So you may or may not know that this year I received a grant to photograph 5 people with Asperger’s syndrome.  Asperger’s is a form of high-functioning Autism (ever heard of Temple Grandin?) mainly characterized by difficulty with social interactions.  They also have a tendency to fixate on certain topics or objects like scoreboards, or Ancient Egypt, or Steve Jobs.  But now I’m just teasing you with hints of what’s to come, and that’s not fair.  I will say that I have spent the last ten months with a group of some of the most interesting people I have ever had the pleasure to come across.  I can’t say enough how grateful I am to my photo subjects who have given me their time, their energy, and their privacy.  Letting someone with a big, no-nonsense-looking camera into your world is never an easy thing and they all did it with grace and heart.

Want to see more?  Well the lovely folks over at Street Roots have offered up a home for this labor of love.  Street Roots is a non-profit newspaper that deals with issues of poverty and social justice.  You know those homeless folks outside of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods who are trying to sell you a paper for a buck?  That’s the one.  The project is basically running from Thanksgiving until Christmas, with three print editions showing up on November 25, December 9th, and December 23rd.  In between, two photo slideshows with some amazing first-person audio accounts of life with Asperger’s will be on the Street Roots website, look for them December 2nd and 16th.

I also have to give a high-five to RACC, the Regional Arts and Council Culture.  They are the money men behind this project and it’s a pretty amazing thing to have an organization in Portland dedicated solely to the funding and advocacy of the arts.  It’s like we’re in Europe or something.

Photo Editor Mike Davis and Graphic Designer Maggie Gardner round out my list of Thanks Yous in this Oscar speech.

Last month I photographed Stephen Malkmus and his band the Jicks (that would be Joanna Bolme, Mike Clark, and drummer/bartender extraordinaire, Jake Morris) for Rolling Stone Magazine. My job was to photograph the band practice as quickly and as non-obtrusively as possible. Yeah, right. I have to be honest and say I didn’t know who [...]

Click below to read the article and see a whopping 20 picture slideshow all about Bob.

I love Astoria…I really do.  This is REALLY where hipsters go to retire, or at least this is where they go to open up cool restaurants and breweries and coffee shops and vintage stores where you can furnish your très cool 1910 Craftsman Bungalow.  And did I mention it is where the film, The Goonies, [...]

Spent the day at the Oregon National Primate Research Center for the New York Times.  The whole facility is immense with more than 4,000 monkeys on site.  One thing I learned was to never show your teeth to a monkey or look then straight in the eye…it makes them aggressive, perhaps good advice for the [...]

What do you get when you combine the world’s largest shooting trade show with Vegas and little ole’ me? Very little sleep and a whole lotta guns. Oh, and scroll to the bottom where you can see my photo about ten feet tall at the Danner boot display. Though it did get a little post [...]

So for the last two years I have been volunteering my services at the Downtown Chapel. They do lots of great stuff for the most marginalized members of society, i.e. the homeless, including the Portrait Project which started in 2007. It goes like this, over the course of four days in December their guests and [...]

Did a little assisting last week on this Track Town USA book project over at the Nike Studios. That place is sweet, and loaded with tons of gear and cute photo boys in skinny jeans. Not sure how I got involved in the whole thing since my assisting skills are dubious at best and I [...]

Recently did a pretty intense shoot for the New York Times. I work for the paper probably once a week, as they seem to have a love affair with Portland, OR. And while I enjoy shocking people with how low their day rate is (don’t ask) they do give me amazing assignments that take me [...]

I really do have the best job in the world.  It’s true.  At least that’s what I thought when I got a call from the Washington Post to photograph the 25th anniversary of the filming of the movie Goonies.  You remember this movie… pirate’s treasure, bank robbers, Sean Astin and the scary yet ultimately lovable guy [...]