Pinhook, Missouri

On May 2, the Birds Point Levee along the Mississippi River was blown as part of a plan to prevent further flooding downstream. Half a year later, the town of Pinhook that sat behind the levee sits empty as residents look for a "new Pinhook." Check out the great article that this piece went with in the Columbia Missourian.

Food Drive

Today is the One for One Holiday Food Drive. I went out this morning to photograph the main collection site in downtown Columbia. The goal is to collect donations and funds for one million pounds of food. Donations can be made until 6pm today at the corner of Providence and Broadway or you can donate $10 to the Food Bank for Central and Northeast Missouri by texting BREAD to 20222.

New Website!

Here it is. I've finally put together benjaminzack.com. Head over and check it out to see some more of my photos as well as a complete portfolio, multimedia, bio, and other goodies. I'll still be doing regular updates on this blog. Enjoy.

Duck Hunt Outtakes

Here are a few extra photos that I enjoyed from a recent multimedia piece I did on youth duck hunting. In case you missed it, you can check out the full story here.  Enjoy.

A Colorful Week

Last week ended up being a rather slow week for shooting, but every time that I did bring out the camera, there was plenty of color. River's ran green, firetrucks were pink, Mozart was teal, and there was the red, white and blue of a Texas flag. This is what the Missourian was like over the last 10 days.

Green dye flows down Flat Branch Creek on Wednesday morning in downtown Columbia.

Jessica Crews, left, and Elizabeth Tate watch green dye flow down Flat Branch Creek on Wednesday morning in downtown Columbia. The City of Columbia Public Works Department and Trekk Design Group are using non-toxic red and green dyes to test the storm sewer and sanitary sewer system.

Drew Arnett from William Woods University rehearses the role of Mozart for the school's production of "Amadeus."

A photo shoot with some of the MU football players from Texas.

Kaleigh Turner, left, and Lexi Hayob look for a place to sign the JennieLee on Thursday afternoon on Lowry Mall. The truck is based out of Kansas City and run by Guardians of the Ribbon, a group of firefighters supporting women with cancer. It has been painted pink and on the road since September 2010.

Thousands of signatures cover the JennieLee. Notes from the hubcaps to the bumpers are both in memory of those who have died of cancer and in support of those currently fighting cancer.

Songwriters Guild at Sideshow

A few photos form a recent assignment for VOX Magazine at the semi-regular Songwriters Guild at Sideshow in downtown Columbia.

High School Hunters

Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to go out on a duck hunting trip for new, youth hunters at Eagle Bluffs Conservation Area. Here is the project I created on the kids I went with. Enjoy!

Road Trip Video

Here's a short little video I shot on our trip back from a wedding in North Carolina last week. Lot of highway between Chapel Hill and Columbia.

San Bernardino National Forest

It may have just been all the high country pines, but one of my favorite spots in California was in the San Bernardino Mountains. We spent the day exploring the mountains around Big Bear with botanists from the San Bernardino National Forest and looking at fires, rare plants, mining, and the sets of old Clint Eastwood movies. Here are a few shots from the day.

Ashgray Paintbrush and Kennedy's Buckwheat

Inside the Big Bear Discovery Center

Sulphur Buckwheat and Jeffrey Pine regrow after the Butler Fire burned through in 2007.

Corn Lily

Emma Williams, a botany intern on the San Bernardino National Forest examines grass seeds in a wetland meadow. The meadow was once one of the largest in Southern California but is now mostly covered by Big Bear Lake.

Corn lilies and Indian paintbrush fill a small spring in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Lemon Lily

Wildflowers grow in a "pebble plain," a geologically unique upland meadow. This specific plain was the location for the  1969 Clint Eastwood/Lee Marvin gold-mining musical 'Paint Your Wagon.'

Elephant Rocks

I'm taking a (very) brief break from California photos to try and catch up on posting images from the rest of the summer. In July, I had a few days of work down in the Arcadia Valley of the Ozarks. On a free afternoon, we went to Elephant Rocks State Park for some hiking and bouldering on the 1.5 billion-year-old fields of pink granite. Since we were camping nearby, I was also able to get out the next morning for some sunrise shots. Enjoy.

Muir Woods

One of the first stops on my recent trip to California for the Center for Plant Conservation was a visit to Muir Woods, a forest of coastal redwoods just outside of San Francisco. It was just a brief stop in the morning before working our way down the coast, but for some who loves photography and forestry, it doesn't get much better than the redwoods.

Located within minutes of San Francisco, the main trails of Muir Woods are popular on a Saturday morning.

Just a few miles from the heart of Muir Woods, fog rolls onto the coast at Muir Beach.

Rainbow Basin

This is a quick teaser of what will be coming on the blog. I'm wrapping up my last day in California shooting for the Center for Plant Conservation. I'll be posting more photos in the coming days, but for now I just wanted share this picture from this morning.

Joshua Tree, Rainbow Basin, California.

Bat Blitz

After several months without regular internet access, I'm finally getting a chance to update the blog.  I just left an amazing week at the Southeastern Bat Diversity Network's Bat Blitz. For the 10th year in a row scientists and students from around the country gathered for four days of intensive bat counting. This year's blitz was in the Pisgah National Forest in the mountains of North Carolina. Enjoy.

Volunteers at the SBDN Bat Blitz remove a bat from a temporary net trap. The bats are measured and tagged before being released.

Sybill Amelon sets up a mist net for trapping bats.

A tag is attached to the wing of a captured bat.

Anna Zack measures a captured eastern red bat.

After being tagged and measured, a bat is held up for release.

Clarissa Starbuck and Sybill Amelon finish setting up a temporary net for trapping bats over a creek near the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A bat taking off after being tagged and measured.

The blog will be returning to non bat related material soon. I'll be filling in gaps from the summer over the next few days and weeks. Unfortunately for my photo editing, but fortunately for me, the next week is overflowing with photo work with the Center for Plant Conservation in California. Stay tuned for pictures from there and the rest of the summer.