Closing up Shop

Well, it's not really closing up shop, more like moving down the street. This blog has moved to a new location:

http://www.jonsoucy.wordpress.com

Be sure to update your links/ favorites etc accordingly.

Bang

A few months ago I photographed those going through Sniper School for the U.S. Army. While I would never want to be a sniper, the marksmanship ability of these folks is insane.

Most of these images are of the students as they went through an exercise where they had to move through varied terrain toward a specified target. They had to position themselves within 300 meters of the target and fire two rounds of blank ammunition without being detected.

Their target: instructors sitting in the bed of a pick-up truck in the middle of an open field.

Then they went and spent more time on the range, which is where they spend a good bit of their time while at the school.

Surrounded by Ghosts

Fort Chaffee, Ark., sits on the western edge of the state with many of the buildings of the Army post decaying in the winds that rustle the tall grasses now growing along once-neat streets and sidewalks. Built during the years leading up to World War II when the writing was on the wall that the U.S. would enter the conflict sooner rather than later, the post has seen a multitude of units and people pass through it's gates including a young Elvis Presley on his way to Fort Hood, Texas, and Basic Combat Training.

The post is largely quiet these days. Still in use, though largely as a training installation with no units permanently stationed there. Units come for a few weeks at a stretch and then leave to head back to wherever their home station is. But, the post's halcyon days can still be seen if you look with the right eyes.

Many of the World War II-era buildings sit vacant with glassless windows looking into darkened hallways and barracks containing 65-plus years worth of Soldiers' stories, dust and memories. The sidewalks brush with ghosts from the units that were housed in those buildings. Floating along on the wind rushing through the silent streets one can almost hear the sounds of Soldiers from long ago shouting to get in formation. Or see Soldiers walking down the sidewalk, or hanging out outside of now-empty barracks. Jeeps can almost be heard rumbling down the same streets that now see no traffic.

The dun-colored paint is flaking and peeling from many of the buildings and there are just as many mysteries that peel away and shuffle past. What unit was quartered here? What happened to the folks who went to the field house for that pick up game of basketball that sultry summer night in July 1943?

The installation was in heavy use from the 1940s through the 1970s before being turned into a training base with no permanent units. During World War II, in addition to providing a training facility for U.S. soldiers, Fort Chaffee served as a POW camp and housed some 3000 German prisoners of war. Thirty years later, Vietnamese refugees were housed at Fort Chaffee following the fall of Saigon in 1975 and then many Cuban refugees following the Mariel Boatlift of 1980. Though there have been new buildings constructed over the years and many World War II-era buildings are still in use, the post seems to be throwback to days long since past.

At the old guard shack marking the main entrance to the post one almost expects a World War II Soldier to step from it to ask for identification, the architectural flourishes of the tiny structure hint of another time. Though, no such person is present and the modern security checkpoint down the road has an institutionally modern, sterile feel to it. No style. No finesse, and the overweight security contractor checks I.D.s with only half-hearted enthusiasm as the paint continues to peel from the old buildings and float along the passing breeze.

Iowa

After Thailand I spent some time in Helena, Mont., teaching a few photo classes. It was more of a week-long workshop focusing on visual storytelling. Fun stuff. I love it when I get to teach photo and that sort of stuff, especially when everyone is as engaged with things as the folks in Montana were. Though I was in Montana for quite awhile, I didn't shoot a single frame, well, unless you count the images shot as part of the demonstration of using off-camera strobes to light portraits.

After that, it was back home for a week and then out to Des Moines, Iowa, to photograph a big training scenario for local police, fire and other first responders etc. Scheduled for a week, it was really only two days of actual hands-on stuff going on, and even then it was pretty slow going. The scenario was a train derailment in which various train cars contained an amalgamation of hazardous materials. There was also a whole sub-plot of possible criminal and/or terrorist involvement, but I never quite understood the whole thing. But there were lots of roleplayers there acting out the part of train derailment victim, and there done up quite nicely with fake burns, lacerations, bleeding appendages and even a few with fake missing limbs. Though while I was there, I kept thinking it really looked like one big zombie movie.

Thailand

Freighter leaving the Port of Laem Chabang, Pattaya, Thailand

Holy no posting Batman. Hard to believe that more than two months has passed since the last post. OK, so actually it's not so difficult to believe. A good chunk of May and nearly all of June was spent out on the road or in the field. Back-to-back-to-back assignments and a number of other things going on outside of work/ photo stuff left little time for updating this thing.

Well, first I spent some time in Thailand. I was there for a little more than a week, which is coincidentally nearly the same length of time it takes to get there from the east coast of the U.S. Well, not really, but after 20 hours on a plane, it starts to feel that way.

I was there to cover disaster response and port operations agencies as they went through training. Did that, but there was quite a bit of down time, so we were able to go check out Bangkok and Pattaya, the two main cities that we were in. Thailand was not at all what I expected it to be like. I expected there to be more trash strewn about and much more obvious prostitution. Perhaps I just wasn't visiting the right parts of town.


Bangkok. More scooters, mopeds and motorcycles than you'd ever know what to do with.


It's like Chips, but no Erik Estrada.


Downtown Bangkok.


Outskirts of Bangkok.


Wading into the Gulf of Thailand, Pattaya, Thailand


Mending fishing nets, near Pattaya


Unloading freighters, Port of Laem Chabang


Firefighters training at the Port of Laem Chabang.


Firefighting training. I got soaked when a hose broke loose from the nozzle portion.


Firefighter, Port of Laem Chabang


And while in Thailand the world ended. Or, at least the sky looked like that was so.

Night

Off and on I've been working on a project shooting at night using long exposures--like several minutes to several hours. OK, maybe not several hours, not yet anyhow, but some of the exposure times have been up there. It's been something I started playing around with as a way to see things differently and to simply try new things. It's also got me thinking of different ways to light things-- using car headlights, or flashlights or painting with light. So, now the next step is to take that and apply it to say portraiture. Or not. Anyhow, it's a different way of seeing the commonplace, and adds a new element, though I've been trying to stay away from the ol' cars on the highway motif that so often gets used. I remember doing something similar for a photo course when I was going to school. At the time, I was in many ways a little too impatient and tried to rush things. It's a little different this time around. So, here's a few form the series.

Water Survival, part II

Spent the last few days in the Moorhead, Minn., area photographing the response to the ever rising Red River of the North. It was odd being in a flood area that had large chunks of ice in it and snow falling while it flooded. Even better than the distinctive accent of the upper Midwest was seeing the way everybody in the community came together to fill sandbags, stack sandbags, build dikes and levees, bring food and coffee and just generally help out. There were even a number of folks who didn't even live in the area, but just came to help out. Mostly though, I focused on what Minnesota Army National Guard folks were doing as part of the response.