African Americans make up 44% of all new HIV infections in 2009, despite making up just 14% of the US population. Even more disproportionately affected are black women, who are 15 times more likely than white women to become infected with HIV and 3 times more likely than Latina women.

Stigma, poverty, homophobia, and a lack of awareness are all factors in the skewed numbers. But speaking out is one of many ways to combat the spread of HIV.

Special thanks to Kimberlin Dennis, Halima Grant, Naimah O’Neal and Dr. Barbara Gripshover.

While working in my archive, I felt like these two images went well together. So, I did a quick diptych in Adobe Lightroom.

On the left, 5,000 revelers take to San Diego’s Mission Bay during Floatopia. On the right, a fundraising dinner at a home on Country Club Drive in La Jolla.

San Diego-based photographer Tim Mantoani has finally put his years-long photographic project, Behind Photographs: Archiving Photographic Legends, into book form.

I asked Mantoani about the project a year ago this week, and it’s great to see that he didn’t run out of the gigantic, expensive Polaroid film he uses.

In my Q&A, I suggested that the project would be great to throw on Kickstarter.com. A year later, he’s used Kickstarter to raise almost $13,000 — with 17 days to go! Ergo, for planting the seed of that idea, I think I’m due a chunk of that change. Almost certainly. Maybe.

I love photos of photographers. I can’t wait till our library gets a copy!

I slept here for six months.

I’m going to miss the wallpaper in my old room. Who knows how long it had been since that yellowed pattern was banished from the rest of the house. Thirty years? Fifty? It covers one wall — the only wall — in an awkward space coming off a short dead-end hallway in the middle of the house I lived in for most of a year. Beaten back to this refuge, the wallpaper disappears behind two massive heating units. In front of it, someone crafted a creaky wooden platform. Foam pads cover it like sedimentary layers. This was my bed.

My roommate pointed out more than once how much “artist-cred” I got by living in a closet. But it didn’t feel small. It had all sorts of hidden space that made it easy — nooks and crannies on the exposed wall beams to store things, room for large boxes underneath the platform. And a short hallway served as my office and doubled the size of my living quarters. I could edit for hours without any true sense of time or weather. It felt a lot like living in the analog darkroom I used as a student. I did relish in giving the brief tour to guests. I would lie down on my bed to prove I could fit.

Almost two months ago, I left San Diego. The morning I moved out, I stopped halfway through pulling my shirts off the rack to photograph my room while it still looked occupied. My green dress shirt hung exposed. It was my go-to shirt for high society assignments. Those gigs amounted to rent — closet money. It wasn’t my nicest shirt, but it was dark enough to not bring attention to myself while I photographed. And I could wear it straight out of the dryer without the wrinkles being unbearable. I don’t own an iron.

Unlike the metaphorical closet, mine was liberating. Living there let me keep doing what I love in one of California’s most expensive neighborhoods. But it is a chapter I don’t plan to revisit. And I think the day I moved in was the day I resolved to bring my craft to a level where my frugality was more of a hobby and less of a necessity. Hence my move to Ohio, land of plenty, where roughly the same rent affords me a room with a window. Granted, I’m swimming less, but I’m taking plenty of photos.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama wait backstage before being introduced at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, D.C., April 30, 2011. Press Lead Advance Brandon Lepow and Trip Director Marvin Nicholson, right, stand with the President and First Lady. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Why doesn’t the White House press office release more photos?

Take the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, for example. In the photo immediately preceding that sequence, Obama is a tuxedoed man-about-town. In the next, he is schooling National Security Advisor Tom Donilon. One more photo and Bin Laden is dead. The White House Flickr photostream makes President Obama look like James Bond.

President Barack Obama makes a point during one in a series of meetings in the Situation Room of the White House discussing the mission against Osama bin Laden, May 1, 2011. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon is pictured at right. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

If we saw more images from within the White House that day, would that photo from the situation room still be the defining image of the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden? Would a real journalist take the same photo?

In an excellent piece on NY Times’ Lens Blog recently, Stephen Crowley calls the White House press office “nervous, distrustful and risk-averse” and cautions new organizations to maintain a distinction between photojournalism and carefully controlled visuals.

“The media will not survive without investing in journalism. And democracy cannot function properly if we settle for the scripted performance — or if we grow unable to distinguish the scripted from the real.”

He also mentions the sentiment of his colleague, photographer Ken Jarecke, that the public is entitled to each and every photo frame out of White House photographer Pete Souza’s camera.

That is not likely to happen any time soon, but what if instead of 7 photos a day (that was the number released from May 1, the day Bin Laden was killed), we got 70? Is that too much to ask for? Granted, security is an issue. But is that why more photos aren’t seen?

Editing is a powerful tool for narrative, and naturally the White House doesn’t want to cede that power. The more images it shows, the more the public has the ability to curate their own experience of our government at its highest level.

When Souza accepted the gig as White House photographer in early 2009, he wanted to make clear what his role within the administration would be.

“My discussions with the transition team were mostly about making sure the function of the White House photography office would be to visually document the presidency for the sake of history. That was important to me and to them.”

In practice, however, the public receives a carefully controlled selection of images on a daily basis. Inevitably, the photos released are chosen for their immediate impact (usually countered by sharp analysis on BagNewsNotes.com) in the news cycle, and not their historical value. In this way, White House photography is going beyond preserving history by steering the collective memory toward the icons of its choosing.

Maybe years from now, or hopefully sooner, the White House will release a wealth of photos for a larger picture of the presidency. This is the only way  we can examine deeper and richer narratives outside of the single, immediate and self-serving one cultivated by the White House press office.

J Parson watches emergency crews work at the scene of a car accident outside of Girard, Kansas.

The past year my dad, J Parson, pushed his music career ever higher with the release of his fifth CD — his first with a full band accompaniment — and gigs across the country. It still seems funny to me, even several years since he got serious about his cowboy songs. I still only see Dad. But, I’ve also come to appreciate that his style — boots, hats, sunglasses, guitars — is distinctive and not to be taken as commonplace among dads in general.

I’ve collected my favorite images of my dad from the past year or so, viewable below.

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Best of January 2011 – Images by Will Parson

If you’re having trouble viewing the slideshow, click here!

Maria Ayala and her daughters squeezed a second shoot in with San Diego photographer John Salgado during Help-Portrait, Dec. 4, 2010.

Recent months have seen a ramping up of my writing activities, something I’m happy to see joining my photos in various outlets, or even standing on its own. I’ve been both a regular blogger for the San Diego Union-Tribune’s Sketchbook arts blog and written about Help-Portrait for VoiceofSanDiego.org’s Behind the Scene arts blog. I also recently wrote and photographed a news article for the La Jolla Light about that community’s latest mural.

What’s cool about my series for the Union-Tribune is that each week I ask a local photographer a few questions about their work, and in every instance they’ve provided thoughtful answers that have increased my knowledge of the medium.

It’s a great exercise, so I suggest you give it a try. All you need is a blog — and it doesn’t even have to be your own. Worried your favorite photographer won’t think it’s worthwhile? Make a deal with them. Ask them to post their answers for you on their own blog if you don’t have one.

I ask questions that speak to my own curiosity — ones that I would like answered even if I wasn’t sharing these photographers’ words with anyone else. It seems to have worked out so far. Here’s one of my favorite pieces, with San Diego photographer Noah Doely, who works with glass plate photography.

A corrupted view of Vancouver, British Columbia, overlooking English Bay.

An interesting thing happened after driving back into the United States from Vancouver, British Columbia in July. Something that would have been a nightmare had I been on assignment.

At some point, while transferring files, my new and apparently malcontent card reader decided to gnaw on some of my RAW format image files. I was left in a quandary, needless to say, but remaining calm I searched the internet for solutions and came across File Juicer. This nifty little program quickly turned by useless .CR2 files into slurry and sifted out the embedded jpegs.

Though some were in worse shape than others, I was able to get usable images of every scene I photographed from a full day’s take. And it so happens that some of my favorite images were the corrupted ones.

Spectators watch the 2010 Celebration of Light contest, where teams from different countries compete with firework shows set to music on Vancouver

A corrupted view of Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

A corrupted view of Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

A corrupted view of Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

And here are some uncorrupted ones for good measure.

Spectators watch the 2010 Celebration of Light contest, where teams from different countries compete with firework shows set to music on Vancouver

Capilano Salmon Hatchery near Capilano Lake, North Vancouver, British Columbia.

See more images from my corrupted view of Vancouver in my archive gallery: Touring the West – Vancouver.

This fishing derby came a day after these photos of the Little Balkans Festival. It took place at Lakeside Park, and though the “lake” is quite scenic it is really just an artificial pond.

Sophie Allison Chapman competes in the Little Balkans Days fishing derby, Sep. 5, 2010.