Day 3: Settling Into Projects and Finding Our Pace

Monday night when we had the big pow-wow about the coming days and scheduling rides to locations and appointments, nobody raised their hands for the sunrise shoot, and everyone looked completely exhausted, so we decided to bag it and have a morning off. The pressure can build quite a bit for students on this trip. This has been a pretty high performing group, in terms of both advance research and making appointments in advance of this trip, for the most part. The first student's shoot was fifteen minutes after we arrived Friday night. By Sunday, between all-day shooting schedules, tagging along and assisting on each other's shoots, everyone was pooped.

Our first trip out today was to The Ark in Uptown, a day facility for challenged adults, where one of Devin's subjects was performing. After we dropped him (and his able assistant, Whitley), we headed for the LaFayette Cemetery No. 1, where both Peach and Ashley needed to shoot.

I picked up Devin and Whitley and we stopped for a poboy and a praline before catching up with the cemetery women, who'd now migrated down Prytania to find more of Peach's structures.

Then we were off to The Ogden Museum of Southern Art to meet Richard McCabe, Preparator, who toured us through the Katrina Anniversary Exhibition put on by the National Press Photographers Association, "Telling Their Stories," Dave Anderson's, "One Block," and shared a group of Walker Evans pictures from the collection of Jessica Lange. He even read Fromm the Evans biography. It was pretty cool. We also got to see a terrific collection of country music memorabilia and photographs from the collection and camera of Marty Stuart. The ephemera included hand written lyrics from some of the greats, such as Johnny Cash, Hank Williams Sr., Emmy Lou Harris...you name it. There were lots of suit, boots, and terrific folk art paintings. We finished our visit with a group picture on the rooftop patio.



After, Becky took some students to their shoots (more to come from Becky on the edible schoolyard later), and I took Shelly, Peach, and Ashley off to the Lower 9th. Ashley made a great sound assistant for Shelly as she toured the neighborhood with Robert Green, while Peach and I toddled off for a church she wanted to rephotograph at sunset. After, we all made for the St. Roch Cemetery for Ashley and met three delightful kids who entertained us while Ashley worked away...