I forgot about this photo and was reminded of it today when it made the front of the A Photo A Day blog. It was shot during an assignment at a nursing home of kids singing Christmas carols to the residents. Hopefully the title doesn’t offend; it’s from the movie Donnie Darko.
This other picture was an impromptu portrait I shot of an older Navajo gentleman while on assignment in Thoreau, N.M.
The Gallup Catholic Diocese recently installed a new bishop. This was a historic occasion for the church, and I was one of the photographers hired to shoot the event. It was a long and tiring day, but it was absolutely fascinating to see the some of the workings of the church. Bishop Wall is a really nice guy as well and allowed me to be there as he prepared for the five hour ceremony. Here are a few selects from the event:
I’ve been hoping to catch up on getting some of the editorial work I’ve been doing in the past several months posted to this blog, BUT it is mountain biking season…..
One of the stories I’ve worked on recently are from the local Grants High School JrROTC. I’ve done several stories in the past year on these guys and I love photographing them every time, they’re so intense.
Living in the southwest provides lots of opportunity for colorful photographs, from golden-hour sunsets that bathe everything in gorgeous light to the kitschy multi-colored buildings that dot our little towns, there’s always something interesting to photograph. One of our local parks here in Gallup, NM, Ford Canyon Park, is a go to spot for me when I need a feature photo for the newspaper. I’ve been eyeing this funky green wall for a while now, and have tried to shoot it before with little success. So when I was told we need a feature for the next day’s paper, I headed to the park in hopes of finding something going on. I was quite pleased with what I found; a couple of kids hitting tennis balls back and forth over the wall. It took a while of hanging with the kids, but I eventually came back with a photograph that I was happy with.
One other thing: I recently built a new website for fellow Gallup Independent shooter Cable Hoover. Beyond my own website, it’s the first site I’ve ever put together. Pretty simple, but effective. Head on over to check out his recent work.
Last weekend, a few friends and I went to Moab, Utah for some mountain biking fun. I’m always reluctant to bring my camera on the trail, especially in a place like Moab, but on Sunday I mustered up the courage to stuff it in my Camelbak for our ride on the Slickrock Trail. In addition to the big drops and technical climbs, the wind turned out to be a big challenge as well. Standing on top of one the slickrock domes the wind actually moved our bikes at one point. So, while the camera did say in the pack for post of the ride, I did find a sweet overview with the Colorado River in the background. 
Since last fall I’ve been photographing assignments for the Catholic Diocese of Gallup, including several in the past couple of weeks. Most of what I photograph for them is coverage of important masses and celebrations. While the shooting doesn’t involve a lot of anticipation- everything at a mass tends to be planned-it does require being extremely low-key and shooting in a pretty dim environment. Add to the fact that you’re trying to capture moments among the planned stuff and it makes for a challenging job at times.
As spring starts slowly creeping in, the last couple of weeks have found me hitting the trail on my mountain bike. Here’s a few images from the last season, all photographed here in the Gallup, New Mexico area. The first and third images are from Dawn Til Dusk, a 12 hour race that takes place on our Third Mesa Trail in April. The other two images are in the Zuni Mountains, one from the sweet Red Rock trail and the other during Bike n’ Jam last fall, also a local event. Also, the first image, along with another, was published in the Santa Fe-based mountain bike magazine, Mountain Flyer.
The thing I love about being a photojournalist, and I’m sure the same is for most everyone else out there, is that you never know what the day will bring. There is a certain magic in that living in the moment flow you develop when you don’t know whats around the next corner. My case in point is related to a story I’m working on about a homeless guy named Bernhard Schultze. Bernhard is great guy, he’s a spunky little guy with tons of character, a zest for life, and he’s a German living on the streets here in the heart of Indian Country. I really didn’t intend to do a photo story proper on the guy, maybe a character profile or something, but tha’ts what it has evolved into. It’s really interesting to see how someone who has so little can give so much back to the people’s lives he touches.
One of the things I find interesting about Berhard is that he, due to his circumstances, is completely living his life in the moment. He’s not worried where his next meal or pack of cigarettes will come from, he knows they will come, as they have for the past several years. He says he never makes plans, he just simply lives and life happens; he’s along for the ride. Yesterday he went so far as to tell me that he likes being homeless because of this. Cool.
I’m not ready to show any images from the story yet, so I apologize for that. I want to present it as a cohesive package, but I love some of the situations I find myself in when I with Bernhard. From taking belts of whiskey and smoking marijuana in an alleyway to going to listening to the preacher at church, you never know what to expect from him. So here are a few outtakes what will most likely not end with the final story:
To live in New Mexico without the occasional UFO sighting wouldn’t be living life to the fullest, or at least to have a UFO convention come to town, which we did. In trying to illustrate the idea in a preview story for the Gallup Independent, I had to come up with something, so I went with the hoaky idea of tossing a couple of pie pans glued together in front of an old historic building in town, which also happens to be the place where the convention was held. Yea it’s little campy, but that’s the effect I was going for:
Over the past 5 months I’ve made two trips to Oregon. It’s a truly beautiful place, and some of it stands in contrast to the southwest desert in which I live. Here’s a few of my favorites from my trip:
This being my first post, I think an introduction is in order. My name is Brian Leddy and I am photographer based in western New Mexico. I work for the Gallup Independent, a 16,000 circulation daily newspaper based in Gallup. While photojournalism is my primary area of focus, I do a lot of outdoor, portrait and other editorial stuff on a freelance and personal work basis. I love the outdoors, and thus I’ve been branching out into that area of shooting. As mountain biker myself, I’ve been putting a lot of effort into shooting anything to do with the sport. I’m fortunate enough to live in a region where we’ve got a fantastic network of trails and great people to ride with. A few somewhat recent magazine articles have called us the next Moab. Maybe so, maybe no, but for a serious mountain biker, this place is a dream. With that I’ll leave you with a few images from a race I shot a few weeks ago of the Squash Blossom Class Screamer on our High Desert Trail System. 
