jake lyell photography

So I am back from Peru now. I have a lot of great photographs from Lima, but before I get to those, many people ask what I do when I’m at home. Here’s a little bit of insight into my life in Virginia…

I don’t put my camera down when I’m back home, though I’m not as good at toting it around as I am when I’m on assignment. I’m still trying to get into the mentality that I am always on assignment, even when I’m not in a foreign country. On Wednesday I went down to Chesapeake, a 90 minute drive, to hang out with my grandmother. Above, our lunch outing at her favorite restaurant, the Pirate’s Cove.

At 85, my grandmother still gets out and does her own shopping and errand running, though at a slightly slower pace than she’s perhaps used to. Her shopping destination of choice: Walmart, or Walmark as she calls it. For her, nothing beats the convenience of one -stop shopping.

My grandmother likes to hear about my latest travels and look over my photographs. My late grandfather was a Chief in the US Navy and their family spent years in Japan and Korea, two countries where I have yet to travel. She also keeps up with politics and world affairs and can talk my ear off about US history since 1942 as if it were yesterday. The war in Iraq in particular is an issue that irks her, and one on which she speaks out.

In my grandparents’ day, war was a last resort and something to be avoided at all costs. She is still angry at the casual, hasty way in which our country invaded Iraq, and the continued expenditure of resources there. McCain’s continued support for the war is one of the reasons she’s casting her vote for Obama in November. “McCain will just go along with what Bush has done. He’s a Republican and we need a Democrat back in office,” she says.

“They talk about him (Obama) being young, this that, and the other, but that’s what we need.” She goes on to compare Obama to JFK: “I remember when he was a young Catholic, and everyone had reservations about voting for him. But I feel the same about Barack Obama, he’s just what the US needs to give us new life. I just think he’s got more ideas about this country moving forward… he’s younger and more energetic.”

Having lived abroad extensively, my grandmother is also worried about the way our country is perceived throughout the world: “Nobody respects the US anymore.” She doesn’t think a McCain presidency would do much to improve our country’s standing. With less than three months to go until election day, the two candidates now appear to be in a statistical dead heat among likely voters. An Obama victory may lie in bringing out unlikely voters who may never have cast a ballot before. One thing’s for certain: I’ll make sure my grandmother gets to the polls on November 4th.

Not exactly an assignment, but still mostly a working week, I’ve recently been in Ireland. The occasion: my friends Ryan and Aoife gathered the closest of their friends and family from throughout the world for a week-long convergence in County Wicklow, just south of Dublin. At the end of the week the two bonded in holy matrimony on a hillside near the town of Blessington.
Though we’ve known each other for about 15 years, Ryan and I became good friends when he returned to Richmond a couple years ago after living in Chicago, Italy and Ireland, respectively. A talented web and graphic designer, we’ve collaborated on a few projects as well. He is the architect of this blog and my forthcoming website. Both of us well traveled, we share a love of other cultures and ways of life. Shown above on the windy moors, Ryan holds on for dear life.

Aoife, from Dublin, was studying abroad in Chicago when she and Ryan met. She then studied in Italy and Ryan went with her. Along the way, the pair (shown above) have made friends everywhere they’ve gone, many of whom came to the wedding in Ireland, where at least seven nationalities were represented.

This is the first year that I have begun to take my camera everywhere I go. Not just when I’m in a foreign country but to a party, or movie, or even the grocery store. In many ways, I think it’s changed the way I look at things. For one, I now feel that I’m always on assignment, that I’m always charged with the task of taking interesting photographs, whether or not someone has commissioned them.

As a photographer who seldom takes a photograph that doesn’t include a human being, I concentrated more on the people of Ireland and their environments than on it’s beautifully green landscapes. Here I was able to gain more confidence in approaching subjects to ask if they’ll allow me to photograph them, and seldom was I turned down. Carrying my camera with me at all times forced me to be so bold, lest I return to the hotel empty-handed. Above, a retired man outside his tenement building north of the River Liffey. Below, school kids take the bus from Dublin to Blessington. “Are you some sort of famous photographer?” the girl asks. “Not yet,” I jokingly reply.

To call me a devoted U2 fan would be an understatement. Though we stayed out in the countryside, I made several day trips into the band’s hometown of Dublin, keeping my eyes peeled the entire time for U2 landmarks and even once sipping a pint of Guiness in a bar owned and frequented by Bono and The Edge. U2’s Dublin was a Mecca of sorts to me. Never am I so berated for the love of a band than among my own circle of friends in the US, who constantly poke fun at Bono to annoy me. It was great to be amongst allies.

Though this is the first time I’ve visited, it is apparent that today’s Dublin is not the same city of the 80s and 90s. Although in some sectors it has not lost its working class and industrial flavor, Dublin is in many ways a posh and metropolitan European capital. It is clearly undergoing an identity crisis. Despite being Europe’s fastest growing economy and a top destination for immigrants from Eastern Europe, voters recently rejected the Lisbon Treaty, a European Union constitution-of-sorts that streamlined EU integration and further centralized power in Brussels.

Ireland is dotted with ancient and medieval sites. On a day trip I visited Glendalough along with Bill, Jeremy (fellow Richmonders) and Andreas of Germany. The site of an ancient Christian monastery, it was founded around 600AD and today contains ruins of churches, towers and countless headstones. Above, Bill strolls through the graveyard at Glendalough.

Never without a song when there’s a pint in your hand, the week was peppered with Johnny Cash, Guns N Roses and U2 singalongs. These groups seemed to elicit consternation on both sides of the Atlantic, but became the glue that bound our various cultures together.

At the end of the week, a dapper Ryan (above with the best man, Barry) wore less conventional attire for the wedding, even riding into the ceremony on his future father-in-law’s bicycle.

Above, Aoife walks to the altar with her father. She and Ryan were married in a stone enclosure on a country hillside, where friends and family encircled them. The guests then used bits of rope to tie an unbreakable knot around the enclosure, recalling Ryan’s years of training to be an Eagle Scout.

Every step of the wedding was planned by Ryan and Aoife, and it remained true to form for the couple. Shunning tradition and employing symbolism, Ryan even baked the wedding cake (although with some last minute help from his mother).

I’ve shot a fair amount of weddings in the past. I’ve approached them as any other cultural event that I document -as a story to be told. Lately, however, my schedule has been so packed with overseas assignments that booking a wedding has become logistically impossible (I’m writing this entry from an internet cafe in Ecuador).

Last August I had almost booked a last minute wedding. The bride had even sent in her deposit when I got a call to go to China. It was a difficult decision, but I ended up taking the overseas assignment. I now have to put my time and energy into doing what I have endeavored for years to do and what is now happening - photojournalism.

Ryan now lives in Europe. I hope that during my travels I’ll still be able to visit him and Aoife from time to time. The fact that so many of their loved ones traveled thousands of miles to be at the wedding in Ireland is a testament to the kind of steadfast and upstanding friends that they are.

Good times ahead.

Okay, so I wasn’t really in Egypt this weekend. These photos were taken at Jockey’s Ridge in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Jockey’s Ridge is a massive sand dune park where extreme adventurers go to hang-glide, sand board, or in my case, just walk around and climb on the dunes. I thought I had the park all to myself but as I was taking some photos of the bare sand dunes, a big group of people came walking over the ridge. At first I thought I’d wait ’til they left but I saw something very surreal in how small and out of place everyone looked on these great piles of sand.

One can draw their own metaphors and Biblical allusions from here….