Honey? After coming up for air after our wedding ( Wait! What? Yes, Lesley and I got married on July 24th, then hit the road for an awesome road trip for 9 days or so. More on all THAT to come soon. ) I have started to get focused back on work. I read a ton of blogs, local and national  concerns, food and restaurant business and of course mostly photography blogs, so when I read on a local food critics blog that the new Ritz Carlton here in Charlotte was going to be harvesting the honey from their roof top hives, I was very intrigued. I knew that the hotel was Charlotte’s first LEED-Gold certified built hotel. I also have photographed at the excellent restaurant there, BLT Steak. Even caught a glimpse of LeBron James while he was in town for a game while on assignment. When they opened the hotel with all of it’s green roofs and other things full of awesome green-ness, the Executive Chef Jon Farace, installed a couple of bee hives with the goal of making their own honey. It is used for granola, yogurt, tea, served as a raw honey comb and  in some tremendous pecan-honey ice cream. Pretty neat stuff all around. So I made a few calls and was allowed to be a part of the event. While it is not the kind of event I usually cover or really like, sort of set up for the media with 4 television stations and some other local print media on hand, I really enjoyed it. It was a pretty cool experience. The actual harvesting was handled by Randall York from Cloister Honey. He was very good at what he did and was very at ease with all the cameras around. Funnily enough, we had just bought some of his raw creamed honey from him at a farmers market! Great stuff. After he pulled out all of the frames with the honey comb ( capped honey ) in them, they were taken down to the kitchen where they were processed. The racks have the ‘caps’ cut off then are put into an extractor which operates like a slow speed centrifuge. The honey is spun out and drains to the bottom where it comes out a drain and is filtered twice.. After that it is ready to go. I got to try some of it, that was, literally, 30 minutes before, covered in bees in a hive on the roof of a Ritz Carlton. Weird. It was really awesome honey.

Without further boring details, here are the photos!

Wow, have I really been away this long? Yes, you have. It seems the busier I became, and the longer it has been since I posted, the harder it became to just sit down and write a blog post. I don’t have much free time these days, with some assignments and house work and getting ready for the wedding ( 7 days away! ) The last 3 months have been pretty busy around here. Many assignments, some renovations, some landscaping, some travel, even a little fishing. I’ve shot a bunch of food and restaurants, some minor league Nascar, some travel stuff, some TV productions, some portraits and some personal stuff. I will be posting recent work in a few parts, way too many images for one post.

I don’t have much else to say other than I am sorry for taking such a long unintended break.

Here are some recent food images –

Visited the Lantern restaurant in Chapel Hill, ran by Chef Andrea Reusing for Food Arts Magazine -

This was for a review of BLT Steak in the new Ritz Carlton here in Charlotte -

Aksel Theilkuhl, Chef de Cuisine

For a review and profile of Good Food on Montford ( they were a James Beard semi-finalist for best new restaurant! )

Chef Kerry Moffett

For a profile on what is considered by many to be Charlotte’s best restaurant, Barrington’s

Chef Bruce Moffett

I took some food photos at a local bar/restaurant/saloon as part of their re-branding efforts spearheaded by my friend Jeff Moss. Jeff’s vision for the place turned out awesome! They have a new look, a new, better menu, a cleaner more inviting place to want to visit, great merchandise and more customers spending more money ( the obvious goal! ) The new restaurant is called 40 Rod, a slang term for dangerous whisky. Check out their web site here. We set up the food shots going for a road house feel. I used one of the dark wood bars as a backdrop, and lit the food fairly brightly. The idea was to make photos that make you want to order those items. I thought the light was a little too clean, so I looked around and decided to take a neon sign off the wall to add some colorful ambient light. I think it did the trick.

Here are some of the selects, a couple of BTS shots, and a few shots of  the final products -

A look at the set up, but the neon was not on yet.

Jeff doing a lighting test!

A portrait of the most excellent art director!

Menu pages! Jeff did such an awesome job on these. The photos really pop off the page.

A close up of one of the pages.

Screen shots of the website. There is a rotating gallery of shots of the food and the upcoming bands in the center of the main page.

Ok, I went to Haiti. Like all of us, I was shocked and saddened at the first news reports coming out of Haiti after the devastating earthquake on Jan 12, 2010. I watched the news in disbelief and could only imagine what the Haitian people were going through. I was watching for the first news photographs to come out of Port au Prince, when I got an IM from an old friend.

“Hey, you want to go to Haiti?”

Well, um, of course. Even though I had not covered too much news in the last few years, it is still in my bones. And this was/is going to be one of, if not the, biggest story of the year. Seems my friend who is a DC photog has some ‘in’ with a few military folks and they were heading down to help relief efforts. All we had to do at that point was get to San Juan, where the Air Force was staging and we would be good to go. Not wanting to go without an outlet for the photos, we scrambled to try to get some guarantees. Seems I don’t carry much weight in the photojournalism circles these days, and it was hard going. And most of the organizations that would be hiring photogs already had folks on the ground or en route. We were all set to go, and I bought a one way ticket to San Juan for the next day when things fell through. As with most military plans, they are fluid, they change all the time. Well, his contacts changed and couldn’t really help us out. Now I am more or less itching to go. I put some time into this and really wanted to go and bear witness, be a part of the story, do whatever I could to help. I decided to try something that had worked in the past for me and called up the Public Affairs Office of the 82d Airborne Division. Found out the Division would be sending down a few thousand troops. I asked if there was room for a journalist to come along. This is called being ‘embedded’ or a ‘ride along’ program. I was told there would be, my credentials were checked out, and I was told to wait for the call. So, I waited and waited and waited. I also got myself out on the embed list for SOCOM, which went very well, but I still have not heard from them! After about 10 days I had just about given up and was getting back on with real life when, of course, I got the call from the 82d. Told to be at Bragg Monday morning, so I was, but the flight was delayed until Thursday at 7am. Fayetteville is not that exciting. But next thing I know I am walking towards a 767 with about 350 soldiers, on our way to Haiti.

So, I wake up and it is screaming sunlight and hot as hell. We were on the ground. I could almost not believe it. The damage is right there on the walls of the terminal, cracks running every which way and you try to imagine what kind of force can do that. There were 9 journalists total, myself, a 2 person TV crew from Savannah, a 3 person TV crew from Raleigh, a one man producer for CBS News and 2 other still photogs from High Point. We were all assigned to different units within the brigade. I was assigned to the 2/319^th AFAR, a field artillery unit. After gathering up our stuff it was off to the FOB ( forward operating base ). I was thinking I would get there hang out for a day or two, get my bearings, then switch to a line unit. Well it was apparent right away that this FOB was the one to be at. They had scouted by air and ground and found an equestrian stable and the owner was very happy to share his space with the troops. So they had moved in. I was on the ground for about 10 minutes at the FOB when Cpt. Alexander came up and asked if I wanted to go on a HA ( humanitarian aid ) mission. I dropped my pack, grabbed the cameras, and off I went. It was my first real look at the situation. It is as awesome and awful as you can imagine. Buildings just flattened, and you know that every one of those buildings has bodies still in the rubble. There were tents set up on almost every open piece of land, and by tents I mean everything from bomb proof 10 person shelters to tarps to bed sheets strung on a wire. There were people everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Just like you would expect in a capitol city. The markets seemed to be back up and running, more or less. We made our way to a distribution point where the 82d was providing security. The way it works is like this – the NGO’s go into a camp and find a camp ‘leader’ and with his help they identify how many people need rice. Then they give out rice coupons to the women in the camp. It was determined that having the men in the lines and receiving the aid was troublesome for a few reasons - from violence to the children not receiving the food. The women then would show up at the distribution point the next morning at sunrise and World Vision would hand out a 55lb bag of rice to each woman. A couple of hours before this the 82d would go in and start to clear and secure the DP. Then they would hold back the crowds and just keep order. This would happen at many different points in the morning and then again in the afternoon sometimes if more rice was freed up. The 82d is very respected in Haiti, and there were only minor incidents. The people just kept order.

I got back to the Black Falcon FOB and someone had set up a cot with a bug net for me under a pavilion amongst the officers of the group. I’m not usually used to hanging out with officers, being a former Sergeant, but this was a great group of guys. All of them from the Colonel to the privates were all very nice to me and many went out of their way to make sure I got where I needed to go and that I was included on missions. The guys have a special skepticism of the media, many of them having been burned before by quotes taken out of context and reporters with agendas. I was just there to shoot what was happening I told them. These guys were doing their job so well, it got to be a little stale visually. I told them that I wasn’t there to make them look bad at all, but that if anything got out of hand I would be shooting it and that those pictures would certainly be selling. They thought that was fair enough. And once they found out that I had been one of them, they all seemed to relax a bit. So my days at first consisted of getting up and going out on a HA run in the morning, but after a few days of that I knew I had gotten all I was going to get from those and I needed to sleep in as I was not sleeping well at all in the heat and humidity. There were runs to the stores, to tent cities, to pick up relief supplies, to hospitals, orphanages, etc. I went out whenever I could. The best things were the foot patrols through the city. That it how you really get to see a place, by walking. We would run thru the tent cities that they were responsible for, just to make sure it all looked safe and to see what the NGO’s had done…new sanitation? New water points? Then we would go thru the markets and look for the rice and other aid that had been given out. They were not looking to get anyone in any trouble, just wanted to check the prices, to see what it was going for on the streets. That way they could help judge when it was reaching a saturation point as prices fall. I ventured out on my own a few times and never felt threatened. I was yelled at by a couple of old ladies near a water point, but I just moved on. After 8 days of this I decided I wanted to change my view, I was going to go to the journalist hotel and work from there. But then I decided that I had had enough and needed to get back to Charlotte. I was hot, sweaty, sick ( outer ear infection ), tried of drinking warm water and eating MRE’s, although that chicken breast with jalapeño cheese spread on a wheat snack bread is pretty good! The city was returning to a normalcy. I did leave right before the ’Days of Mourning’ and if I had known about that I would have stuck around for that. I didn’t get to the worst hit areas. I stayed mostly in the areas where the guys I was with were working, Citi Soleil and Citi Militaire. At first I was bummed and upset that I wasn’t seeing it all. I felt like I had only done part of the story. But then I realized I could not do it all in 8 days. So I mentioned that I was going to head out and within 5 minutes the word came down that I better get to the airport now to catch a flight out in an hour. That was a whole other adventure. It turns out that some Air Force Colonel decided that civilians, even embedded civilians could not fly back to Bragg/Pope so I had to get on whatever plane they told me to get on. Great. I ended up in Charleston SC, had to rent a car at midnight, drive a couple of hours, crash at a hotel, drive to Bragg, drop car off, get cab to my car then drive home! It took about 24 hours with some much needed sleep and iced tea involved.

All in all I think it was a good experience. I shot some good photos, nothing earth shattering like the work coming out of Haiti from the first week after the quake, but not bad over all. I was covering a story that was not being covered. On all the missions I went on, over 15, I never saw another journalist, not even the ones I came in with. These soldiers from the 82d were busting ass, working hard to get this aid out and doing a great job of it. They were not only providing security, but they were also coordinating with the NGOS and all the people who need help in their AO ( area of operation ). Because these guys were on the ground and out walking and talking to people, they know the area like no other. They would make lists of the camps and orphanages and what was at each one and what each one needed, from food, to clothes, to medical to building assessments, and then they would meet up with the heads of the NGO’s and pass along this info so that they knew where to go with their aid. It is good work. It should be known. These guys are usually on TV or in the news when something goes wrong. Well this is a story of how it all goes right and no one is telling it.

I would love to go back and make all the shots I am thinking of now, that I missed. If you know of anyone looking for someone with experience in Haiti, please pass my info along.

Now here are some pix, a mix of PJ shots and snap shots:

my bunk -

A huge 18 foot projection screen was brought in for the Super Bowl

Crowded street

A child asks for anything from the guys on patrol. They were not allowed to give anything to the people and while these are tough, battle tested dudes, it broke some of their hearts, even if they deny it now!

Carrying away the rice. These ladies could carry anything on their heads, anything!

checking for rice coupons

a helper on patrol

unloading Shelter Boxes. These things are awesome. Check them out. This is where you money should go if you are donating.

A Specialist keeping watch

Crowded market

beans and grains and rice, oh my!

Trash is everywhere, just piling up.

Animals, like this pig, roam free throughout the city. I saw ducks, loads of chickens, pigs, goats and cattle.

Crazy busses EVERYWHERE!

A sergeant stops the line of people heading for rice.

destruction everywhere you looked. One block would be complete flat then the next would only have 1-2 buildings damaged.

Two young boys. Note their toy cars, it is a plastic bottle with bottle caps for wheels pulled by a string.

On patrol

trying to get a shelter up before a rain comes.

on patrol passing a damaged building.

Children in a tent city wait to be seen by an Army medic.

Spec. Bellinger, a native Haitian waves to some kids while on patrol.

Enterprising folks created cell phone charging stations with small generators and power strips. EVERYONE has a p hone in Port au Prince.

Patrolling through a tent city.

This dude freaks me out. Must be some kind of voodoo thing.

Waiting in line for a Shelter Box.

Keeping watch while resting on what used to be a school.

Waiting for rice.

Bags of rice

Children in a tent city play with homemade toy kites.

Children in a tent city

A child smiles.

One of the biggest reason we bought the house we did is for the very large yard. It is almost a full acre and we are 3 miles from downtown center. Kinda crazy. I know there are larger lots here in Charlotte and 1 acre doesn’t compare to some of you who live  in the sticks, but it is awesome for us. The dogs love it, love it, love it. They will run and run and play all day. They have made a little path around the fence and sheds. And I feel sorry for whichever squirrel stumbles when I open the back door, they will be a goner if these dogs ever manage to catch one. While we were house hunting and checking out the neighborhood, we saw three deer in a yard about 10 houses away. That was pretty cool. Then one night after a late shoot I came home to an 8 pt buck standing in our driveway! We have had deer int he backyard, they jumped the fence to get in and out and the other night a herd of 8 strolled right across the driveway while we were standing there. I’m sure there is other wildlife around, but that is what I  have seen so far. Oh, we have heard an owl a few house away. We want him to come here!

We also love birds and decided to put out feeders. And before you knew it we have 9 feeding stations set up! Can you say obsessed committed! We have replaced some of our earliest ones with better and prettier ones. We just were gifted with an awesome anti-squirrel feeder from Lesley’s mom that spins the squirrels away, can’t wait to see that in action! So now we have 7 feeders with seed and 2 with suet. It has been awesome to watch the birds. We have some many kinds it is kinda crazy, we can have over 10 species in an hour! We have had 2 types of woodpeckers, cardinals, wrens, finches, bluebirds, all kinds! I am hoping for blue jays but that would be both good and bad, as I hear they chase away a lot of other birds. We would love an owl and a couple of other types of woodpeckers, but we are mostly very happy with what we are getting.

I decided I would like to take some pix of these birds for both fun and for help in identifying the ones we couldn’t. So, I dug up my 300 f4 and took the screens off the windows and started shooting. Now, these photos are not of the best quality, many are shot at very high ISO’s and are cropped very heavily, like 1/8 of the frame or even less. I could do better with a 400 2.8 and a 2x converter, but, alas, I sold mine about 10 years ago when I stopped shooting sports. So here is what I have done with what I have on hand! If you know any of the birds I can’t identify or notice an mis-identified birds, please let me know!

pt

Eastern Bluebird - we love our bluebirds and hope they nest nearby this spring. We have 3 houses throughout the yard spaced well apart.

Eastern BluebirdNot sure who this is, maybe a wren?

Tufted Titmouse - a very regal bird

Tufted TitmouseA common DoveDowny Woodpecker - we LOVE the woodpeckers. We have also had a Red Bellied Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

Purple Finch - we also have an orange-faced one, but I can’t find him in the bird books or online.

Goldfinch I beleiveBlack-capped ChickadeeNuthatchWe love our Cardinals! We have quite a few of them and just love the flashes of red!I love the ‘What is he doing, What is he pointing at me’ look in his eye!Not sure, do you know? Some kind of wren or sparrow?3 kinds of birds on the feeder at once!Grackles  - the jury is still out on them. They come en masse and make a mess. Those are two bluebirds on the wire in the background.Thought this was a gold finch, but now I am not sure. Some help, please?I hate the squirrels. But just can’t bring myself to shoot em yet. They’ll just keep coming.