Back to Nicaragua and then on to El Salvador

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Having enjoyed my time in Nicaragua so much last year, I decided to return for a second trip this year to continue a photo project I began last time (more to come on that later) and continue exploring the country.

Here are a few snapshots from my trip...

After Nicaragua, I continued on to El Salvador to do some video work for a non-profit based in San Jose Villanueva, just south of the capital, San Salvador.

Here are a few images from my time there...

2015 Year in Review

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Happy New Year! 2015 was a really great year. Here are a few highlights for me.

I grew up traveling all over the world, and it's been a goal of mine for a while to incorporate overseas assignments into my work as well. So, this year I was really thrilled to be able to spend two weeks in Nicaragua working on photo projects there.

I'm returning to Nicaragua this February to continue a project on a former gangster who is working with kids in his hometown to try and intervene in the cycle of gang violence.

During my travels in Nicaragua, I found out that I actually really like Instagram (my dad insisted that I post something online everyday so that he would know I was still alive). Taking pictures with my phone has been a great way for me to explore a completely different way of shooting.

As usual, this year Harvard Business School kept me busy with a whole slew of video projects, from creating video introductions for their Entrepreneurs in Residence to promoting some programs like their joint degree with the Harvard Kennedy School.

And in the spring I finished the very last piece of a video and portrait project I had been working on for Boston University School of Law. I really enjoyed the project because I was able to use both my photo and video skills and really exercise my creativity in putting it together.

During the summer, I had a lot of fun hanging out with kids in various summer school programs around the Boston area while producing some photo and video work for Boston After School & Beyond.

Also over the summer, I finally managed to finish editing my short documentary on the erosion issues on Plum Island. The film, Human Nature premiered at the Newburyport Documentary film festival in September.

In the fall I began shooting for MIT, which I've been enjoying a lot so far. I love the challenges and creative possibilities of environmental portraiture.

For 2016, I'm hoping for more of the same! I really enjoy the clients I've gotten to work with and the wide variety of assignments I've had. I'd love to do some more traveling and am hoping to find the time to work on one or two other personal projects as well.

Samara Yoga

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Here are a few images from a shoot I did for Samara Yoga in Davis Square earlier this summer. I love going to their yoga classes and the studio has a really wonderful atmosphere, so it was great to be able to do a shoot for them.

Summer Learning Project II

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This past summer I was really glad to get a chance to work with Boston After School & Beyond again to document some of their Summer Learning Project sites around the Boston area. The Summer Learning Project is a summer education program where students spend the mornings on academics and the afternoons on "enrichment activities", which can be anything from swimming, to gardening, to visiting animals at the zoo.

'Human Nature' Screening

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I'm excited that my short documentary film on Plum Island 'Human Nature' is finally complete and will be screening at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival this weekend.
The film is 15 minutes long and is screening Sunday, September 20th at 11:30 AM in The Screening Room, 82 State St, Newburyport, MA 01950. It will be screened along with another short film. You can get tickets here.

Creating this film was a long difficult process for me as the story and issue are pretty complex and I was trying my best to accurately represent all sides. I feel good about the results though, and I'm looking forward to sharing the final product with the Newburyport community!

Synopsis: Plum Island is a barrier beach on the north shore of Massachusetts that people have inhabited, in one form or another, since the early 1800s. In the past few decades, people have built more conventional homes where dune shacks once stood. In 2013, a series of winter storms caused enough erosion damage to destroy six of these homes. Many outsiders see the people on the island as wealthy homeowners who built too close to the water and got what they deserved, but the truth is much more complicated.

The Coast of Maine

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I love traveling along the coast of Maine. The air feels fresher and it's wonderful to just roam around and make pictures. Here are a few images from earlier in the summer when I took some time to wander around Castine after shooting a wedding.

The Rule Keeper

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I'm pleased to be able to post the final installment in a series of videos and photos I produced on Boston University Law professors and their passions outside the law. You can view the rest of the series here. For each professor I produced a portrait as well as a video about them and why they're passionate about their hobby. It was interesting to see how many of their hobbies connected to their work as law professors.

BU Law Professor Jack Beermann loves rules. "I always have two pamphlets with me whenever I'm traveling," he says. "I love to read the Constitution and I love to read the Baseball Rule Book. Both of them are very similar experiences to me. You're always finding some new nuance or some new phrase that you never really focused on before and trying to figure out what it means." When he's not teaching administrative law, you can often find Beermann umpiring little league. "I think, other than my house I've probably spent more time at a baseball field than anywhere else in the world," he says.

Micro-lending Portraits

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While traveling in Nicaragua recently, I was fortunate to be able to do some work for a micro-lending non-profit there called People Helping People Global. They provide loans to small business owners in both Granada and Matagalpa and many of their borrowers are women. We traveled around to visit several borrowers in their homes and workplaces.

Happy New Year!

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I decided to start the year off with a trip to Cadillac Mountain in Maine to catch the first the sunrise on the continental U.S. of 2015.

We did a dry run the day before to check out the trail and see the sunset.

On the morning of the first, we were joined by many other people who hunkered down in between the rocks to wait for the sunrise.

With temperatures around 15 degrees Fahrenheit and a windchill of 18 below it was a long wait...

Summer Learning Project

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This past summer I spent two weeks photographing Boston After School and Beyond's Summer Learning Project, a summer education program where students spend the morning on academics and the afternoon on a variety of activities. The program has 18 different sites around Boston and I bounced around to six of them trying to show off the unique characteristics of each.

Newburyport Documentary Film Festival

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I was really fortunate to be able to screen a short clip from my Plum Island documentary (which is still a work in progress) at the Newburyport Documentary Film Festival this past weekend. The screening was part of a special section of the festival for works in progress and was screened alongside a film on Henry Beston. It was great to be able to show something to an audience and receive feedback and after a year and a half of working on this project it's definitely given me an extra boost of motivation to see the project through to the end.

Earth Port Film Festival

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A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to have a film screened at the Earth Port Film Festival in Newburyport, MA. The film, Rise and Fall, is one that I produced along with Lindsey Topham and Sarah Ganzhorn for the International Documentary Challenge about a year ago and it deals with the erosion issues on Plum Island, MA. It was great to be able to participate in the festival and meet other filmmakers who were also interested in highlighting environmental issues. You can watch interviews with me and some of the other filmmakers here: http://www.earthportfilm.org/ (start at 7:18 for my interview).