A Man, a plan, a (ear) canal, India

On my third day in Delhi an odd but harmless man “professionally” cleaned my ears despite my best protests.

“Your ears are very dirty, sir,” he began. “Let me have a quick look.” I didn’t doubt his assessment, though in my partial shock from his very specific and direct aural interests I didn’t take him very seriously. Within a split-second he placed a tuft of cotton on a metal q-tip and plunged it into my ear canal.

Morocco Revisited

For a second time I was fortunate to work with Rustic Pathways’ Advanced Photo Workshop in Morocco, this time teaching a group of 32 high school students from Hong Kong International School. It was also great reuniting with my Moroccan friends from last summer to lead the trip and get the opportunity to work and teach […]

A Changing Cuba

Cuba—which in most people’s minds is Havana—feels defined by its dilapidated chic of crumbling mansions, vintage cars and fading grandeur. Much has been written over the future of the island now that American tourism is surging, which increased 450% this past year. On one hand I find the idea that American tourism will somehow change the country to be arrogant if not naive. After all, Cuba welcomes 3.5 million tourists a year and Americans only make up a fraction of this. If tourism “changed” Cuba it’s happened well before hoards of Americans arrived.

Election Night in Austin

Morocco: A Visual Feast

Casablanca’s humid ocean breeze mixes sounds of motorbikes, car horns and call to prayer that provides a suitable soundtrack for reflection.

For the past month I’ve been working as the Photo Instructor for Rustic Pathways’ Advanced Photography Workshop in Morocco. I taught photography to a small handful of incredibly thoughtful and motivated high school students with the help of a crew of indispensable Moroccans who guided us around their beautiful country. The trip itself was a fast-paced tour that had us cruising across a large portion of the country to see many of Morocco’s famous sights.

The Language of Selfies

Instead of seeing selfies as the end of civilization and Millennials (side note: there is empirical evidence that shows that no generation takes more selfies than another, so, let’s stop blaming Millennials for selfies.) as harbingers of societal disaster, it makes more sense to understand the process of taking selfies as just another means of communication.

Best of 2015

Ya so I’m way late on this, but thought I would organize a post anyways with some of my favorite pictures from 2015 in one place (click on the tiles to view them larger).

New Orleans

Mock Mass Shooting & Open carry at UT

The Best of Wurstfest

Spent an afternoon shooting Wurstfest in New Braunfels over the weekend, and it involved a lot of weird mashups between German and Texan traditions. Having grown up in Wisconsin where German heritage is much more pronounced, it was pretty odd to see how Texans embraced and changed the Octoberfest-esque event to make it more Texan […]