Thursday, March 23, 2006

Big city boy shoots a dairy farm! THE SIMPLE LIFE part III

This past October I was accepted and attended the prestigious Eddie Adams Workshop for Photojournalism (www.eddieadamsworkshop.com). EAW is an intensive 4-day weekend workshop that is made up of the top photojournalists (Gordon Parks taught one year) paired with the top photojournalism students across the U.S. and abraod. Since I was taking a documentary photography class at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in NYC, I submitted my portfolio and was accepted! A real achievement, 'cause they only accept 100 photojournalists out of thousands of applicants! Each "student" is given an assignment to shoot over the weekend. Mine was to document the Weiss Dairy Farm!! I had never been on a farm in my life! I live in New York City for goodness sakes! This was a true case of THE SIMPLE LIFE. Having documented life on a dairy farm I now have mad respect for farmers everywhere! By the end of the weekend, I had ruined two pairs or leather boots and two pairs of jeans. There was shit and muck everywhere and the smell was in my nostrils for a week after I'd gotten back to NYC!

All photojournalism assignments are not "fun" or "easy". It takes great skill to produce an image that is not "typical" of what you know about a subject (but what's not typical of a dairy farm!). While I did shoot cows and the like, I was focused on more of the "details" of a farm, and looked for images that could speak to the subject, in this case a afrm, but was not as obvious.

The EAW was a GREAT experience that has forever shaped my life as a photojournalist. Below are some photos from my day on the Weiss Dairy Farm in Jeffersonville, NY on a cool, wet, misty, overcast day. Enjoy!

Thanks to the WEISS family for your hospitality!

Tire tracks in the muck


Clothes line


Feeding time


Feeding time II


Owner of Weiss Dairy Farm in truck


Portrait of a farmer


Front Porch of farm house


Desolate barn


Farmer


John Weiss, Owner of Weiss Dairy Farm


Misty spider web


Untitled farm


Cow portrait


Bales of Hay


Cow "holding pen"


Deep in shit and muck


Ford truck


Untitled hay and house

4 comments:

Paula D. said...

You have a great eye! I love photography. What camera do you use?

Morisset said...

Thanks Paula! I use mostly Canons 20D and D60. The farm photos were taken with a Nikon.

divine oasis said...

these poor cows. OMG. i see why i stopped eating red meat 10 years ago.

btw,
you are talented in the world of photography.

SGL Café.com said...

Awesome. That says it all. What a truly talented eye.