After 21 years as a daily newspaper staff writer, copy editor and editorial and advertising photographer (which most recently included a nearly three-year stint as automotive columnist and car shooter), I am embarking on a new journey and career as a freelance commercial, editorial and movie-stills photographer.
Wish I could say people have told me I'm crazy and wonder why I don't settle for, say, a cush desk job as a public information officer at some well-financed public institution, or perhaps a semi-regular gig as a pet photographer (who doesn't adore poodles in sunglasses and goofy hats set against faux Cape Cod backgrounds?).
But they haven't. Instead, friends, family and colleagues have greeted this unexpected transition as an opportunity to unshackle myself from my wage-slave golden handcuffs and finally set my sights on more creative and brighter horizons.
Oh, ye of great tremendous faith (and, by the way, thank you, one and all).
Best I can tell at this juncture I'm going to shape my blog with a mix of regular assignments (deconstructing the shoot as is common in the photoblogosphere) and images accompanied by storytelling from nearly three decades (and still counting) spent tramping around the globe as a freelance travel photojournalist.
People seem to like the stories behind these images. Time will tell.
After a little hand wringing I decided my first blog should tell the story of one of my favorite images, in black and white, titled "Eye of the Storm" (for the record I don't as a rule title photographs), snapped a week or so after my wife Cathy and I evacuated our New Orleans home the day before Hurricane Katrina hit our beloved city. For six weeks we lived in a 30-foot trailer parked in the driveway of the house where my wife's niece Claire and her family reside in the small, heart-of-Cajun-Country town of Opelousas, La. (FYI: Opelousas is home to the best cracklins and spicy deep-fried boudin balls in the world, if you ask me, thanks to Billy-Ray's Boudin on Short Vine Street.) Claire's wonderful family includes husband Larry and their three children Jacob, Laurel and Tyler James (our godchild). Cathy's oldest brother Francis and his wife Sandie lived right across the street.
Chances are you’ve never met my Louisiana family but perhaps you’ve met people like them – loving and kind, generous and selfless to a fault, hysterically funny and great cooks to boot.
We were lucky and counted our blessings nearly on the hour. Most Hurricane Katrina evacuees did not enjoy the luxury of living in a travel trailer, home-cooked meals and family members to hold them when they wept.
Not knowing whether we had a home, jobs or even a city to return to in those early post-hurricane days, I took to carrying my camera with me nearly everywhere I went, “clinging to what you know and comforts you,” my therapist of yore once told me.
He was right.
One morning when stepping outside our Cherokee trailer, I spied our young niece Laurel a few feet away watching television in the family living room. When she heard me rustling around outside, she turned around on the couch, leaned forward and pressed her finger through a torn hole in the window screen. Without thinking, I grabbed my trusty Nikon and snapped the shot.
It wasn't until later when I was post-processing the image that the haunting nature of the photograph when viewed in the context of our circumstances revealed itself to me. Young Laurel's diminuitive finger widening a hole in the screen, her innocent and expressive eye gazing at me, seemed a fitting metaphor for a child-like Mother Nature and her unpredictable disposition and equally unpredictable, don't-take-it-personally fury that can visit us at any moment.
Eye of the storm, if you will.
