First degree murder. Aggravated kidnapping. Aggravated indecent liberties with a child. Floyd Bledsoe spent fifteen years in prison after being convicted of these crimes in 2000, but he never committed any of them.
The thing I enjoy most about editorial photography these days is what used to terrify me about the whole idea. Everything is unknown, everything is a variable…except the deadline. On mornings like this one, I spend the long drives letting my mind drift between imagining scenarios for the shoot and absorbing podcasts.
In late October, Christina (my wife) and I were driving through the worn down mountains and coal towns of southern Pennsylvania, and it hit me that just a few miles back, we’d passed through a perfect metaphor for the year: Wild and Wonderful West Virginia. It was almost foreign from our perspective, a little rough around the edges, and – being only 15 miles wide at the point we drove through – passed by in the blink of an eye.
In January, something happened that I never expected: I got hired on as a staff writer for Fstoppers, a top-tier photography news and education site that I’ve loved for years. A wedding photographer friend (and fellow Fstopper), Levi Keplar, thought I’d be a good addition to the site and suggested I apply. Within hours, I was signing papers. To be a part of such an elite community has been absolutely wild, and I regularly feel like the impostor of the bunch.
It’s no secret that I’m terrible at self-promotion, so I wanted to take a minute to share some of my work as an Fstopper.
Black and white, blurry, grainy images have been on my mind for the past year. The imperfection of it makes it feel like action is happening, and the camera just barely caught it. Perfection is overrated.