after a few hours of talking she agreed to let me take her picture and we ended up having a really wonderful time. 

I sent her some copies of the pictures and she wrote a beautiful note back thanking me. She thought they were the truest and most honest pictures she's ever had. I like this one here.

I also finally got a chance to photograph a great woman, Michelle from Ann Arbor, MI. Michelle has a interesting story because she was born in Canada and then travelled all over the world doing research and working. She met her husband, who is American, overseas and then moved back to the US. They have moved around in different places for school and work and are trying to find their footing in terms of the bet place to raise a family and balance work and home. They are some of the nicest and smartest people you could ever meet. 

Like many American's they are trying to figure out their direction and where they are going to live and work and what they want out of life. Sometimes the people who are the most common sometimes have the most uncommon stories.

So, it's been a long time since the last post. Busy busy..and lots of news. The new website for the project is going up soon and there is about to be a big launch everywhere possible to get people involved and have their say-----Tell all your friends!!!

I went to Toledo, Ohio last week to Photograph Matthew Deshayno. Great guy and he's really trying to make things happen. He works at the Stop N' Go Liquor Store on the outskirts of Toledo, which is really depressed and struggling to find it's way. Ohio has the Nation's second Highest unemployment rate right now, so things are tough. Matt's from Arizona and is in school for nuclear medicine. He's had a tough go in Toledo; living in his car, selling blood plasma for cash and working a bunch of odd jobs to get by and pay for school. He's trying hard and his 'AMERICAN DREAM" Is heartbreakingly honest and inspiring. Here's his photo here; taken on a sunday night outside the liquor store.