It’s been three years since I was a student on the navy team at Eddie Adams. I remember the cold and rainy weather we had at Barnstorm XVII, but what I remember most is being inspired and challenged to take my photography to a new level and the friendships that were made with other students and faculty members.

I returned this past year for the 20th workshop as a member of the Black team. There were about 65 members of the black team who did all the behind the scenes work ranging from transportation, security, hospitality, A/V, digital work flow, and cooking. I was on the security team along with Ashley Franscell, Thomas Witte, Josh Ritchie and Carrie Niland. We were basically responsible for directing traffic when the students were loading/unloading the buses, parking cars in a muddy lot on the farm and making sure no disgruntled students who were rejected tried to crash the workshop.

Because of this, my workshop experience was very different than as a student. Although I did not get to see many of the faculty presentations, as a black team member I was able spend time and talk with many of the speakers and vip’s inside of Eddie’s house.

On of the highlights of the week was spending time with Bill Eppridge and hearing him talk about his project on heroin addicts in Needle Park. This was the first time he had publicly shown and discussed this body of work since it was photographed in the 60’s. It is truly inspirational work and is only a fraction of Bill’s amazing photographic archive.

Day 1

Day 2