LIFE (in the Luminescent)

Angelica

2010-03-05T10:57:00.000-08:00

Angelica says family, young and old, are her strength...

Strong Woman: Anne

2010-01-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

Anne Medley Bailey is a freelance photojournalist based out of Missoula. She works for the Freedom Forum, a project helping bring minorities into the media. This spring she s moving to the Democratic Republic of Congo to teach journalism for one semester. She prefers to concentrate on issue of social justice in her shooting and reporting.

Strong Woman: Salena

2009-12-08T00:31:00.000-08:00

Crow woman Salena Hill says that when the going gets tough, you can either laugh, or you can cry. She considers laughter one of her greatest strengths.

Strong Woman: Janet

2009-12-05T14:42:00.001-08:00

Professor Janet Finn, works at home and abroad to empower women and share their stories.

Strong Woman: Lindsey

2009-12-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

Lindsey wanted to cover her face in mud from her backyard. She doesn't want girls to be afraid of being dirty.

Strong Woman: Ruth

2009-12-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

This in another image from the Strong Women Series, Ruth describes herself as cerebral.

Strong Woman: Ella

2009-12-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

This is a photo from a series of photographs I am taking with some friends for a class project. We are working to profile strong women in the campus community at the University of Montana.

Homeless

2009-12-02T18:37:00.000-08:00

A snap from a short foray in downtown Missoula.

Test Shot: Wanshung

2009-12-01T09:18:00.000-08:00

I love this shot of Tiffany. There is nothing technically special about her look that I like... and that she is peeling an apple.

I Like to Bike

2009-11-24T08:57:00.000-08:00

Snap from my ride home the other day.

Sunset Over the Pintlers

2009-11-24T01:14:00.001-08:00

All you real photogs out there are probably psh-ing at this posting. I was looking through some images from this semester and came to this one.

There is nothing photographically interesting about this image: I just love that the light is passing through miles and miles of atmosphere, bending and twisting and making these simple, yet beautiful colors. Light is AMAZING!

Take Me Back to PhotoKamp

2009-11-22T18:56:00.000-08:00

As I sit at this moment, procrastinating on the next paragraph of my senior paper, I want to go back to photocamp. A few older students in the photojournalism program here led a photo workshop in Fort Benton at the end of the summer. It was the highlight of my summer. It was amazing, it reminded me how much I love photographers and photojournalism.

Chin-deep in this semester, I miss the freedom of just doing the thing that I love, not all the other things it takes to get the piece of paper that says I can do it.

This snap is from one of our late-night critiques, where we sat around and critiqued photos from the day. It was late, we were tired, but it was a lot of fun.

Portrait Work

2009-11-21T10:43:00.000-08:00

This is the last image from a portrait session last weekend. For no apparent reason it was a hard shoot, I struggled the whole time to make things happen they way I wanted them too. It was incredible frustrating, but it felt good in the last minutes when things finally started falling into place. It's a rewarding and relieved feeling when that happens...

Mobile Madness

2009-11-19T10:11:00.000-08:00

Those of you who see me on a regular basis know how crazy I am about taking photos. With this in mind, image if you will how a 2 megapixel camera phone with a 35mm lens will to for a guy like me. I bought the 8 gb card for the thing: it has been an exercise in self-control ever since.

This is a little artsy snap from a hiking trip in the Bitterroots last week. It is the reflection of a tree and a friends hand off of Blodgett Creek. It was a beautiful day.

Montana Moment

2009-11-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

I snapped this while on a trail ride with my dad and one of his best friends. It is a reminder that life in Montana still holds hints of its past, even as it changes. This trip was a reminder too, of how nice it is to shoot outdoors and to take pictures of things that you don't usually shoot.

FREE PORTRAIT: Portland

2009-08-14T00:57:00.000-07:00

Portraits from my last day in Portland. I have always wanted to do it, and finally I have, Gillian helped me set up a spot in downtown Portland and took pictures of people. It was fun.

Postcard from Portland

2009-08-12T13:47:00.001-07:00

This is an outtake from a little shoot I did with some friends in Portland yesterday. Her name is Rhonda and she had a storied face and a personality to match.

The Northwestern Adventure 2009

2009-08-11T18:57:00.000-07:00

So I have left the safe confines of the inland northwest and I am off. Here is a snap from my first day on the road, crossing Puget Sound on my way to Port Angeles.

Earline and Cletus Cole

2009-04-08T16:58:00.000-07:00

"Everywhere you look here, there are memories of Steven," says Earline Cole, the mother of Steven Bearcrane, who died after being shot by a coworker and friend.

Following the shooting the Coles say the FBI and other agencies that investigated their son's case mishandled it, leading to a declination by the South Dakota U.S. Attorney to prosecute his killing.

The family, from the northwestern corner of the Crow Reservation outside Billings, has managed to get case files, the autopsy and several other documents and are now suing the FBI and the South Dakota U.S. Attorney's office in Federal Court.

The family stands little or now financial gain for themselves or another family that has joined their suit. "Steven deserves justice," they say.

Presidential Madness

2008-04-08T18:54:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I had the chance to see both Clinton and Obama in Butte, Montana. I was interesting, to be that close, but to have no connection to them. They both seem like nice people, but who knows what is really going on. I walked away with a much bigger appreciation of Senator Clinton, which surprised me. In general it is just nice to have something to think about other than the last 8 years of stupid policy and strong-arm tactics.

Art Yoga Madness

2007-10-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

I shot this a weeks back on a night where I had to shoot almost entirely features. I was at the Missoula Art Museum and they were doing this great art yoga session, what was pretty cool. It was a really long day and I had a lot of photos, but this series of yoga photos where pretty fun. I really loved the shapes against the art in the background. The coolest part was how calming it was to shoot yoga. I took off my shoes and played with angles and light. It was great. And standing there behind my camera I felt an inner calm that I don't usually feel so calm. Shooting for news is pretty fast paced, so it was really nice to slow to and stuff.

Saturdays

2007-09-16T00:35:00.000-07:00

I love Saturdays in Missoula. I think I want to live in a big city for a while, if I get where I want to go, but at the same time I will always love the small-town/city feeling that you get in places like Missoula. As summer winds down and the mornings get colder Caras Park will quiet down on the weekends, but I will always love the days when it is surging with activity and vibrant laughs and screaming kids.

Da Judge is in da Building!

2007-09-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

Supreme Court Justice John Roberts looks up at the ceiling at a speech I shot today for the paper. It was a big day for the U of M, another big star in our midst. I liked this picture becuase it was sort of light hearted and I played with the idea of submitting it. In the end we chose another one. In a world where everyone is holding themselves in such a dignified way, funny moments like this one just make me chuckle a bit. Roberts later delivered a speech that appealed to Montanans love of Norman Mclean and their reverence for the Mann Gulch Fire. It was a good, but for me slighly pointless speech. It was nice, but I am not a lawyer and not that interested in being one.

Six Years...

2007-09-11T20:20:00.000-07:00

Today it's been six years: six years since that terrible day. A day that every person who was alive can remember exactly where they were when they first heard. I was just finishing a morning cross country practice when I ran into a friend who told me.

So here we are, six years out. In many ways it feels the confusion of that day, and the clarity of that day have stuck. Our administration has spent the last six years fumbling its foreign policy and implimenting band-aid fixes to our national security network. Our fear isn't as immediate, but it has stuck. How many times do we hear the word terror, terrorists, or terrorism everyday? Someone should release that number, if they haven't already.

We remain united as a people, but many are now asking what it is that really hold us together. The conflicting bumper stickers you see on the highways and the reports from the televisions, they all depict a people that are confused, personally and as a whole:
"Honk if you believe in freedom."
"Honk if you believe in peace."
"Honk if you still support GW (and are willing to admit it)."
"Honk if you are sick of the partison nature of American politics."
"Honk if you vote based on things that don't have anything to do with anything."
"Honk if you don't know what is going on."

The simplicity of the days in which the New York skyline would probably be a nice vacation for the White House, the UN, and the American people; but we all know that is not coming back anytime soon.

So we continue on.

We do our daily thing and do our best not to let it all get to us. You can't live in fear. As one woman said to me today, "9-11 isn't something you can talk about in just a few words." In many ways we are taking that to heart.

We have to get on with it, but... have we really given it enough thought to move on? I dunno...

Home and Away

2007-09-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows the feeling I am sure, I think it is fairily universal. The feeling that home is home, but somehow it's not really YOUR home anymore. School started two weeks ago, tomorrow is the beginning of the first full/real week and I am starting to realize that I am not going to be going home soon, not as soon as I would like. Growing has been a lesson in living and leaving in many ways. Leaving those we love behind, but keeping them and their lessons in our daily lives somehow. This image is my father, leading his horse on a little trail in the Missions.

You don't see his face, for me I don't have too, I will never forget the light coming in through the ponderosas and lighting the path. This image hangs on my wall in my room. It reminds me of where I come from. It reminds me of someone who means a lot to me, but for the most part, not in the way many of my friends think of their fathers. We all have some much history. This image isn't really that great, it doesn't really say anything at all, but it does say something to me, so I guess that is why I post it, and way it hangs on my wall. It is a reminder of a moment and an attempt at capturing a man that has been constantly dodging in to the shadows throughout my whole life.

Missing Ghana...

2007-09-06T20:51:00.000-07:00

I left the mother continent over three months ago. I feel I was never there sometime. I feel I am still there. My life here is so different from the 6 months of leisure, learning, and the like that I spent there. This picture was taken just before sunset on a back street in Kumasi. The power outages had sent people to the streets in search of water. I snapped this out of the window of our speeding taxi. It is a snapshot really, but one that captures an emotion, a way of life, and a way of being that most of us can't even imagine. Not me, not the average American, not anyone, but this young woman and those around her.

It hard to understand. All these beautiful and terrible differences that exist in the world. For now, I just miss the place.

Time to be Bloggity....

2007-08-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

I was driving down a road a few miles north of Moise, Montana the other day when I ran into a little rainstorm. In two minutes it was all over, but when it was I pulled over and had to get out of the truck and smell the air. It was my first rainstorm in Montana since last fall. Stepping out of the cab I was overtaken by the freshness of the air. Summer 2007 fires have burned almost 100,000 acres, fresh air has been hard to come by. Most of western Montana needs 3-9 inches of precipitation to get back to pre-drought levels, so though the little trickle I ran into was a nice little break, it didn't do much. It did clean some bugs off my windshielf though...