#32 - Karuna Shinsho - July 15, 2018 - McLean, Virginia

An old high school friend of mine suggested that Karuna would make a great subject. He had attended high school with her in Japan back in the mid-1980s. So I got an introduction via Facebook and we set up a photography date to make these images. I met Karuna for the first time the day I photographed her for this project.
Karuna has lived an exciting and interesting life. She grew up in Hawaii and Japan. Karuna got an early start in television news as a news anchor in Japan while she was still in college working for NHK Television. A few years later she went to grad school in New York and worked for NHK's bureau there. Then she lived in Singapore working for Asia Business News (later merged with CNBC Asia) and then to Hong Kong as an International anchor for CNN. She has also lived in Africa and traveled to many places around the world. She left the news business when she started a family and raised her two boys. They are now teenagers and are both talented musicians like their mother.
Karuna is also pursuing a passion of studying and singing jazz. As of this writing she is learning to sing Bossa Nova in Portuguese and will perform with a renowned Brazilian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist from New York at an upcoming concert. She has started to sing in clubs in the Washington, DC area and will perform in Japan this November.
In the year since I've met Karuna, I have photographed her many more times, but with a digital camera. She is now a good friend.

#31 - H. Darr Beiser - April 29, 2018 - Carderock, Maryland

I first noticed Darr's photos in 1996 when I started to freelance for USA Today. I'd often see his byline under his photos and I always wondered if I would ever get to meet him.  It wasn't until 2015 that I finally met Darr at an art gallery opening.

Darr was hired as one of the founding staff  photographers back in 1982 when USA Today was established. He was one of two photographers who established the photo department of the fledgling newspaper. USA Today eventually grew to have well over a dozen staff photographers and photo editors at one point.  Over the decades that he was there, he traveled extensively and photographed quite a few impressive portraits of some well known people. Take a look here. Darr worked there until 2015 (33 years), when the paper underwent massive buyouts and downsizing. He now freelances and does work photography and video work for several clients and political candidates. He also teaches video journalism at the University of Maryland.

Darr and I met close to the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal path near his home in Maryland to make these photos.  He spends a lot of time photographing nature and wildlife along the path as a meditative practice.

There are only nine frames from this shoot. As I was moving the camera for the last photo I had my finger on the shutter button and misfired the camera. I got a blurry underexposed image of the ground.