Growing up in northern Vermont, the Long Trail was a constant presence in my life.  Friends and parents of friends would share their stories of hiking the trail. Looking at the horizon, I could trace its winding path. Like many Vermonters, I am familiar with overnight hiking trips and what the weight of a 40 pound backpack feels like (terrible), but I never considered trying to hike the entire trail.  However, this summer I decided to start section hiking the Long Trail. The motivation finally came from Cheryl Stayed’s memoir Wild, which inspired me to contemplate the idea of hiking on my own. After a lot of research and consulting with Carol Irish, who celebrated her 50th birthday by thru-hiking the trail solo, I have set out to section hike the Long Trail. 

Meet Cale Stoeffler & Adele Levine, a queer couple in Boston. I spent an evening wandering around Jamaica Plain with these two passionate, funny and down to earth people. I asked them what their experience has been like dating in the queer/trans community. 

Vermont promotes little friendships. 

The lovely Molly O’Reilly and I spent an evening together making photographs and sharing stories. When hoping to create images that reveal private thoughts and feelings I often set the tone for honesty through some well chosen music and open conversation.  

Two of my favorite photographers, Nan Goldin and Kelli Connell, focus on intimacy in their work. The more I study their images, the more I feel their work touches on the elusive quality that surrounds friendship and love. This summer I wanted to create a photograph for Anisocoria that touched on my own experience with intimacy.

It was such a pleasure to photograph Carolyn & Max on Whiteface Mountain and in Lake Placid, NY. Carolyn & Max are both fellow Skidmore Alumni and I studied photography with Carolyn, so we had a lot of fun on this shoot. Check out some of Carolyn’s photography here.

This past Friday I had my first real gallery opening at Maglianero in Burlington, VT! It was a fantastic night with a great crowd and in support of Food 4 Farmers.

Sara is my oldest friend, and she’s been a wonderful person to photograph over the years. We’d been talking about doing a photoshoot focusing on her tattoos for a while, and last weekend we had a perfect location. My family’s summer home sits on Lake Champlain in South Hero, Vermont and, when the water dropped for the summer, huge trees and driftwood were washed up on the rocks. The combination of drift wood, South Hero and dusk, made for a perfect scenario.

Last April I went to NYC to visit friends and go to the AIPAD photography show, and I’m pretty sure this might become a lifelong tradition. AIPAD is such a thrill – the world’s best photography galleries display their best photographs. Most people at the show attend to purchase these photographs, anything from $1,000 – $60,000, and then there all of the photography geeks who wander around drooling.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of spending the day with The Gang of Thieves and photographing their album release show at ArtsRiot in Burlington, VT. In the past year, the band fundraised $10,000 through a Kickstarter campaign to work with a grammy award winning producer, Michael Rosen, to make an incredible album, Thunderfunk. This day was the culmination of an insane amount of work on the part of all the band members, and I felt so lucky to be included on such an important day for the gang. See the full gallery from the day here and you can buy the album here.