Washington Photo Journal: Images from the Chinese New Year celebration at Gallery Place in Washington, D.C., Sunday February 1, 2009.

Enjoy!

I’ve been updating the templates at Washington Photo Journal and have come up with a layout that allows me to add new posts, links, and photos much easier than in the past. I’m also now able to create web galleries within the journal itself, so it should be a much better experience for visitors.

Though I’ve been trying to be more general in my photography, I realize I will do better to stick with LGBT themed photography as my primary focus. After all, this year marks the 20th year I’ve been taking photos of the gay community (I started at Gay Pride Cleveland in 1989), and my body of work is primarily related to LGBT issues. I’ll continue to cover anything newsworthy, but I plan to focus mostly on LGBT themes.

Other photographers for different beats (sports, dc politics, music, city news) are still needed on WaPhoJo. Let me know if you’re interested.

Washington Photo Journal – Shepard Fairey Obama Portrait “Hope” unveiled and installed in the National Portrait Gallery

A.N.S.W.E.R. usually organizes whatever major war protest is happening on the mall. The counter protest is usually organized by Free Republic. I think both of these groups are extremist, but A.N.S.W.E.R. tends to grab ahold of whatever is happening at the moment. Their protests are large because they attract new people who care about a cause, plus the same core group of left-wing protesters who carry their own agendas regardless of the issue of the moment. Free Republic tends to tow the extreme Republican party line of the moment, whether it be “We have to fight them over there…” or “Nuke Iran.”

Since the Free Republic group is usually pretty small, you begin to recognize people after a while. This weekend there was one long-haired mountain man that I first didn’t recognize, then it dawned on me I had photos of him from September of 2005, where he looked like an overgrown boy scout. While some Free Republic people (or “Freepers” as they are called) can spew some pretty vile stuff at these rallies, this guy is usually pretty quiet and holds a sign. His transformation to this bearded man of the wild was pretty stark. Upon reviewing the photos my buddy Bullneck got to thinking: “Is this a sign of Republicans wandering in the wilderness?”

Is this a sign of Republicans wandering in the wilderness?

Photographing amidst a protest can be scary stuff. You can really feel the adrenaline. Photographing a riot must be terrifying.

Check out a set of photos from the Oakland riots from prolific and talented Flickr photographer Thomas Hawk.

Oakland Riots 2009 – a set on Flickr

BART police shooting protest

Photo by Noah Berger / Special to The Chronicle

Be sure to read the article too. It’s a fascinating piece on ignorant mob mentality.

‘I wanted to make sure I never lived like that again,’ says (Katherine) McIntosh, who turns 77 on Saturday. ‘We all worked hard and we all had good jobs and we all stayed with it. When we got a home, we stayed with it.’

McIntosh is the girl to the left of her mother when you look at the photograph. The picture is best known as ‘Migrant Mother,’ a black-and-white photo taken in February or March 1936 by Dorothea Lange of Florence Owens Thompson, then 32, and her children.

Lange was traveling through Nipomo, California, taking photographs of migrant farm workers for the Resettlement Administration. At the time, Thompson had seven children who worked with her in the fields.

‘She asked my mother if she could take her picture — that … her name would never be published, but it was to help the people in the plight that we were all in, the hard times,’ McIntosh says.

‘So mother let her take the picture, because she thought it would help.’”