Bands and Fans

Oh, high school football. How I've missed you.

Since I don't work the night shift anymore, football really won't be my thing this year (tear). But since its the start of the season they wanted all hands on deck. My job was to shoot the "bands and fans," as our chief photographer put it, to run on A1. So I was off to Calallen.







Another reason they sent me to Calallen was to hit the pregame ceremony naming the newly renovated field after their longtime head coach. After a series of speeches spanning the winning coach's career, I finally got this unstaged shot. Problem was, the ceremony took so long I hadn't shot any bands or fans by this point. Can't have that.





By the way, I love my 50mm, 1.8 lens (above and below). I want to marry it and have little baby 1.8s of varying sizes.
Hopefully I can talk my way into shooting some games here and there this season. Sometime before the playoffs would be nice.

Cry Baby

I don't know why, but I found this crying baby endlessly entertaining today.

It was hard to keep from laughing while I was shooting an assignment at a day care today. So what was this little girl watching from baby jail that was making her cry?

There were no survivors.

Back To School

Everyone loves getting ready to back to school, right?

New Shoes

Immunization Shots

Traithlon

Over the weekend I got up early (super early) to make it out to a mini triathlon. It was a short triathlon aimed at kids and first timers. There was biking and running involved, but the bulk of my photos (or at least my favorite ones) came from the pool.

Feria De Las Flores

Why cover the annual Feria De Las Flores "scholarship" pageant when you can hit up the pre-event rehearsal instead? I got a little time backstage as these teenage girls got in there final rehearsal just hours before they went on to compete for the Feria Queen title. It was good times.

I'm not sure why, but I was slightly obsessed with their feet. I wasted invested a lot of time trying to get shots of their shoes. Something about those fancy boots amused me.

Jourdanton

I get to travel to all the exotic places :)

Boat Race

The Scripps Fairy dropped by overnight, leaving bundles of new-to-us photo and video equipment. It was exciting, yet sad, because all the equipment once belonged to the staff at the Rocky Mountain News. Now its being spread out among the papers left in the chain. My excitement returned when I found a lens marked "GANNAWAY" on the barrel of a 16-35mm. With my new tool in hand, I set out to make some fantastic images with a lens once used by a Pulitzer prize winner.

The funny thing was, my favorite images of the day (from a cardboard boat race) were shot on my own trusty 50mm 1.8 (above) and my 70-200 zoom (below). They are the lenses I carry around all the time.

It's a quick lesson on how it's not the equipment, but the photographer. The lens may not give me Pulitzer powers, but it's a nice motivator. I hope every time I see that name on the bottom of my lens I'll work a little harder to get the best image.

I'll try and make you proud, Preston.

City Swim Meet

I went to the City Championship Swim Meet today, apparently a little too late. While I came away with some nice, clean swim images, I didn't have time to try and get the sort of odd, quite, behind the scenes images I like to play with. This group of girls, hanging onto one another as they go from the staging area to the starting blocks, was the closest I came to something different.

July 4 Parade

Flags, palm trees and little old ladies. Just a few of my favorite things.

Model Search

The Hawaiian Tropic Model Search came to Corpus Christi over the weekend. Other than the women strutting around in bikinis, their wasn't much visually to work with. The auditions were held in this plain, poorly lit workout room on the second floor of a Gold's Gym. They did an interview, changed into their swimsuits, then did a little walk for the model search director. What I found funny was that there was no place to change near the audition room. So the girls had to go to the locker room downstairs on the other side of the gym to change, forcing them to strut pass regular folks working out to get back to the audition room. It was so awkwardly fantastic that I had to shoot it.

Pool Shots

I was in a wierd mood today (I think it's called heat stroke), so I took some wierd shots at the pool.

Snooper Dooper

Oh, the Closet Snoop. You either love it or you hate it. Or, you love to hate it.

The weekly Sunday fashion feature generates the web hits, but also illicits the ire of some readers. Earlier this year as the paper began to shrink and sections and features were cut, I heard the same thing again and again from angry (usually older) readers. "How can you cut (blank) but keep that Closet Snoop!?"

I'll tell you why. Because it's fantastic!

Though they can sometimes be super stressfull and exhausting, they are also super fun to shoot. Get a good subject, some cool clothes and some great locations, and you've got gold. Plus, the photo above ran six columns across the page. Six columns! Where else in the paper am I gonna get that kind of play?



I'm no fashion photography expert, but every couple of weeks I get to pretend I am. It's great when I get a woman that likes to play along. None of the women selected are models, just real people that were nominated or asked to be considered because of their love of clothes.

It's such a creative challenge sometimes. Usually we arrive at these people's home or business with no advance knowledge of their clothes or what the location will look like. It's a scramble, and my mind runs a mile a minute as I run lights, rearrange furniture and do my best to give directions. I always leave exhausted. And if I'm lucky, I come away with some really cool images, too.