I’ve just created a new gallery on my photography site consisting solely of images taken at meetings, conferences, and conventions.  I’ve done a lot of this sort of work over the years, having photographed events for clients ranging from Yamaha and Home Depot to Liberty Mutual Insurance and the American Planning Association, and it was about time that I dedicated a gallery to this work.

There’s an energy and a vibe to meetings and events that I really enjoy, and I work hard to capture this in my photographs.  Whether it’s an executive presenting an award to an employee dressed as a pirate, or conference attendees diving into a buffet, or a gospel choir entertaining convention delegates, meetings and events are concentrated moments in time filled with all sorts of photographic possibilities.

I traveled to New Orleans earlier this year to cover the annual conference of the American Planning Association.  As part of this coverage, I accompanied conference attendees, who are urban and city planners, city planning officials, and educators in the planning field, on a tour of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, the part of the city most devastated by hurricane Katrina.

More than five years after the storm, it is obvious that it will be a very long time, if ever, before this neighborhood fully recovers.  But while there is plenty for residents to be pessimistic about, I was struck by the dogged optimism of the residents I spoke to.  One spoke of the many months of having to live “frontier style” – no services like drinking water, electricity, or sewer, no mail, along with having to carry a gun to protect what little they still had.  And yet, this resident was cautiously upbeat about the future, and looking forward to moving back into her house this winter.

Dealing with a cancer diagnosis or the news that you need an organ transplant is more than enough to test the maturity and emotional stability of a well-adjusted adult, but how does a young child handle such a thing?  Starlight Children’s Foundation’s mission is to help seriously ill children and their families cope with the pain, fear and isolation that comes with fighting such difficult conditions.  One way they do this is by holding special parties that give an ill child and their entire family a break from the day-to-day stresses of hospitals and doctors, and offer the opportunity to just be a kid.

Skydive Chicago isn’t really located in Chicago, being about a 90 minute drive from Millennium Park, my personal zero milestone for the city.  But the “skydive” part certainly is accurate, with planeloads of jumpers climbing into the sky seemingly every few minutes.  I was in Chicago to shoot an assignment for a regular client of mine, and managed to spend a weekend with old friends I hadn’t seen in many years.  One of my friends’ sister had decided to make her first jump that weekend, so we all headed out to the single runway airport Skydive Chicago uses as their base to watch and support her.

From being strapped into the harness, to getting instructions from her tandem instructor, seeing her chute in the sky, and her joyous victory dance after landing, to watching her and my friends watch the helmet-cam video of her jump, it all looked like a ton of fun, and left me wanting to try it sometime very soon.  Next time I’m in Chicago . . .