Biker Portraits

So I found myself walking down a crowded Weirs Boulevard, carting an arm chair on a dolly that I borrowed from a local market, and watching as the leather-clad Laconia Motorcycle Week bystanders laughed and pointed curiously in my direction. I had conjured up the bizarre idea of conducting a portrait session with some of the richly-diverse characters who attended bike week this year, placing them in the comfort of an overstuffed chair wedged amid a sea of colorful motorcycles.
I found myself asking the question, "Who are the individuals behind the tattoos, leather and growling machines?"
Lisa Jane, 38, recently crowned the winner of the Miss Laconia Bike Week Contest, was one of the first to lounge in the chair. Having been around the bike scene for many years, she spoke of how she would never ride a motorcycle again after being in a severe motorcycle accident. Kenneth Underhill, 47, rested his horned and helmeted head on the back of the chair and took a catnap while I photographed him, and later explained that after 10 years of attending the rally the clamor of the motorcycles put him right to sleep. His late wife had forbidden him from purchasing the helmet because she worried that he would accidentally poke an eye out.
"My wife passed away in 2004 with cancer and I was all by myself and I said, 'By God, I'm going to go get me that helmet because that helmet is me,'" said the bearded Underhill, one of many to collapse onto that comfy blue chair and share a piece of themselves.

Laconia Motorcylce Week

The only advice I was given before heading out to bike week at Weirs Beach was to watch out for the Hells Angels, who've been known to smash cameras that take unsolicited photographs. So, as the reporter and I made our way through the crowds snickering like teenagers at bizarre palm readings, fake squirrel skin hats, butt-less chaps, and skanky outfits I naively marched right up to the Hells Angel booth (completely missing the "81"s slashed everywhere, worried glances from the reporter, and the multiple knives strapped to the belts of burly mob looking individuals) and introduced myself. Really all I wanted was to photograph the peg legged guy whose entire head was laced in tattoos, but instead I got to see a whole lot more then I bargained for.

Snow Pond

The sun came tapping on my window early this morning and like an unwilling passenger on a journey about to end I tried to wrap myself in the last strains of sleep. But the allure of a misty morning and a cool lake led me tiptoeing through the wickedly wet grass, offering myself up as a human sacrifice to a million gleeful mosquitoes. Every once in a while a forgetful bullfrog will bust into song, mistaking the morning for the dusk. And silently, as the world hung choosing between night and daybreak, I slipped back into my bed after welcoming the dawn.



I hear the chickens waking as they begin to muse among themselves at the coming of daybreak. Bird song begins to drip from trees as the sunlight plays among the branches to dapple my wall. Good morning world, I think into my pillow, cocooned in my bed, sleepy eyelids drifting shut.

Tree'd

Tuesday night Harry and Connie Place awoke to the sound of a tree hitting their mobile home in the Oxbow Mobile Home Park near Boscawen, NH. "We ain't getting out of this smelling like a rose," said Harry Place. "Insurance never wants to pay anything and we ain't going to have enough money for what we need to."

Coming Home

Four month old Emerald Penny saw her father Mark Penny yesterday for the first time at the homecoming of the NH Army National Guard 237th Military Police Company. Stacie Penny gave birth after her husbands deployment to eastern Baghdad a year ago. "I've been waiting for four years to say 'here take your daughter,'" said Stacie Penny.

King of the Stump

Grover, our three week old goat, is taking over the house and the hearts at Snow Pond Lake joining the already established menagerie of animals- Dudely the golden retriever, the evil goose clan that tries to attack all two legged foe, and the friendly chicken Lucy (she is in the third picture wondering if my camera is semi edible). If I leave the screen door open in the morning Lucy will march into the kitchen and chat with me while I make breakfast in hopes that I drop a tasty morsel. In case I forget her true intent, she reminds me with a sharp peck. I live in the loft of the barn in the last photograph (my mom alway said i would end up in a barn).

Graduation