Sound + Color: in Dakar, Senegal

In Senegal, we soaked in the sun, the music, and the beautiful vibes under Baobab trees, in market places, on boats out on Lac Rose.

We painted with bright watercolors in the slant light while our loved ones drummed late into the afternoon.

We danced in celebration of a New Year and renewed love. We threw our arms around old friends and carried new babies on our hips. We shook off the slumber and constrictions of isolated pandemic years and shared community plates as our bent knees touched other bent knees and our laughter spilled down from the rooftop onto the streets of Dakar.

Campus Embrace: USF Magazine

The University of San Francisco looks for new ways to listen as students speak candidly on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We connected with students and professors to hear what they want in a campus learning to better respond to the voices of the students it serves, to dialogue through tough observations, and to stretch toward a more robustly supportive academic environment. Portraits published in USF Magazine in support of interviews.

Ambos Nogales: A City Bisected

Ambos Nogales began as photo-illustrated field notes and ultimately garnered praise as a San Francisco Press Club Award winner. The piece describes learnings encountered during an immersion trip on the US–Mexico Border.

East Bay Glitterati: Fashion as a Force of Good

BIG IDEA: Christena Reinhard's love of fashion pairs powerfully with her desire to fund nonprofit organizations compassionately shaping their communities.

CHALLENGE: The only challenge inherent to connecting with Christena is getting her to stand still. We punted on the stillness, opting instead to run alongside her as she showed us around her warehouse studio. On site she accepts high-end pieces and resells them to fund donor-selected partner charities or choose any 501c3 non-profit big or small.

Among the Stars: A Cosmology of Delight

San Francisco Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Aparna Venkatesan, studies the first stars and quasars in the universe, cosmological reionization, the physical conditions in early-universe galaxies, and cosmological element synthesis.

Along with the early stars and quasars, Aparna lectures on various cultural understandings of the heavens, so for her session we comingled textures and lighting varieties to reflect the breadth of her interest. We made photographs in her lab, surrounded by models of the universe she explores.

CSULB POW WOW: CREATING SPACE FOR A GATHERING OF NATIONS

California State University, Long Beach, has been hosting an annual Pow Wow at Puvungna for the past 45 years. Lakota, Diné, Kiowa peoples as well as other tribes from North America arrive to dance and celebrate language and culture on one of the few campuses that boasts a program dedicated to the academic pursuit of tribal studies.

Our clients wanted undirected action that reflected the power of the dancers and respected the flow of the event. So every photograph had to be made using a hands-off, photojournalistic approach.

SLOW ROLL CHICAGO: SOCIAL JUSTICE BY BICYCLE ON CHICAGO'S SOUTH SIDE

Slow Roll Chicago is a community-based organization utilizing bicycles to connect a diverse group of people, transform lives, and improve the condition of communities by organizing community bicycle rides and other bicycling-related programs throughout the greater Chicago area.

Oboi and Jamal suggested shooting in Historic Pullman, built in 1880 as a workers' housing development. The neighborhood has gone through a renaissance in past years. Slow Roll's mission is social and this neighborhood's desire to acknowledge, recast, and revitalize the area's history echoes that of the organization. 

Momentum Magazine picked up the story of Slow Roll's good work. Grab a copy of the July 2015 issue and read all about it.

WORKING WITH FAT FORWARD: BODY-POSITIVE TRAVEL ADVENTURES FOR PEOPLE OF SIZE

Fat Forward operates with the radical understanding that you should love the body you are in. That body-shaming isn't ok. That it isn't a public service when you air your exasperation at the large-body sitting next to you on the plane. That we're all in this together. 

Most lifestyle websites use a mixture of thinner-than-average models, flattering angles, and PhotoShop to idealize beautiful people in beautiful surroundings. Travel photography is meant to incite desire—to see spectacular places, to be bikini-ready.

FF's editors challenged us to capture the pleasure and discomfort of being a traveler of size—flipping visual expectations upside down and continuing their vision of creating a forum in which travelers can exchange honest information and reviews of lodging, transit, and accommodations.

JOIE DE VIVRE: IN NOLA AT THE HH WHITNEY

In our ongoing quest to support all things local, here's Nola's own HH Whitney House. There's an art to the kind of hospitality practiced at the B&B—an ability to anticipate not only what guests need, but what would make their time in town extraordinary. Glen and Randy's investment in their family—biological, adopted, and guest—and their ongoing warmth makes this my sweet home away from home. 

We wanted to get at the warm, familial nature of a stay at the HH Whitney, so we had little Randi give us a tour. Welcoming me at the door, she launched into an introduction of the solarium. Gorgeous, I said. It's your room! she replied happily. I traipsed around her claw-footed, tropical gardened, Italianate surrounds as she showed me around the place with the polished grace of a petite princess. 

FUEL FOR FIRE: IN SAN FRANCISCO WITH POET KEITH EKISS

Keith Ekiss was a Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford from 2005–7. His poems and translations have appeared in Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, New England Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, and elsewhere. His creative non-fiction has been anthologized in Permanent Vacation: Living and Working in Our National Parks. He is the translator of Eunice Odio's The Fire's Journey (Tavern Books, 2012).

Photographing writers is very interesting work. So often they are more comfortable represented by words. Images, not so much. We worked with Keith in his handsome live/work environment, the San Francisco apartment where he does the bulk of his writing. The generative space was lent a visual sense of his voice to the photographs.