Falconry: Day 3

On Friday the 14th, the girls didn't catch anything for two hours. Al moved to a different place after I left and they caught a couple squirrels. These are edited still frames from video I shot. So far, over three days, I've devoted a single day for photo, audio and video, respectively. As the season continues I will likely pick and choose a little more to get a solid base for a piece then improve everything as time goes on.

I really love the top two. Even though the birds don't have any affection for Al like a pet dog would and the girls are still wild, that doesn't keep them from growing on Al. He truly loves and cares for his birds. 

Some of the other photos are better quality for sure but they lack the emotional and connection that I was searching for when I began this story. It's great to not have the pressure of doing this for a class. I've gotten most of what goes on in one form or another it's just a matter of focusing the story and using the right media format for the right moments. 

Poaching in Greece

Out working on the falconry story I nearly stumbled into this carcass. It was in a weird place behind some old trucks abandoned behind a church- not likely near enough to the road to have been hit but I presumed no hunter would have left the meat. 

When Al walked by and saw it he said, "What a waste." He told me a lot of poaching still occurs and pointed out where the antlers had been cut off. It had been culled for its horns and the meat left for the animals- largely wasted. 

In October, National Geographic featured the poaching of elephants for their ivory in Botswana but this is an issue that also occurs in our area. There are a lot of people who would gladly have taken that meat. When my dad was in college, he and his roommates would dress dear that had been hit by cars near their house. This deer was likely shot so some hunters could add another rack to their wall. True, it could have been hit and discovered but we also came across a hunter on posted private property who skulked away when we gave him a wave. 

Falconry: Day 2

Last Saturday I went out with Al Jordan and another falconer from the area, Hank Minor. Hank's bird Mocha is still young and in training. While she didn't catch anything, Jordan's girls caught four squirrels again. 

I focused on capturing audio for the hunt with Jordan's hawks to accompany the previous hunt. 

Falconry: Day 1

Falconry is one of the oldest forms of hunting known to man dating back to somewhere between 3000-5000 B.C. It is a partnership between a man and a wild falcon or hawk that is mutually beneficial. The hawk has a greater chance of survival than it would in the wild and the man (or woman) has the chance to hunt with a bird of prey. 

Al Jordan, the falconer who has allowed me to begin the story, has three birds named Kit (6 months), Tess (about 18 months), and Z (24 months). A bird can be trained in 17 days from being wild to hunting with a falconer. They could read a newspaper across a football field. Jordan's hawks were bred in captivity with the purpose of hunting but when released, as he will some day do, they will be perfectly capable of transitioning. His Harris hawks are not indigenous to the northeast but are found in the deep mid-south in and around Texas. They are one of the only breed of hawk than hunts together.

Both days I've gone, his hawks have caught four squirrels in about an hour. Jordan takes his hawks out every day during the season and has one of the highest kill rates in the country. 

America's Waste: The Perfect Supplement

Multimedia I final project. Needs some touching up still.

America's Waste: The Perfect Supplement from Jesse Horning on Vimeo.

With a growing global concern for coming food shortages and economic lows in the U.S., many people have chosen to search for alternative means of providing for their families. Autumn, a wife and mother of five, spends one night a week supplementing her family's basic groceries with dumpster diving for "the really good stuff". Since there is such an abundance of food wasted, she shares with multiple families in similar economic situations.

Dumpster Diving

Autumn had skillet grilled chicken with barbecue sauce and rice from the dumpster and she cooked a second cauliflower with cinnamon and spices for a post dinner snack.

Dumpster Diving: Night 3

Fragrant dumpster roses. 

Food presumably unfit to sell or donate to shelters. 

Autumn scoping out dumpsters behind a large plaza

We left those... 

Keeping it classy with the dumpster roses.

Last night was one of the longer trips largely because we went so far, to so many places and had very little to show for it. 

After shadily driving behind a gigantic plaza to check out the new Trader Joes's for a while, we moved on. Mall security kept patrolling and the place wasn't closing down in the back. We checked behind every other place we could think of but most places had trash compactors. 

One bakery had a bag of eight loaves of fresh bread in it, we pulled a new heater out of a farmer's supply dumpster, and another location of a grocery Autumn usually hits up was slim pickings (but not as slim as when I scoped it out on my own the other night and spotted another diver pulling in after I left). 

After finding those chicken bones, Autumn said, "Just wait. Next we'll find a body." Honestly, that actually happened a couple years ago when I lived off Monroe Ave. in the city. A man's body was found in a dumpster behind a gas station a couple blocks from our house. 

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On a personal side note, after being the TA for a photo class I was in two years ago, I suddenly felt like a complete failure. This project on dumpster diving is so relevant and pretty unusual. After perusing CPOY where the real competition is for college photojournalists, I felt like this story has serious potential if for no other reason than it's different. There's no drugs, death, transvestites, natural disasters, military ceremonies, or athletes involved. Everyone in the business tells young journalists to "shoot what you know" and that rarely happens. Maybe too many students spend their time getting wasted or doing these fantastic (in the truest sense of the word) stories that are removed from them. It's so much easier to shoot when you've been in the dumpster, experienced the rush of approaching sirens, the stench of dumpster. I'm sure the same goes for everything else. 

But after that class, I felt so defeated- again. Shooting lost all appeal when I was in that class. A friend of mine is helping me get my shit together for a website, and my multimedia class is the most fun I've ever had for college course. So one minute I'm like, "Yes, this is so awesome!" And after that lecture, "I'm a failure and hate my life." C'est la vie some days. This is still really fun and I'm spending most of my time on it at the expense of other classes. 

Dumpster Diving: The Stevens Boys

I couldn't resist. Before we went dumpster diving last night, Autumn and Jon were putting Everett and Hazel to bed. Owen and James started playing with Chapel. So precious. 

Head of the Charles Regatta 2012

David Gasser passes off a PB&J to Coach Jim 

Women's collegiate four

View from Eliot Bridge near the end of the course. 

Mini Cooper makes an appearance...

The women's 4 talks with Coach Carla over the phone before their race. 

Coach and alumni Chris Guerra shakes hands with Chris Massey before the race.

Jon Massari and  Sean Kennelly sporting their RIT Crew hats and Resolute tattoos

Anna- Marie Lee prepares for the race with a Go-Pro camera attached to her hat. 

Anna-Marie Lee steers the boat under the Eliot bridge- the final bridge of the race- with Nicole Conway in bow. 

Morgan Mowins, Devan Musa, Dani Absi, and Nicole Conway compete in the women's 4 with Anna-Marie Lee coxing. 

Jon Massari, Chris Massey, Sean Kennelly, and David Gasser compete in the men's 4 with T.J. Binotto as coxswain.

Morgan Mowins embraces her mom after her last race as a collegiate rower at HOCR.

Two weekends ago, which seems like ages ago, I went with my team as the photographer for the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, MA. Even though I wasn't rowing, it was heaps of fun hanging out with the team and getting the chance to get some pictures of everyone. 

This was my boat at our race last weekend at Head of the Fish in Saratoga Springs. 

Dumpster Diving: Take Two!

Been super slack on my blog lately but with rowing pretty much finished...it's on, baby. Hurricane Sandy is here and I'm headed out in the morning to hang with Autumn and hammer out some more photos for this awesome story.