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A sampling of some favorite images from the past month working at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

This was a cool assignment. Last week I got to watch the release of a golden eagle back into the wild. The raptor was rescued by Montana Raptor Conservation Center director Becky Keanon January 25th after it was injured by a cable snare trap and Wednesday marked it’s successful nurture back to health. After a four month road to recovery, Montana Raptor Conservation Center volunteer Jocelyn Barker is shown releasing it back into the wild outside of Bozeman near Middle Cottonwood canyon Wednesday afternoon. Before the birds can be released, they must be banded and have a sample of their feathers saved on record. So you can imagine my humor watching the raptor center volunteers trying to recapture the bird in its pen with a blanket. It’s harder to catch a wild eagle than one would think. These volunteers were pros and were able to safely capture and release the eagle without any harm to it. It was a pretty cool thing to witness this healed bird soaring on the mountain winds once again. What a feeling it must have felt to finally fly again after 4 months cooped up. How great for the Bozeman community that they have such dedicated raptor enthusiasts that provide such a service.

Things have been trucking along here at the newspaper over the month of May. As of late, I’ve found that I’ve been up close and personel with a lot of animals on assignments lately. I adorned a bee keeper suit as I photographed a guy and his bee colonies, I’ve had my head chewed on and nuzzled by a friendly farm horse and later huddled close to a fallen tree as hundreds of wild bison trotted feet from me as federal authorities hazed them back into Yellowstone National Park. It’s never a dull moment in my line of work. I’ve been enjoying myself. More photos to come. Thanks for looking.

I had some fun making these photos. This past weekend, as part of my newspaper‘s monthly photo page called the “Viewfinder” I decided to pack up the photo studio and bring it over to the Gallatin County fair grounds this past Saturday and make portraits of Bozeman locals and their new old bicycles. The Viewfinder can be anything. It really gives us photographers a chance to get creative and do photo studies. It’s an opportunity and  challenge I look forward to. But sometimes it can sneak up on us due to the busyness of the daily newspaper. Combing the events calendars looking for ideas, I stumbled across an add for the bike swap being hosted by the Gallatin Valley Bicycle Club. Bingo! I remembered how excited I was as a kid to receive my first bike. It was a feeling of freedom and independence. A simple machine that would serve as a reliable companion accompanying me on countless adventures throughout my youth. Waking up early on Saturday morning, I set out to try to capture that feeling in a well lit portrait series. These are the results. Thanks for looking,  -M

I’ve been excited to post this project for a while now. Over the past six weeks, I documented the journey of a young couple who just had their second child here in Bozeman. I was looking for a long term photography project. Something that would challenge me to slow down and really tell an in depth story through pictures and sound. Upon meeting Rosie, the sister of Knikka (the mother) at the Bozeman Film Festival, I was able to introduce myself to the rest of the family and get the okay to start documenting their lives. It started sooner than expected. That night Knikka went into labor and I met her and Chris at The Birth Center in Bozeman, Montana at 1:30am to watch their new daughter Ryleigh be born. What an amazing thing to witness…the birth of a child. I began this project because overall I was drawn by the sense of family these guys all had. Rosie had just flown out from Connecticut to help her sister and her husband Chris become adjusted to life with a 3-year-old and a newborn. For the parents, Knikka and Chris, it was balancing the needs of their children while juggling their own relationship. Each are working on their degrees while attending college at the Montana State University. The running theme in my head was “It takes a village to raise a child.” I had many different facets to document and I put no limits on myself. I also had no agenda or a deadline. This was a different approach to storytelling that I am used to documenting. So much of what I do at the newspaper is rush around making deadlines. The growing trend of small editorial staffs, budget cuts and big workloads prevent us from doing more of these in depth documentaries. This was a intimate, personal story. One with no clear end or direction in sight. Having a family isn’t anything new. There weren’t any big news hooks to it. It was just their story and their life. A story I felt was worth telling. Through the countless hours I spent watching and documenting this family, I came to learn a lot about them and realized there path in life could easily have been a very different darker one. I focused my approach on telling the journey of the parents Chris and Knikka. I wanted to show how their unexpected journey into parenthood changed them, derailed their previous path of substance abuse and switched course to give their kids the best life they could give them. This multimedia video is the result. I hope you enjoy it. -M
-To read the story and see more photos you can view them on the Bozeman Daily Chronicle website.

Hey all, What a month. I’ve been busy working on a long term documentary project all this month in addition to all of the normal daily assignments and I’ve just now had a chance to post my recent work. Whew! My project “For the Family” debuts tomorrow! Stay tuned. For now, a look at some of the more successful images I’ve made this past month. Thanks for looking. -M

 

“Primeiro você deve comer com os olhos”

Years ago, I was out to dinner with my Brazilian friend, starving, fork in hand and about to dive into my just-delivered, fancy restaurant dish. Before I could take a bite, she interrupted me with a smile, put a hand on my forearm and repeated a Portuguese phrase. It’s translation… “First you must eat with your eyes.”

The concept of giving your body food was something, up until that point, that I had taken for granted and had given little thought to why my brain was attracted to whatever meal I was about to eat. Things looked and tasted good; simple as that. Now a more mature cook in my thirties, I’ve started to think about the psychology of food. Of the chefs I’ve met over the years and the books I’ve read about cooking, the consensus is that the better looking a dish, the better you expect it to taste. For the past week, I have been ruminating on this concept and her phrase as I’ve watched the morning sunshine creep through my kitchen windows and illuminate my countertops. Not being a seasoned food photographer, I was interested in the idea of what makes our food look so appealing and realized it’s not so different as to what makes a successful photograph. Color, light, mixing up textures, shapes and the arrangement. Highlighting a natural focal point that draws in your attention to the dish. As a working photographer, I’m constantly observing and studying how light illuminates everything around us. I decided to do a visual study. With my limited window of good sunlight, I started documenting my go-to breakfast scramble I routinely prepare with the goal of slowing down and seeing why my taste buds salivate with anticipation of this dish again and again. Bon Appétit! -M

 

Happy New Year everyone! I ended my 2012 on a high note and have been working hard to keep the momentum going into the new year. As always, I’m looking for ways I can develop and grow in my photography and I hope to improve on some things for the new year. So far so good. Here are some of my favorite images I’ve made so far in 2013. Thanks for looking, -M

Montana has been in need of some snow. It’s been a while since we had much and the local ski mountain crew have been holding their breath for a boost. Yesterday they got their wish. I woke up to reports of over 23 inches of snow and it seemed like the whole town called in sick with “powder fever” to go ski it. I was lucky enough to be assigned to document it . Love my job at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Epic ski day!

What a year! Looking over the photos I made from this past year, I found it difficult to pick favorites. How do you narrow down the very best photos after such an interesting year? For me 2012 was a new beginning. I started my year in a new place after having been hired at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle and spent most of my time in a state of creative reconnaissance, exploring all the beauty southwest Montana has to offer.

In the end, I chose photos that made a personal connection. I wanted to show you all photos that make you feel something. So much of what photojournalists do everyday is bring readers into the lives of their subjects through captivating, storytelling images, to quote SI Photo Editor Jim Colton, “that reach down your throat and give your heart a tug”. Whether they succeed is in the eye of the beholder.

As I was editing down this year’s take of images and trying to pick out ten for the printed newspaper, I realized that trying to capture the essence of the Gallatin Valley in a handful of photos was a fool’s pursuit. Thankfully, the people in this community that make it such a great place are too vast and rich in culture to show in its entirety within a select few favorites within my “Best of Photography” slideshow. I have much more exploring to do.

I look forward to what the new year will bring. Thanks so much for all of your support and I hope all of you have a bold, adventurous new year! -M

 

I recently finished up a portrait marathon for an assignment for our weekly business journal. In three days I made twenty portraits of individuals in the Bozeman community that have made an impact on the community through their personel drive, local job creating endeavors and their overall contribution to the betterment of the community they live in. It was a fun project for me. I don’t get to work in the studio that often, so I decided to challenge myself by trying to make different portraits all with keeping the same lighting set up in the studio here at the newspaper. I wanted the photos to be about the subject and not their clothing. With this in mind, I chose to have this series be in black and white. I liked how it turned out. To read more about each individual’s story you can check out our interactive story on the Bozeman Daily Chronicle’s website. Thanks for looking.

My newspaper has this great section in every Sunday newspaper called “Viewfinder”. It’s a full page deticated to displaying photographs of whatever we photographers want. I look at it as a visual study of a random topic where we have free reign to explore and tell that story however we see fit. I use these opportunities to try to push myself into a new way of seeing. Last week it was my turn to have a go. I decided to check out the dress rehearsal of the Montana Ballet Company’s The Nutcracker that was going on at the Wilson Auditorium. Here are some photos that stood out to me from my time there. -M

Tis the season…to catch up on blog posts! I’ve been meaning to get some new work up here for a while now but I’ve been pretty busy as of late running around Bozeman and documenting all of the festivities of the season. Without further ado, here is some of the better images I’ve made in the last month. Thanks for looking, -M

About a week ago, I was charged by my editors with coming up with a way to illustrate a story about how Montana State University football fans should prepare for the cold weather playoff games. It’s been a while since I’ve done much photography in our Bozeman Daily Chronicle photo studio so I elected to break out some lights to make some photos that would pop off the page. It was a fun, little experiment that challenged me to think more about wardrobe of my subject (an enthusiastic co worker in the advertising department) and how best to convey the story within a limited number of images. Yes, the photos are a little corny but I think it turned out to be a fun, informative story. Best of luck to the Cats as they take on Sam Houston State University tonight under the lights of Bobcat Stadium. -M

I have always been jealous of my photographer buddies in Portland, Oregon who get to photograph the muddy, up-and-coming sport of cyclocross. It looks like such a wonderfully goofy social sport event and the photos they would bring back from it made it look like just a blast to photograph. Last weekend I finally got the chance to photograph it when my roommate clued me in on a race that was happening here in Bozeman. It was awesome. For some reason I decided to pack light and use just a 35mm lens to photograph the event. Using such a small lens can be very limiting on what I can do with it but it forced me to think more in layers and/or force me to use my feet to get closer to the action. It was a fun photo exercise on my day off. The rest of the images are some favorites that I made from this week at the newspaper. Thanks for looking, -M

Here are some images I made for the newspaper during the last two weeks. The first snow has arrived in Montana. Welcome winter. Thanks for looking, -M

A week or two ago, I had an opportunity to photograph some Montana State University football. It’s been a while since I’ve photographed any sports and I was looking forward to getting back into the saddle. The home game was against Eastern Washington University and according to all the buzz in the newsroom sports department, it would be a game that would likely determine the Big Sky Conference champs for the 2013 season. I always like photographing sporting events that matter. You can feel the added intensity from the players and crowd which ultimately make for a more exciting game to photograph. I decided to go early to the tailgates so I could document the tailgating scene here in Bozeman. It ended up being a long day (working 11 hours straight) but it was a fun one. I was pleased to wake up the following morning to see a big photo spread in the Sunday paper. I still geek out seeing all my images displayed big in newsprint. Love it! -M

Here are some of my more successful images from the last couple of weeks working at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. The battle continues. Thanks for looking. -M

Here are some recent images I’ve made for the newspaper in the last week or so. So much of the assignments I’ve been doing lately are for upcoming magazine articles. I can’t show them yet but more photos are on the horizon. Thanks for looking. -M

Blink an eye and you realize summer is almost over. Crazy. I’ve been keeping pretty busy these days traveling nearly every weekend out of town for magazine assignments for upcoming Montana Quarterly articles and traveling to California for my wedding business. The combination of the two, has left me little time for much else. Though exhausting at times, luckily, I’ve been enjoying the journey. Here are some of my favorite images I’ve made at the newspaper during the last month. Thanks for looking. -M