i like to tell stories

Newt Gingrich for TIME Magazine’s 10 Questions

1271 Avenue of the Americas – 23rd fl. NY, NY

93 images in 8m 22seconds

11:21:06AM-11:29:28AM – April 11, 2008

I was waiting on the train platform playing with my camera, listening to music in my headphones and avoiding the group of teenagers hanging out nearby, hoping they’d leave me alone and not ask what I was doing photographing the bushes and rocks. They didn’t.

My phone rang and I knew it was you. I had been hoping to hear from you and kinda hoping I wouldn’t as I was scared of what you had to say. I knew you had another doctor’s appointment today to take even more blood and do even more tests. I knew you received results from the last blood test today too. I could hear the fear in your voice when I answered. I could see you shaking a little, trembling, and stuttering on the other end of the phone in my mind. Your voice never lost it’s calm yet I could sense the panic just under the surface in your mind through it. The doctors had no answers, they didn’t know what it was causing the problem, they only presented more possibilities of one dire thing or another. They could only take more blood and make you wait, again.

I didn’t really know what to say to you to make you feel better, relax you or let you know how much I worried for you too, so I kept making pictures while I listened to you talk to me through my headphones. I thought all I can do is stay calm for you and not let you hear or sense the panic in my mind, so I calmly kept making pictures while we spoke.

i shoot competitive sporting clays, this means i own a shotgun. this means i travel with it, which means i fly with it. i live in nyc, so this means jfk, lga. i have flown with my firearm 19 times.

one of the creepiest feelings i have ever had is walking into an airport carrying a firearm in one hand and ammunition in the other.

this is legal. this happens thousands of time a day, everywhere in america.

it is easier to travel with a firearm then it is my photographic gear.

to say i am anal about how to do this is an understatement. i have a permit, i have the registration. i follow the law here, the tightest in the country, to the point that the laws themselves make no sense. i have had to instruct counter agents and tsa agents on the proper procedures.

today i walked from one side of midtown to the other, up madison ave and back again to get a repair made. i did this carrying my firearm as required by law.

if at any point i make a mistake in these procedures in the city or at an aiport, i go to jail, for a very long time.

these are weird experiences.

my gun has never killed or hurt any living creature and as long as i own it never will. well except the time i dropped the gun/case on my foot and broke a few of my toes, that hurt, a lot.

The 2h of turnpike drive from NYC to M&M and back again is seriously starting to hurt my brain.

4/19/08
M&M Sporting Clays
Pennsville, NJ

The Big Seafood Blast is a 3 day tournament. Last year, I did both the Main Event and the John DeVito Memorial Preliminary. This year, I could only go for one day.

So I shot the DeVito Memorial event because last year, I destroyed it, I won it in my class at the time, the lowest class, E class. What was so wonderful about this wasn’t just winning my class, I won it with an 84/100. I would of won D, C and B with that score and was around 35th of 300 OVERALL score wise, not just class rank. This was epic and to this day exactly one year later, remains the most amazing performance I have ever had.

So Saturday, I tried again. It wasn’t to be, I shot a 74/100. I started at station 5 and shot a 2 of 8, an abysmal beginning, so I tried to work the mental magic and forget, move on. I did well, all the way to station 14 where I shot a 2 of 6. Station 1, 3 of 6. So in 3 of 15 stations, I dropped 13 targets, this is not how you win a competition. I would finish this year’s DeVito Memorial in 6th place of 40 entries, C class.

I also shot the 28g event, I hadn’t shot subgauge (smaller shell/load then usual 12g = harder to hit target) in almost a year, already had shells and wanted to shoot more as I have no idea if or when I’ll shoot again. I was 6th here too out of 14 competitors. Subgauge is fucking cool, but hard, damn hard.

FITASC.

Carne Ross for TIME
Independent Diplomat
March 15, 2008

Independent Diplomat takes on only clients who are committed to democracy, nonviolence and human rights–and those nobody else seems willing to help. They include the Polisario Front, the government in exile of Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, which ID is helping in its struggle for independence. Then there’s Somaliland, which has been independent since 1991 and is taking advice from ID on how to gain international recognition. “You should be engaging with all groups,” says Ross, “not just governments sitting in offices and embassies.” After a career spent deciding the fates of people who weren’t even in the room, Ross gives the voiceless a chance to have their say–before they find more drastic ways to be heard. – TIME Magazine.

Mr. Ross will help you plant your flag, so to speak. The intern informed me of their admiration for Bjorks song, that’s why I have used it here.

(I may not post more of these as I am no longer comfortable using music I don’t have permission for… or they will simply be left silent. Other solutions are in the works, time will tell).

i had another restless night before the tournament, maybe 2.5h of sleep at best. i got lucky, L did most of the driving for me both ways. otherwise, it would of been a rough day of trying to sleep from rest stop to rest stop, hoping i knew when to sleep and when to drive.

Quarry Thaw 2008.

more catastrophe, i need to stop, i started really well. being that this feels most like a home club, my hopes were high for a pleasurable result or at least, one were i knew i did all i was capable of. i started well, 5 of the first 10 stations were a perfect score, 6 of 6. the other first 10 station scores were 3 stations 5 of 6 and 2 stations 4 of 6. i can respect myself with that. i then went on to lose 13 targets in the last 5 stations out of all the 17 stations. 75/100. absurd. i cannot even say i choked, no mental game felt lost, the targets weren’t out of my ability, some were even my favorite presentations, the fucking flying clay just didn’t break. i have no idea, they just didn’t break….

7th of 28 in C class. for the first time in about 6 tournaments, i wasn’t one place/target out of money/trophy/points. i am slipping instead climbing.

i had just moved to NYC, greenpoint. the only working camera i had was a bastard version of an olympus stylus. i always had that thing loaded with bad, cheap fuji 100 i could get for $2 a roll. all that film went years without getting processed and to this day, has only been half heartedly thumbed through or used for journal fodder. being that LGA is right there, whenever you looked up, there was almost always some man made flying wonder to look at. it reminded me of texas and florida, living near bases and the sound of war planes practicing that always made me get to a window or crane my neck to see that flying steal magic that i still don’t understand not falling like a rock to the earth.

maryland, april 2006.

the same wonder, 11 years later, nothing is different in a way, to me, in making the images. well, actually it is, but it’s an unfortunate connection that got in the way of my wonder of all these metal birds. 9/11 changed how a plane is looked at forever. no longer just the awesome images from the news of mechanical, weather and human error failure imagery. the horror of this technology as a weapon will forever change the very definition of the object itself. before 9/11, one of the most remarkable things i remember ever seeing was after the crash in DC, a plane that hit one of the bridges in a blizzard, the potomac frozen solid slowed the debris. i can remember the woman on the ice, blinded by jet fuel in her eyes, deaf from a rescue helicopter just feet above her, flailing in an attempt to swim from the wreckage but trapped in ice and too week from exhaustion to hold onto the helicopters skid the pilot actually dipped below the water in attempts to save her. i was only 8, but i watched the television as a man jumped into the icy water to save her as another man jumped in from the shore after seeing her lose her grip for what was surely the last attempt. they saved her. to this day, i believe watching the helicopter pilot dip the skids of that chopper into the water trying so hard to save her is why i wanted to be a helicopter pilot all the way into high school.

i went to maryland with L. her parents basically live on the grounds of BWI, it is wonderful, there is always something to watch cross that sky, her mom even works for an airline, perfect.

at nationals, for some reason, other then the once or twice a day flyover of paired fighter jets, there was a C-5 almost always around somewhere up there and almost every time i could i wasn’t actually shooting, i had to snap it. even when i couldn’t hear it, i’d think i hadn’t seen one in awhile, so i would look, sure enough, here one would come, making shadows on clouds, disappearing in them and around them or simply sitting there against that blue sky, daring you to understand how something so fucking big can actually get off the ground.

the plane is getting much attention. robert is up to something up in brooklyn and finding others all over that are too. i must confess, i haven’t read much that is being said, bits and pieces here and there, i just want to look at the pictures. i took this one sunday, i always snap the beasts in the sky leaving/landing at EWR from the turnpike, i don’t know how anyone with a camera can’t. robert, i didn’t want or intend to put the pole there, but not looking through the camera and delay issues can only be anticipated so much….. not that i am unhappy with result in the slightest.

Me

1271 Avenue of the Americas, 23rd floor, April 11, 2008, 12:17:35 P.M.
(TIME Magazine)

i shot someone awhile back in few different outfits. no real point to any of it other then to have fun or otherwise make silly pictures. she said i could shoot her in one if i never posted them, even though other outfits showed more skin, she didn’t want these posted. i said ok and kept shooting.

that was a mistake.

all the images i like best i cannot use or maybe i only like them because i cannot use them, i dunno. i have a release from her, but still, my word is my word.

so yeah, i can no longer see the point in making images i cannot share.

now i know that, without a doubt.

On Martin Luther King Day this year, 2008, Bill Clinton fell asleep in a church in Harlem. Alone, this is very entertaining as it’s funny, at first. Till you start to realize the hypocrisy of course and the fact that no matter how insulting it is and that it was widely published, no one really seem to care.

I like this story as the church it happened in is on Rev. Dr. John W. Saunders Place and that there is a plaque in Saunders’ honor inside. I also like this as my girlfriend at the time lived just feet away, so when the images hit of Bill asleep, the back of that wall propping up his tired ass is literally only feet from the back of her wall where my tired ass gets propped up regularly.

That’s the closest I will ever come to sleeping with a President of the United States, probably.