A couple of weeks ago, my friend Sarah came to visit me in Phoenix. One day, while we were driving around aimlessly, she asked me what was in Mesa.
I shrugged. No clue. Never been there.
We plugged it into my GPS and took off.
We landed somewhere in downtown Mesa late Friday afternoon. The city was quiet; shops were closed and no one was about.
No one real, anyway.
We quickly met some of the permanent inhabitants of downtown, though: the statues that the city of Mesa has purchased and put on public display. They range from horses scenes from daily life in Mesa.
This 3/4 replica of the Vietnam Wall was only in Phoenix for an extended weekend before it moved on to Houston, Texas. Rebekah Zemansky and I went to visit it Saturday, August 19 before heading out to shoot assignments for our journalism boot camp class.
It turned out to be a pretty amazing thing to photograph, although I will make a suggestion to others with this opportunity: Do not plan on spending an hour at a reflective, black wall surrounded by a black rubber walkway at midday in the sun when the temperature hovers around 104. One lovely lady (the one with the flag umbrella in the following slideshow) had her son buy me a bottle of water because I looked so flushed.
Rebekah suggested we get some interviews, and I went along for the hell of it. I learned that two years of experience at my college paper has given me a rather handy formulaic way to approach people for interviews, but it doesn’t make me any more comfortable with the thought. However, we managed some really nice interviews. Both Daniel Pratt and Warren Seiz were great to interview and gave us some good information as well as insight. Part of what I love about being a journalist is being able to talk to people who have stories that you can’t possibly imagine. Being a soldier is a prime example of such a story.
This is my cut of our project. I will admit to loading it with more of my own photos than Bekah’s, simply because I felt like my blog should probably showcase my own work. Also, she’s hoping to get our collaborative cut picked up by an outside media source.
While this is a bit more extensive than most of my posts will be, this is generally the kind of thing I hope to continue presenting here.
