The high school winter sports season came and went and again I had the opportunity to photograph the area’s top athletes for the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. Another whirlwind week of trying to make contact and schedule times with the students – many of which were bumping up against spring break. But it always seems to work out.

Spring sports are already finishing up and another round of portraits will be coming soon.

Christopher Evers, 32, of Vero Beach, FL, walked out of the Indian River County Jail on Friday after having waited 3,192 days for a trial that never happened. In 2003 he was arrested for felony murder and felony aggravated child abuse in a shaken-baby incident that lead to the death of his daughter, Katherine. His trial was delayed after he was twice deemed incompetent to stand trial because of a brain injury he suffered in an automobile accident two months before his daughter died. As his competency came and went, he was moved back and forth between jail and a state mental health care facility. Most recently he was deemed competent.

Evers has maintained his innocence throughout, claiming that his daughter suffered from seizures and that her injuries were caused while in the care of medical professionals in Orlando. On Friday, however, Evers had the opportunity to leave jail and return to his family, which includes two sons. A judge accepted his plea of no contest to a lesser charge of manslaughter. The felony aggravated child abuse charge was dropped and he was sentenced to the 3,192 days he has already spent awaiting trial.The full story can be found here…

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/feb/17/judge-finds-vero-beach-father-guilty-in-shaken-9/

I covered the story for the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers with reporter Elliott Jones. We were at the sentencing at 9:00 am when the plea deal was entered and accepted. We then thought we’d try to catch him as he left the jail.

We sat outside the main entrance for 3.5 hours watching people come and go. Elliott made some phone calls to the release office at the jail, but they couldn’t give him a solid time as to when Evers was to be let out. We were told there was a chance he wouldn’t be released until after 6:00 p.m. – that was at about 1:30 in the afternoon. Whatever time he was let out, we were expecting someone, a friend or family member, to come meet him at the entrance. Then suddenly, at about 2:05 p.m., he walked out the front door of the jail on his own wearing a bright gold shirt with a sack slung over his shoulder carrying his personal items. Elliott asked, “Is that him?” It was less of a question and more of a statement of disbelief after not getting any indication that he would be out so soon.

Elliott followed him while I gathered up my cameras. We stayed back for a little bit and then caught up with him and introduced ourselves. He was very relaxed and said that he wanted to walk back to his mother’s house to surprise her. He added that he also just wanted to be outside, to walk and see how things have changed over the past 9 years. We asked if we could walk with him for a bit and he told us it would be okay.

We followed alongside him for about a quarter-mile. Elliott talked with him while I photographed, trying to catch moments in between sentences. He was open with us. We were with him for about 10 minutes before he was met by someone in a car who had come to pick him up. We suspect someone from the jail called and said to come intercept him.

Walking with someone during their first free moments in 9 years brought up a lot of things, but I was mostly wondering about what he was thinking. Even though it’s technically over, he’s still very entangled in the case. It will be with him forever. How does he begin again? It was also curious how he left the jail – on his own, walking, head down but with intentions of surprising his family. It was so quiet. I don’t know what I was expecting. I didn’t expect balloons and fanfare or anything, but thought at least one person would be there to meet him. I guess he had other plans though. It was his choice not to call anyone to come get him. It was such a different scene from when I saw him for the first time earlier in the morning, in a red jumpsuit surrounded by lawyers and bailiffs and under the control of others.

One other thing about our exchange outside the jail that keeps sticking me is that Evers never got to finish his walk home. It was advantageous for our newspaper that we were there, but we ate up those first moments. Granted, he did say it was alright for us to join him, which we appreciated, but just as we were going to leave him alone he got scooped up by someone in a car.

In the end, it is our understanding that he made the decision to plead no contest to manslaughter in order to be with his family. He wanted to go to trial and fight the charges against him, but realized that the likelihood existed that it would continue to be delayed, or that he could of course be found guilty. Both options resulted in more time in jail and more time away from his family, but he was offered a way out. It’s a significant compromise in his mind, but he understood that by accepting it, in the eyes of the state, he would be a free man.

Good, contagious energy was all around at the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration today in Gifford, FL. I was one of three photographers covering different events for the Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers and it was fun to see how our other photographers saw the celebrations they were photographing. I had a good time trying to make a few portraits of some of the people I met as well.

With great help from Scripps Treasure Coast multimedia journalist Chris Arnold and my awesome wife, Deborah, another season of Scripps Treasure Coast All-Area High School athlete portraits is finished. We got out of the studio this time to try out some location work. Big Thanks to all the athletes, coaches and parents for all your patience and flexibility. Here are a few of my favorites.

Marilyn, my aunt, passed away in June. She is my mom’s sister, one of five girls who grew up in Dyersville, Iowa. She had a beautiful funeral full of laughter, tears, food, family, friends and memories. She is great. She is loved. She is missed and still felt.

Deborah and I recently went on a cruise throughout the Caribbean. We had a stop in Nassau, Bahams where we went into town for only a couple of hours. Having been up late the night before, we got a bit of a slow start on the day, but that was alright. Slow Down…that’s the point, right? We had fun looking around and talking with a few folks. And then the rain started. We found this black wall, stopped to wait for a photograph, bought a cool t-shirt and went back to the ship.

This is a portrait of Stanley Mennuto. Stanley lives in Palm City, FL, but on the morning September 11, 2001 he was living in New York and working on the 88th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center. He escaped the south tower after seeing the first plane hit the north tower. Most of the people he worked with did not get out. He has recently begun talking about his experience. It helps him to talk about it, he says.

His story ran in The Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers along with profiles of other local residents who were in NYC that day, or were first responders.

I photographed the series of portraits for the package with a Holga.

I’ve been doing more and more portraits, but have only begun experimenting with the Holga so this approach was a bit nerve-wracking since the results can be unpredictable. I wasn’t totally sure it would all work out.  Everyone was photographed digitally as well just in case something went wrong, but thankfully it all turned out okay. This portrait was shot with the camera on a tripod, using the “Bulb” setting. My finger was the shutter release, guesstimating the exposure time.

One of the best things that shooting with the Holga did, though, was to slow things down. Being so used to having unlimited frames while shooting digitally, using film was a welcome change of pace. Because of that pace, many times the portrait sessions came to a crawl, or even stopped, as we’d get caught in discussions about their experiences during the attacks or the results of that day and its effect on them, and the world, to this day.

I’m a big fan of personal projects…doesn’t matter what type of media or form of expression. Arguably, every type of work or creation can be considered personal in some way. Whether it’s painting a series of murals, designing a structure, building and landscaping a public thoroughfare, making a sales call or anything else, the person doing the action ultimately brings some personal aspect to it. But a project that is done free of any peripheral influence dictating the outcome is different. The motivations are personal and those motivations, and the resulting project, can tell us something about the person doing it.

The “In The Yard” series started last summer as a way to unwind after work or on the weekends. I enjoy meeting and talking to and learning about people, but sometimes it’s nice to get away and go somewhere else for a while. When I needed to do that I’d dive into the tiny world in our yard and look at the patterns of behavior and relationships between the creatures and plants growing around the house.

I can’t say that the resulting photos are anything unique – there’s a lot of really fantastic small-scale work out there – nor does it attempt to bring large scale environmental issues down to size, but it’s been an enjoyable project and it’s completely different from a lot of the other photography work I’ve been doing. It’s certainly given me a greater appreciation of the smaller world, a new fascination with spiders and a basis from which more new interests have already grown.

Al Maeyens, of Alvis Sings Elvis, performs for the crowd at a spaghetti dinner fundraiser for Southeast Florida Honor Flight at the Knights of Columbus building in Stuart, FL. His wife, Dee Maeyens, was Marilyn Monroe. Al and Dee were a lot of fun and really enjoyed working the crowd. There was one woman (very old) who thought he was the actual Elvis.