Photographer Jonathan Crosby

Its been a while since my last post and I apologize for that. Since the last post: I finished my internship at the Aspen Daily News, drove to North Carolina for spring break vacation on Bald Head Island with some incredible friends, and am back at Ohio University.

I’ve been busy this spring working on expanding a long term project for the 4th addition of VisCom’s Soul of Athens student project. I’m working on a project with a mentally handicapped man by the name of Doug that I had the pleasure of meeting while working at a local bicycle shop back in freshman year. This project has been a work in progress throughout my college career and I’m excited to take it to a new level.  After many late nights in the computer lab, production has finally wrapped up and I’m quite pleased with the final product. Below are some behind-the-scenes images as well as a few favorites I shot this spring. Check out the countdown page and stay tuned for the multimedia story that’ll launch sometime in August.

There was a large rockslide in Glenwood Canyon early wednesday morning that severely damaged the I-70 interstate causing it to be closed in both directions. There’s a massive hole in the road, which happened to be a bridge so the falling rock went clear through. I made it up to the site on Thursday and by then the debris was broken up  and cleared of the road. Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) is working to patch the many holes in the road in order to open a lane in each direction for traffic.

Today they blew up a vulnerable boulder that was still above on the cliff, waiting to let loose and crush the interstate below. They estimated it to be 2 million pounds. So a CDOT crew spent the day drilling and placing explosives around the boulder to blow it into little pieces to minimize damage. It was a big boom. The delayed shock wave was enough to shake me enough to blur my frame at that exact moment. I like it though.

Every CDOT crew member I talked to seemed very cold and tired. It was snowing pretty hard and conditions were not ideal for hard manual labor outside in a tight canyon. I for one was not expecting snow in the canyon because Aspen, about 45 minutes away, was warm and sunny. Luckily I had some extra clothing in my car but I immediately felt bad for the six man team scaling the snowy cliff above trying to lay explosives. The photo below is of a lone ear-plug in the snow-slush-mud that the road crew had to deal with. Huge thanks to the men working to get the road back open because I leave Aspen in 5 days, and really don’t want to drive the 200 mile detour just to get out of the Roaring Fork Valley.

Up until this point, Aspen has been struggling with an unusually low snowpack. The Roaring Fork Valley was operating at about 70% snowpack average, and that personally feels like a generous statistic. My rock skis were the choice ski all season because dodging rocks and gravel wasn’t uncommon. Luckly, in the past 3 or so days, we were blessed with 3 feet of fresh snow. Although it was pretty heavy snow, it was well needed and breathed life into town.

The town is now awake. I got to the gondola at Ajax before it opens at 9 A.M. in hopes of getting first bucket and was surprised to see the line weaving out the corral and down the stairs. It was worth the wait. Over the next few days I skied myself into to the ground. My body hates me, stairs are the enemy, and the Ritz-Carlton hot tub next door is my saviour.

One great this about being the winter intern at the Aspen Daily News was the opportunity to photograph the ESPN Winter X Games 14. Although the access was very limited despite having a press pass, it was interesting to see some of the behind-the-scenes operations and was also a new experience to cover such a large event. It was a long and very cold 4 days but I walked away with a few frames I like and learned new things about the industry. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t shot sports action in a year or 2 so it was a good challenge to get back in the saddle and produce some good imagery for the paper.

Some images from a gay costume contest the other day. I found the judges – 3 drag queens – to be pretty entertaining and shot their portraits after the event was over.

“Portia Potty:”

“Nuclia Waste:”

and “Gabriella Butzin:”

Here are a few frames from daily feature hunting for the Aspen Daily News.

Basalt Barber Shop:

Silver Circle Ice Rink in down town Aspen:

I’m spending the winter in Aspen, CO to complete an internship at the Aspen Daily News. So far its been fun getting to know a new town and working for a paper. While driving home from grocery shopping in Basalt, I drove by Buttermilk ski resort where a snowcat was doing the daily prep on the X Games superpipe. I went back later at night thinking it could be a cool feature photo for the paper. The light fall off made for pretty dramatic photos of the Olympic-standard half-pipe that has 22′ walls.

I’m back working on a story of Doug Latz. Doug is a local from Chauncey, OH that suffers from mental handicaps. This story has been long in the making but I finally feel like I’m starting to get somewhere with it. Doug’s an awesome guy with a huge heart and has been a great photo subject.

Below are some frames from hanging out with Doug this evening. When I got to his house he was taking a nap. After resting (as I sat quietly and shot some frames) and indulging in his favorite activities  - eating a giant bowl of ravioli and watching Scooby Doo – he headed into Athens to collect some cans at the Smiling Skull Saloon.