(Jersey County, IL) A young girl looks into a large aquarium that is part of a yearly fishing fair at Pere Marquette State park near Grafton, IL. The mobile aquarium is stocked with fish native to the local area rivers and lakes.
(Jerseyville, IL) Barber Jimi Hill cuts the hair of Alex Weaver at 11:15 AM on the Monday morning following Alex's high school graduation. Jimi previously worked in the shop of Elmer Heafner which is located two blocks away. Jimi is only the third barber in the location since the early 1930's. The leather covered seating and art deco fixtures date from that period. His shop is lit by plate glass windows and a door facing east with some fluorescent lamps above the stations and the ceiling.
(Elsah, IL USA) CBS foreign correspondent Lara Logan onstage as part of the Principia College Speaker Series. Logan was the 2011 Ernie and Lucha Vogel Moral Courage speaker. On the night of Feb. 11, 2011, as the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was falling, Logan joined the more than 100,000 people celebrating in Tahrir Square, where a mob turned on her and sexually assaulted her. She now speaks out to help end the code of silence surrounding sex assaults on female journalists as well as others.
(Brighton, IL USA) A boy and his dad warm themselves near a fire surrounded by bales of straw. In rural areas of the US, people host annual outdoor parties that include a roaring fire, some sort of food that can be cooked over the fire and drinks of some kind. There is also a wagon lined with straw pulled by a farm tractor that takes partygoers on the gravel backroads. This boy and his dad arrived early and were trap shooting at clay shotgun targets before darkness fell.
(Brighton, IL USA) Three friends sit on a bale of straw during an annual fall bonfire and hayride. Many rural US residents host annual outdoor fall parties that generally include a large outdoor fire, some sort of food that can be cooked over the fire, beer and a ride on a straw filled farm wagon pulled by a tractor Sometimes partygoers in the wagon will stop at rural mailboxes and fill them full of straw from the wagon. L to R Bill Huebener, Bob Sancamper, Art Tunnicliff.
(Elsah, IL) Pulitzer Prize winning columnist George Will shows off his iPhone screensaver. Will was a lecturer as part of Principia College's George A. Andrews Distinguished Speaker Series. The screensaver is an image of a 1964 Barry Goldwater US presidential campaign button.
(Virginia, IL) A crowd waits at night at the courthouse square in Virginia Illinois at the 2011 annual BBQ to see country music entertainer Marty Stuart and his Superlatives. A storm had just passed that almost destroyed the stage and tents.
(Jerseyville, IL) While sitting in Elmer Heafner's barber shop, I watched as three young boys had their hair cut. Their mother makes a monthly trip to the shop with all three of them.
I ran out to my car as Elmer was almost finished on the last boy to get a camera. I estimated the focus, stood up, shot 3 frames and got this image. The boy looked my way as Elmer finished.
A few days later I gave Elmer a print of this image and his response was, "I look old."
(Carlinville, IL) Pitcher Sam Coonrod sits on the bench and tries to cool off on an extremely hot day during a sectional Baseball game held at Blackburn College. Coonrod was a member of the Carrollton IL Hawks team that eventually won the Illinois High School Class A Championship.
Coonrod will attend Southern Illinois University in Carbondale as of the fall semester of 2011.
I shot this as I walked by him in the dugout. He was stripped to his underwear trying to get cooled off.
(Jerseyville, IL) This is the color guard of the 2010 Jersey County Veteran's Day parade getting prepared to march down State Street. There are very few WWII veterans that participate now and most are Vietnam era vets although Middle East vets are becoming more common.
(Elsah, IL) A woman plays the piano inside the Christian Science Church during Elsah's annual holiday celebration. Elsah is the home of Principia College.
(Jerseyville, IL) A member of the Staunton Bulldog track team starts to jump a hurdle at a spring 2011 co-ed track meet at the Snyder sports complex. I was so close to the track I could have reached out and touched her as she jumped.
(Jerseyville, IL) Runners are coming off the starting blocks for a race at a spring track event at the Snyder sports complex. The look of the image reminded me of something from the 1930's.
(Greene County, IL USA) An abandoned farmhouse sits empty along a county road with its windows broken and doors gone. Someone has left the toilet on a concrete slab that was once the front porch.
