~fdpiech

Saturday afternoon I had the chance to stare mortality in the eye.

We were driving back from Tunica on 61. We had crossed the state line and were in the bottle neck section of the road almost to where the buildings start again.

About 50 yards in front of us a back SUV slowly drifted off the right hand edge of the road and into the ditch. Anyone who knows this stretch of road knows that the ditches along the sides are like cliffs. As the SUV hit the dirt it pulled them down onto the steep part of the ditch. The driver tried to get themselves back up... just in time to T-Bone a telephone pole directly in the passenger side door doing something around 40+ mph.

The pole sheared off in TWO places, bringing down power lines onto the road. The SUV went clear THROUGH the poll. The force was such that a small child (8 ish) was thrown from the vehicle, landing in the middle of the highway directly in front of us and was almost crushed by the still moving SUV.

Those of us that witnessed the shocking wreck pulled to the side and ran back to offer any help that we could, calling 911 and trying to keep everyone calm. There were 3 young children in this truck, none of them were belted in. The one boy who was thrown had an obviously broken arm and leg. A young girl was complaining of pain "inside" and a third was still trapped in the back seat with his foot trapped under a seat. The driver was still conscious, but trapped in the driver seat.

The force of the impact was such that the roof of the passenger side of the truck was crushed down to the level of the gear shift. Thank the lord that nobody was in the front seat. If they had been... there would have been no hope.

At the time the cops let the witnesses go, everyone was still alive, and I pray that everyone will be OK.

I'm passing this along to my friends and associates because after two days, I still can not get the vision of a small child flying through the air and hitting the pavement in front of me and struggling to drag themselves with a broken arm and leg out of the middle of the road.

It's haunting me.

If you have children, siblings, nieces etc... be sure they are seat belted in.

It happens in the blink of an eye…

Don't let the next one be someone you love.

Well,

I wasn't able to make it to the TD show on Sat.

Did any of you make it? How did things look?

My art has been chosen to be displayed at the Thomas Dolby-BT Tour shows in Tennessee. If you dont know about this tour that deviantart is involved in you can read the news article here [link] Deviantart is picking like 15 deviants from each area the tour goes to show thier work on a giant screen at the show, and I got chosen! How COOL is that?

My stuff will be show at the Memphis show, which is at EP's Delta Lounge on Beale St. on Saturday, December the 9th and i think they will also be shown at the show in Nashville on december 10th also, although im not 100 percent sure about that. I will be at the Memphis show, so come check it out if you are in the area and see a cool show and meet some local deviants from the area, which i sure hope to do!

You can check out for info about the show. The blog containts updates about each stop on the tour and lists of the deviants having thier work shown.

Well, the story has finally published this weekend.

For those interested in the shoot, you can read all about it at this link: [link]

Got a call on Thursday from Neal Slavin of the New York Times Magazine looking for a Photo Bee-atch (assistant) recommendation for a magazine shoot down at Ol Miss in Oxford of Michael Oher and his family and other supporters for the cover and a story for the Magazine.

Michael is a football player who plays for the University of Mississippi who apparently was born into a pretty bad situation in Memphis and has gone on (with the help of his adoptive family, coaches, and tutors) to become a rising football star and very successful student.

Me... never being one to miss ANY opportunity to add to my technical knowledge, am going to take the gig for myself.

We're going to be shooting in the Ol Miss Stadium using Profoto 7B Battery powered packs and shooting 4x5 film with a Linhof Master Technica.

Above all I relish the opportunity to just be able to observer someone like Neal Slavin.

I'll pass on how everything goes when I get back on Monday.

<EDIT>

The shoot went GREAT, but I'm under a gag order until after the article is published. I'll fill everyone one in after it hits the news stands.