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.

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.

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.

From the article:

“This is the first in a weekly series profiling the areas proposed by the Hidden Gems campaign for federal wilderness designation. The campaign, led by Carbondale’s Wilderness Workshop, calls for more than 400,000 acres to be protected as wilderness. Most of the land is in the White River and Gunnison national forests, and includes areas in Pitkin, Gunnison, Eagle and Summit counties. An act of the U.S. Congress is required to designate new wilderness. The campaign has drawn criticism from some outdoor recreationalists, because all mechanized use and development is barred in federal wilderness.”

you can read the rest of the story here.

“Portia Potty:”

“Nuclia Waste:”

and “Gabriella Butzin:”