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Boston, Mass. – Well what a crazy scene this was. I was leaving dinner in Cambridge, dropped a friend off near Harvard, and was heading back to Brookline where I live. I saw a bunch of State Police rushing across a bridge, and noticed a helicopter with a spotlight shining down which is not really typical of the area. I called someone “in the know” about these kind of things and he said there was a full bus that crashed into an overpass on Solider’s Field Road.

There are signs showing that 10ft is the maximum height, but the driver, not familiar to the area, must have not seen it, or maybe got confused. I drove across the Charles River, and hopped a curb with my car and parked up on the grass and ran over to the scene. It pays (literally) to always have your gear with you. I was the first still photog on scene, right behind Fox 25 TV.

The bus had its roof peeled off but than placed back inside, trapping many of the injured riders. There were over 30 injured, 3 were critical and one was very life threatening, per rescue officials. I have never seen anything like this scene before. It is incredible that no one was killed. The rescue and police officials did a hell of a job handling this situation. Pictures below

Boston, Mass. – Shot two concerts the past week, one at the House of Blues, and the other at the Orpheum Theatre (which is a really cool old venue downtown). First show was on Tuesday, January 29th, which was “The Used” and “We Came As Romans” and last night I photographed “Fun.” and “Andrew McMahon & Band”

The first shoot was typical, in the pit, first three songs, no flash – except for this one girl who thought it was alright to shoot with a 580EX II flash and a Gary Fong modifier. Oh well.

The shoot last night at the Orpheum was great, but a little frustrating. I was told that there was a “tight guestlist” for the show, which to me meant “Oh good for you, you’ve been issued a credential, be thankful”…turns out 11 photographers were credentialed. Really no need for that. Though I have no issue working around that many photographers, it changes how the venue deals with us. Instead of letting us down the aisle all the way to the stage, so we can get real close to the band, they decided to keep us about 100 feet back from the stage, in the middle aisle of the venue. To the disbelief of the majority of photogs who came with a 50mm as their longest, I pulled out my 300 2.8L IS and didn’t have any issues being close. For Fun. we also were only allowed to shoot songs 2,3, and 4, instead of first 3 songs..not that it caused any issues, just a weird change!

Here are some photos!

The Used

We Came As Romans

Fun.

Andrew McMahon & Band

Boston, Mass. – Had an assignment today for a magazine. Was lucky enough to get to go into NPR’s local studio WBUR to do a portrait of radio host Tom Ashbrook who makes the “On Point” program. Was a 5 minute shoot at most. Happy with the simple portrait outcome.

Hey everyone,

So I just wrapped up my Hospice project which is called “Living While Dying” last night. There are a few kinks in it still, and probably some spelling/grammatical errors, but the images are done. Please go to this link. Share it with friends and family too!

http://www.scotteisenphoto.com/hospice.html

Needham, Mass. – I’ve been working on a personal project for the past weeks, and I wanted to just sort of put out there what I’ve been working on. By no means is this anywhere near finished. The final product will not be in a blog format anyways.

I grew up in a family of medical professionals. I understand way too much in that field that the average person doesn’t have to know about (or want to know about). I’ve also dealt with a great deal of loss in my short lifetime. These two things prepared me to do a project on Hospice. I believe that the concept of hospice is very misunderstood, especially in the younger generations. In our culture it’s almost taboo to talk about death and dying, and I feel like this gives hospice a bad name.

My goal of the project is to tell two different stories. First, what hospice is really like. It’s a place that is made to put terminally ill and dying patients in a comfortable place, where nurses and aides can assist them to be comfortable, as well as family and friends. While the thought of dying is sad, there is so much happiness and love that comes from the entire situation, especially inside of a hospice. Live goes on while a patient stays there.

The second goal is to tell the personal story of a patient I follow through their journey at the hospice. I was connected with a woman named Tricia who was recently admitted to the Tippett House Hospice in Needham, Mass. She was diagnosed with Stage-4 Metastatic Cancer over the Summer. After going to a hospital and then a rehabilitation center, they declared she was incurable and only had a short amount of time left to live.

Tricia worked for a company that designs very high end closets and organization systems. She also was a burlesque dancer on the side. When her back first started to hurt, she thought it was related to dancing, but that’s when she was diagnosed with cancer. Since then, she has lost the ability to walk, she can’t use her left arm very much, and other parts of her are beginning to be affected. The doctors did not give her a certain amount of time left to live, and Tricia does not want to know.

Tricia uses her diloted pump to administer a morphine-type medicine to help with her pain.

The way I wanted to shoot this project was just to document her day to day routine, and everything that I experienced and saw happening. I can’t spend all day every day there, so I drop in every few days, and occasionally wait over a week before going back.

I’ve experienced how her friends and family come out of nowhere to help her with so many things. Her friends come in and share stories with each other about childhood, or coworkers come in to talk about new designs and things they experienced at work.

Two friends raise glasses of wine while Tricia holds up a glass of eggnog during a afternoon of holiday decorating.

Now I’m not going to write about everything I’ve experienced so far, but I want to share a few moments and observations I’ve made. Tricia keeps a notebook of everything she does in a day. Each month she makes a new book. She’ll record when she takes medicine, eats food, drinks water, when friends come and visit, what time they arrive and leave, when she goes to the restroom, etc. She says it’s her way of keeping her thoughts together in one place.

A notebook titled "December" where Tricia records all of the daily events at the Tippett House.

Getting from place to place in the Tippett House is not easy for Tricia. Since she cannot use her legs to support herself anymore, employees need to use a Hoyer Lift to move Tricia from her bed to a special reclining wheelchair. She only likes to stay out of bed for an hour or two because she gets tired very quickly.

Tricia is lifted from her bed using a Hoyer Lift.

An aide at the Tippett House uses a Hoyer Lift to move Tricia to a special reclining wheelchair.

Tricia likes to stay very busy. She started a project scanning in old favorite family recipes that she’s making into a book using her computer. Her friends bought her a special “wand” scanner that she can swipe over recipes to scan them into her laptop.

Tricia scans in a recipe using her small scanner and laptop.

Two friends and an aunt react as Tricia shows them a scanned in recipe.

With Christmas and other holidays, Tricia was constantly surrounded by friends and family. I was there while the Christmas Tree was decorated by two friends one afternoon.

Two friends string white lights around Tricia's Christmas tree.

With the constant pain, it’s hard for Tricia to stay comfortable for an extended period of time, and without the ability to move on her own, it’s even harder. Her friends and family are always willing to help her re-adjust her position to make her more comfortable.

Two friends help move Tricia's leg so another pillow can be placed beneath it.

For some reason, Tricia has began to see things in doubles. They’re not sure if it’s the pain medicine, or the cancer spreading to other areas. Tricia has created a creative fix for this. She takes the cup she gets her pills in, draws an eye with eyelashes on the front, and covers up one of her eyes so that she can see normally again.

Tricia places her pill cup on her eye to help with her double-vision.

Tricia, being only 49 years old, is not the average hospice patient. Most of the patients are much older than her, and I believe the hospice is learning from having such a young patient staying there. Tricia, being a dancer has many dancer friends. They came to put on a quick show for her one afternoon.

Tricia's dancer friends talk with her before starting their quick show.

Tricia's friend Aurel dances inside the room at the Tippett House.

Aurel dances for Tricia inside her bedroom at the Tippett House.

Tricia's friend Manuela performs a dance.

Tricia has given me many introspective quotes that I’ve taken to heart. She constantly tells me everything in her life is now within arm’s reach. I’m constantly shocked at how technology has let her stay in touch with friends and family far away. She has a laptop, and iPad with a keyboard, and her cell phone. She is constantly being called and talked to.

"Everything in my life is within arm's reach."

Tricia set up a Google calendar so friends can sign up for times to come see her at the Tippett House.

Well I think that’s all for now. I may write another update, or I will wait till the project is complete. Thanks for looking!

Springfield, Mass. – A strip club was leveled as well as over 40 other buildings damaged when a gas explosion happened Friday evening. Amazingly no one was killed, and none of the injuries sustained by firefighters, police officers, gas workers, and civilians were life threatening. It looked like there was a missile strike at the main building. You would never know we were in a relatively “normal” American city.

I was legitimately taking the dinner I had spent an hour or so cooking out of the oven when I got the alert for the explosion. Took a few bites, grabbed my gear, and hit the road to Springfield which is about 88 miles from where I live. I have spent time there previously for the tornado that came through a year or so ago.

As soon as I got off the highway I was already hit with roadblocks and police lines. Cops in Springfield were incredibly nice to me in helping me get to where I needed to be. The area where media was staged was far down a closed road, and I would never have found it without their help. I photographed a quick presser, and then wanted to get the important shots of destruction. There was no access to the scene directly as it was still dangerous.

I consulted with a police officer about finding a place to get a view. He said “you see that tall building, that’s one of the projects here, you can just go in their backyards, you should get a view from there.” Never had a cop give me permission to trespass before .

The view was not good from the ground, but I scaled a sketchy dumpster to get my shots. The view was a bit skewed by a truck, but you have to take what you can get. I was shooting for REUTERS, so as soon as I got some damage shots, they were off to the wire. The 4G wireless in Springfield was tweaking out, and it was incredibly hard to transmit my images out, but eventually it worked. The images ended up running all over the place, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Russia Today, Orlando Sentinel, Reuters website, and many others. Here are my images.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/24/us-usa-explosion-springfield-idUSBRE8AN00220121124

Boston, Mass. – Last evening I covered a relatively large Gaza protest in Boston, including both the Israeli and Palestinian sides of it. The Israeli side may have had about 100 people there in support, and the Palestinian side had at least 400+ people. The protest was mostly calm, in terms of people getting physical, but in the beginning there were a few quick moment that cops had to intervene and separate people.

The protest rallied at Copley Square, first with the Israeli side next to the Palestinian side, but that soon changed to one side going across the street, just to keep things civil. From there, the entire group marched down Boylston Street, and through some other areas of the city. Stopping for a little while at the Park Plaza Offices where the Palestinian supports performed a sit in for a little while. Here are my images.

Boston, Mass. – Yellowcard and main support for their tour The Wonder Years rocked the House of Blues in Boston on Sunday, November 18th, 2012, with a sold out show. This show was incredible. I’ve photographed both Yellowcard and The Wonder Years a bunch of times, but the lighting had always been a nightmare, especially for Yellowcard. When I say a nightmare, I don’t mean it’s bad lighting, but just bad for what I need to do. Of course it always looks cool. Just trying to make sure I’m not bashing their lighting designer .

Anyways, this show had incredible lights, and incredible energy. The Wonder Years always have their crazy stage jumps (one that I FINALLY caught), and Yellowcard is just powerful and makes all of their fans go wild. Here are some images.

The Wonder Years

Yellowcard

Boston, Mass. – Covered a nice concert at the House of Blues on Saturday, November 17th. Taking Back Sunday, a band based of New Jersey has been touring, celebrating the 10 year anniversary of the release of their album that made them huge “Tell All Your Friends.” Two bands opened for them before their main support, Bayside. Both Taking Back Sunday and Bayside are bands I have really liked for a long time, so it was a pleasure to get to photograph them. We were only allowed to shoot 2 songs instead of the typical 3 song rule. And of course, as soon as the 3rd song started for Taking Back Sunday they had beautiful light that was non-existant during the first 2 songs.

Bayside

Taking Back Sunday

Boston – Mass. – Had a pretty unique shoot today. Local rock legends Aerosmith announced they were playing a show in front of their old apartment at 1325 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a day before their new album drops and the presidential elections.

We had to meet up at the TD Garden and board a bunch of the famous Duck Boats for a quick police escorted tour and trip to the apartment. The funniest part is that they put the press duck boat in the front of the envoy so everyone on the streets was waving, taking photos of, and yelling at us, thinking Aerosmith was aboard. We arrived at the concert location to find 10s of thousands of fans ready for the show. More waving and yelling at the duck boats as well.

Bob Kraft, Jerod Mayo, and Tom Brady were all there as well to give out some signed footballs to the band.

It was really poorly organized, in my opinion, in terms of dealing with the media. There was a quick ceremony in front of the apartment building which a giant cluster-f*** of media ran up into, as well as random non-credentialed people, making it essentially impossible to get any photos. Security wasn’t playing nice either. Oh well. They then placed us across the street (in front of a FENCE) to shoot the show. We couldn’t shoot anything below stomach level because of the fence. Oh well. Here are the photos!

This was our convoy, for anyone wondering.

Friendly reminder: all photos posted in this blog are copyrighted with all rights reserved. They may NOT be used without written permission and consent of Scott Eisen.