I would assume that the point of keeping a blog is to stay regular with it. If that is the case, I have failed miserably! I opened up the website's blog section, knowing that it had been a good while since I had written anything. It surprised me that it has been almost a year. The past year has been crazy for all of us in so many ways, but I don’t intend to dwell on that. I’ve had my issues, you’ve had yours, we all want to get back to normal.

In an attempt to keep this relatively short and focused, I’m going to stick to two things. Amazingly, after an entire year, I don’t feel like I have a whole lot of words to put down. Either way, here is what I’ve got.

For the past five years or so, I have been working on a long-term project, “A Southern Verse.” If you’ve navigated the website in the past, you will have seen some of the work. The work began as I was transitioning from running a gallery into working full-time on my photography. Over time, though, this work developed into a study of the landscape of small towns in the south, mainly in the regions of Georgia and South Carolina adjacent to where I live. Driven by curiosity, a love for the region, and a little dash of nostalgia and obsessive shooting, I amassed a rather large collection of images that reflect the everyday state of these places.

Normally, at least my normal, this would not be something that would have kept me from keeping this blog up to date. However, I’m happy to say that one of the reasons I haven’t gotten back to this blog is that “A Southern Verse” is being published by Daylight Books this fall. It has been a far more consuming process than I ever expected, but it has been full of learning and growing as well. There have been times I was ready to throw in my hat and quit, but in the end, I’m excited about this venture. This past week I finalized the cover, selected paper for pages, and sent off proof prints to the printer in Turkey. It has become more real and exciting as time has gone on. I’m hoping to start offering some pre-sales soon on the website and some print/book combos as well.

Also, I am hoping to be doing a book talk in Venice, Italy, later this year. Some of the works from the book are going to be part of the European Cultural Centre’s “Time, Space, Existence” exhibition that will be running concurrently with the Architectural Biennale. I’ll try to update you about that as time progresses.

Lastly, I’ve been developing some new work and running it through competitions to see how it is received. If anyone follows me on Instagram, you’ve seen some of it in the diptychs I’ve been posting. I’m not sure where I’m going with this yet, but that’s part of the process. I hope to have some of it in a more concrete form as the summer progresses. I think it is going well, though, as the series of diptychs I sent for the Siena Awards’ Creative Photo Award have been shortlisted. For those who don’t know, that’s a good thing!

There is more to come as the months go by, and I’ll do my best to keep everyone up to date on all of it. I’m sorry it has been so long since I’ve put in the effort to write, but I plan to be more regular, so please check back.