Cracking Nuts

Some randomness from backstage at one of the local productions of The Nutcracker. The editors only wanted/needed one shot from the rehearsal for tomorrow's paper, so none of these will make print. I don't know why, but I didn't really want a backstage photo for the newspaper. I ended up turning in a regular rehearsal shot for publication. I really do enjoy shooting these kind of assignments, though. Theater productions are so full of possibilities, with the costumes and the colors and the lighting and such. I ended up sticking around for much longer than I needed so I could just observe and shoot. Good times.

All I Want For Christmas

Nothing overly fantastic about this image, but I was a little taken aback when I was talking to these people.
This was from a "Lighting of the Park" event, held at a ritzy shopping center with high-end stores and boutiques. Everything was already lit before the event started, and it was all kind of a random gathering of people eating free refreshments and looking through high-priced merchandise. So after I made this shot I started gathering the cutline info. I asked the mom whether they've come out to this event before. Her response was something like this: "Well, we haven't been out here the last couple of years because we're usually in Aruba at this time, but we're here now."

What? Really? I didn't really know what to say. I felt kind of sorry for her because she was slumming it in CCTX rather than on an Aruban holiday. Then I felt sorry for myself because I'll probably never set foot on a Caribbean Island in this lifetime.

I also think I may have angered Santa, since I was flashing him every time he came around the big lighted tree to hand out candy canes. Here he is giving me the evil eye. That's fine. There really isn't anything I want for Christmas anyway.

Get Behind Me, Santa! by Sufjan Stevens
That Was The Worst Christmas Ever! by Sufjan Stevens

By the way, I finally purchased the Sufjan Stevens' "Songs For Christmas" CD that came out last year. Now my holiday will be 45% more Sufjany. Hooray!

Current Mood: Gray

Cold weather has finally come to Corpus Christi, and I couldn't be happier. This morning I came into work about an hour later than I had planned because I was unpacking winter clothes and trying to decide which jacket/sweater/long sleeve shirt/hat/toboggan combination to go with. The last two days it has been cold and wet and overcast and murky and dismal and all around fantastic.

I dusted off the melancholy melodies of Damien Rice and David Gray just for the occasion, contently listening to their somber tunes as I drove around the very gray city that is Corpus Christi. I have to enjoy it, because I'm sure in a few days it will go back to being sunny and warm. These photos are from downtown, all taken from either the roof of the Caller-Times office, or the parking garage at the American Bank building across the way.


The Refineries
or,
"Sparkling City by The Sea"
The American Bank building
The opposite view
Water Street and The Harbor Bridge

Grey Room.mp3 by Damien Rice
Disappearing World.mp3 by David Gray

Shapes and Colors

Because unlike in the paper, I can always get the photos on my blog to run in color.

Cage Fight

Showtime and the EliteXC came to town over the weekend, bringing all the class and family entertainment you would expect from a cage fighting event.

I was actually really excited about shooting this event. I'm not sure why. Going in I knew almost nothing about mixed martial arts fighting, and until this past week I had never heard of the "big" names like Kimbo Slice or Nick Diaz. But for some reason the allure of shooting caged fighting at a live televised event made me giddy. It was the first time I've been really excited about an assignment in a while.

When I arrived, I was under the assumption that the Showtime people weren't going to let me near the cage. That turned out to not exactly be the case. I did sit right in front. The only thing between me and the cage was about a two-foot wide platform used by the Showtime cameramen to walk around and film the action. It wasn't a bad seat, but not being able to get right up against the cage or shoot over it did not make my auto focus happy. So I shot the entire event on manual focus. It's been an extremely long time since I've shot a sporting event like that.

The big draw of the evening was the professional debut of Kimbo Slice, a fighter who has built a huge fan base with his videos of street fights and backyard brawls posted on YouTube.
Unfortunately the fight didn't last long. After a few second of dancing around the ring, Kimbo cornered his opponent and beat him into submission. The match lasted 19 seconds.

That was another thing I wasn't prepared for. They advertised three rounds at five minutes each, but a fighter can tap out at anytime and the whole thing is over. Only one of the fights actually made it to the third round. Most of the fights were over within a couple of minutes in the first round. For some reason I thought it would be an all out brawl until someone was knocked out. I also thought there would be more cool martial arts action. Mostly, though, the fighters danced around, took some jabs, then inevitably got balled up together on the floor trying to wrestle/punch each other. It was very odd.




It got kind of bloody sometimes, which of course was super cool. A couple of the fights were stopped by officials because a fighter was bleeding so bad. At one point one of the fighters spit out his bloody mouthpiece on the mat, splattering blood on the platform right by me and another photographer. When that fight was over I checked to see if I had any blood on me or my camera, half hoping I did. Sadly, I did not.

Between bloody rounds, this guy came out to wipe the cage clean. Talk about your bad jobs. Overall, though, a good time was had by all.

Greek Fest

Scaritage Park

I love Halloween. This photo was taken in the parking lot as I heading back to my car from the Scaritage Park event at Heritage Park. I think I may be over doing the silhouetted-palm-tree-with-fill-flash photo, but those palm trees were just begging me to shoot them. I couldn't resist when I saw people parading past them in their costumes on their way to the event. Actually most of the stuff I came away with was shot outside or at the edge of the park. I just wasn't keen on the actual event, I suppose, but was all about the comings and goings around it.



And I'm the fence about his photo. The layering of subjects with people coming in and out of the frame make it either interesting and brilliant, or extremely pointless and pretentious. I'm not sure which.

Outtakes (or The Patrick Hat Trick)

A couple of outtakes from a Closet Snoop fashion thingy I shot tonight. The above shot I love. This was taken in a small room off to the left of a bright kitchen. It was bare and dark, and the kitchen light streaming in was so cool and moody I had to recreate it with my lights. Throw some cool art in the back and, bam, you got a photo. The photo below I shot as I was waiting for the woman to change. The kid was jumping all over the place saying, "take my picture," "let me see," "can I try it," and so on. So I took a couple of test shots of him to adjust my lights, and we were both happy.


So it's only Tuesday, but the highlight of my week has already happened. I'm talking, of course, about The Patrick Hat Trick. I'll explain.

For a while I was obsessed with a Canadian singer/group called Patrick Watson. Good stuff. It took me a while to really get into it, but it has some fantastic songs and overall is a great little album. Then a few weeks ago, a co-worker introduced me to the music of Patrick Wolf, and my obsession shifted to the slightly androgynous, yet fantastically talented British singer. Pure coincidence that they both had the same name. But after a while I thought, 'wouldn't it be funny if the next artist I started listening to also had the first name Patrick?' Not only would it be cool, but then I could use the phrase "The Patrick Hat Trick" when people asked what I was listening to. As soon as I uttered those words I knew I had to make it happen. Well, Monday I found my third Patrick.

Introducing Patrick Park, the L.A. based folk rocker who's catchy tunes and slightly melancholic melodies provide the perfect balance to Patrick 1 and Patrick 2. The first song of his I heard, "Here We Are," had me hooked right away. Here's a sampling:

Here We Are.mp3 by Patrick Park
Life Is A Song.mp3 by Patrick Park

I guess to make it a true hat trick (and to keep with the post's theme) here's a Patrick outtake that didn't quite measure up. Still a great song though.

Rocket To The Moon.mp3 by Patrick Cleandenim

Current Mood: Orange

Orange Sky.mp3 by Alexi Murdoch

Fright Night

One of the reasons I left the Natural State in search of greener pastures was to create more web and multimedia content. Last week I decided it was probably about time I started doing what I came here to do. So I swiped a video camera from our web department and ventured over to a local haunted house.



About 5 minutes after I arrived at the haunted house, I started having second thoughts about this whole video thing. It was so dark, I had no idea how to really use the video camera and I felt kind of lost without my Nikon and Domke bag around my shoulder. About 5 seconds into the editing process I decided I'd made a horrible mistake and never wanted to do video again. Adobe Premiere is definitely not as user friendly as iMovie.

In the end, though, I was happy with the final product. It definitely tells the story better than I could have with a still camera alone, and it was a bit of a thrill when I finally saw it on our newspaper's web site. I think I'll definitely give this video thing another try.

Train Tragedy

I think this woman's daughter got hit by a train.

Or maybe it was this boy's girlfriend. I don't know. Either way, four kids were crossing a train bridge over the Nueces River when they heard the engine coming. Two of them ran back south the way they came. Two ran north to the other side. The two that ran north weren't going to make it. One jumped off the bridge into the water. The other, a teenage girl, was hit by the train. Her body was later recovered from the river.

There was some questions in the newsroom on how we should run the grieving photos, or if they should run at all. The people refused to be identified and no one on the scene would confirm if they were the family of the deceased. But the photos were compelling. Couple that with a slow news day and you can justify just about anything.

It was an uneasy scene, to say the least. I felt terrible every time I lifted my camera. Occasionally they would look back at me through my long glass and glare in disgust before turning and weeping some more. Just don't put your camera down, I thought. I was afraid there would be issues when I got back to the newsroom, but I couldn't worry about that. Shoot it all, sort it out later, I kept thinking. So I kept shooting.