Ryan Pelham

The Wall That Heals

ryanpelham — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 02:02:44 +0000

The Wall That Heals, a half scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, came to Sebring last week and through the weekend. I tried to take some time to go up there and make some pictures each day. It was a pretty sobering experience watching as people walked past the wall with the print-outs with the locations of their friends and relatives’ names, kneeled down and ran their fingers through the names scanning for the name.

“I’ve got too many names,” sighed one veteran as he flipped through the stack of papers giving the locations of his friends.

ryanpelham — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:14:23 +0000

I haven’t updated this thing far too long, so I thought I’d post some daily stuff from my new job on staff at Highlands Today in Sebring, Fla.

ryanpelham — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:50:48 +0000

Here’s just a few pictures from my life over the past week or so. These are just pictures from carrying my camera around with me, not any sort of organized project.

This one was an accident. The camera fired while it was hanging around my shoulder while I was riding my bike.

zombie walk

ryanpelham — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:16:09 +0000

I shot a zombie walk through downtown Tallahassee hosted by the Mickee Faust Club, a community theater group in Tallahassee’s Railroad Square, to promote their Halloween cabaret show. It was a fairly short event, but I found myself mostly drawn to the interaction between the zombies and the “living” they encountered along the way.

One zombie remarked that they shouldn’t be so close to the capitol if they were looking for brains.

Japanther at Charles Mansion, Tuesday, Oct. 27

ryanpelham — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 01:44:52 +0000

Japanther at the Charles Mansion, a punk house in Tallahassee, Fla. Tuesday, Oct. 27. I remember going to house shows at the Mansion when I was in high school, and returning with my camera is an interesting feeling. It was so hot inside during Japanther, cramped into the small living room space, that my glasses and camera lens fogged up several times.

ryanpelham — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 00:41:13 +0000

I recently returned to my hometown, Tallahassee, Fla., after several years away. I decided to try to put together a project on DIY punk rock, something that Tallahassee has no shortage of. As a teenager growing up in town, I spent many nights at punk/hardcore shows, at both legit venues and house shows, standing in someone’s living room watching a band play their hearts out for the love of the music. I have fond memories of seeing bands play in the hot, sticky, smelly air of venues like the Thunderdome and Fade Theory Records, small do-it-yourself venues on Gaines Street.

These are a couple pictures from a house show I attended this weekend. Looking through my viewfinder at this show was like watching my teenage years through my lens. First photo is Homemade Handgrenade from Tallahassee.

Douglas Shields and the X-Factors from Gainesville:

ryanpelham — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:10:06 +0000

I attended the VJ Multimedia Workshop at the Brooks Institute in Ventura, Calif., which was for current students and laid off professionals, this past week. We were each given a story and 24 hours to shoot it, plus another couple days to edit our multimedia pieces.

My story was about the Rubicon Theatre Company, a local theater that is struggling with a decrease in donations due to the economy. Spanky Reynoso, the Rubicon’s hair and makeup artist, hosted a drag show to raise funds for the theater. The great thing about the workshop was that stories weren’t pre-packaged and handed to us. We were all open to find our own visions and angles to approach our topic.

ryanpelham — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:30:10 +0000

I spent a couple days photographing at the Shepard Meadows Therepeutic Riding Center in Bristol, Conn. this month. I followed 7-year-old Ben, who has spina bifida, during his weekly riding sessions the past two weeks.

Ben does his riding sessions on a female pony named Blueberry.

Ben tosses a plastic hoop over a fence post as part of an exercise to improve balance.

Ben uses a piece of grass from the field to tickle volunteer Lois Solomon.

LARP multimedia

ryanpelham — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 01:10:31 +0000

Live action role-playing

ryanpelham — Tue, 26 May 2009 04:53:56 +0000

I went back to photograph a live action role-playing event hosted by Alliance CT this weekend. Here are some of the photos, and I’ll have a multimedia piece up soon.

And this one just because it’s funny: