One of the cool things The Bozeman Daily Chronicle does is have a weekend page dedicated solely to photography. They call it there “Viewfinder” section and it serves as a blank canvas to fill with pictures of whatever the photo department wants. This past weekend was my first time being in charge of it and I decided to head over to a local foundry here in town where my friend Ty works. Tucked away in Bear Canyon just outside of Bozeman, Montana, a small handful of metalworkers and artists make up one of the top bronze foundries in the country. The Northwest Art Casting Company has quickly become a go to destination for high end artists across the country looking to have their sculptures enlarged and casts in bronze. I decided to spend the day doing a visual study of the place and to document the process of making bronze statues. It was pretty awesome. Here are some of my favorite images from the day. For more information about their process or to take a tour of their facilities, visit there website at www.nwartcasting.com

This was a cool story I worked on last week. I got the opportunity to head out to Moonlight Basin Ski Area to document inventor/skier Bob Kolesar along with his wife Ellyn Murphy and their concept Ski Bikes. Basically ski bikes are a high end mountain bike design with modified skis instead of wheels. Bob started making them after Ellyn sufferred a severe head injury back in the 1980’s when the cliff she was hiking on collapsed and she fell 35 feet. The injury has left her having servere weakness on her right side which makes it near impossible for her to enjoy one of her favorite pasttimes of skiing. As a remedy, Bob starting making these awesome bikes for disabled individuals so that they could enjoy the slopes together again. My reporter Jodi and I spent the afternoon trying these things out and had an absolute blast with them. They are awesome. For the full story check out the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. -M

In the blink an eye, I’ve realized that it has been almost a month now since I’ve been living and working in Bozeman, Montana. I’ve been settling into my new position at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle here quite nicely. My transition from the busy world of California into the calm wild openess of Montana has been a surprisingly quick and painless journey for me. It’s a place that already feels like home. Like all newspaper gigs, I’ve had a gamut of different things to photograph lately. The one major difference has been the change in temperature. Where in California I would consistantly be shooting out in 100 degree heat, I was quickly re-introduced to the polar opposite of Montana’s winter and trying to operate my camera and my numb fingers in the daily snow storms here. In all, I’ve been having a great time photographing in a place and culture that fuels my soul. I feel like I’m just racing out of the starting gates. I can’t wait to see what awaits around the corner. Here some of my work from the last couple of weeks. -M

Note: I’m trying to figure out why my work computers are making my images look all flat when I save them for web. I’ll work on the annoyance. Thanks for looking.