This morning I left early to get some photos of workers taking down the fences. The fences that have kept me away from the venues since I’ve been here. Fences and lines seemed to be two themes for the games. I took photos of that, but they didn’t feel right. The tone of the city had changed. It wasn’t an Olympic city anymore. It was a city recovering from a huge two and a half week party. Some people went back to the lives they had before the Olympics. Others it was their job to help restore the city to it’s previous state. Tourists were leaving, very few were out on the streets. The mood I wanted to capture was one of loneliness. When the crowds were around, I never felt alone. I felt part of something greater than myself. While wandering the same places I’ve been many times in my time here, they were empty and cold. I felt alone.

My last full day in Vancouver. I’m filled with emotions as I reflect on this trip. I’ve been here long enough that this is my new normal. Phoenix seems like a lifetime ago. When I think about this trip, I feel opposite extremes at the same time. It seems like I just arrived, but I also feel like I’ve been here a very long time. I can’t express how much fun this has been. It’s also been one of the hardest assignments I’ve shot. I’ve questioned myself many times. It seemed kind of crazy to head up with about a month’s notice and no guarantees of work, but it also seemed like a no brainer. How could I not go?

Interacting with people from all walks of life has been a great joy on this trip. I feel like I missed many more photos than I captured. I’m confident in what I did capture. I’m glad I had today to reflect on the trip and gear down from Vancouver. I’m already gearing up for a busy couple months when I return to Phoenix. I’m excited about making prints and going through my work with Arielle and other photographer friends. I feel my work is done in Vancouver and I’m ready to leave. I’ll also miss the city. I’ll miss the amazing time I had hanging out with Seth, Vickie, Margo and Dale. All of them are very special people. I’m excited to return home to my wife, Arielle. I’m excited about the thought of coming back to visit.

The evening was a lot of fun and was able to met David LaBelle. I bought his book, The Great Picture Hunt, when I was first getting into photojournalism. It was very influential in getting me started along that path.


I hope I was able to help and encourage the students with my critiques. I know the many critiques I’ve had have helped me. Not a bad way to spend a Friday evening.

I feel I’ve done this in my current portfolio and the new one I’m working on, but there’s always something pulling at me to put photos in that will get me hired. Photos that I wouldn’t put in if I stuck to my vision.

According to the Planet Money Podcast, counting to a million would about 11.7 days, a billion would take about 33 years and a trillion would take more than 32,000 years.

I will turn 34 years old in September. I’m over a billion seconds old. After a few calculations, I figured a billion seconds is closer to 31.7 years. I figure that I turned 1,000,000,000 seconds old on May 20th, 2007 at around 10am. Where was I when I turned 1,000,000,000 seconds old?

Less than a month earlier, Arielle and I were married in North Carolina. I was working at the Clovis News Journal in Clovis, New Mexico. May 20th, 2007 was a Sunday, so I had the day off and I was helping out Arielle with a remote she was doing for her radio station. This photo was taken at about 12:48am, less than three hours from when I turned 1,000,000,000 seconds old. That’s well within a 0.1% margin of error. Where were you when you turned 1,000,0000,000 seconds old?

It’s really interesting to go back and look through your body of work from the past several years. The last time I did it was the beginning of last year. After 2 months of sorting and pulling photos I came out with my current portfolio. Now I’m looking at taking things a different direction and photos that completely overlooked are now making the cut. Mostly those photos were overlooked because they didn’t fit the idea I had in my head for what I wanted my portfolio to say. Now some of them seem to fit and after spending hours and hours sorting through everything, it’s easy start to see patterns and themes. This isn’t the direction I intended to take it, but I’m really liking where it’s going.

Here’s something that caught my eye while going though all 100,000+ photos.