1. Assateague Island National Seashore

2019 was a true ‘Tale of Two Cities’ kind of year. I’ve experienced some of the darkest moments I can ever remember this year, as well as some of the most uplifting. Now, where to begin?

2. Alum Cave Bluffs, Great Smoky Mountains National Park

3. The Pressure Kids, Sofar Sounds

4. Cinco De Mayo on Cherokee Street

5. Unapologetically Human Podcast portrait shoot

My wife and I started 2019 with the knowledge that we’d have to close the Store that we’d opened only the year before. Finances had always been tight there, but when a string of stores closed all at once in the Fall of 2018, we hit a wall as foot traffic in our business district completely tanked. Our holiday season was decent, but didn’t provide us with enough profit to get us out of the hole we were in. The writing was clearly on the wall.

6. Camp Grits, Cosby, Tennessee

7. The Gate District, Photo Flood Saint Louis

8. St. Charles, PFSTL

To add insult to injury, I experienced our only rash of crime during this same period.

Just for some context, kids in Gravois Park get a bad wrap, and we made the decision early on that we were going to do what we could to make our space as welcoming to those in the immediate area as possible. We programmed events for youth of all ages, that were either free or low cost, and we never kicked kids out of the shop, even though it was clear that very few of them were capable of or interested in being customers. I always met teens out in the showroom, talked with them, taught chess or checkers to many of them, and always treated them with the respect which few other strangers, in their daily dealings, showed them. We weren’t there long enough to see if this strategy would have converted some of these folks into outdoor enthusiasts, but I can say that, over time, some of them did express a modicum of interest (in especially our new gear, that was always coming in). The other side of this coin is that, in the whole year that we were open, we had nothing actually stolen. We did have one close call, but our neighbors brought the goods back to my store and made the kids apologize. One of the two kids in that instance continued to visit the store afterward, with no more issues.

9. Office of Tom Croat, Missouri Botanical Gardens

10. America’s Central Port

11. Bussen Quarries Underground Warehouse

12. Research Pilot Brewery, Anheuser-Busch

That said, I did experience the ugly side of Cherokee Street as well. The side that keeps some customers away, and perpetuates negative assumptions about the safety of the neighborhood. In January, the same month that we’d decided that the store would not survive, I had several run-ins with a group of teenagers that exposed myself and my oldest son (as a witness) to violence. Knives were presented to me and I was threatened to be stabbed, a punch was thrown at my face that I narrowly avoided, and more. It was all happening when I was in a particularly dark place about the store and life in general, so I struggled a lot mentally with all of it. I even debated whether even to show up to open the shop on a regular basis (though I always did). What’s more, the instances with the teens were accelerating in their severity. I made police reports about some of the more egregious behavior. A week after one of the teens threatened to slit my throat (at my front door, at 11am), some out of town visitors were held up at gunpoint just down the street from the store. I watched the video footage captured by another business, and was able to identify the same teens as had been harassing me.

This group was not a cohesive unit, however (i.e. not a gang). In fact, with one of them, I’d managed to earn some respect because his younger sibling was one of the kids that I’d taught checkers to. He gave me the names of some of the teens that had been harassing me, and I believe, that because I was able to greet the one with his own name (to his extreme surprise), that threatened to slit my throat, I probably spared myself having that gun pointed at me. I shortened the hours at KAMP until we closed, and this was largely why. The shop closed officially on March 31, 2019.

13. Forest Park Forever controlled burn

14. Aroid Conservation and Research Greenhouse, Missouri Botanical Gardens

15. The Gate District, PFSTL

16. Aaron James, Sofar Sounds

17. Mississippi River Flood of 2019

During this same time, Photo Flood Saint Louis was invited to be the media partner for the 2019 Cinco De Mayo Festival on Cherokee Street, an annual event that brings as many as 40,000 people to the area. Shortly after we accepted, a former member of the group was tragically murdered in an attempted robbery near Cherokee. This, combined with the experiences that I’d already had, made me concerned about our participation, but the organizers of the Festival came through in a huge way to ensure everyone’s safety and the event went off beautifully. This was the first occasion that the group covered an event officially without a Flood attached, and it paved the way for expanded opportunities for members, including paid gigs. During 2019, Photo Flood Saint Louis also partnered with Northside Trap Run, Grand Center Theater Crawl, AltonWorks and more.

18. Cinco De Mayo on Cherokee Street

19. Washington, D.C. Metro Station, Arlington, Virginia

20. NuBlvckCity, Sofar Sounds

21. Cell of Charlie Birger, Benton, Illinois

In early April, just after the store closed, my home was burglarized. It is difficult to explain the impact of something like this emotionally, psychologically and financially. There is certainly anger, there is certainly fear, and there is certainly sadness. Our sense of security (in our own home) was erased. We lost all of our computers, all of my camera equipment that was not with me (I was on a photo shoot at the time, thankfully), and things you cannot replace, like Mandi’s engagement ring. This added to the weight that I was already carrying, and for me personally, it was almost too much to deal with. Less than a month later, my car was broken into as well. Perhaps mercifully, this is around the time that the year began to turn around for me.

22. Laclede Power Plant

23. Hermannhof Winery Cellars

24. Cliff Cave, Cliff Cave St. Louis County Park

25. Research Pilot Brewery, Anheuser-Busch

26. America’s Central Port

27. Old Hamilton Iron Works

In preparation for the store closing, I had begun to freelance more aggressively than I have in the last 5-10 years, and added event work and concert photography on as reoccurring sources of income. I shot things like Sofar Sounds concerts, museum lectures, weddings and conferences. Additionally, I accepted a traveling sales job selling children’s books to public libraries in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. This job was fascinating, as it took me largely to rural areas in all three states; a point of view that I have not had since going to high school in Greenville, Illinois (a stop on my route). I thoroughly enjoyed this role, and always brought my camera along (though there was never as much time to shoot as I would have liked). However, when a part-time opportunity opened up at the Saint Louis Art Museum in May, I jumped at the chance. The timing was pure luck, as was the position turning into a full time offering, that I also leapt at. I am now the Image Rights Manager for the Museum, and feel extremely fortunate that the opportunity was there. For this reason in particular, I am content with how 2019 is drawing to a close. Sure, there is a lot financially to recover from with the business having closed prematurely, but I, at least, no longer feel spiritually or emotionally adrift. In fact, it feels like I have spotted distant land now, and am slowly, steadily, swimming towards it. My role is one that I held previously at the Museum, and left to pursue finishing a degree (something that I have always partially regretted). The time between then and now has had its share of ups and downs, personally and professionally, but I think these experiences have made me even better equipped for the demands of the job, and I do really enjoy it.

28. Cheltenham

29. Haubstadt, Indiana

30. Benton, Illinois