Southern Indiana's Coal-fired Power Plants

Taking a page from photographer Chang Lee of the New York Times and his excellent series on energy and the environment in China, I put together a slide show of my own work in coal-fired power plants in southern Indiana. I even borrowed the music he used by the cellist Zoe Keating. These photographs are from two different power plants in southern and southwest Indiana.

Archiving

So I'm currently going through the long, exacting, and yet exciting process of archiving most of my work on Photoshelter. As I do this, I come across all sorts of pictures I've taken in the past. Many of them are BAD! But occasionally I come across some gems. Some of these have been published, but maybe only one of a series got any real play. Now I can put them together into little slideshows and post them on border crossing, giving you all a chance to see them, maybe for the first time! So, here, from over two years ago, some pictures of the Indiana University women's crew team. This was a fun assignment I did for Bloom Magazine, an early morning on Lake Lemon near Bloomington. Expect more slideshows like this one as I continue digging through the archives.

P.S. There's a little icon on the bottom of the slideshow player that will open this in full screen--surely a better way to watch.


Indiana University Women's Rowing Team - Images by Ben Weller

Restart

I've failed to keep this blog up-to-date, largely because I've been busy getting my other sites up and running. My portfolio and my archive are now accessible online. Soon this blog will be integrated with those sites for what will hopefully be a seamless experience for users as they use my portfolio to view my work, my archive to purchase work, and my blog to read about projects I'm working on, individual photographs I've taken, and my thoughts on developments in the field of photojournalism. You can probably expect some political commentary as well. I'll also use this blog to link to the work of other photojournalists.

For those who haven't been following me lately, or don't know me at all, I'm a photojournalist based in Bloomington, Indiana. I attended graduate school at Indiana University's School of Journalism, and then interned in South Korea at the Seoul bureau of Reuters news agency. I'm now back in Bloomington. In addition to freelancing, I currently work for the communication department of a non-profit rural electric cooperative. Sound strange? Well, it is, kind of. But it's also a great introduction to the behind-the-scenes of energy production in this country. And I get to photograph it. I've been spending a lot of time in coal plants. They're dark, dirty and dangerous places, and they provide a lot of opportunities and challenges for me as a photographer. So as the "restart" post on this blog, I'll post a couple of pictures from my work in a coal plant in Petersburg, Ind.