NEW BLOG

I've got a new blog at www.catnorman.com/blog. Please go there in the future to see my new posts! I won't be putting new posts on this site any longer. Thanks!

a walk to beautiful

Watch "A Walk to Beautiful" Online

I'll be going to Liberia at the end of this month with a team from Vanderbilt's Institute of Global Health. My dad and others are working to Ganta Hospital to increase their effectiveness in treating women with fistulas. I am going to provide photo-documentation. I'll return to put together multimedia presentation for Global Health to use in fraising money for this effort.

Please click on the links I am placing in this blog. An estimated two million suffer from vaginal fistulas - a 100% preventable problem that is a result of inadequate care during childbirth. My dad, Dr. Andy Norman, has spent his career learning about repairing fistulas and educating others to do the same. As a result, he has given a new life to women who were hidden in shame and silence in their village communities in Africa and Asia, as well as enabling others to do the same good work.

My dad isn't the only one doing this work. Another lady, Catherine Hamlin, recently had a documentary feature, A Walk to Beautiful, air on PBS - an incredible video put together to show the social, psychological, and physical effects of fistulas. Please watch the chapters they have put online on PBS.com. The whole feature is about one hour long, but is broken up into 5-8 minute segments. Try watching one a day until you get through it. These videos show the same women's health issue that Institute of Global Health will be addressing in Ganta, Liberia.

Keep an eye on my blog for more information about vaginal fistulas and pictures from my trip to Liberia...

Watch "A Walk to Beautiful" Online

An update as a segway to a new series of posts.

I got back from Thailand in a whirlwind- trying to catch up on a lot of tasks for both my photography work and my job at Octane, moving to a new house down the street, and getting ready for my next adventure - Liberia. I'll put up a post about that next. See above.

Below is a picture or two of my new little basement apartment... how fine it is! You'll all have to come over to sit on my porch and watch my flowers grow! I've got wildflowers, zinneas, sunflowers, and carrots starting to grow!

And we made it back...

Michael and I made it back to the States on April 16th - hitting the ground running with shows, work, courses, and catch-up tasks. Our return flights all went smoothly.

Wat Phra Keaw

We spent our last day in Bangkok, visiting a few temples, souvenir shopping at a huge night market, watching a live Thai pop-music performance at the night market (good times), and trying to get a bit of sleep before we had to wake up at 4am for our flight home.

On our way to this temple - Wat Phra Keaw, a lady let Michael and I feed some pigeons for a hidden small fee. It was actually kind of fun though. They were bold little pigeons that would light on your hand until frightened away by rowdy passers-by.

Below are pictures of the intricate and elaborate decoration of the temple - absolutely gorgeous.

Inside Wat Phra Keaw

The covered walkways around the wat are painted as intricately as the building outside is decorated. The images portray stories from the life of Buddah I think - not 100% sure of that. But they have some interesting imagery anyway.

Below: Sea Goddess?


Above: Hungry god meets some competition?
Below: That's his tongue!



Above: Perhaps an ancient depiction of a "lady boy", as Thai's refer to it?

Wat Po!

Wat Po is famous for its gigantic reclining Buddah and the temple built around him. The day we went was particularly hectic due to Songkran festivities and rituals.

Condoms and Cabbages

This is only a post about a restaurant. A very nice restaurant in Bangkok, in fact. I had gone there in my last year of high school with my parents when we visited Bangkok a few years ago, and thought that I'd have to take Michael by to see it while we were in country this time...

The food is great - a little pricy, classy, fine dining. The atmosphere - condom themed. You'll just have to see what I mean in the pictures. The vision of the restaurant - pretty cool actually.

The restaurant helps raise money and awareness for safe sex by encouraging condom and contraceptive use. They also work to empower women in smaller towns in Thailand and benefiting orphans.

Anyway, couldn't resist posting some pictures of the decor...

Below: Santa Condom, Super Condom Boy and Thai Girl, Contraceptive Elvis.

Songkran

Songkran is the celebration of the Thai new year. (According to their system, it's now 2552!) We had no idea when we booked our tickets that we'd scheduled ourselves leaving right in the middle of the festivities. And, yes, that was a problem. Thai's take this 3-5 day holiday to visit family, so public transportation booked up well in advance. We were able to get from the beach up to Bangkok ok, but had to take a seat on the 12hr train ride instead of the plush sleeper car we'd grown to love on our ride up to Chiang Mai a week earlier.

Another fun aspect of the holiday - water fights. Four days of water fights. Basically, to celebrate, everyone buys super-soakers, hoses, big buckets of ice water and whatever other vessels they could to douse everyone with water. They would all pile up in truck beds to cruise through the town fighting from truck to truck. It didn't matter if you were holding a bag, a camera or anything - everyone gets soaked. We made it out without ruining anything, fortunately...






Thais also pour water and scented oils on the gods at the temples. Even the monks have a pale of water they splash passersby with. This is the time for spiritual cleansing too...





We managed to catch all these shots before hiding the camera safe in a water-proof bag.

Oh, and did I mention that they also put muddy baby powder on everyone? I don't know why on that one...

An excuse for the recent lack of posts...

We've been here:

"Special"

While my dad and I were scuba diving, we met a nice French man named Peter who told me about a secret lagoon and a "special" cave on Railay Island. Michael and I tromped off around the island in search of these two things after the rave reviews they got from the well-traveled Peter. We never managed to find the lagoon - think we wasted all our energy trying to get to it from the wrong direction. But the cave - well, let's just live it at "special".

Apparently a princess drowned in waters nearby the island. Her spirit was said to have moved into a cave off Phra Nang Beach. Now sailors come and leave phalli to honor the dead royal lady. Interesting, no?

Life and Times - Ao Nang Beach

A few sights from Ao Nang Beach - where my dad and I scuba dived during the day while Michael hiked and explored on shore.

The diving there was some of the best we've done and we are now Advanced Open Water Divers! We saw everything from coral to lion fish to sea snakes to moray eels.

Michael enjoyed grueling climbs and sunburns.


"Sawasdee!" says Ronald


The best ever roti stand (Thai pancake - I like the banana ones.)


Even mannequins have more fun in Thailand...

The family.

My sister and her family were the real reason for the trip. She just had her third child two days before we got to Thailand. Here are some pictures of the family:


Above: Isaac. The new one.
Below: Mom and Dad holding grand babies.




Below: Zion works with walking confidently.




Below: We all celebrated Zion's birthday while we were there. She is about to turn one. Big brother Micah helps play with gifts and blow out the candle.

Elephant Stampede!

We went today for a elephant trek/raft ride/ox cart trip/etc. It started off pretty great with an impressive elephant show where the elephants...


...played soccer...


...painted...


...and played basketball.


All were quite amazing. Then we got on elephant back with all the other tourists to trek for about an hour through a river and up a mountain. Michael and I's elephant quickly passed my dad and Jack's (my sister's husband's step-dad) due to the quick passing our driver did with our elephant. About half way up, something startled some elephants behind us, and we looked to see what happened, and up came two elephants with passangers - full speed through the trees! The drivers got them stopped and, with only a dozen or so scratches and bruises, they came out ok.

When we met back up with the rest of the crowd, we found out that at least 5 elephants with tourist riders behind those two bolted down - leaving the damage that we know about that dad and Jack saw (they were the last elephant south that didn't bolt) at a plethera of scratches and cuts and bruises, a badly bruised knee, a probably broken foot, a man with "blood gushing down his face", a man that feel off his elephant, and two ladies who got a wild side-ways ride when thier chair slid off, and no deaths we know of. Pretty scary all in all. We all came out fine, being the bracket ends to the mayhem.

We asked what made the elephants bolt, were told - "Elephants are very big, but have a small heart." Apparently, they scare easy. See below for a picture of the first part of the journey.



The rest of the day was much less eventful and we enjoyed a great lunch, lazy raft-ride, and cheesy "extra" monkey show for only a little more money. Feeling sorry for those that went down.

Market

We went to a local market that is generally not frequented by tourist. This was the center for any produce, meats, and the like, in Chiang Mai. Below are, pigs heads and live eel among other things that we saw. Not exactly like the local Kroger...

Chiang Mai and the Night Market

We spent yesterday hanging out around Chiang Mai. Later in the day we headed down to the night market for street food and some local bargins. We got to eat sticky rice and mangos, barbque sticks, onion rings, fried green beens, fried banana, and drink fresh juices. Yum!

See some of the pictures of the mayhem below!

Me and my Zion.

Before I left the states, I made matching shirts for me and my 11mo old neice. They don't fit perfect, but they're fun anyway.

On her shirt, I appliqued on "I love Hat Tat". Last time we saw my sister and her family, Micah, my nephew, couldn't say "Aunt Cat", and "Hat Tat" was what I got dubbed.

Lopburi Pt.2 and the Night Train

After visiting several Wats in Lopburi we walked around looking for dinner before boarding an 8 o'clock night train up to Chaing Mai. Here are a few shots from Lopburi, the night markets there, as well as a couple from our sleeper car.

Waking up at sunrise as we made our way through the mountains was a great way to start out the day coming into Chaing Mai.

Monkey Monkey

This afternoon we journeyed to Lop Buri, aka Monkey Land. For some reason unknown to us, they allow monkeys to teem the streets and ancient temples in Lop Buri. Fortunately, they also issue monkey beating sticks to help keep the excited water-bottle-loving, bag-loving, food-loving, loving monkeys off a tourist's back. As you will see in the pictures below, the monkeys seem to not understand the "beating" concept, and prefer to use the stick as a ladder up to the tourist's hand or back.

Michael and I had a lot of fun here. It kind of felt like a zoo - except we were the ones being watched by the monkeys. We've also gotten to explore some spots in the rest of the town. We're posting now from a bright pink internet cafe while we wait for our night train to Chiang Mai.









(Girl on train.)

Wat Yai!

Here are a few pictures from a Wat we visited this morning. This one is in considerably less ruin than the others we saw yesterday.

This afternoon we are headed to Lopburi (monkey land) and then on a night train to Chiang Mai tonight to meet my sister, parents, and my new nephew - born yesterday.

Ayuttayah

This morning, we took a train from Bangkok north to Ayuttayah - about 1.5 hours north. We are slowing climbing our way up to ChiangMai, where my sister is, in the north.

Today, in sweltering heat, we saw a couple of wats (temples) and got to get our barings here in Thailand a little more. The wats that we saw were mostly just ruins, but really beautiful nonetheless. Tonight we are hanging around the youth hostel recouping from jet lag and generally enjoyed the laid back life...


(Ayuttayah)


(Wat Marah That)


(This tree grew around the head of a buddah - one of the most photographed and famous sites in the city)



(You could go down steep stairs into one of the chedis to see ancient paintings on the walls. See Michael down there.)

JAPAN. Unexpected surprise.

So... This really isn't the time to fly if you prefer smooth travel. Every flight we were on, or supposed to be on, was cancelled or delayed. All airlines are downsizing, planes are grounded, inclimate weather... But all that being said - it worked out great for us. Our flight to Chicago sat on the tarmac for 3hrs before we were allowed to take off. Fortunately, the weather that kept us down, kept down our flight to Japan too. It left 4.5 hours after it was scheduled to. Since, by that point, we'd missed our connection to Bangkok. United put us up in a hotel in Narita, Japan and rescheduled us for a flight the next day at 6:30 (which was also later delayed.)

So we got to spend a day in Japan on their dollar - mostly!!!

We took a train down to downtown Tokyo the next morning and wandered around for about 6hrs before we had to head back to the airport. We didn't have a travel book or any direction, but still managed to stumble upon the Imperial Palace and Gardens and a museum area. We were dressed for the 90+degree weather of Bangkok, but still managed in the 50degree weather in Japan.

Some pictures below.

Aerial Silk

I got to shoot a wedding in Athens this weekend at the Botanical Gardens with Ian McFarlane, working once again, as I used to in college, as his assistant. One fun thing about this wedding was that the One of the bride's friends, Nicolle, performed on Aerial Silk as a part of the ceremony. It was pretty impressive. I wanted to share a few of the photos...

Belgian! A wordy post.

When I was a kid, I got great pleasure out of organizing things. (Note: I am not "neat" or "clean", I just like organization.) I would spend hours pouring through the garden and bush in our compound to find just the right flowers for a flower arrangement to put on the table. (The yellow fuzzy-stemmed ones were my favorite, pictured right). Then, when I was a little older, I spent my time arranging my earring collection (amassed over a hundred pairs of large dangly earrings!). With the help of a rack my grandpa built, I could organize by size, color, emotional attachment, or current mood, and reorganize at will! Now my sense of "beautiful" arrangement displays itself in the beer fridge at Octane Coffee.

I've been working at Octane for almost a year now. The best part about the group is that everyone who works there is passionate about something - for M'lissa, it's coffee education; for Aly, it's community service and aid; for Matt, it's recycling and the environment; etc. I like organizing and educating about our beer. Passions are encouraged and everyone brings Octane up to their own high standards in each area. Octane tries to be great at whatever it does, and limits the food and drinks to aim at quality over quantity.

I spend a lot of time at Octane stocking the beer fridge, rearranging it by country, alphabetical order, style, etc. It's my earring rack on a whole new level! I learn more and more about each beer and style as I am ordering new stock, and talking to customers about them. I've noticed that a lot of our customers know that we serve great coffee, but don't know a lot about the quality of our beer. M'lissa does weekly coffee cuppings on Mondays that educate anyone willing to learn about the differences in coffee styles, processing methods, etc. Inspired by that, I've been working on a DIY beer sampler pack that will allow anyone interested to sample 3 or 5 beers, as an introduction to Belgian beer.

You'll see below the Five Beer and Three Beer samplers I designed, wrote text for, and did a little photoshoot or two for. I learned a lot of interesting tidbits of information - like that the proceeds from Trappist ales go to charity or the work of the monastery they were brewed in, no profit kept.

Thanks to Janet for text editing, all the Octaners who posed for the pictures, and Wikipedia, Beer Advocate, and RateBeer for the education.

Photographs are like statics.

You can read them whatever way you want to depending on what you what to say. For example: Did Bill Clinton enjoy his evening at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration? Is he tired from campaigning with Hillary for the upcoming elections?

Photographing a Former Presidents, Day 3

The big name visiting tonight was Bill Clinton. He closed off the three day New Baptist Covenant Celebration with a message on Baptist unity and beliefs. Other vibrant speakers also took the stage during the Friday sessions, including Hanna Massad from Gaza, Charles G. Adams from Detroit, David Satcher, MD, and US Senator Charles Grassley. The meeting summed up with will all asking, "Where do we go from here." To read articles on anything that went on, look on BPNews for stories with my photos or on the NBC site...

Photographing a Former (Vice)Presidents, Day 2

A few highlights for today:

Al Gore spoke at a luncheon - very impressive. If you ever get the chance to hear his presentation, see his movie, read his book, do. He's got some really interesting things to say, well supported by charts, graphs, and well-researched examples.



__________________________________________



This morning Marian Wright Edleman, founder of Children's Defense Fund, charged the crowd to care for the future and lives of Children.

This evening, John Grisham spoke about what it is to be Baptist. And Carter took the stage another time to give a few announcements.


For full stories and more photos, visit BPNews.net.

Photographing Former Presidents, Day 1

Other than celebrating my 24th birthday today, I took pictures for Baptist Press of the New Baptist Covenant Celebration. President Jimmy Carter spoke today... And even Gov. Sunny Purdue made an showing... more to come!

Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO)

On Wednesday, I shot EO's monthly event - this month held in the Piedmont Room above the Park Tavern. The evening was hosted by the Atlanta Wine School, who gave a lovely presentation on wine (mostly reds) and seamlessly tied in a wine trivia game too. The Piedmont Room was a great spot for photos, overlooking Piedmont Park and the city at sunset. To see more pictures, go to my site at catnorman.com/EO/!

Who said engineers don't have personality?

Yesterday, I did a day long shoot at JJG of some of their employees (78 of them to be precise). They will use the photos for part of a new brand look that they will be unveiling in a few weeks at their 50th anniversary. The look focuses on the part that JJG's employees make in who they are as a company and the role that each plays. The pictures will be used to show "personality". We did them in front of a green screen so they can change the background color to represent each persons department. Keep an eye on their site when it gets updated to see what it looks like.


Working there in the past and yesterday, it doesn't take long to realize that focusing on the employees is much more than just an advertising move. Great people work there. Everyone I've met is nice, friendly, and quirky in wonderful ways. Take the guy at the top of this blog for example - he does improve comedy in his spare time. How great is that?


It was fun to hear each one come in and whine, "I'm an engineer, I don't have personality." Then a few minutes later, they were just shy of an offer from a top modeling agency for "personality portraits". I suppose my good looking Alien Bee helped them really shine too... (I like my new light. And, no, I didn't buy it for this shoot. I got the call the day after I put the internet order in.)

Did I mention I do Christmas Parties?

This last year I got to shoot three different Christmas parties for different groups: EO, Ripple, and Octane.

EO:

EO (entrepreneur's organization) had their Christmas Party at 10 Degrees South in Buckhead. Members had a good time eating a drinking from the South African cuisine offered there.






RIPPLE:
Ripple IT hosted their Christmas party at Baraonda in Midtown. They enjoyed a fine, many course meal.






OCTANE:
We did our Octane Christmas party at Tony and Diane's house. We had a white elephant gift exchange and lots of good times...

Alien Bee

I finally invested in an Alien Bee light set up (for studio portraits, lighting, etc). Above you can see Michael posing with it on his right. It's bright. :)

Below are some of my first few shots playing around with it. More to come!

SNOW!

So, in Georgia, this is kind of a big deal.

One of those days on which I wish I could grow a beard...

[images above taken by whiskerino participants]

A few of you have heard me talk about my large love for the bearded man (full beards, mustaches not acceptable). And it's not like I have standards that are unmeetable. In fact, I deeply appreciate the uneven beards of guys who can't quite get that grizzly bear look, just as much as the full beard warrants my respect.

Due to this love, I keep a watchful eye on my would-be friends on Whiskerino. Below I have included the Whiskerino Manifesto so that you can know a bit more about them:

We are alienated from our own facial hair.
Society tells us that full beards are unacceptable. Businessmen, politicians, bankers, and the like are all clean shaven; all demonstrating the standards that middle class society expects us to maintain.

In other words, these are all examples of "the man" keeping down nascent beards everywhere. These are the people that alienate us from our masculinity, forcing us to shave and adopt public personas which might not reflect our own true inner animal.

But it wasn't always so.

Beards used to be glorified as signs of virility and manliness. A man that couldn't grow a strong beard was privately ridiculed. Some societies would only allow males to grow beards once they were married, thus denoting a sign of stature and respect in the community. To be shaved was to be emasculated.

In early America, men that could not grow facial hair were demeaned less advanced and uncivilized. Now we have come full circle where our own society promotes this emasculated version of maleness. Where to be a man is to be clean-shaved; to be respectable is not to have a beard.

Let us return to our roots! Let us return to true masculinity! Let us cry out with one voice:

"I WILL HAVE A BEARD!! I WILL BE A MAN!! I WILL NOT CONFORM TO YOUR RULES!"


A praise them for their commitment to nonconformism. And for their dedication to excellent photo-documentation of their growth as men. I fully expect all of you who can grow beards to join their ranks next year. They start growing November 1st and members keep in up until February 29th, or shave thier way in to a tomb in the Hall of Shame...

Another...

It was cloth for this quilt, for my best friend Janet, that I was buying when I got the inspiration for Michael's quilt, blog below. Sorry, I never got a good shot of it on a queen sized bed, though it is big enough to fit one.

Happy New Year!

Photo from HOB Myrtle Beach Website

For new years eve, Michael played with Sam Thacker at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, opening up for Corey Smith. Sam's girlfriend Melissa and I went along for the ride and the good times.

It was an easy six hour ride down there from Atlanta. Then we checked into the hotel (The Hilton on the beach! (Sam has some connections down there...)) and chilled for a while before going to the House of Blues to load in and for them to sound check.

Sam and Michael played great to the crowd of about 1800 people, as did Corey. We all got to stand on the stage and ring in the new year with balloons falling, confetti, and a champagne toast in front of a big screen showing the ball falling in NYC. Then Corey kicked into his song "Maybe Next Year".

We got to sleep in and then wake up to walk on the beach in gorgeous sunny weather. After a good fish lunch, we headed back to Atlanta on what seemed to be a long six hour ride....

See some pictures below. Happy new year!


Michael and Sam warming up in the green room.


Not so great shot from my cell phone of Michael and Sam on stage.


Another cell phone shot of Michael with the spot light on him for a kicking guitar solo.


A side shot of Michael and Sam playing.


This is a shot of the guy that played after them, Joel and his band. I put this one up so you can see how the crowd looked - lots of people!

...and another.

So, for Christmas, I decided to make a quilt for my best friend Janet and her husband John (this is not that quilt pictured). While cloth shopping, Michael was with me and saw a fabric that reminded him of a quilt he had when he was a kid. He got all excited and asked if I would throw together a simple quilt for him, he would be glad to buy the fabric, etc. I told him I was too busy.

So the next day, of course, I snuck back to the cloth store and got all the stuff to make the quilt. It came together really quickly until I discovered that I had gotten the wrong kind of binding and that I can't bind anyway. My mom came to the rescue over the holiday and took time to help me find the right binding and show me how to work it.

It finished up nicely with a little appliquéd turtle (Michael looks a bit like a turtle when he is sleepy, in an endearing way.) Michael was surprised and liked it. Hooray.

Merry Christmas from Parker

For Christmas, I came home to Nashville to spend the holiday with my parents, older sister and her one year old son, and my grandparents on my mom's side. We had a good time eating together with some Chinese friends, going to my parents church's candle light service. I took a few pictures, but the only one of our crew cute enough to put up is Parker - the cutest football player sized one-year-old you'll ever see...

Architecture

I've been doing a lot of architectural photography lately for a group called Ware + Associates. They will be using the pictures I have take of their work for their website (coming soon). They have done a variety of buildings from churches to shopping strips to avionic hangars. See some of the shots I have gotten below:

All the trees have been skirted.

Here's another tree skirt I made. This one is for my parents.

It was a disaster the whole way through - I made the pattern myself, inspired by a picture I saw online, and completely botched it. Somehow I had an extra inch that wouldn't connect between the squares. It ended up smaller than I intended, and the back doesn't connect, and I can't work with twill tape to save my life and lessons were learned. But, all in all, it looks alright and will function great with presents on top of it.

I have learned. I am humbled.

Mr. P!

My sister Amy has a very nice, very big one year old son. His name is Parker officially, but is often lovingly known as Mr. P, Porker, or Fat-so. She has a blog for him, but never updates it, so I am going to give you a glimpse into the first days of his second year of post-uterus life on here:
Every baby in the Norman lineage anxiously awaits the day when he or she can ride on the tractor with 'Baba'. For Mr. P, that day came during thanksgiving. Oh, how glorious it was.
Not only did Porker get to ride the tractor, but he also got to see the "dog!"(s) in Cousin Jack's field. (Actually, they were horses, but the difference is inconsequential.) So it goes.
















Another big thrill of thanksgiving weekend, other than the turkey, was Mr. P's one-year-old birthday. Grandmother (mine, his great-grandmother) and cousin's Hannah and Heather made him a sports cake and cupcakes. Oh, how sweet it was!
And he got gifts. And, as with most children, he was just as fascinated by the wrapping paper as he was by the gifts inside. Cute kid. Happy kid. So it goes.

Tree Skirt!

Just made this tree skirt tonight to give for a Christmas gift. See it!