One in Three photography wins local ADDY Gold award

For the past few months, I have been working in conjunction with the Jacksonville Public Education Fund on an incredible documentary portrait project called One in Three. I am photographing about twenty high school students who have succeeded despite staggering odds against them. These portraits will be 4 feet by 5 feet in size (BIG!) and exhibited at the Cummer Museum in the fall along with their stories printed on vinyl on the walls. The goal is to raise awareness of the staggering dropout rate in Duval County.

I am so proud of this project! I love the students I am meeting and so incredibly inspired by their stories and and also by the amazing adults in Jacksonville--ministers, teachers, volunteers who are making such a huge difference in the lives of students.

I just found out yesterday that my photography, which is used in the Sponsorship Kits that Brunet Garcia Advertising Agency designed was submitted for an ADDY and won GOLD! Woohoo! It now moves on to the state level. The photographs below show the brochure. I am so excited to share this project with you as it comes to fruition over the next few months.

Alligator Poem by Mary Oliver

I knelt down

at the edge of the water

and if the white birds standing

in the tops of the trees whistled any warning

I didn't understand,

I drank up to the very moment it came

crashing toward me,

its tail flailing

like a bundle of swords,

slashing the grass,

and the inside of its cradle-shaped mouth

gaping,

and rimmed with teeth--

and that's how I almost died

of foolishness

in beautiful Florida.

But I didn't.

I leaped aside, and fell,

and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its path

as it swept down to the water

and threw itself in,

and, in the end,

this isn't a poem about foolishness

but about how I rose from the ground and saw the world as if for the second time,

the way it really is.

The water, that circle of shattered glass,

healed itself with a slow whisper

and lay back

with the back-lit light of polished steel,

and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees,

shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and drifted away,

while, for a keepsake, and to steady myself,

I reached out,

I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me--

blue stars

and blood-red trumpets

on long green stems--

for hours in my trembling hands they glittered

like fire.