Washington DC Wedding, Ryan + Candice

On Saturday I assisted for my friend, Nick Stroccia, with a wedding on Capitol Hill. Here are a few of my favorites from my camera. I've always found "second shooter" responsibilities pretty low key - tote some gear, take some pretty photos, stay out of the way! Nick is always super professional. He handles more weddings than I do each year, so it's also a great way to pick up a few tips. And what a beautiful, sunny day!

Chuck Brown's Wake - Howard Theater, 29 May 2012

Is it correct to say that hundreds turned out - or was it possibly more like thousands - to pay their respects to Chuck Brown, Godfather of Go-Go music, at the Howard Theater earlier this week? For me the number was not clear. What was clear was the amount of love that the people of Washington DC shared for this man. To celebrate a person's life at the time of their death can sometimes sound like a cliche - On this day that is exactly what took place and in a way that would be hard to measure.

A few more from the set here

Darryl - Portraits of Ledroit Park Neighbors

Looking out the window last week, I saw my neighbor Darryl getting his hair cut on the sidewalk, so I grabbed my camera and ran outside with 4 shots left on an old roll of film. “If you're going to do that on the sidewalk I'm going to need a photo,” I remarked.

Darryl was born and raised in Ledroit Park, and he takes a lot of pride this fact, and he has a certain “old school” mentality that you really just need to respect. I’m sure the haircut is just another demonstration of this thinking. He loves the elders in the community and always has a story about growing up in the neighborhood. On that day he told me about his high school football team and the asphalt practice field they played on. “We were the toughest kids in the city, and no one wanted to play us,” he told me

On previous days Darryl pointed out some faded, barely legible text scrawled in spray paint on one of the houses on the block. Today you would probably not notice the words “Soul Brother” as you walked down the sidewalk, but Darryl remembered when houses were tagged during the MLK riots in the hopes that certain houses would be spared.

The Innocents

A piece aired yesterday on NPR that I found particularly interesting. What Happens if Justice Fails was a story about innocent men and women who were incarcerated for serious crimes that they did not commit. In the last 23 years over 2000 people have been exonerated and released as a result of new evidence (often DNA), changing witness testimony, admissions from those who actually committed the crime, etc.

It is a chilling thought - the prospect of loosing a decade or more of one's life as a result of a flawed process or by the word of a well meaning witness. In my mind it was also immediate material for a powerful portrait project ... and of course I was not the only/first person to think so. A quick google search guided me to the work of Taryn Simon and her book The Innocents.

Both the project and the commentary are worth the time. In all of Taryn's work I'm particularly struck by the way that her elegant photos are elevated by her intent as an artist.

"Ronald Jones" by the photographer Taryn Simon from The Innocents, 2002

A Headshot for an Improv Performer

A few weeks ago I got together with local DC improv perfomer, Laura Westman, to work on a series of headshots for her comp card. We spent some time on a traditional headshot, and then I photographed her "in character" while she told me a story.

I posted her selects below - More improv portraits here.