This past weekend I met Kris O’Neil while covering a tattoo expo in Memphis. He chose to get a lion head on his chest as his second tattoo. When I asked him why a lion, he simply shrugged and said that he believed himself to have the heart of a lion.
Kris also admitted getting this chest tattoo was more intense than his shoulder tattoo. Kris grabbed onto his mom’s hand a few times while the artist inked on his new body art.
This past May, I was very privileged to photograph Megan and Spencer Caylor’s wedding in Middlesboro, KY. I am good friends with Megan’s brother, Brad, who is also a photographer. I felt honored that I was asked out of all the great photographers Brad knows. It was great day and a very fun, relaxed time in the Kentucky countryside. Enjoy.
“The moment we were under way I began to prowl about the great steamer and fill myself with joy. She was as clean and as dainty as a drawing-room; when I looked down her long, gilded saloon, it was like gazing through a splendid tunnel; she had an oil-picture, by some gifted sign-painter, on every stateroom door; she glittered with no end of prism-fringed chandeliers; the clerk’s office was elegant, the bar was marvelous, and the bar-keeper had been barbered and upholstered at incredible cost.”
– Mark Twain
On my way to cover a Palm Sunday prayer rally at Memphis City Hall, I found myself driving along the Mississippi with thick fog banks hanging over the water. I caught my first glimpse of the American Queen steamboat docked at Beale Street Landing. The Great American Steamboat Company made Memphis their headquarters about a year ago. I hoped my assignments would eventually bring me downtown during one of the few times in the year the American Queen was docked so I could get a look at this slice of our cultural past.
The fog surrounding the steamboat gave it a haunting quality. It appeared that the veil of time lifted briefly and I stared at a Memphis riverbank from over a century ago.
Hundreds of women ran, climbed, crawled and bounced through the Dirty Girl Mud Run, a 5k obstacle course, at Shelby Farms. The Dirty Girl Mud Run, a for-profit company, donates a portion of its proceeds to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Dirty Girl exceeded $250,000 in monetary and in-kind donations to the foundation in 2012 and hopes to raise $500,000 in donations in 2013.
Last week, I covered Terminix employees talking to second graders at Idlewild Elementary about the differences between spiders and insects. They brought two arachnids as living examples, a tarantula named Legs and an emperor scorpion named Scorpi. Some of the students, including Sydney Berry (above), were horrified to be so close to these creatures while others like Nathanial Ivy (below, hands) were eager for a turn holding Legs.
I found Scorpi to be a more interesting specimen. When emperor scorpions are exposed to ultraviolet light they turn from dark blues and blacks to vibrant, indiglo green.
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Kyle Kurlick 
