El Circo Cheap – West Coast Style
I happened to be in LA a week or so back for about 24 hours.
It so happened that some friends of mine from Aloft Aerial Dance were in town doing some performances as part of their El Circo Cheapo Get Rich Slow Tour. So I, of course, wanted to stop by and take some photos. That’s where the performance images that will be appearing over the next week or two came from.
If you happen to be in Chicago I highly recommend you go see El Circo Cheapo. It’s worth the money, easy, and a really fun Friday night.
Ecovillage Tour
The following are a series of panoramics talking about my buddy Damien’s ecovillage, life in it, permaculture, sustainability, and how to make a kickin’ bathroom.
(There are some small issues, tiling to speed load times and low res previews while full res load and that kind of stuff. Just give it a minute to load and look around while you listen to Damien describe his ecovillage.)
First Fridays
This is for a promo piece for the people at First Friday. (First Friday is a Vegas arts festival held the first Friday of each month.) This month there will be a bunch of people going to Burningman who will be showing off their art cars. I figured I’d try and get them a photo of an art car and artist with hope that the local papers would pick it up.
This is Malicious with her car that was inspired by a former neighbor’s annoying dog.
Olivia
Olivia is very proud of and loves her baby chicken very much. She made sure to show it to, and pass it around to all of us, us being Erin, Damien (in the background) and myself.
The three of us had gone to this location to see the landscaping, done in a style known as permaculture. The idea behind it is to capture the water, hold the water and use the water that comes onto the landscape and not to shuffle it off to a gutter as quickly as possible. The water is used to grow all kinds of plants, lots of them being fruit bearing and the like so that fresh food is available in the backyard.
The underlying idea is to create a connection to your immediate environment well also making it more sustainable. The other sneaky part of this was how it creates community. See, we weren’t there to visit Olivia’s backyard, we were there to visit a neighbor and family friend’s backyard, but the families had torn down the fence between their yards. It was one giant garden, one giant green space, one giant communal area. So while we talked to Erik, his neighbor’s daughter Olivia started to talking to us, and we got to know more of the community than just Erik. All in a backyard.
Highland Games
More images of crazy tough Scots and athletes of Scottish heavy sports. From the 2009 Las Vegas Celtic Gathering & Highland Games.
Okay, and it’s a really loose edit. (sing along – It’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to, do what I want to.)
Catching up, Winning Awards
In the mix of moving across the country, I’ve fallen behind on some stuff…one of those items is that at the Illinois Press Photographers Association (IPPA) Best of Photography competition I took awards for 1st place in Portrait, HM in Portrait, and 2nd place in Enterprise Picture Story. Also at the Southern Short Course I took 2nd place in Daily Life and 3rd place in Daily Life Story. All and all not to bad. Not great, I’d like to have done better, but on the other hand that’s always true.
The winning entries are related to my story on Michele. Michele is a breast cancer fighter/survivor. I documented you her battle throughout 2008 and into 2009. I hope to continue to document her in the future, even with the flights involved. By the way, if you ever get a chance to meet her, she’s a great human being.
The image below is after her 2nd chemo round, during which she stopped breathing from anaphalatic shock, this is during the elevator right down to the car. This is the image that took first in Portrait.
Highland Games
From the 2009 Las Vegas Celtic Gathering & Highland Games, because even Las Vegas has crazy Scots throwing rocks and trees. (And I’m not calling the Scottish bad crazy, just a “I can’t throw a 22lbs stone over a 100 feet and would never do anything to annoy them good crazy.”)
Party for the Laid-Off
This was a party for the group of us that were laid-off. Some of the people here saw their last day and some just came to buy drinks and talk…and maybe do a little singing as well.
