For the Family – A Bozeman couple’s journey through parenthood

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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.
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Uncommon Bond – Finding Friendship on the Farm

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I recently completed my first multimedia piece since starting at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. My reporter Amanda and I had heard a rumor that there was this goose and donkey at a nearby farm who had developed a friendship. Sure enough, we found just that when we visited Barbara Kurk on her farm. My editors were pushing for a multimedia piece about the pair so I brought along an old handicam video camera. Time was short to produce this video. In all I had about three busy days to collect the footage and then put it all together in one 13 hour day. I was happy with how it turned out. Thanks for looking! -M

 

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A Year in the Marsh – Preparing for the Hunt

A look into the preparation of of the California Farms Duck Club and their efforts to create habitat to sustain their life-long love of duck hunting in the Suisun Marsh.

For the past couple of months, a reporter from my newspaper and I have started working on a year long documentary project focusing on the Suisun Marsh and the Delta. With water usage being such a hot topic in California, we wanted to explore all of the groups and organizations that are staking their claim for water rights. Our first subjects were members of a local duck club and their year-round dedication and passion for creating habitat for waterfowl. I had a great time hanging out with these guys. Stay tuned over the next year for other installments to this series. Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. -M








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Waller’s Rally – A local skateboard maker takes his future into his own hands

Here is a multimedia video I just completed about a finish carpenter that defied the failing economy by turning his childhood fun into a modern-day longboard skateboard venture.

I’m pretty excited about this post. For the past month I have been working night and day on this multimedia project. I found Bob Waller, of Waller’s Woodys, by chance while working on another story for my newspaper. Bob is a high end finish carpenter here in Fairfield who for the last 25 years has been doing high end custom woodworking and carpentry throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. As he puts it, “I was a cake decorator for a house. Doing beauty for the sake of beauty.” When the economy began taking a nose dive two years ago, Bob watched as his business dwindled from being booked six months out to a near trickle. It was that point that he realized he needed to go another direction. A phoenix rising out of the ashes. Through the encouragement of his sons, he decided to harness the life-long love of skateboarding and started a longboard skateboard company based off of the old 1960’s Woody panel wagons.

This story meant a lot to me in that it was a very personel project. For the past couple of months I had been frustrated with the stories that I was producing mostly due to the fact that my newspaper always gave me very limited time to development and work on one. I wanted a project that I could do on my time at the pace I wanted to develop it at. A pace that favored quality over quick deadlines. Waller’s Woodys was my answer. Bob and his family were gracious enough to open their door and let me into their lives. Through their patience and trust, I was given full reign to experiment and try new approaches to telling a story. Most notably my use of video. I’ve done little video work as a photojournalist throughout my career and I saw this project as a great opportunity to give it a shot. I had a great time with it. I am grateful to them for allowing me play and to step out of my comfort zone as a journalist. Check out the video, let me know what you think and spread the word. Best, -M

I’d like to dedicate this story to a friend and insanely talented photographer Monica Lopossay who recently helped me to refocus my approach to my photography. I am forever grateful.









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Drag Racing against the Fuzz

This is a multimedia story I just completed for my newspaper about an unique, youth out reach program that the Fairfield, California Police Department is implementing into combating local street racing. It had been awhile since I last brought our HD video camera out to an assignment. Top the Cops drag racing event at Infineon Raceway. I thought it turned out pretty good. -M

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Vimeo for Everyone!

This is a video I did last fall about the community of pet owners that occupy the Lagoon Valley Dog Park outside of Vacaville, California.

I recently discovered this great alternative to youtube called Vimeo. I re uploaded this old video I did last fall on a local dog park. Hope you all like it. Best, -M

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