Crop Dustin...

This was one of those stories I've been wanting to shoot for a couple years, but haven't been able to find someone to shoot. I tried contacting a crop duster about 5 or 6 years ago but at the time his plane was out of commission, and other times they didn't have anything to work on. This time for my photo column I figured someone with an interesting job would be great for Labor Day weekend. It made for a really cool story and I learned a lot about the business and potential problems faced. The biggest problem was getting up at 5:30 to make an hour-long drive to Haskell to meet the pilot at the airport at 7am. As I've said many times before... I'm NOT a morning person. But I'm glad I did it, my only regret being that I didn't have more time. He only made one flight and the field he was spraying was far enough away that I wouldn't get there in time to shoot him spraying before he was done. But otherwise, it was really cool. You can read the story I wrote here.

In His Little Red Wagon...

Normally when congressmen and senators come in for public appearances it's usually quick and just to pander for votes, or money for fund-raisers. This time the local congressman was in town during the congressional recess and was holding a town hall meeting to discuss congressional issues. Normally these meetings are pretty cut and dry, he stands up in front of people, says his thing, takes a few questions and it's done. I made a few photos and was thinking about leaving after about 15 minutes, but figured I'd stick around since I didn't have a whole lot else going on, plus he was going to take questions from the audience. I'm glad I stuck around because then he started talking about the economy and pulled out a little red wagon and then sat in it, saying "Americans need to quit riding in the wagon and start pulling the wagon again." It was pretty out of character since most of these are stuffy meetings. I knew I had my shot, however, I did stick around for the questions, so I'd have some extra stuff if needed.

Dove Season... Again

I often don't give my lovely wife enough credit for all she does for me, especially outside the friendly confines of our four walls. But, if it wasn't for her this photo wouldn't have happened... as well as all the other ideas for photos, photo columns, stories etc. she has supplied me with. For the third year in a row we were doing a story about the opening of dove season, so as usual the plan was to have a portrait of a hunter to go on the front page of the Sunday newspaper. This year there was a catch... someone mentioned the last two time we had featured a young guy the first year, and an older guy the next year, so we should have a female hunter this year. Well, in thoery that's a great idea but... I don't hunt, and don't know any hunters. So, just finding a hunter was going to be hard enough, not to mention a female hunter.

So, while I was having lunch with my wife the Monday before this was supposed to run, I asked her if she knew any hunters (it was sort of tongue in cheek, thinking I already knew the answer). And she says yes, then I ask if his wife hunts. She tells me no, but I think his girls do (SCORE!!). So, with her help I got it all set up. Then called my boss to clear my schedule to shoot it, and told him I got two high school girls who dove hunt for the photo. Well, lets just say, my wife made me look really good on this one, and I was quick to point out to him my wife found them for me. After that it was just a matter of shooting the photo... that has become the easy part, I try to keep it the same relative style, it's worked out well so far. I probably should have asked for my boss to pay for lunch that day.

Zero Week, Game 2

So, after a night of shooting Abilene High in the football classic, and a nightmare night of transmitting pix back, the reporter and I piled into my car and headed 2.5 hours up the road to Belton, the team AHS had beaten the night before. Wylie was playing La Vernia. Not a bad drive and a 6pm start allowed up to sleep in, get lunch and get to the stadium with plenty of time. The only problem was me forgetting to bring a wireless card for my computer. Thank God it was a 6pm start. I was able to quickly find a McDonalds to transmit from.

The game wasn't great plays were pretty bland and a few turnovers, and with it still being the first week of the season my timing was off and I was out of place on a few plays I'd normally recognize later in the season. There was some nice light late in the first half and the start of the second half.

Zero Week, Game 1

This year was kind of weird, for the first time in years, the first high school football game of the year for me didn't start on Thursday night, but rather on Friday. So, my first game came with a 250 mile trip south to San Antonio, where the season ended last year, shooting Abilene High again. Only instead of them playing Katy in the state championship, they were playing Belton in the 12th annual Texas Football Kickoff Classic at the Alamodome.

It was a pretty good game considering it was the first of the season. The cobwebs were certainly there both for me and the football teams. I missed a lot of shots I'll get later in the season. The first half kind of sucked photo-wise. After editing through halftime I decided to shoot the third quarter from the upper deck, something I had wanted to do during the state game but never made it up there.

I'm glad I went up there, I got a few nice shots and I really like the nice clean backgrounds you get from shooting so high, not to mention even shooting from the pressbox at high school stadiums you can't get up this high, so it's not a shot I'll get for at least another 11 weeks.

Garage Band Woodstock...

This was kind of a cool idea and shows exactly how influential social networking has become. A couple of months ago, some local folks decided to have a reunion of garage bands from their days in high school in the 60's. The organizers put it up on many of their reunion pages on Facebook and it pretty much blew up in popularity. It was a pretty cool way of showing just how influential social networking sites can be. The organizer told me they were hoping to get 400 people there so they could break even and ended up nearly selling out the place.

Football Covers...

So, a couple of weeks ago I was looking through the previous year's football tab trying to get an idea of what I shot, hoping for some inspiration for this year's covers. What I saw was a real disappointment in what I had shot last year. Most of the covers I had shot were action shots, they were ok, but I didn't really like the overall product that I had done. I know some of that had to do with time constraints, a lot more last year than I had this year. Others were just not real great in the way of ideas that were given, and some of the stories weren't real conducive to producing a good cover. Basically, it boiled down to me being really disappointed in the work that I had done, and I was determined to improve it this year to a product I was happy with.

Over the past few years, in addition to a front cover of the section, we've split up all of the classifications (Class 1A-5A, six-man and college, seven total) with their own individual covers as well. It's a neat idea in theory, and a helluva lot of work in the short period of time that I get to do it in. Basically, I get about a week-and-a-half (eight total days) to get all of these done, in addition to the first four days of practice being taken up by shooting mug shots.

This year, I think it helped that all the cover stories were player features. This allowed me to go out and shoot portraits of the players. Most of them I was able to shoot portraits for, I did use an action shot of one using game file art for one of the covers, just to change it up a little, plus the photo worked really well as a cover shot.

For the overall cover (second from the top), Abilene High was the defending state champs, so they were a natural fit for the cover. I'd originally planned to put them in a dark room and have a black background, but as I was walking into the coaches office I walked by the wall with all the team accomplishments over the year and figured that would make a better background, all that was left after that was putting the players in and setting up the lights. It worked out just right so you could see what was in the background but not be too distracting.

The only other problem I had was trying to avoid making all the photos look the same while maintaining the same style and still leaving some space to put text on the photo for the cover feel while at the same time being stuck having to put it in a 10x10 hole (which was the page dimensions). I think it worked out ok. I was happy with the overall product, of course there were some photos I liked better than others, but that's going to happen any time. But, compared to last year, the sum of the covers were considerably better.