I love the mood and feel of the following image.  It is my personal favorite from the session.

Thanks for a great session, Lindsay!

I love the color of this door.

I love this next series… the location feels to me like an old alley in Chicago or New York.

Thanks Emie and Jon for a great session.

I love the humor in this next image.  Lindsay’s dog reminds me of a little kid who can stand to watch his parents kiss.  Priceless.

I think I could spend a whole week photographing around her farm and not run out of beautiful locations.

I learned that Sean has this amazing ability to find four leaf clovers.  He found this one in about a minute.  I don’t think I have ever found one in my whole life.

Being wet and walking in cold streams is a requirement for our engagement sessions.  Just kidding…but it’s always fun to have water nearby.

I’ll end with my favorite. The emotion in this image grabs me in such a powerful way.

This young boy came up to me as I worked on the first system that we set up  - at a university.  While a lot of the structure is still standing, most of it is unstable and will have to rebuilt.  He spoke pretty well with broken english.  He was able to tell me that he lives close by and he playes football (soccer).

This picture we took as we waited for the water to purify is my favorite from the trip.  He took my hat off my head and put it on his own for this one.

My team, Team 2, overlapped with Team 1 so they could get us up to speed. They left on our Day 3.

In the compound where we were staying they had a little agricultural farm with many chicken, fish and goats.  It was a pretty impressive setup to to down in Haiti.  I don’t recall crossing a setup like this anywhere else in the whole country.  Right next to it was a field where it looked like farmer were clearing the weeds out of the field.  In the field they had coconuts, plantains, beans and corn.

We went back to the tent city for the third time and purified another 275 gallons of water .  I walked around this time while while our team was purifying the water and photographed some of the people that lived there.

This man was ironing his blue jeans with a coal iron, something I’d never seen before.  This image also provides a great view of the make shift tents the people were living in.  They used any boards and tree limbs they could find to make the frame and then they would use tin roof or blankets as siding, whichever they could find and salvage.  Most tents were a space of about 8 feet by 8 feet and most had a mattress with some other small furniture items. These tents house whole families as well as everything they have left in the world.  I can’t imagine what it will be like when the rainy season comes.

Everyone was curious about the camera and these two boys caught my attention really quickly with their sweet moment and gaze.

Back at camp by the moonlight, Ron, one of the best and most patient teachers that I have ever worked with sends an email home.  It was pretty bright all night.  We were later told that it was the brightest moon would be all year.  It was really neat to experience with no light pollution, it felt like a really dark day.

On to Day 2. The plan was loaded with cargo.  It was crazy arriving in Haiti we walked out of the plane and didn’t even have to go through customs.  Two vehicles pulled up to the plane, one was a pick-up truck that would carry all of our cases and backpacks and the other was a “tap-tap” (a converted pick-up with a topper and two boards that run over the wheels for people to sit on) that would carry all of us.

This was the first of many trips on the tap-tap.  One must be very skilled to ride in a tap-tap.  You must ride loose enough so that you don’t feel the bumps in the road, but not so loose that you get thrown into the wall or ceiling of the truck.

We drove out of Port-au-Prince and it was shocking to see the devastation.  People had moved out of their homes and into make-shift tents formed from anything they could find.  Most consist of tin, wood, rope and blankets.  These small tents house the very little that is left of peoples’ belongings – in most cases a mattress, clothing and some minor furniture.  The size of most tents is about 8×8 and it holds an entire family.

Beyond the devastation the next thing we noticed was the overwhelming military presence.  There was military from all over the world.

These were water purification systems that we had in our cases.

I immediately went out with Rick and Donnie to look at some pumps and perform some water tests nearby our camp.

I noticed this young guy with his very striking eyes and form.  I knew that I wanted a portrait of him right away.

There were many goats roaming through our campsite and the countryside was so beautiful.

Once I returned to camp, Bill, Mike, and I went to Leogane.  Leogane is believed to be the epicenter of the earthquake.  It was best described to me as being reminiscent of an Eastern European town in World War II.  Buildings were brought down to rumble.  Very few were left standing.  It was a hard site to see.  Many people have built their tents in the road because there is no where else for them to live.

I saw a team of about 7 who, despite the recent devastation, was carrying a five gallon bucket of water and five brooms made of palm leaves in an attempt to control the dust in the air.  They made their way through the town throwing water on the dusty dirt streets and sweeping up the trash.  This woman’s face was so descriptive…

We waited in Leogane to meet up with a pastor of a small village outside of Leogane.  The village was about 20 minutes away and as we traveled therewe passed through a dry creek bed and what felt like a jungle of sugar cane.  Many of the children chewed on the sweet treat of sugar cane while others flew some of the best kites I have ever seen.  The kites were made from plastic bag and sticks.  Some flew well over a 100 feet in the air.  We stopped at a bridge on our way into the village to perform more tests and see if the community would be a good fit for the water purification system.

When we arrived in the village people came out in droves.

On our way back to camp that night we stopped at a tent city and filled and purified a tank of water.  This young boy watched us as we filled the tank with water from the well.