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I don’t know about you guys, but when I was a kid I loved seeing the illusions of magicians. I was given a simple paper folding magic trick once and I eagerly would volunteer to make a dollar bill disappear then reappear for anyone willing to appease me. I loved the misdirection and the reactions I got from people. For years, like so many, I’ve seen big time magicians wow audiences on television and on tour and I always was interested in the idea that these individuals were still carving out a living in illusion in a time where people are being bombarded with new technology and entertainment of the 21st century. When I moved to Bozeman last year, it became known to me that Jay Owenhouse, a national name on the magic circuit, lived in Bozeman and that he used tigers for his performances. I had to meet this guy. Over weeks and weeks of trying to line up our schedules, I finally was able to hang out with Jay for a week leading up to his tour kick off performance at the Montana State University Brick Breeden Fieldhouse last Saturday. I was interested in his unique occupation and the fact that someone in this small little Montana town had two tigers as pets. I wanted to document his relationship with his big cats and try to show our readers what it was like to prepare for a magic show. Time was against me, as always. Between daily assignments and not enough hours in a day, these images are what I was able to come away with. It was really cool to watch the relationship/passion this guy has for his craft and with these beautiful animals. If you ever get a chance, it would be worth checking out his show. You always want more time or more access to work on stories but overall I was pleased with many of the images I made of him. 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.