Japan

I finally made it to Japan!  I have wanted to visit that country for many years, and I became more motivated after I started sewing a few years ago.  Verdant, lush greenery greeted us as soon as our train took off from the airport, whisking us into Tokyo.  Even though we arrived in Tokyo around rush hour, the city was not super crowded and was so quiet.  The whole trip we commented on the quiet cleanliness of the country.  There is so much I could write about this trip, despite the fact that I'm not a great writer.  I'm going to just post a gallery of images instead and hope that I'll get to tell people about the trip in person.  [I'm going to take some of these images and make prints and stationery.]

Greyson + Nadia

This is only half of Nadia's family, so this isn't the best entry to the neighbor series.  I thought I had some film I wanted to use up, so I set up a little white backdrop (homage to Avedon) in my backyard this morning.  I wanted to get a couple pictures of Greyson so that I could take this roll of film to the lab and pick up some developed film that's been waiting on me.  Well, I didn't have any frames left on the roll as I thought, so this is all shot on digital in a few minutes of time this morning.

I'll tell more about Nadia after I do pictures of her whole family.  Until then...

Ethiopia

I had the pleasure of spending this past week in Addis Ababa for work.  Ethiopia is an enchanting country, filled with lovely landscapes and beautiful people.  The job that took me to Africa was photographing schools for an organization called Edify (www.edify.org).  After finishing up at one of the schools on the last day of work, I asked our bajaj (a blue 3-wheeled taxi) driver to take me to a good place to take pictures of Ethiopians in town.  I wanted to get more images of adults since I had mostly been taking pictures of children in school. 

Mesfin, whose name means "prince" in Amharic, took us to his own family's home.  There, I got to meet his sister, niece, and stepmother.  They were so hospitable and kind.  Even though I didn't have time to stay for it, they invited me to a coffee ceremony.

I even got to meet their priest.  He was so generous to let me take his picture, and when I tried to show him the picture on the back of my camera, they let me know that he has trouble with his sight.  [I've sent the images to one of my new Ethiopian friends to have him print these pictures for Mesfin as well as the priest.  They say he will be able to see the printed image.] Despite his failing sight, he gave me a blessing and placed his cross right on my forehead and lips with no problems.

Mesfin's family home was on this charming street, and on the way there, I took one of my favorite pictures I've ever taken :)

It was just a really great day.  Thanks, Mesfin!

Stay tuned for more pictures after I edit and give the final images to Edify... and maybe images from my market experience.

Brother Bill's Helping Hand

Although this post is about an organization in Dallas, it is still about neighbors.  These aren't my neighbors, but they are the neighbors of West Dallas.  I got to do some work for Brother Bill's Helping Hand last week.  I took a lot of pictures of the work they do, but I'm just going to post a few from their monthly grocery delivery.  Once a month on a Saturday, volunteers come to pack up food and head out into the West Dallas community to deliver groceries to people who don't have the ability to get to Brother Bill's on their own.  I got to meet two ladies who live just two doors down from each other.  Both were talkative, warm, and full of neighborhood history.  It was really a Saturday morning well-spent.