My old roommate and good friend manages a soup kitchen in San Rafael, California, where, in the center of one of the wealthiest counties in North America, he oversees serving thousands of plates each week. Though I will be purusing this story further as my graduate thesis, I initially helped out by introducing myself to the staff of St Vinnie's and photographing their patrons as part of their outreach program.

What I ended up with was an array of portraits, and stories, from a range of people facing hardships in Marin.

My intermediate photography class in college was Holga-based. In fact, it was Holga-exclusive. We weren't allowed to learn medium format on anything else. It was light leaks and fucked up film and awful focus and the array of other problems that this magnificent little piece of plastic provides. To this day, it's still my favorite camera.

So when I moved to California, I was burned out after a year of digital and wanted to get back to basics. Thus, The Holga Project was born in my attempt to rekindle a lost flame between my once best friend and I. Every photo I've taken is available in this archive, to (hopefully) show a progression as I get used to the camera more and experiment with how it handles.

In the spring, the Army ROTC squad at Boston University gears up for it's Spring Training Exercise (STX), a three day endeavor that trains third year cadets in commanding squads through simulated combat situations. The first day is filled with eight missions, or lanes, each 90 minutes in length, with combat orders given and fourth year cadets taking up the role as either opposing forces or citizens encountered. The second day is one long, six hour lane where three units are all in one, large squad, ordered to complete a single mission.

The goal of these exercises is to measure the decision making abilities of officers in training in a safe environment with legitimate obstacles; the rounds are all blank, but the terrain and timeline for mission accomplishment all are very real. For the 2009 STX, I embedded with a small unit of BU students and documented their experience from training months prior to STX, and through the weekend.

My love of graphic design and journalism were able to meet in something other than self-published magazines when I covered the endeavors of Firefly Press, a classical letterpress and typesetting shop in lower Allston, Massachusetts. They were nice enough to let me sit around and watch them work, show me around the shop and talk philosophy as it pertains to tyopgraphy and the human condition.

On top of this photo essay, I wrote and produced a six-minute multimedia piece on the labors of love and beauty produced at Firefly, and how this measures up in the face of an all-ecompassing digital horizon.

At Boston University I had the opportunity to embed with the school's Army ROTC squad over a rather intense three day, two night annual event called the Ranger Challenge. The RC is designed to test cadets' knowledge and endurance through a series of physically intense tests. For me, it was hard enough to wake with the guys at 4:30 in the morning and head out into the freezing cold woods of western Massachusetts. Fortunately I didn't have to assemble any rifles or run an obstacle course; I was merely there to document.

Over the course of the weekend, I observed both the intense concentration of the soldiers of tomorrow but also the friendly dealings within the unit, and interviewed an array of cadets on their views on war, college, and what the future holds. In addition to the photos in the project, there is a six minute documentary video I wrote to deal with what I discovered over this weekend.

I'm not a big fan of casual portraiture. Though I take my camera everywhere, rarely will I ever take a picture of someone I know, at least for awhile. I am of the belief that it not only takes a good photographer to take a good portrait, but it also takes a friend. Maybe this goes against the common idea of whatever that portrait photographers are supposed to 'get to know someone' right off and get a great shot, but I think the best photos will always come after knowing someone for a significant period of time before you ever attempt to get a picture of them.

So these are people I've known; some are great friends, some were. We fall in and out with one another, I suppose, but I guess that's what photographs are for in the end.

Band photography started out for me as just something more interesting to do at shows than standing around and getting kicked and having nothing to show for it. However, after I got used to the fun you can have with swirling lights and motion, I began investing more of my time in documenting the culture surrounding live music and small bands in shitty venues.

Eventually, I saw the photographs as a way of reproducing a sound in a silent room; that the best band photographs aren't necessarily about who has the right look or the right shadow, but more that the photo has captured the essence of the band's sound. Included are from a collection of shows I've shot over the past couple years.