So I’ve been following news about Katrina. Probably in a different way than most. I’ve been reading message boards on sportsshooter.com, a professional photojournalist’s site (hopefully will be a member of soon, just need to get my portfolio together). It was really crazy how fellow photojournalists posted that they were going stick it out in the path of Katrina in order to document it.

After some of the first images started coming out of the disaster area, one photog, Vincent Laforet, posted some of his images to sportshooter (link in the first post), many of which ended up on the front pages of newspapers and in photo essays around the country. Time magazine has an especially good essay featuring some of his stuff. I’m in awe of his photos and of the destruction, and at the same time I almost wish I was stuck in that mess in order to create images to show the world what’s going on.

Two workers look on as high school students enjoy a mid summer dance event in storke plaza. The fog in the middle is smoke from the fog machine, and it’s colored by light clusters on the railing.

We got our new place. I’m living with summer roomie Lisa on Pasado. It’s a pretty sweet house, even though my room is a little small. Because my room used to be a garage, it has a washer/dryer attached to it (woo hoo for in-house laundry, that’s a first). It also has its own outside entrance that leads literally 2 steps to where I’ll park my car. The back yard is huge…about 3 times the size of our current yard and has a fire pit or 2, room for the trampoline and maybe even the vandalized kiddie pool (someone stabbed it). So I’m there through at least December.

My car got keyed too. Probably by some IV hooligans on the 6700 block of abrego (if you know what I mean).

Playing with fireworks. Fireworks are highly legal in Japan and Okinawa–you can buy them at any convenience store or market and set them off just about anywhere. This is David trying to set my camera on fire when we were in Okinawa.

The South is currently being hit by a huge hurricane. It’s Cat 5, which is the 4th category 5 to the hit U.S. in the history of hurricanes. (Acutally it’s a 4 now) The news stories were pretty meaningless to me, but reading the message boards on sportsshooter.com (a photojournalist website) and reading how people are telling others to get out of the New Orleans area, or reading how journalists are scrambling to be safe, and then document the aftermath made me realize the severity of it. This is on the scale of a major California earthquake (like loma prieta or northridge). The last line of the latest discussion out of the NOAA SE louisiana forecast office reads “good luck and godspeed to all in the path of this storm.” Indeed.

The Shinkansen. Japan’s high speed train. Looking out the window going 190mph feels very wrong at first.

Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war protest/camp outside of Bush’s Ranch in Texas reminds me of Arlington West.

Arlington West at UCSB. (Spring 2005)

Arg. Nothing to say.

Himeji Castle, Himeji, Japan. There are a lot of castles in Japan, most of them reconstructed as they’ve succumbed the harshness of fire and time. Himeji Castle is the castle to end all castles. Pretty crazy considering the entire thing is built out of chopsticks and saliva. Just kidding.

6:35am. Waiting for the all day ferry at Ishigaki Port in Okinawa. The ferry took about 14 hours to reach Naha, Okinawa.

I haven’t listened to Lifehouse since May 16th. I can’t believe you removed me as a friend on facebook.
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The Navy’s newest aircraft carrier is in town. There was much debate about having the $30,000 commercial port fee waived in Santa Barbara because it is a military vessel. Eventually the fee was waived by the Santa Barbara city council even tho the Dr. Laura Schlessinger volunteered to donate the $30,000. Seems pretty bitchy of the Navy considering it costs $2.5 million per DAY to run the ship.

Was so lame that photoshop saved the day and the owners of SB segway rolled by and made fun of Mike and I. Wait…you own a segway dealer, dumbass.