Two girls from Point Hope photograph themselves

I back up a little bit here, to November 23, at the Challenge Life basketball tournament for middle schoolers, held in Fairbanks. I have finally begun to edit those photos and will incorporate a selection of them into a much bigger project that I am working on.

As I shot the Point Hope boys battling Fort Yukon in their final game, I noticed these two members of the Point Hope girls team photographing themselves from just behind the basket.

Wasilla: Skating with a dead salmon; New York City: Painted and unpainted faces at Coney Island

I had to pick Margie up from work at 4:00, so I left the house at 3:30, thinking that I would stop at Wasilla Lake and see if anything was happening there. Not too much. Maybe half-a-dozen people skating here and there on the lake and a few more walking about onshore.

The first ones to catch my eye were this father and son, David and Christopher Rogers. It was the first time in his life that two-year old Christopher had stepped onto the ice wearing skates. He was still trying to get used to them. I reasoned that the father was likely a hockey player, in the process of passing his sport on to his son.

So I asked David, "Do you play hockey?"

"No," he answered. 

They both have hockey sticks, but little Christopher has momentarily been separated from his.

David retrieves Christopher's hockey stick, and slides it back to him. He may not be a hockey player, but he and his wife have long loved the Anchorage Aces, and catch every game they can. As it happened, his wife went into labor during a playoff game. Ever since he became cognizant of the world around him, Dad says, Christopher has loved to watch hockey.

Now David was giving him his first chance to begin learning the talents he will need to one day play the game himself.

Now father and son skirmish for the puck. I hope somehow to halfway keep track of this kid, Christopher Rogers. I think we might see him doing battle in the rink one day.

I saw another father and son skating across the ice, so I went over to check them out and noticed they were skating straight toward a dead, spawned-out, salmon, frozen fast into the surface of the lake.

The boy skates toward the salmon.

Another boy comes skating toward the salmon.

The two boys collide, and one goes down almost atop the salmon.

Dad has helped little Christopher stand up in skating position. They glide slowly across the ice, Dad backwards, son forward. They do not know it, but they are headed toward the salmon, too.

After taking a fall, little Christopher gets up and is amazed to see the salmon. I did not have time to linger and discuss diet, but I suspect that Christopher knows the tasted of salmon. It wouldn't surprise me if he eats salmon often.

Another photographer, Bill Roth of the Anchorage Daily News, was also prowling the lake. He had been photographing a man skating farther out and then he came over to say hi, saw the salmon, and got artistic.

And I took a few pictures of the man out in the lake. The sun had now set on the surface of the lake, although it still shone on the mountains and the upper walls of Fred Meyer. I would have liked to have spoken with this skater, as I would have the other father and the two boys. But it was very nearly 4:00 PM and Margie was not going to be happy if I left her standing outside the work place. 

She would not complain. She is not like that. But she would not be happy, even though she would soon put it behind her.

(Remember, a "click" reveals a larger image.)

Margie was tired but happy when I pulled up in front of Wal-Mart and she climbed into the car. We stopped at the drive-through window of the Espresso Cafe, ordered some hot drinks, then wandered around a bit on our way home. A momma moose and her calf ran across the road in front of us.

Back to Coney Island: A young girl got her face painted

After the face painting, she admired herself in a cheap mirror.

And then I saw the homely face of a graying man who is quickly growing old, looking at me from that same mirror. Who could this hideous creature be, I wondered. And then I realized - it was me!

Yet, how could this be? I can assure you, my friends, that I do not look like this. There must be something wrong with that mirror. I am young, handsome - quite good-looking, debonaire. And I always will be. No gray in me. Maybe a little bit in my beard, but that doesn't count.

That mirror is very cheap.

New York City: Mikhael Subotsky - W. Eugene Smith grant winner; Wasilla: mean dog, cute baby

This is Mikhael Subotsky, the Cape Town, South Africa, photojournalist* who won this year's $30,000 W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant in Humanistic Photography and he is just about to inflict significant pain upon me. Following the awards ceremony, the Fund hosted Subotsky and several others of us who had played a roll in this year's event at a fine, French restaurant where diners are greeted by a calico cat.

After dinner, a group of us were standing on the corner waiting for cabs and that is when I took this picture with my Canon Powershot G9 point and shoot pocket camera. I had wanted to bring my big, heavy, Canon 1Ds M III with me to New York, because of the quality of pictures that it produces - especially under low light such as this. Yet, given the state of my still healing shoulder, I knew that I could not handle carrying the weight of that camera around New York, so I left it home and took only the G9.

Subotsky's cab came first. Before getting into it, he shook hands with everybody on the corner. I had meant to warn him that I had broken my shoulder in June and that my whole arm and hand was still sore and delicate, but before I could, he clenched my hand in a vice-grip and vigorously pumped it up and down.

Despite the sudden pain, I managed not to howl out or scream. He then let go of my hand, and, as I struggled to maintain my composure, with his left hand he suddenly gave me a good, hearty, vigorous, friendly, cuff directly over what had been one of my major fractures.

I gritted my teeth and suppressed the scream that tried to escape me. I smiled, expressed once again my admiration for the powerful, stunning, poetic, enlightening look this 27-year old photographer has taken at this often dark life that we all share and then said good-bye as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Not far from Broadway and 84th Street, where Sue Brisk, of the Funds Board of Trustees dropped me off by cab, I spotted this homeless man pushing his cart past the trappings of a fantasy world so impossible to him. This gave me a good excuse to point my camera at a fantasy image of the kind that I never have nor ever expect to get to take - although I damn well sure could, given the lights, the model, the assistants and the time.

I damn well sure could!

I attended this year's awards ceremony because I had won a first runner-up grant in 1999 and, as a Smith fellow, had now been invited to show a sample of work I had done since. Furthermore, as my little hometown has recently become famous, infamous, and notorious, I was asked if I might show some Wasilla photos as well.

The test run went fine, but - oh my! The presentation! Technological nightmare. Instead of photos, I put on a display of gigantic pixels over tiny images, some of which hinted at possible photography. 

Fortunately, I quickly realized that the situation had gone to hell and was not likely to get better and so I joked about it and kept everybody laughing all the way to the end and afterward managed to get a bunch of positive comments anyway.

I then spent the rest of the week in New York and I walked all around, at least ten and maybe sometimes 15 miles each day. I rode the subway, again and again and again. As I walked and rode, I snapped a hodge-podge of images with my little pocket camera.

Now, I will devote my next few entries to samples of my New York grab shots.

To keep the blog relevant to Wasilla, each time I do I will also include a few of the Wasilla images that I took to New York to show. To keep the blog timely to the day, I will end each of these presentations with some pocket-camera Wasilla images from the date of the post.

Here, then, are the three images that I used to introduce Wasilla to New York:

And yes, this damn dog bit me. Later, when it came after me again, its owner assured me that the dog was all bark and no bite, a truly loving and gentle character, not an individual to fear at all.

And here are five images from today in Wasilla:

My flight arrived at convicted Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage at 1:15 this morning. Daughter Melanie picked me up and got me home by about 3:00 AM. I slept in until 10:00 AM, then, as I always do the morning after I return from a trip, I got up and took Margie to breakfast, Kalib too.

A bit later, we ate lunch at Taco Bell, which now sits in the parking lot of the new Wasilla Target, where someone took a cigarette break, and talked on her phone. After New York, where people amazed me by bundling up in warm weather - some even wrapped their faces in scarves - it felt quite cold here, even though it was actually a nice, pleasant day in the teens. Single digits, now that evening has fallen (and come morning, a few degrees below zero).

As you can see, Rupright survived the primary and is still vying to take over Sarah Palin's old job. I have no idea why. If I can meet him, I will ask him, and share his answer with you.

The other primary survivor was Metiva. Same goes for him, should I meet him.

I end this day's presentation with baby Kalib and his mother - my wonderful daughter-in-law, Lavina, photographed in our driveway, right here in Wasilla, Alaska.

*Mikhael Subotsky's webpage.