New Project: Seeds of Harmony Garden, New Columbia, Portland

Wako (need to check the spelling), Ethiopian, 2012

Seeds of Harmony is a unique community garden in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Portland, New Columbia (formerly Columbia Villa). Many refugees are placed in this neighborhood as it is mostly government housing. In the SOH garden I'm told there are over 25 nationalities represented. My wife Mia and I are now part of this neighborhood having bought a condo unit here. We are also part of the garden. I'll be updating this blog with portraits of the gardeners and a video at some point. By the end of summer I hope to produce a small cookbook featuring the recipes of the gardeners alongside their portraits and have an exhibition as well. 

New Heights Clinic

The New Heights Clinic, based out of a renovated house on the New Heights church property, is a church-based free dental and medical clinic serving the city of Vancouver, Washington. 

University of Portland nursing student Svetlana speaks with the clinic's director and her faculty advisor.

University of Portland nursing student Svetlana interviews a patient at the clinic.

University of Portland nursing student Svetlana takes a patients blood pressure.

Located in a renovated house in front of the New Heights Church is New Heights Clinic, a church based health clinic for the medically & dentally underserved in Vancouver, Washington. Svetlana is doing one of her clinical rotations here assisting the full-time physicians. 
One aspect I found interesting at this church-based clinic is the intersection of faith, spirituality and medicine. Although I didn't have time to investigate this further with the students or physicians (nor was it part of the clients brief) I found it to be an interesting point to possibly investigate in the future. 

March in Beijing Homemade Instagrams

Proud Ground Video

Here's a recent video I made with Proud Ground, an amazing non-profit that helps low-income first-time homebuyers get into quality homes in normal neighborhoods. Rebecca and I actually bought our condo with them and we couldn't have worked with a nicer organization. If you're looking for a place in Portland, please check them out.

New Smart Car University of Portland Video

Here's the latest video I made for the University of Portland playing at all home basketball games.

The idea was pretty straight forward. We unfortunately didn't have a lot of time, although this is pretty typical. A dept. wants a video and comes to marketing at the last minute with a short deadline. Not ideal, but pretty standard. We sketch out a rough idea for it and work on scheduling the shoot. In this case we had to shoot it in about 3 hours as the coach is super busy and they were leaving town for a couple weeks for some games on the road.

It was shot with a couple lenses (tried the new Tamron 16-28mm f2.8, which was is surprisingly high quality, although heavy and lacks the ability to use a screw on filter) and a 5d mark ii. Edited in Premiere 5.5 with magic bullets color grading.

Happy New Year!

Onward! To 2012!

 Hello human.

A mass Elk mooning. Considered good luck in these parts.

We stayed at the the once NY Times food critic and American chef James Beard's house located in Gearhart, Oregon. James was large but his house was small.

Leo looking back on 2011 and shortly thereafter taking a satisfying crap in the tall grass, a fitting farewell.

Thomas Garran | Chinese Traditional Medicine Practitioner & Herbalist