Beach Goth Party Photos & Reflection

GALLERY

     When I was 19, my favorite musician was Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls. I was going to college in Iowa and when my friend, Connor Mulhern, asked me if I wanted to photograph a Frank Turner show for dyingscene.com, I was very enthusiastic about the opportunity. I met up with Connor in Milwaukee, WI, and we interviewed and took pictures of Frank and the opening act, Andrew Jackson Jihad (AJJ).
     I photographed to the best of my abilities for someone who didn't know what an aperture was. Although I was dissatisfied with the images I took, I became enamored with the experience. This show was the inciting incident for what would soon become an obsession with photography. An obsession that would eventually take me across the country to Ventura, California to study photojournalism.
     I think it is significant that I photographed AJJ exactly three years from when these images were taken. I took the first ones at a very formative time in my life. Now, as I prepare to graduate in December, it feels like an important benchmark. Today, I am just as unhappy with the images as I was in 2011. My hope is that in three years I can photograph AJJ again and feel just as dissatisfied. If there is one thing I've learned during these last few years, it is that dissatisfaction breeds growth and powers improvement. LINK TO THE GALLERY 

This is a dancer for Alice Glass

Here are some photos I took from the show in 2011:

 Andrew Jackson Jihad

Connor, Mitch, Frank and I after the interview

Downtown Milwaukee

When I'm nervous I take pictures.

I realized that I haven't blogged since the end of Reno.

Since then, I've been unable to shoot as often as I would like and certainly not as much as I did over the summer. My main focus has been put towards shooting a documentary with Sarah Bourscheid and Chris Martinez out near the Salton Sea in Slab City.  The documentary is about a woman named Moria and her husband, Ben Morofsky... I won't say anymore now, but I'm very excited about it!

Anyhoo. Coming home is weird. No matter how long you're gone for it always seems to be strange. In these few days that I've spent here before I go to the Eddie Adams Workshop, I have been very nervous. I've found that the best way for me to deal with any emotion is just to photograph... so this is what I've been trying to do a lot of. Some of the things I've been posting are on my INSTAGRAM account, but here are the rest!

Sleepy Sarah after spending a very chilly night in the car in Bombay Beach

Reflection of a man reading a book

Adam Apple Orchard

Marcell and his tractor in Williston, Vt

So many apples

Polly Dakin. 

Apples

Autumn

Leaves

Found a lizard

Honky Tonk Tuesday

Honky Tonk Tuesday

My Aunt's birthday

And then I ran into Bernie Sanders...