I went to school in New Orleans and lived there for a bit after graduation. Katrina hit my senior year of college and I watched the city pick itself back up. New Orleans is a deeply personal place for me, but also a place I hardly know. When you go to college in a town, you really only experience life as a college student, and half of that through a silly self-induced drunken stupor.
I decided last year that I would return to New Orleans to photograph Mardi Gras, a subject I had never taken a camera to, seeing as I developed my photography interest after school. I bought some plane tickets and finagled some places to stay (with the help of some very generous friends). And then I tried to make connections - for all the things I thought would be important for telling all sides of the New Orleans Mardi Gras story. When I arrived, though, I learned that there is so much to Mardi Gras that I had never heard of, let alone experienced. There were so many many events taking place on Mardi Gras Day - far too many to capture in one trip. I knew I either needed to make this a regular experience, or put aside the ambitions I had going in to make this a book. Now more than a month past the trip, I'm not sure what I want to do with these images. I'm quite happy with a number of them, but I don't know where they belong. Perhaps the best answer is the default: right here on this blog.
I promised myself I would go hard on this trip - not waste time, not be frivolous. But in the end, I'm not as young as I used to be and I can't control the weather. Friday night, Krewe d'Etat night, I pushed it and was very satisfied with my night photos. I stepped off the plane and immediately set out to photograph d'Etat setup and then Hermes. The timing didn't work out so great for setup, but I was out there for both parades, standing under various streetlamps that I found. It's the only way to shoot at night.
I even made it all the way to the Quarter, after a pitstop at the Trolley Stop Cafe, a favorite old stomping ground.
New Orleans is bigger than I remembered, and walking back from the Quarter to uptown that night was not pleasant. It sort of ruined me, physically, for the next day.
Through friends of friends, I was able to march in Tucks, which was definitely the highlight of the trip.
When you're "in" the parade, people pose for you.
The best part of marching was once we got to the Quarter. All along St. Charles, you really could just fall in with any group of people walking and no one would give you trouble. But you need to be with the parade when it gets to the Quarter and all the barricades are set up - folks can't just wander into the parades at this point. It was really need to be on the other side of the barricades. The energy was intense.
I spent a good deal more time in the Quarter and then set myself up to watch Endymion, but I just couldn't anymore and had to go home. Endymion is a trying parade even if you haven't put in a good five miles of walking. But with all the breakdowns and waiting and not having any friends to talk to (boo hoo), I figured it was time to go on home and rest up.
The next day was Sunday and I headed uptown to watch Thoth. I'd never spent much time watching parades from anywhere other than Drunken College Student St. Charles area. It was really fun to see the parades with the neighborhood folks - people who camp in the same place every year and watch their kids grow up together.
That night was Orpheus, and probably my favorite images from the week. The costumes and floats were so colorful, and I had a great time creating compositions with them.
Orpheus I cut short because it was crazy windy and cold. Mardi Gras Day came even chillier, and rainy. I got up early to go see Zulu, but it started raining almost immediately. The temperature was around 35 degrees and it was completely miserable. So I just packed in it in and called it a wrap. Who brings gloves to New Orleans? Not this girl.
So I finally got to photograph Mardi Gras. It was fun. And I imagine I'll be back. In the meantime, if you want to offer me a book deal, I'll be here!
Also, you may have noticed that February isn't over. This roundup is coming early because tomorrow I head off to New Orleans to cover Mardi Gras. I'm excited but also nervous. And I'm really, really hoping to come back with a lot of really great images. The big plan is to put together a book.
But in the meantime... it's been damn cold. So cold. I'm a warm-weather girl and this winter is breaking me. I'm very happy with the forecasted 60s in NOLA. That is going to feel like swimsuit weather.
This is the Alexandria waterfront, iced over. Craziness!
14th Street near the Black Cat.
The National Botanical Gardens.
A pound cake in a tree. This kind of thing is called a "found object", as is a photograph taken of such.
My neighbor and buddy John invited me along to the George Washington birthday parade in Old Town, Alexandria. It was a very helpful exercise pre-NOLA, as I was able to determine quickly that the real action is the set-up before the parades and not the actual procession. Though in Mardi Gras, there's more of everything, so this may not hold down there.
The aforementioned John, in front of a pretty blue wall.
Finally, more winter. I decided, on one of those warm days last week, to get my ish together and go for a hike. However, I had not anticipated that most of the snow out in the VA country would still be on the ground - a good four inches in many places on the trail. Where there wasn't snow to trudge through, there was either packed ice or sludge. This was a truly miserable hike, and one for which I should have been wearing boots. In any case, it was some exercise in a winter that has kept me shut indoors whining about the cold.
And that is that. Hopefully I'll come back atcha in March with more good randomness.
In any case! I was kind of all over the place in August this year, but this past week spent four days in Boston. It's a hell of a town, with tons of stuff to see and scads of events going on every day. If it weren't so damn cold nine months out of the year, it would be really ideal for spending a big chunk of time.
I'm good at traveling by myself. It gets lonely, sure, but I get to do whatever I want at any particular moment. A sweet bonus to solo travel is that you can often snag a seat at the bar of two-hour-wait restaurants - just walk on up and they put you in one of the gaps created by more sociable diners.
My trip included karaoke (my go-to is Maggie May), a little bit of drunken debauchery (with the other hostel travelers), plenty of Freedom Trail learning, buying books from the Harvard Bookstore, witnessing a bizarre and fascinating Italian parade that included throwing tons of shredded paper into the street, way too many pastries, way too many indulgent dinners, endless walking, multiple books read, and just a few photos taken.
For me, a photo trip is a distinctly different trip than other kinds of travel. A photo trip is work in a way that I was not interested in working here. So you just get a handful of images, because I only took a handful. Little flavor of Boston, perhaps.
Must go back soon.