Visitors from North Carolina came north.

All my best friends from high school met in DC. I went down to visit for the evening.

The next day they played 21 Dunk Tip like they used to when they were in elementary school.

While in DC, I got caught in a flash thunderstorm in a park. My camera didn’t fare so well and this is one of its last frames.

Other time, Mike Belleme came to visit Brooklyn with Kristen.

Will and Layne were also visiting.

I’ve been working on the project for almost a year. It’s a love story.

Jason Andrades spends most of his time on a street corner on the border of Williamsburg and Bushwick. He grew up there hustling drugs, although he’s spent about half of his life in jail.

At the height of their dealings, Jay and Mikey used to sell thousands of dollars of drugs a day. Everything from heroin to crack to cocaine to ecstasy would pass through their hands. These days the only legit work they can get offers a mere fraction of what they used to make.

Around the same time Jay started dealing, he also started using. He first tried hard drugs because he heard it would make sex better. Now he’s been addicted to heroin for about 15 years. He’s maintained a healthy appearance because he would snort it rather than shoot it.

After years of working the corner, Jay knows just about everyone in the neighborhood. He jokes with the young kids and helps out the older folks.

Jay smokes a tobacco laced with PCP. He has cravings but tries his best to stay away from heroin.

Gladys is Jay’s savior. They fell in love two years ago and it changed Jay’s life. He lives with her in her project apartment. However, Gladys is well-educated and empowered. Though they have very different moral backgrounds, they balance each other well.

For the first time in his life, Jay sought out treatment for his heroin addiction. He goes to a methadone clinic everyday and receives 100mg.

On warm days, Jay opens the fire hydrant on his block and washes cars for $10 each. He doesn’t mind hard work but he’s never really had a regular job.

Jay sings to Gladys on one knee. Jaheim is his favorite singer because Jaheim was also in prison.

Nevaeh is Gladys’s granddaughter and Jay has taken on the role as the primary male figure in her life.

Jay often tells Gladys that if she were ever to leave this earth, he would leave with her.

Please watch the audio slideshow of Jay telling his story. He says so much more than I ever could.

A smattering from June.

Andrew stuck and poked my initials in his leg.

A few months ago I shot a assignment for Wired.com about Kaiju. It’s like professional wrestling in a Japanese monster movie.

Here’s a little bit of Independence Day.

A few weekends ago I went down the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Virginia. Saw some of my favorite photographers speak and nerded out with a bunch of photojournalists.

Mary Ellen Mark. Joel Peter Witkin. Jim Nachtwey. With the exception of Springsteen, it’s increasingly rare to find the names of my heros on a marquee like that. This was a comforting sight.

First order of business: go to the river. Maisie, Daryl and Ramsay are much better at shooting photos than doing handstands.

One night, they screened audio slideshows of new work in an abandoned warehouse. I think Andrea Bruce’s work about drug addiction in coal miners was my favorite.

After all the work was presented, the night became nothing but light.

Killing time between presentations.

On the last night Nachtwey spoke. It was in the form of a conversation with MaryAnne Golon, the picture editor for Time. She asked him questions while his photos, the most important record of war in the last 30 years, flickered behind them. Her last question was something to the effect of: after witnessing so much pain and so much sadness do you think you still have the capacity to love? Nachtwey answered that witnessing pain and sadness was an act of love. Tears and a standing ovation followed.

If you’re not familiar with his work, watch this talk from last year.

We rounded out the night with a party at David Alan Harvey‘s house.

National Geographic photographer William Albert Allard out partied all of us. He was still throwing back bottles and charming ladies when we left at 4am. Not bad for a 71 year old man in a blue sportscoat and porkpie hat.

Back to NY, humbled yet inspired.