Where have I been and where I am going?
So, I have been absent for a bit, which I think became a pretty common thing after the pandemic provided many of us the opportunity to put time and effort into new endeavors until the grinding wheel of work and life lurched slowly to life (which is probably the category that I fall under). Though, to be fair, the pandemic also limited my ability to go out and shoot, mostly because — regardless of how others feel about it, I thought it would be best to keep things limited until vaccines were available. I refuse to debate the personal choices of those who do or don’t vaccinate, that is not what my work is about.
So, where have I been? Working my desk job…a lot. By nature my job, and the impact that the pandemic had on it, asked of me to give as much of my time as I possibly could. As a public servant, and my natural tendency to focus on a mission, this is what I do. However, I went to New Mexico with my partner to meet her family for the first time in May. New Mexico IS the land of enchantment. It is one of the most amazing landscapes; the oil fields with their sulfurous flares, pump jacks, drilling rigs and pulling units, open desert, the largest single room under the earth in the Unites States, the blinding white and disorienting dunes of the Tularosa Basin, food that is a blend of the Mexican and First Nation cultures, and a sense of how old everything is, but also how tenuous some of these are once it becomes less profitable to suck oil and gas out of the earth.
Price Per Barrel The Human Cost of Extraction
Where I am going: My partner has written a book. It’s a very good book. It’s a very honest book. It’s about the men and women who serve their communities as fire fighters, medics, public safety officers, and the effect that the economic boom and eventual bust of the extraction based industries has on these people and on the towns they serve. One thing it is NOT about is speaking against or for the extraction industries. Some of it is about her own experiences as a firefighter, a medic, as a woman working in a field that is dominated by men. It is about her love of travel, and need to experience a place not just as a passenger, but really in her case it is more from the driver’s seat. So, as two fully vaccinated people, we’re packing up the dog, packing up three weeks worth of time, and going on her book tour. Over 7,000 miles. Driving. That is a lot of country, a lot of story, and especially patience. It also means a lot of film and photo gear. There will not much time to experience one place long enough to get to know it well, but long enough to know that we will want to come back. From the gas and oil fields of the Bakken, to Jackson, Wyoming, Moab, Utah, Morenci, AZ — the largest open pit mine in the United States — to Artesia, NM and its refinery in the centre of town and the constant rumble of trucks. The book will be available Oct 22, 2021.
Where is the website going and what is my way forward? I am reorganizing things in a more logical (to me) manner, and starting to remove the content that I now find either uninteresting or banal over a year and a half later, or contrived and has a million of others like it out there. Also, in early 2022 I wish to return to my childhood home in Sperryville, VA and visit a few more of the homesteads within the Shenandoah National Park, continuing my project and hopefully track down families of those homesteads to speak with and share the images where their family used to live. Also, the ability to purchase prints will be coming in the very near future. More on that in November (yes, of 2021…shocking). I also would like to be more engaged with an audience, taking this endeavor more seriously, but not take myself as seriously…after all, I am a goofy ***k.