Hi! I’m doing this thing. Already received some great images to look at and I’d love some more. Don’t be shy, I love seeing people’s work and hope you’ll share. This isn’t MFA-level critiques, just hoping to pass along some friendly advice of things I’ve learned along the way. Hope to hear from you. 📸❤️ https://ift.tt/3a1DHCP

Rachel Louise Snyder (@rlswrites) author of No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, for the Observer. https://ift.tt/3aJ6EU7

Senator Elizabeth Warren brought energy, ideas and a lot of heart to her presidential campaign. Warren was also my 7 year old daughter’s favorite candidate and her run was a great entry point to talk about politics and what it means to be a citizen. Thanks to all for your support of Light Readings, my new email newsletter about photo history, tech and creative expression. If you haven’t already, you can sign up at the link in my profile. Next issue goes out Monday. https://ift.tt/3cyoURI

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading expert on coronavirus, for @atlanticlive First issue of Light Readings went out today - thanks everyone for their kind words and support. If you want to get on board for issue #2, you can sign up at the link in my profile. https://ift.tt/2VA8rGR

I’ve made something new that I want to share. I’ve been doing internet things since 1995 or so, when I ran a BBS from my house. I went on to participate in USENET groups and then publish a blog from 2000-2004. At the same time, I listened to a lot of punk rock music, went to shows and saw a community that was organically created and didn’t ask anyone’s permission to exist. Through skateboarding, I started a skate ‘zine, got interested in photography and now many years later, make my living doing this work, which I love. But I’ve missed the sharing part, the creating just for the sake of creating. I miss making something new and throwing it out into the world. I miss sitting down to write to figure out what I think about something. So, I’m a huge fan of a number of e-mail newsletters (guessing you can see where this is going). It’s like the original digital communication medium. It’s intimate and casual, and easy to step in and out of whenever you have a moment. But the newsletter I really want to read doesn’t quite exist, that intersection of photo history, technology and the personal side of creative growth. After a few months of thinking about this, I’m going to give it a try. It’s called Light Readings. You can sign up at the link in my profile. The first issue will deal with forewords to photography books, going way back. If any of this sounds interesting, I’d be grateful if you gave it a try and thanks for reading along. https://ift.tt/2vprybU

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield was at the White House today for a press conference on the government's handling of the coronavirus. Last year I photographed him at CDC headquarters in Atlanta for an @AARP series on people doing the real work of government. The photo was shot through a tinted window making for some interesting tones. https://ift.tt/2uxo2vy

Genuinely thrilled to have this strange moment with Robert Mueller arriving for testimony win 2nd place in the White House News Photographer Association's Eyes of History Contest, in the "On Capitol Hill" category. Huge thanks to the great @CNN Photos team, especially @bptuazon and @brettr for having me cover this. https://ift.tt/2uo7iXH

Spent a great morning with Chef Spike Gjerde (@spikegjerde) at his restaurant Woodberry Kitchen and then at a community farm where I left with a handful of fish peppers (that went into a delicious shakshuka). Fish peppers were used mostly by African Americans in the 1800s to add spice to their cooking, but the ingredient had largely disappeared in recent years. Gjerde encouraged local farmers to grow the pepper again and now makes a hot sauce and uses the pepper in lots of other dishes as well. https://ift.tt/2UgekrX

Sen. Susan Collins, from a few years back. This year, polling found Collins to be the most unpopular Senator, surpassing even Senate Leader McConnell. Senator Collins faces a tough re-election challenge in 2020 from Democrat Sara Gideon. Maine continues to be the bluest state in the country with a Republican senator. https://ift.tt/2O8faTC

Tara Westover, author of Educated: A Memoir. This book has spent an incredible two years on the NYT Bestsellers list and is next on my list to read. I'll probably post one or two more author photos as I wind down this series. Thanks for following along. An excerpt from her book: “Everything I had worked for, all my years of study, had been to purchase for myself this one privilege: to see and experience more truths than those given to me by my father, and to use those truths to construct my own mind. I had come to believe that the ability to evaluate many ideas, many histories, many points of view, was at the heart of what it means to self-create. If I yielded now, I would lose more than an argument. I would lose custody of my own mind. This was the price I was being asked to pay, I understood that now. What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.” https://ift.tt/36nS2XC

Writer George Pelecanos for The Washington Post Magazine. This was my first cover story for the magazine back in 2008. I had read some of Pelecanos' work, most of which took place in DC. I remember being a little obsessed with the alleyways in the city that were exploding with greenery in early summer. I wanted to capture that slightly sinister feeling of these wild, out of control vines that seemed ready to reach out and grab you. He was game and I scouted out this alley in Columbia Heights. If you look closely, you may be able to see a power cord for one of my lights running past him just above knee level. https://ift.tt/3aCAevl

The second Nigerian author in my week of author portraits, this is the great Helon Habila at his home in Maryland. His book, Oil on Water is a favorite of mine, telling the story of an environmentally ravaged Nigerian Delta, ruined by oil companies. "The next village was almost a replica of the last: the same empty squat dwellings, the same ripe and flagrant stench, the barrenness the oil slick and the same indefinable sadness in the air, as if a community of ghosts were suspended above the punctured zinc roofs, unwilling to depart, yet powerless to return. " From Oil on Water, by Helon Habila. https://ift.tt/2RhyyQg

A new web site edit has me looking at old work and considering a separate section for the writers I've photographed. I'll be posting some of those images that didn't quite make the cut here as a continuation of yesterday's post and in praise/awe of writers as photo subjects. I photographed Christopher Hitchens in April of 2010, two months before he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, a disease he would succumb to by the end of the year. He was a couple of drinks in when he greeted me at the door for the 10am shoot. He was gracious and accommodating for the couple of hours I spent photographing him being interviewed and then for some portraits afterwards. Of all I asked of him, he only turned down my request that he hold a small painting of a martini that his daughter had painted for him. “It wouldn't send the right message," he said. https://ift.tt/2ulHMlC

An outtake from an all-time favorite shoot of mine with Pulitzer-prize winning author Anne Tyler, at her home in Baltimore, Maryland. Come to think of it, many of my favorite shoots have been with authors who collectively have been a little less polished in front of the camera and more willing to open themselves up. After photographing her, I began reading her books, starting with A Spool of Blue Thread. It's a beautiful, lyrical book and this passage always stuck with me: “But it has occurred to me, on occasion, that our memories of our loved ones might not be the point. Maybe the point is their memories—all that they take away with them. What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth. The hardware store their father owned with the cat asleep on the grass seed, and the friend they used to laugh with till the tears streamed down their cheeks, and the Saturdays when their grandchildren sat next to them gluing Popsicle sticks. The spring mornings they woke up to a million birds singing their hearts out, and the summer afternoons with the swim towels hung over the porch rail, and the October air that smelled like wood smoke and apple cider, and the warm yellow windows of home when they came in on a snowy night. ‘That’s what my experience has been,’ they say, and it gets folded in with the others—one more report on what living felt like. What it was like to be alive.” https://ift.tt/2RtA00K

Today, Senator Cory Booker announced that he is suspending his campaign for President. Despite his strong credentials his campaign never really took off and in a video posted online today he said that they lacked the funds to continue running the campaign they needed to run. For @theatlantic https://ift.tt/37Yk9xG

Rep. Ilhan Omar (@ilhanmn) for @guardianweekend https://ift.tt/34IhndZ

Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS. Their new book, Crime in Progress talks about the famous dossier put together by Christopher Steele at the company’s behest, investigating the Trump campaign. https://ift.tt/2qPtfwY