Home on the range...

Near Condon, Mont.

The Verrazano

Belly Flop Contest

Seabright

Corpse Bride

This is from the Day of the Dead procession in Missoula.

Stephansdom

Clark Fork Sunrise

Clark Fork Sunset

The Finlen

People usually look at me weird when I tell them Butte, America is one of my favorite places in the world, but I stand by my love of the decrepit old city. These are photos from inside the Finlen Hotel.

Yay China!

Watching the 10,000 firecrackers go off at the end of the shortest, loudest Chinese New Year parade outside of the Mai Wah building in Butte.

Chinese Dancers

These were taken at the Chinese New Year parade in Butte. Some Chinese girls came from a school in California to preform, then they had a snowball fight in an alley.

A light in the window

Papua New Guinea

I took this a few years ago when I went to PNG with Habitat for Humanity.

Tree

This photo is image of the week on the J-school website.

Redfish Lake

Tubing on Redfish lake under the ominous clouds of a near-by forest fire.

Abstract Dancing

Eloise, Alison and Cord "ruining tomorrow to put cups upside down."

Library

Dianne in the studio

My first studio shoot... a bit overexposed, but I kind of like the effect.

Kite Surfers

Driving back to Missoula

BINGO at the Senior Center

Bee Hives

Near Mirabelle, France.

Painting with Light

Rich

My cousin Rich this summer in Boone, NC.

Dance Class

I took this for a bounce flash and color correction assignment. However, the walls were fuschia, so my attempts at correcting for the fluorescent lights got kind of funky.

Seashore Day Camp

I took this photo while my camera was at Nikon HQ being fixed, so I had to use one of the really slow TRT cameras. I had to hold the shutter down for like 5 seconds before the image was captured, so I never knew what I was going to get. This was just really lucky.

Roosevelt Street

I took these last spring on my "balcony," which was actually just the roof outside Abby's bedroom window.

Gambling

This is part of a story I did on gambling in Missoula this past fall.



Live poker at the Silver Slipper.




Yes, the mall in Missoula has a casino. It's called Pepper's and you can drink beer for free as long as you keep feeding the machines.






His glassy eyes reflect the glow of the keno machine he’s been playing for the last hour. He won’t say how much money he’s spent today, but Dan Bookman won twenty dollars at this machine last week, and he still has 60 credits to use to win some more. The Silver Dollar bar by the train tracks in downtown Missoula, is like any other bar in Western Montana. Crusty old men bellied up to the bar, a friendly bartender pouring their Budweisers, a couple of pool tables, a juke box, and of course, the wall of keno machines.
Video keno has been legal in Montana since 1976; after years of false starts, it was passed as a form of live bingo. In 1985, the Video Poker Machine Act was passed, which meant that the state granted five video poker licenses to each liquor license. After a 15 percent tax was imposed on video gaming in 1987, the state realized what a great source of revenue these machines were and lifted the five-machine poker limit and instead instated a 20-machine-per-liquor license-law in 1991.
The Video Gambling Machine Tax, the major gambling tax in Montana, is equal to 15 percent of the video gambling machine revenues. One-third of this revenue is distributed to the state general fund, and two-thirds is set aside for the municipality or county. Montana’s government has come to depend on this tax.
Missoula’s appetite for these machines seems insatiable. Just take a quick drive down Brooks Street, and you will pass over ten dedicated casinos, and at least ten other restaurants or bars with video gaming machines.
In 2005 alone, over 20,000 video gambling machine permits were granted in Montana. That is one new machine for every 50 residents, not to mention all of the machines that have been accumulating since 1976. Last year the gross income tax revenues from all the video gambling machines across the state was a staggering $355.9 million.
Who is playing these machines? Most people play to relax and “zone out” after a hard day at work. Although it costs money, it’s more exciting than television. But also more addictive.
The 1999 National Gambling Impact Study Commission Final Report found that, of the 125 million adult Americans who gamble, 7.5 million were problem or pathological gamblers.
People with gambling problems are found in every demographic group. Behaviors that signal problem gambling include a preoccupation with gambling, a need to gamble with increasing amounts of money and trying to make up losses by additional gambling.
There are three advertised gamblers anonymous meetings in Missoula. St. Patrick’s Hospital hosts one on Wednesdays, and the Providence Center on North Orange Street hosts meetings Sunday and Thursday nights.
Although these games are a boon to tax revenue in the state, it tends to be taken from those who can least afford it.


My biggest problem with this story was access. No bar-owners wanted me disturbing the gamblers and no gamblers wanted their pictures taken. Luckily there were a few exceptions. I really wanted a picture of the keno machines in the mall, but the mall itself doesn't allow photography. I had to actually sit there and play video poker until I could whip out my not too subtle Nikon D70 when nobody was looking. I lost a dollar.

Nap Time

Abby, my perennial model, relaxes at Tug's mom's house in Corvallis. This was taken a couple of years ago for a high-angle/low-angle assignment.

Deaconesses

This was taken this summer at Pilgrim Baptist Church in Red Bank for the Two River Times magazine, The Book.

Zug nach Wien

Jet lag? Nein! Trans-continental travel won't put a cramp on Alison's style on the train into Vienna. I think we were a little punch-drunk that morning before Christine's wedding.