I've Moved (Again)

I finally was able to secure an url with my own name! I'm very happy about this. I'm now over at jonathanhouse.com

Lady with Picture

What's odd about this is that she kept an old photo of her parents that has them posing in their garden, yet the photographer completely cut off their heads.

I liked it.

Party Photo

HeatherAnn

HeatherAnn Borino suffers from a multitude of ailments, from Downs Syndrome to Autism. Her mother, Gina, (pictured) and her father are trying to raise twelve thousand dollars to afford a special-needs dog that can basically keep watch over her throughout the day. The family has done an absolutely amazing job taking care of her, considering the amount of attention she requires. But what impressed me most was how patient Gina was with her.

This is a small moment after HeatherAnn was finished playing outside. I think I might post a second photo from this soon.

Moving the Robinson Building

I was at the site where a team of contractors was moving a historical building further away from the street to allow a wider sidewalk near downtown Tualatin. There was a pretty good crowd that got up early Sunday morning to watch and as you can see, some were so excited they didn't want to wait to finish curling their hair.

At the Lake Oswego Hunt Club

We did a short piece on a Dressage competition at the Lake Oswego Hunt Club last week. For those who dont know, a dressage is a formal horse show where the horse and rider are given instructions on what to do and how to move by a judge, and then are graded on how well they complete the task.

Here, Sandee Archer is readying her horse "Imke," to take her out for some lunch.

Another snap from Chicago

An impromptu puppet show on Michigan Ave.

Geekfest '06

As usual I had a great time at Geekfest, the annual get-together of the A Photo A Day group. A lot of amazing photographers attended this year, just like the last, and hopefully into the future.

This was taken along Wabash Ave. in downtown Chicago

Wrestling

This was part of a series that I posted to my Sportsshooter page a little while back. I have a couple of images that I really liked but since I've kind of gone over this assignment on the internet already, I'll just post this shot and be done with it.

State Dance

I shot some Oregon State Dance this past weekend and the quality of competition was a lot better then I thought it was going to be. This turned out to be a last-second assignment (at least by my standards), where I was given it on Friday and had to be there early Saturday afternoon.

In retrospect, it would have been nice to know that I was going to do it sooner so it wouldn't have been such a surprise to me or the dance team that I was going to be photographing them for six hours. But anyway, everything went smoothly and in this shot, one of the coaches is giving last minute advice to the team before they head out onstage for their final performance.

Missing Aurora

Lately I've been missing my time out in Aurora. It felt like the work that we did out there meant more to the community. Sure, the circulation out there was better than where I'm at now, but it also seemed that the stories themselves had more complexity; something which isn't the product of sales, more the desire on behalf of the reporters and photojournalists to do good work. But I also don't want to idealize the paper either. There were a lot of head-scratching assignments there as well, just not as many.

Even this assignment, a ride-along with an ice cream truck driver, had deeper implications within it. For instance, it turned out that most of her colleagues wouldn't drive the route she took because it went through the Jericho Apartment Complex, which has a historically high crime rate, and where I took this picture of the child on the curb.

She would tell me that other drivers had been jumped while winding through the complex, simply because the teenagers there were bored or wanted money. For the younger kids, there was absolutely nothing to do. The complex itself is sort of enclosed and on the edge of town by some farms, but not near anything. The kids mostly have to fend for themselves.