In Participle; A Melody of Lessons

It has been proven to me that I am protected by God’s grace.  In Ukraine my cell phone was stolen and I did not fret. 2 hours later the criminal “felt bad” and sought me out and returned it. Two days ago my computer was stolen out of my hotel room without me knowing it. I left at 10 am and the criminal came in while the cleaning lady was present, stated he was me and took my computer and my passport. My entire Chinese project was on this computer. I received a call from the police saying that they had my computer, and that they had the criminal too. I said, “Why?” I did not freak out, at all. I had no even thought that i needed to stay calm. Two hours later after the criminal took my computer  he was caught trespassing in another hotel trying to sell the computer. Two hours later. Without me even knowing it was taken and returned. I did not get to meet either criminal. As I left the SF police station I told the policeman to tell the criminal that I forgave him and wasn’t angry but wanted him to know that God loved him.

I can not answer why God’s protection and provision looks like it does or when it works or how to obtain it. I can proclaim though that it is active without our effort or participation more often than some would like to think and it is most relevant to our understanding and noticeable in our ways when out into the world we, our soul steps and in the will of God then we, our soul found.

Jesus is the least of these so what am I to me? What are my possessions or my purpose? If I am passing prophets (without the time to talk for they are good without me) for the purpose of the Lords will in my life, than not only do I mimic the zealousness of the early disciples who wouldn’t give time to the poor asking for Jesus’ healing, but I make given plans more important than given purpose.

Don’t be frightened, dont be scared, this calling is for you.

At Grace Cathedral in San Francisco I began to write this message and I was reminded of two stories as my eyes closed, present, and open to the sounds of the youth choir i used to sing in echoing against the stone pillars. The youth choir live in between peaks falsetto and the troughs of the pipe organ.  Two stories about two friends I have met in my travels where God’s protection was present but did not look as “successful” as a returned cell phone or computer.

I am reminded that I have met others whose life in faith has shown protection that looked different. There were Elijah and Isaiah. My friend Elijah in Uganda saw his father get assassinated before presidential elections as a 13 year old. In the following minutes his family was killed as he ran into the jungle. His father was the rebel leader who overthrew Abote. For three days Elijah hid in dead bodies left in a pile in his town. When he got up he was taken into custody by child soldiers and fought with them for five years. An uncle recognized him and bought him out of that army. Two years later after being saved in flesh he was saved in spirit and is now pastoring in Kampala.

Isaiah, a pastor in Angola who was teaching both sides of the war about the Lord, sent his family to the market along his routine route one day so he could finish some activity during the war in 2002. That day someone had placed explosives in the road to assassinate Isaiah. The family didn’t come home and that day Isaiah had to pick up his family with the help of my other friend.

Mark 5 has been my “status” inside along with Romans and God’s personal gifting of vision and purpose.  Friends, the Lord has revealed to me something, not more than words can say, actually not words at all, but he has revealed to me an attitude of heart. There aren’t words with the attitude of heart.

We can’t expect to hold the knowledge of who needs Jesus. As the disciples were blinded by the mission of Jesus when the two blind men asked for help I am blinded when I relate the troughs and peaks with my strengths and my weak.  If you weigh measures of the Lord in possibility, then you leave yourself with room for doubt. Possibility doesn’t prove existence.  God’s love can’t be replicated. Prepare to be interrupted by the Lord while on the road to the Lord’s work.

I don’t currently own a working or complete pair of flip flops.

To Kill a Mocking CityBird

Welcome to my blog. I am a filmmaker and photographer. I currently have a head ache. I love Detroit, and well, now that my video is out, many Detroiter’s have expressed that they don’t love me or my video. Most people consider word choice more than meaning. Too few actually acquire the freedom to photograph. To photograph what comes along the way is to be living with a camera in hand. What am I but just another chamber of Detroit’s orchestra.  In my city, Shooting only adds to the music. Passing prophets for your purpose makes your works more than your meaning.

When you find your name on Michael Moore’s homepage, that is when you know you have done something polar. The Wall Street Journal purchased my content and my story on a dump truck that was hanging forever out of a fourth floor window at the Packard Plant and ran it front page in today’s paper. An editor told me it was the first time ever a photographer had pitched a story to the WSJ that they ran.  I am interested in telling my side of the story.

I just returned from doing a film series in China on the renewable energy sector to show to Congress/the Obama administration when I learned that this story was actually going to be in the WSJ. Not only in, but on the front page. If I didn’t have to edit all day tomorrow, I would tell you more about China, More about how I got to the actually film/photograph this dump truck event, and how my laptop with all my china work on it was stolen in SF today, only to be returned in 2 hours. Maybe more tomorrow.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125745924791631907.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_RIGHTTopCarousel

PS. I am available for freelance work in Detroit/the world.

New York Times, PDN

Photography this week; Local empty store front advertising real store with cardboard cutouts of a pig and sausage, a few boxes of cardboard cheese and cardboard milk. This was placed to show what Detroit could be with investment. Below; on the set of Red Dawn.

My Story comes out tomorrow in the New York Times about the pro life movement here in Michigan. It is the work I am most proud of because it was three days of quick photography, daily deadlines and lots of car travel. I think 7 different locations. The hardest part was my new macbook pro failed. And my backup computer failed. And the model the mac store gave me to replace failed (thanks Snow Leopard). 3667 images for the story. Damien Cave, the writer, was awesome enough to let me transmit from his computer, while he was typing the story.

It will be a lens blog, listed below, a audio slideshow and a photo story in the paper.

The Lens Blog is a blessing to me because it was unexpected. I will write more later. Right now, off to prayer.

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/behind-19/

Damien, a writer for the New York Times, holds a white board while my photo subject holds a photograph she took of an aborted baby. Make Shift photo studio.

On a side note, it has been a most amazing day today. Rainy, which hindered the tempers of the children who were going to fight. I did not photograph any fight today nor did i see any police.

I met the president of a camera case company last year on a plane. He saw my crappy camera bag and told me he would send me a new one from his company. A year later I have nothing but that is cool with me. But I figured I would call the company and find out if the offer was still there. So I did, I explained everything. The company said that the guy was no longer with the company but that they would send out a bag of my choice. I sent them two examples of the bags totally a lot of money that I was going to buy and I received an email back that both bags would be in the mail for me for free.

All I can say is that when God has something for you to do, he equips.

I also thank Daryl Lang and PDN for getting my story about yesterday out to the other photogs out there.

Until Financial Stability

My friend Jackie Victor and I were talking about major media being in town to cover Detroit.  I was at my usual spot, Avalon, discussing that most stories being told were actually just being retold. The packard plant being on the cover of a major magazine addressing Detroit was the example we both agreed not the best choice from a Detroiters’ perspective for a cover shot that should have been different.

So what story isn’t being told? I’m 22,000 images into a photo/video documentary in my search for who detroit is. My hope with this letter is to ask the detroiters themselves to help me by opening their lives. (thank you to those who have volunteered so far).

Please read this blog post and help me find the stories to tell. from bar mitzvah to mosques, car lovers to the unemployed, young and successful to a hip hop artist. My goal is 70 day-in-the-life photo stories with video and written components in the next 12 months.

My mom just wrote to me this after she read this desire to photograph Detroit, “My prayer is that you will look to those who are doing good in Detroit, to those who are living productive lives in Detroit, to those who are in love and making their way in Detroit. Look to the sprouting seeds, the seeds of new life.” I hope the same thing mom. Continuing…

As Detroiter who travels the world working on photo/video assignments, I have now turned my focus to cover Detroit for the next year. And I am going to rely fully on stories from Detroiters focusing most of storytelling through photography. For 7 of the next 12 months, I want to document the city of Detroit in depth using both photographs and video to create a traveling photography exhibition and feature length film. With letters from the Detroit citizens in the exhibit this will finally be a visual example of our city that doesn’t mock or attack, but just documents the life of the people. I want to live with you and document what you do. Sounds strange but that is how the best photographs come from and is where the spirit of Detroit can be found.

In the city that modernized the industrial line giving jobs to tens of thousands of immigrants and American citizens alike I ask how can the American Dream still exist for the citizens of a city that is not only mocked for it’s existence but on the fridge of bankruptcy. If you have a detroit moment coming up that I should photograph, or a story that I should interview you about, please contact me and you can be part of something huge.

As a Detroit citizen by choice, I have throughout the past three years, photographed and filmed the daily life happening around me in Detroit.  From refrigerators flying out of high apartments windows to shootings to a 6th grade ceremony for Obama’s inauguration. I, with many of the new young homeowners in this city, share an optimism and see the potential in the shell of this former great American icon.  The optimism is not seen easily nor can it be reached by simply driving around viewing the many insecurities like attractions that encompass Detroit.

The focus will include a study on quality of life, the basic human rights that being met or not met and the definition of community in the terms of local and world view. Detroit was made, remade and unmade by the automobile industry over the course of the twentieth century creating within its city limits a human geography of race, class and power unique in America.  Amidst the constant negative news coverage and the doom and gloom of the 2008 and
2009 economic crisis, many Detroiters remain optimistic of another rebirth for their city.  Holding on to what citizens in other cities might take for granted, Detroiters share a strong sense of pride in their
common luxuries like the corner grocery store, cafe or church.  Detroit is a city whose boundaries are known, its history is written, its current status is unknown, its budgets, rhetoric and problems has been placed for the world to see (and mock) and its murder rate at an all time high.  Yet, with all
of that, I have found that individuals who are drawn to this city invest with a hope of being part of the change that is inevitable in thought and hope.  But with each investment comes the high possibility of failing if the investment isn’t timed correctly.

I still don’t believe that Detroit has been written about in the popular media in the way that makes Detroiters proud and at the same time educates others. Over the past 5 months the city I have lived in for 3 years now has been swarming with foreign correspondents trying to get their story’s edge on a city that has been around for awhile. I say swarming because their are not too many of us freelancers here and it is easy to spot an outsider.  With most of the auto reporting being done from outside the city limits of Detroit I want to focus inside this great American icon that helped build America into the country it is today.

“There is so much unknown” a local mid-50s white male architect said during one of Detroit’s only fashion shows I photographed in the past year at the Detroit Artists Market.  “Which is why I stay,” he finished.  Here in Detroit I am a difference.  I, like the cars that make up most of America today, am an import.  I have driven slowly to enjoy what I see and have come from trips
abroad and have had to breathe slowly just to remember why I remain here.  Each hopeful Detroiter goes through their own recessions of doubt with the lure of another state’s common luxuries beckoning.  Much more than my desire to photograph and film my city is the desire for the inhabitants of
Detroit to have a voice of their own. As a Detroiter I want with the Guggenheim grant to give that voice and with that voice I think many outsiders will begin to think differently about how they not only
respond to the reports from popular media but how they look at their own communities to find that place is more than buildings, but are people.

“People don’t want to know about the good in Detroit”, one news editor told me.  From my windows of an American built house and American built car I notice the light in the city, the possibility, the citizens in the city left for dead.  I continue to call Detroit my home even with all my travel to 28 different countries.  I have lived everywhere people want to live; California, Las Vegas, Washington DC, Italy.  The difference is that I am a difference here.  Not in a way prideful or bold, but in a way that by echoing the determination of the
few, in a way where I am accepted by other citizens instantly as a part of something larger, in a way that every single person in this community can be which is by taking advantage of the possibility to make a change here by being the change.  Conversation first.  Investment second.  It is not that I look past the hurt, it is that I, we, Detroiters, know that the past, pain, and failing industry exists and we count it as blocks for
building.

It seems to most of the citizens of Detroit that the world doesn’t want Detroit to succeed.  For many of the young working class the day will come when the world finds Detroit as a center for possibility. In this transition to despair or success, there needs to be a proper documentation of what Detroit is now. “Detroit always finds itself” a subject of mine said in an interview.   Until financial stability comes the citizens of Detroit must hold on to what remains with or without the economy… hope.

Talk to Strangers

Joe Pickett, Brooklyn, NY. First photography teacher. Brought me into the world of strangers.

August, 2002, an idealistic photo student walked into a class with some shots from Cambodia. A week later I was at the bottom of the Stratosphere Hotel parking lot, 8 stories underground, with Pickett, photographing a man who threw away the trash. 1 year later with those photographs I was accepted into the Eddie Adams Workshop. 1 year after that I worked at the Eddie Adams Workshop. 9 days later I was in Detroit working for the Free Press. 4 years later I am headed to China.

the most personal thank you a photographer can give is a portrait.

photo taken in typical one shot one kill fashion. after 9 days in Ukraine, this was the only shot in Brooklyn over a 4 day trip.

Liquid REformed

done

Video by Me.  Sorry if I just blew your mind.

I need more time

 

Sunset down Jefferson, Detroit

[caption id="attachment_1418" align="alignnone" width="477" caption="As in final bow, a piano that isn't mine. "][/caption]

 

 

less words

When I was 21 I could not convey my idealism or dreams in one 5 minute sitting. I was told I did not know what I want. In response I told everything I wanted but not in a Christmas list manner but in an idealistic matter. Everything could happen and my words could be the push factor for the happening.

At 23 I could not convey to a New York Times editor what I wanted to do as a photographer in less that 5 minutes. It was 2 am in a barn in New York. Words upon words and many dreamed filled metaphors brought out not a single tangilbe dream of mine. Explanations that never ended only compounded to find some other realm to talk about.

Now 6 years later, I find that my idealism exits stronger than before yet I use less words because my search is more refined. More faith meets the greater questions that exist. The stakes are higher with larger budgets and bills. I have become patient knowing in a confident sense that I am young and have much to learn.

Wait and be patient, everyone who is younger, Your purpose will come. It is ok not to know but waist not in the reality that you are young but with ambition and contentment, await eagerly the dreams you have in your heart only to be brought by God and your mind will be blown.

My 6th trip to Asia, 2nd time to China, 19 days from now.

I was exploring an abandoned building last night and came across this group of people from the suburbs who were tipping had spent 3 months trying to push this truck off the 4th story of the packard plant for the fun of it. Not sure what the photos are worth, but wanted to send them along in case. I have more, just wanted to send you two for now. I have been doing a story the scrappers and urban spelunkers for the past 2 years. Crazy city.

Who is Critique

Praise the Lord. I wonder often who I look for for appreciation and self worth and compare that to whom I should actually be looking to for appreciation. My momma like my work, I know that. I know I am a child of God and because of that I don’t have to create “Great” work. That sounds too bold, but I believe it. So without the need for creating great work, why do i feel like there is a need? What is the value of Excellence.

God’s ownership in my life should set me in a joyful mood. But I think he displays his love to us through others and their words sometimes. I prayed this morning that my images would bring glory to God. And for a critique my editor today from the Wall Street Journal said to me, “It is hard to find photographers we can trust on deadline, thank you for letting us put our trust in your hands.” That blew me away. That, the four days shooting for the Times last week and a few other things, have made me become a bigger believer in the fact that the work that I do is actually, to put it humbly, good. But then the artist’s doubt sets in, like it always does, which makes the work more labor intensive, and creation happens again with refined skills learned from the previous shoot. Hmm. Then another critique.

done

Notes

Less than 4 weeks remains till my trip to China which includes Mongolia, with a possible India trip right after. A conversation tonight has led that trip further east to Europe for a tour d’cappriccio. I might literally fly around the world. Kind of a big thought with all that is in front of me; bills 4 times more than I actually have in my account, the list could go on but in my mind it stops with bills. How will I capture audio?

Last week I had the shoot that i am most proud of in my life for the New York Times. It was a three day shoot on the pro life movement starting with a protest in front of a planned parenthood. Think what you may about those people who stand out on corners with graphic images of aborted babies, I now have an appreciation for what they do and the strong convictions they live by.

Every time I turn in photographic work (especially to the ny times even after 24 shoots) i feel like I am in a situation where I just said I love you for the first time to a pretty girl. I wait for her rejection and when it doesn’t come (in the form of an editors negative critiques) a huge step is taken in the direction of confidence. Not confidence in who I am as a photographer but in the natural feelings I have to photograph what I think I should when I am in photographic situations. “You did fantastic work” is what my editor said. I praise the Lord for this. The Wall Street Journal editor used “Superb” instead. So it is a great week.

I want most of you to know, that my life is amazing because of Jesus. That might go over your head or you might just want to discount it.  But everything I have is from him. I trust him and I believe he trusts me and loves me and is equipping me to do his work.

With all the great in my life, I trust God, with all the “bad” in my life, I trust God. Bad just means it isn’t going as I planned but is humbling me into a mentality of acknowledging a need for a savior. There is a lot in my life that is not going as planned. Most of it in fact. I am sad to say that a friend I have had a brother in similar circumstances who was going through a tough time in his life. Lost his house, his wife divorced him and he chose to end his life.  I am now praying more than ever for all who read this to understand that God gives you purpose because he has purpose for you. God has work for you. That is why you are still breathing.

I laid out all my gear to inventory it, I need to be purchasing a few pieces soon. Had a couple come check out my house midday today. They might rent my place. I have no plans to go anywhere. This all means something.. And my life goes on.

You can live in optimism with reality around the corner, and continue in your dream. If you dream in pessimism and reality and neither can pay rent, it is now that acknowledging that God was there they whole time will make you feel like a fool.

Damien, a writer for the New York Times, holds a white board while my photo subject holds a photograph she took of an aborted baby. Make Shift photo studio at it's best. Monica Miller is an advocate for pro life and has done amazing photography for the past 10 years. (Thank you bounce flash and Mr. Greg Cooper for light class for great portraits, the article runs sometime later this week)