I graduated!

I still plan to continue with this project. Right now at Mind Your Design we have an awesome project started to talk about preserving natural resources and land in Pennsylvania.

Check us out here: preservepa.org and keep coming back for updates!

My website!

It’s very basic, but it’s my very first website!

 

http://agricultureanonymous.com

 

YEAH!

Sunnyside take two!

Santa Fe, New Mexico (National Geographic Workshop)

Hey everyone,

Sorry I’ve been missing in action. I recently went back to Sunnyside to visit Homer. It went great, had some more of the best carrots ever and got some great action shots of us trying to catch small chickens to transfer them to another pen. When I have better internet access I will be uploading those photos.

I will also be uploading some photos from my Santa Fe trip, and then about midweek next week I will put a link to my website up so you can all access it. I hope to have my blog as a main item, along with a gallery of some of my best work from the project, and then also links to the really awesome people and places I worked with over the last year or so.

So check back next week for more!

I love the Earth

I made this for a film contest!

I got lost for a bit…

and now I’m back. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, a little less doing, and a tad bit of stressing.

I love what I’ve been doing, and I plan to continue it after I’m done with Penn State Harrisburg. I’m thoroughly excited to help preserve farming, farmland, natural resources, and land in general. I think we have lost some major connections with the planet and places we live, the people we encounter, and so on.

I’ll be working on a project with Paul Boger, for Mind Your Design, our photography and design studio. We’re working on some stuff towards land conservation. So please check that out, http://www.facebook.com/mindyourdesign

Anyways, I took some road shots today. I don’t normally do this, but I didn’t feel like I was invading any privacy.

Another visit to the Joshua Farm

I visited the Joshua Farm again today, and it was a breezy cold morning. Nonetheless, 3 students from Messiah were there to volunteer and help out. I think it’s great that Messiah College encourages volunteering with things like Joshua Farm. I wish I could see more like that, because it really is a great community feeling to see stuff like that.

 

 

 

3-5 page paper, schmaper.

So I realized last semester that setting this independent study up as a regular class with papers and silly things that just make you frustrated, not educated, was not going to be how this independent study would go.

YET, I still set it up that way. For example, I crammed a bunch of assignments in that I knew would probably not get done, get done in order, or could be possible. Regardless, I have still done something almost every week for this independent study. I still set it up to include papers! You hate reading them, so why would I write them? Blogging to me seems to be an endless paper, and endless amount of ideas and thoughts and feelings, and yet again it is not academic enough!

Something I realized with this independent study is that change will not come from academic education, but people education. Get to the level of the people you need to educate. It’s like what happens when you take pictures of children from above, they seem small, vulnerable, and weak. BUT, they’re not. In fact, anyone who does not understand, but who is as eager as a child to learn should be proud of themselves. Admitting that one, you don’t understand something, and then two, that you’d love to learn more about it should be applauded.

So 3-5 page paper I had scheduled about my progress through the semester, stick it. Don’t get me wrong, I love academics for personal growth, because I learn a lot. When you’re trying to share something though with people who are not already familiar with the topic, or already don’t have much interest, writing a 10 page paper on the topic with graphs and statistics won’t make a difference. So that’s one of the biggest things I’ve learned in this independent study is that it’s okay to admit when you don’t know, and it’s okay to ask for someone to educate you without making you feel dumb.

I’ve seen a lot of material since high school that is supposed to educate, motivate, and invigorate the individual or group to do something (or not do something). It’s a shame humans have so much capability to communicate but fail at it because of this regulation, that law, or that taboo.

 

I’m working for Mind Your Design these days, a PA based photography and design studio. We’re working on something pretty big concerning the conservation of land and natural resources. So keep checking for that, and check out some of our other stuff if you like my photography at pleasemindyourdesign.com

Also, I used some of my material to create a newsletter. Below are screen shots of the pdf:

Agriculture Anonymous

 

It's okay to love agriculture that much.

The best carrots I’ve ever had and quotes from “Witness in our Time” Working Lives of Documentary Photographers

I haven’t really been able to go out and photograph over the last couple of weeks, but yesterday I went to Sunnyside Farm in Dover, PA. I was delighted to find a farm that is almost entirely self-sufficient, no pesticides, no hormones, no chemicals, no need for fertilizers. Every thing, animal, and plant had a place, purpose, and job. It was incredible to see something so dynamic working so efficiently. The animals were happy, even though they’ll end up as food at some point, the plants were incredible for the time of the year, and all of this thanks to people who were passionate about some of the same things I am.

These were delicious

Mary Ellen Mark : “The fact that they [documentary photographs] no longer fit the economic needs of magazines is a tragedy… the public is missing the experience of seeing many great images.”

“The self-assigned subject is your heart and soul.”

Eugene Richards: “If there’s any philosophy that I could put into words – and it’s not particularly new or deep – it’s that when you say you’re a photojournalist, you attempt to tell the truth.”

“As for tomorrow, I’m looking at going back to Auburn, a tiny town in Nebraska, and doing not photography, but a film about the old farmers living there. But who’s going to want a twenty-, thirty-minute film on old people? I’m doing it because I’ve got to keep what I love alive.”

Donna Ferrato: “My feeling is it’s not what you’re going to get. More like what are you going to give? What are you going to learn? There’s so much to learn out there with a camera. It gives us power for educating ourselves and for educating others. We have to be patient, try to learn as much as we can until there comes a point where we have something to share with other people. And that doesn’t come for a long time.”

Guatemala Farming

I was in Guatemala last week and was able to take a few pictures of what farming is like down there. I had hoped for more time to meet some of the farmers, but that was not possible. They have something similar to the Department of Agriculture in Guatemala, but it doesn’t really help the people out much from what I gathered. They have many terracing farms, and many small plots of land that individual families use specifically to grow food for themselves.