Personal Projects
I’ve embarked on two ambitious projects bringing together my passion for travel and skills for video production and web content creation.
HardestYear.com
In early 2009 I co-founded a project to tell the stories of ordinary Americans affected by the economic crisis. With a colleague, I traveled from Washington, DC to Seattle meeting and interviewing individuals facing hard times and telling their stories in the form of 3 to 5 minute HD video stories online at HardestYear.com.
I developed the project’s WordPress-based website from scratch and produced, shot and edited story videos on Apple’s Final Cut Pro. Here are some of my favorite stories from that trip.
Video
Videos are also available on my YouTube page.
How a 90-year-old Kansas woman built a community pool by collecting aluminum cans for 40 years.
A fun visit with the team that developed the new typeface being used on American highway road signs.
A woman who lost everything in the economic collapse sets out to walk cross-country with her horse.
One-minute “trailer” I shot, produced and edited
introducing HardestYear.com.
Try watching in high def by clicking the “HD” button after the video starts playing.
ThereGoesJohn.com
I’ve also done extensive independent travel, including visits to 47 U.S. states and more than 50 countries including newsmaking hotspots such as Sudan, Iran and North Korea.
From 2002 to 2004 I traveled across Central and South America, Africa and Europe. I documented my travels online at ThereGoesJohn.com in the form of journal entries, photos and live chats with web visitors. The site was featured as a Yahoo “Cool Site of the Day” and received as many as 10,000 visits in one day.