Big Bend, Part III - Rafting, Rafting on the River....

As we sat in the Chisos Mountain Lodge and watched it storm, one thought kept running through my head.

“There’s going to be enough water for rafting tomorrow! Awesome!”

The rafting trip on the Rio Grande had been one of the planned highlights of this trip – I had been dying to photograph the steep walls of Santa Elena Canyon, in particular.

Most rafting trips on the Rio Grande leave from Terlingua, about 45 minutes from the lodge.

With the lodge restaurant not open yet, we had an 0-dark-thirty start, and stopped at India’s Coffee Shop and Bakery for breakfast.

If you’ve ever lived in a small town, the scene changes, but the morning formalities remain the same. Here, we sat out on a patio framed by Christmas lights, and listened to the locals bullshit each other as they sipped coffee. An Australian drawl added a little flavor to the fluent Texan being spoken.

As the sun drew a line across the mountains in front of us and slid down, we loaded up on fantastic homemade tacos and a breakfast burrito like no other.

The peaceful easy feeling from the great breakfast and the sunrise was dinged a bit, however, when we found that Santa Elena Canyon was not available for our rafting trip. Not because the river was too high – but because the road to the take-out point had been washed away.

We would, however, float Colorado Canyon, which was not as dramatic.

I’ve got to admit – I was a little disappointed at this point. This trip had been up and down a little too much for my taste so far. But, buckling up, and renewing determination to enjoy what I could get at, we jumped in the van and headed out.

Bouncing down the bumpy roads on our way to the river, the burrito might have momentarily felt like a bad idea. But it, and we, survived, and before long we were loading onto rafts and into the river.

With all the hot air and self-importance about borders, it seems natural to think of rivers that serve as borders as huge bodies of water. The reality is much humbler – for virtually all of this trip, I could have walked across the Rio Grande and not gotten my belt wet.

The guides told us of often meeting the vaqueros who herd cattle on the Mexican side, occasionally in the sights of border guards who hadn’t counted on the people who lived on the river when the political walls grew higher.

As we rafted, we looked up at the hundreds of feet of canyon wall and couldn’t help but wonder why exactly politicians thought we needed a manmade wall. Kids occasionally hopped over to the Mexico side and then giggled back to their rafts.

While the canyon wasn’t the one I hoped for, being there for the rain showed how quickly the river can be reborn. Thick green sheaves of river cane flourished on banks that had been brown or yellow just a week ago. Our guide said it was the greenest he had seen it in three years.

As we pulled the rafts out, I looked at the river – both life force and barrier. Living here means living on the edge – if the water goes dry, you’re done. But on this day, the river offered stillness, peace and a snapshot of the rebirth simple water can bring – more valuable than any photograph I could hope to take.

Faith in the trip – renewed.

Next: The ruins of Terlingua.

Big Bend, Part II - Or, That's as Close to Lightning as I Need to Be

As I carried the box holding my camera bag back to my room, lightning flashed to the south. Backing up for a second – the Chisos Mountain Lodge sits in a big bowl in the mountains. The Window is a crack in the west side of the bowl, making a beautiful spot for sunsets – or lightning watching, if you’re into that kind of thing.

From where I was standing, lightning buzzed and flashed through the clouds to the west – still far enough away that it wasn’t raining, but making for some great views through the Window.

Racing back to my room, I pulled out my bag and tripod and headed for a small scenic overlook trail in front of the lodge. The storm seemed to be drifting to the left of the Window, behind the mountains, but some long exposures helped me capture a couple of lightning strikes.

After about 20 minutes of shooting, I went back to the room to see what Superwife’s plans were for the evening. We had talked about going for an evening hike, and I was hoping to find a place where we could continue to watch the storm.

Not a problem, as it turned out.

We packed our gear, stepped out of our room, and found a cloud monster had eaten the surrounding mountains.

The storm had shifted course, bringing the lightning and rain right into the bowl around us. The wind picked up fast, blowing hats off and sending papers swirling. Rain began to pelt us, hard drops that sprayed off the ground. Thunder boomed around the timpani drum of the mountains.

Immediately giving up on the hike, we started for the lodge. I stopped in amazement as the clouds rolled down the mountain behind our building, disappearing the trees and rock formations.

I stopped to try and capture the swarming clouds, but the wind and rain made it almost impossible. I shot one frame:

And then we ran for the lodge, where we sat and felt very small as the storm raged around us.

The turning point was a sudden change in tone from the roof and windows. Quarter-sized hail started bouncing off the deck and dinging the cars in the parking lot.

After about 15 minutes of that, the storm lessened quickly, leaving a watercolor-smeared sky.

Next – Why all that rain in a desert isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Big Bend, Part 1

I’ve wanted to go to Big Bend National Park for the last eight years – since the day we decided we were moving to Texas, in other words.

The mountains, the rivers, the rugged edge of the back of beyond – I was all over it. The idea of photographing that level of wilderness was making my camera salivate.

Thus, it was a trifle distressing that three hours into the eight-hour drive out to the park, I realized I FORGOT MY FRIGGING CAMERA BAG.

Commence head-to-steering wheel connections, made early, often and with many expletives.

Lemme ‘splain.

When I was packing the truck we rented for the trip, I took my camera bag off my shoulder in the bedroom before carrying another bag out to the truck. When I went back to help Superwife with her bag, she was already out of the bedroom, meaning I didn’t go back in, and THE BAG was left on the bed.

On a lunch stop in Del Rio, three hours drive from home base in San Antonio and four hours to Big Bend, I opened the back door to find…no bag. Meaning no camera. Meaning all the photographic dreams that I had had of Big Bend…just disappeared.

Commence headbanging, to the tune of “You’re a Dumbass.”

As we ate lunch, we kicked around our options. Drive back and get the bag. Get The Friend with The Key to ship us the bag overnight. Bite the bullet and do without.

I hoped to sell stories and photos from this trip to help offset the cost, so biting the bullet didn’t work. We had finished lunch and started heading east when we finally were able to raise a FedEx office. Yes, they were open late. Yes, they could get the bag there tomorrow.

Thankfully, we had a Friend. Said Friend went far, far above and beyond the call, driving out to our house, finding the bag and schlepping to the Fed Ex store, where for $200, they flew it from San Antonio to Memphis to El Paso before finally putting it on a truck for the Chiso Mountain Lodge in Big Bend.

Conflicting reports had it arriving anywhere from 10 in the morning to five in the afternoon. When it didn’t show up by 10, we decided to take the least scenic hike possible and still get a taste of Big Bend – a walk through the Chihuahuan Desert to the rock formations called the Chimneys.

Hiking out, I expected the family from The Hills Have Eyes to come stumbling down the hillside at any moment – it’s scenic, but once you’re out of sight of the road, you can forget civilization even exists. The hike is a relatively flat walk through a giant bowl, and before long we started to feel very small.

Returning to the lodge, I found that my camera bag had arrived…and then the thunderstorm rolled in.

Continued In Part II…

50,000 and counting...

“Great image!”

I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with photography in my life. We discovered each other in college, and like many young loves, we burned bright for a while, exploring the streets of Boston, then burned out.

“I can feel the roughness of the bark just by looking at it.”

She’s an expensive habit, and developing roll after roll of film and making print after print (yes, I’m dating myself – now get off my lawn, whippersnapper) was tough to do on a young reporter’s salary.

“Really lovely. I like the lighting in this one.”

We’d have brief dalliances now and then – on a vacation to St. John, we spent a steamy week with huge starfish and the ruins of sugar mills. In Alaska, we had a close encounter with a bear.

“Makes me smile.”

During those dark ages (pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter), I actually had to be in the same room with people I showed my photos to. That usually meant that any feedback I got came with something of a grain of salt – most people are generally kinder when you’re face-to-face with them, and these were people I knew.

When it comes to art – I often end up thinking of myself as more of a mechanic than an artist. That’s mostly because of experiences in the real job – making things run smoothly and on time is a valuable trait.

But two things have let me explore my artistic side more – buying a digital SLR, and discovering Flickr.

“Love this in b&w. Nicely done!!”

I’ve only scratched the surface of Flickr, even after four years as a pro member. There are so many groups, so many discussions and so much knowledge – it’s an almost overwhelming source of inspiration and knowledge. It’s a social network without (most of ) the obnoxious political commentary and with a lot more mind-blowing brainwork.

Using Flickr to plan trips has been invaluable – some of my favorite images from Banff and Maui came from inspiration I found on Flickr – seeing where people have been and what ideas they had, wondering how I can build on them, and reading how people dealt with different situations.

“Beautiful…great shot!”

And, being able to bring my photos to a wider audience has been tremendously rewarding. I’m sure this is the same for users of Picasa, Smugmug, and other services – but I’ve used several of these, and I haven’t found one that matches Flickr for ease of use and breadth of community.

I’m going to mark 50,000 photo views this week, and I can’t imagine sharing my photos with that many people without Flickr.

It also offers a good dose of humility – no matter how great a photo I think I’ve taken, I know there’s one photo that will be more popular.

Allow me to explain.

I’ve never met Amalie Benjamin.

I’ve seen her on TV, of course, and have read her work for years in the Boston Globe, first covering the Red Sox then on different assignments. I follow her on Twitter for her observations about the Boston sports scene. She’s a rarity – a Boston sportswriter who doesn’t overindulge in hyperbole and sarcasm.

The one time I saw her in person was at a Red Sox game against the Rangers in Arlington – she and then-NESN TV spokesperson Heidi Watney were doing a pre-game segment.

Armed with my shiny new DSLR, I was taking pictures of the players in pre-game workouts. I took one frame of Benjamin and Watney together and threw it up on my Flickr account with the other photos from the game.

It’s not anyone’s definition of a great photo, and it’s not particularly flattering to either subject – I thought it was just something different to add to the pregame shots.

It’s gotten almost 5,000 of my 50,000 photo views.

Second place is a photo of Jason Varitek at 275 views. Third – and finally, one of my favorites – is a monarch butterfly photo with 167 views.

Humility, thy name is Amalie.

Sleepy, rainy Sunday afternoons...

A few thoughts while edging toward a Sunday afternoon nap:  It's pouring rain here in South Texas today, and the Cowboys are playing in bright sunshine in Seattle. Ironic.

It is officially football season, and that reminds me of my favorite football-related story. 

Since moving to Texas, my wife and I have had regular occasions where we've been reminded that we live in something of a foreign land compared to our native New England. 

Seeing a mariachi band visit my workplace. Finding out that salsa goes with everything. Have people tell me, "We're fixin' to shoot" and "They've got good EYE-talian food." Hair that could fend off bullets and leopard prints in all their forms and splendor.

This is the Texas moment that I think I'll always remember, though.

Driving home from work one day, I was listening to a sports-talk radio host rhapsodize about the stadium just opened by the Dallas Cowboys. After ripping through several pages of the nearest thesaurus, comparing it to all the hotels in Vegas and various wonders of the ancient and modern worlds, he came out with this:

"If Jesus Christ was a Transformer, he'd be the new Cowboys stadium."

I nearly drove off the road. 

Branching out: After focusing on travel writing for some time, I've had the chance to stretch into some outdoors writing for the sports section of the San Antonio Express-News. I wrote this piece on windsurfing, and I've got some additional pieces coming on rafting, zip-lining and hang-gliding.

Adventure is coming. We're going out to Big Bend National Park soon - a trip I've been looking forward to practically since we moved here. Gorgeous, seriously photo worthy country. Can. Not. Wait.

The end of an era

And just like that, everything’s changed. The Boston Red Sox blew it all up Friday – trading Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett to the Los Angeles Dodgers for four minor leaguers and first baseman James Loney. The Sox shed about a quarter-billion – B like you see on the McDonald’s signs - dollars in bad contracts, and vowed to start over – younger, hungrier and cheaper.

This by itself isn’t much more than a headline on SportsCenter. But that trade is the end of an era for me.

When the Red Sox signed Crawford and traded for Gonzalez in one whirlwind week in December, 2010 – a weekend that might have been the last time Red Sox Nation was this overwrought – I called my father in New Hampshire from my house in Texas to talk about the new additions.

We had many of these conversations after I left home – he didn’t always understand what I did for work, and I didn’t always understand why he didn’t want to explore the world – but baseball brought us together.

When I lived in southern New Hampshire, we talked about how amazing Pedro Martinez was, coming out of the bullpen with a dead arm to no-hit the Cleveland Indians for six innings.

We marveled at the sheer majesty of Manny Ramirez’ first swing at Fenway Park, a shot that bounced off the Coke bottles on the left field light standards. He loved the wiles of Tim Wakefield's knuckleball - always enjoying the story of a guy getting it done against the odds.

When I moved to Texas in early 2004, we dissected Nomar’s mental state as he sulked his way off the team, and celebrated when the band of Idiots finally brought home a championship. I remember him telling me that so many people he knew had lived and died without seeing that happen, and that he was more than a little amazed to see it come to pass.

When Crawford and Gonzalez were signed, I called him, and we talked – me doing most of the talking, as usual, about what those players would bring to the team. I was enthusiastic – I thought Gonzalez would be another great thumper, and Crawford would be as electric as he had been in Tampa Bay, stealing base after base for the Red Sox instead of against them.

Three days later, Dad was gone, taken by scleroderma, an illness that had been dogging him for years. In that last conversation, I was trying to be upbeat – I knew he didn’t have long, and I was trying to cheer him up.

Now, nearly two years later, the Red Sox have gone young and hungry, with players like Pedro Ciriaco and Ryan Lavarnway. I don’t know if they’ll be world championship material again soon, but I know this is a team my father would have liked better than the overpaid, underachieving group that has been the Red Sox signature of 2012.

Gimme a beat...

Pardon the interruption...world domination takes time. Or as a more evil man than I once said, “I’ve got  my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder and Guilder to frame for it; I'm swamped.”

Luckily, what I’ve been most swamped with has been work. But all work and no play makes Jack a dull photographer, so I took a night last week for some play time.

I’ve been looking for opportunities for more indoor and modeling photography for some time, both to broaden my portfolio and for a change of pace in my shooting.

Behold, the wonder of Meetup.

Superwife and I signed up for Meetup a while back to find things to do. We hadn’t taken advantage of it yet, but while browsing possibilities, I found the Juju Foto Factory in Austin regularly hosts band photography nights. The band gets free publicity photos, we – the shoot allows for eight photographers -  get experience using lights and working with models.

Score.

The subject on this night was The Beat Dolls, a rockabilly band based in Austin. I had my usual new experience jitters – new place, new environment, hadn’t been through this before – but the studio owner, Juju, was very welcoming and helpful, especially after finding that my Sony camera was incompatible with the remote controls for their lights.

Saving me from some embarrassment and a long fruitless drive home, she let me borrow her Nikon for the shoot.

Going through three rounds of shooting – each photographer got 5-10 minutes with the band in three different setups – gave me a whole new appreciation for photographers who have to shoot a lot in a limited time, such as the meat grinder for photographers shooting the Olympic athletes

The band members were great to work with - projecting several difference vibes that made for interesting shots.  Sitting and watching other photographers work with them was a lesson, too – seeing how different ideas were put into play and executed.

The photo above was, for what it’s worth, my original idea. Frontwoman Angie Munsey and I talked about her dislike of posed photos of musicians and their instruments. My answer was a photo where you didn’t see her face – just the guitar and her trademark hair.

It’s not perfect on a technical sense, but I think it’s interesting and could be used in a lot of different ways – a flyer or an album cover, with the right typography backing it.

The rest of my favorites from the shoot can be seen here.

A dark night, indeed

For many movie fans, July 20 was supposed to be one of the highlights of this year.

The Dark Knight Rises was expected to be the capper to a trilogy that put comic book movies on the same level as “serious” films – movies with cinematic gravitas, such as Unforgiven or Citizen Kane, but built around characters revered by geeks and nerds the world around.

Midnight showings are a tradition for this kind of movie – art films don’t get hundreds of people lined up dressed as elves or Ewoks. The anticipation was off the charts.

Then, at a midnight showing in Colorado, this happened.

I would have been in a theater that night if I hadn’t had to work the next morning, just as excited to see the next great story unwind from the projector.

I spent that Friday reading stories and tweets about what happened. This self-proclaimed “Joker” may not have gotten the hair color right, but he got the Clown Prince’s craziness pitch-perfect.

Mass murder has been done before, and sadly, will be again. There’s no accounting for crazy.

But this one invaded one of the last sanctums of adult imagination – a place where men and women can put aside having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, worrying about paying the mortgage, how their children are doing in school, what they are doing with their lives.

Summer movies – the out-of-this-world scenes, the dark superheroes with tortured pasts, the whip-cracking wit – these are our great myths, our great stories.

Some will take the intellectual high ground here and argue that the summer tentpole movie form of entertainment shows how depleted our society has become.

I’ve got no argument for that – I’ve thrown away enough money for dreck such as Transformers II to understand where they are coming from.

But even Shakespeare and Joyce wrote some losers – the difference is at this point, their “Spider-Man 3” has been consigned to the wastebasket of history, while we’re stuck with it on blu-ray for the foreseeable future.

Taking two hours to be as badass as Wolverine, as cocky as Iron Man, or as determined as Batman is how we escape from the daily grind – the same way ha’penny heads crammed into the Globe Theater saw MacBeth, Hamlet, and Othello fight their demons.

This killer splattered real blood on the stage where our players – those embraced by moviegoers everywhere – stood up to injustice and wrongdoing, and made the stage a little smaller and a lot more real.

About the movie: Friday night, I had tickets to The Dark Knight Rises. As I sat in the theater and listened, the buzz was there, but quieter – restrained and questioning instead of joyful celebration.

After the movie ended, the buzz resumed – still lower than one might expect, but interested – people examining the story with each other to understand it. Like The Dark Knight, I feel like I have to see it again (and possibly again) to catch the nuances.

Some mild spoilers ahead.

In general, I found Bane’s blunt battering ram of a villain to be an apt metaphor for the movie – it winds up with a telegraphed swing, but still hits like a truck. The Dark Knight, in comparison, was like the Joker’s knife – it was in your ribs, twisted and out again before you even knew he was there.

Personal preference – I liked TDK, then TDKR, then Batman Begins. But they are all of the highest quality when it comes to superhero-based movies.

Catch this doubleheader

The dog days of summer are my least favorite time of year. Everything feels like it’s moving in slow motion – the 95-degree sun across the sky, me at the gym, Jon Lester’s fastball… you get the idea.

Baseball slogs through these days. Trying to take my mind off the Red Sox, who are slogging their way to oblivion, I’ve been listening to books about baseball.

My most recent doubleheader has been The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach and Calico Joe, by John Grisham.

The difference between the two is the difference between a 90-mph fastball down the middle and an artfully shaped curveball thrown by a lefty – one of those that when you see it on TV, it looks as if it is going to wander out past the first base batter’s box and hit the on-deck batter. Then it snaps back and thumps into the catcher’s mitt.

Harbach’s book is a lyric little bandbox of a novel, detailing the struggles of several figures brought together around a phenom dealing with confidence issues.

This could easily devolve into a paint-by-numbers jock book, but Harbach brings a sense of depth and reality to his characters that far surpasses the situation.

Baseball is the nominal backdrop – Grisham’s novel has more recognizable baseball moments – but Harbach crafts his story so well, the characters could have been playing cricket or sitting on a raft in the ocean.

He crafts several viewpoints, all dealing with different issues. I identified with some, didn’t with others, but couldn’t tear myself away from any of their stories.

Read it. Today.

Grisham’s novel, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same surprise or craft of language – it’s a simple little tale around a bitter father, an angry son, and what, at least partially, heals the gap between them.

I found the bitterness between the son and father so harsh as to be almost unreadable – my father and I bonded over baseball more than anything else.

It’s a decent read (or listen, in this case – both of these were on audiobooks), but it’s a John Burkett to Marbach’s Pedro Martinez.

Work:I've got a new piece in the San Antonio Express-News about Corpus Christi. Another piece is coming soon about the turtle release I wrote about here. The photo show at the San Antonio Public Library is still ongoing.

Movies: Plenty of thoughts about The Dark Knight Rises, which was epically long and included plenty of awesome, but was tragically overshadowed by a mass murder at a Denver theater. Still working out some thoughts about this.

Seeking a cool breeze...

Lots of swimming thoughts, but nothing cohering into much length. It's summertime, and the thinking ain't easy.

The specimen above was one of 96 tiny Kemp-Ridley turtles I saw get released into the Gulf of Mexico on Father's Day.

The Oreo-sized reptiles gamely pushed their way across the 25 feet of sand from their release point to the water's edge. The staffers fluttered around, alternately swinging plastic pipes to ward off the gulls and picking up the turtles and showing them to the crowd gathered behind a line.

Photography note: The workers will take cameras down to the turtles to get close-ups of them making their way to the ocean. A better bet, however, is to wait for one of the workers to bring one of the Kemp-Ridley hatchlings by your spot.

This release was on Malaquite Beach - the beach I took my parents to on my dad's only trip to Texas before he passed away.

Was it sappy to think he was there watching, protecting these small forms as they struggled out into the world? Yep. Was I thinking it? Of course.

Work in the works: The San Antonio Express-News published a piece I wrote last fall on the Canadian Rockies. More work is in the pipeline...

Summer sports: The Red Sox are terribly mediocre. That is all.

Book of the moment: Chad Marbach's The Art of Fielding. I've been listening to it for the past 10 days' commute, and it's getting harder and harder to get out of the car when I pull into the parking lot or the garage. Edit: I finally finished it by bringing the last three discs into work and listening to them there.

Summer movie count: The most recent movie we've seen is Brave, the latest installment from Pixar. I'm normally a big Pixar fan, but this was definitely aimed more at a mother/daughter relationship. Still, I found it entertaining, and the animation was fantastic as ever. Less than two weeks until THE DARK KNIGHT RISES.

Crazier things have happened...

It had been four years almost to the day since I walked out of a newsroom.

I had been a working journalist for almost 15 years, and a copy editor/designer for eight of those (meaning night and weekend duty), when an opportunity arose to start working days again. It came with more money, better hours and actually seeing my wife every day instead of being ships in the night five days out of seven.

The catch - leave newspapers and go to work for a sporting-goods company and design catalogs.

I took the job - quality of life is important, after all - and watched from afar as my last newspaper, the San Antonio Express-News, and other papers around the country were shredded by layoffs. Mentors and inspirations alike were left to scramble through the wreckage for new jobs.

Every time I saw another revered figure get cut down, I thanked whatever deities there may be for my safe little corporate position.

But...

I found the inkstains didn't just wash off. After about a year, during which my Diet Coke consumption was cut by two-thirds, I started getting the newspaper itch again. It's been incredibly hard to walk away from having a hand on that first draft of history, whether it's a city falling in war or a basketball championship.

There's something about the immediacy of being there when big things are happening that satisfied a need - something monthly deadlines changed at someone's whim by days or weeks didn't reach. I watched Obama get elected, Hussein and bin Laden get cut down, and itched on the sidelines, trying to convincing myself that I was doing the right thing.

I picked up photography again, shooting photos that would result in my first art show. Superwife and I traveled, visiting Europe and Maui and the Canadian Rockies. I started taking classes.

Then I started quietly dipping my toe back in here and there. It started with freelancing travel stories. Then I started working a night or two every few months for the San Antonio Current, an alternative weekly that needed help with ad design. The creative director there is another newspaper veteran, and we'd commiserate about the business, then go home and see our families.

Working at home or in an ad department isn't the same as actually producing pages on deadline, but it was enough, I told myself.

Then, the San Antonio Spurs went on a playoff run, and the Express-News got in touch through Facebook (which had just under 100 million users when I left newspapers, and over 900 million when they called).

Did I want to come in on a part-time basis while the Spurs were in the playoffs?

To coin a popular Sunnydale phrase, duh.

So, four years and six days after I walked out of a newsroom for what I had almost convinced myself was the last time, I walked back in.

There was a little trepidation - it had been four years, after all, and I hadn't touched the pagination system once since then. (If you know CCI, you understand why I'd approach with some fear.)

But familiar faces welcomed me back, and I was introduced to the two or three people hired to replace those that were gone. And before long, I'd been enveloped in the ongoing conversation that's part of any night crew - the 20-minute debate on the artistic merits of Jean-Claude Van Damme's theatrical stylings felt like I had heard it yesterday.

The next day had the predictable side effects - I was more than a little groggy from lack of sleep, and hitting the soda machine like Manny Pacquiao.

I ended up being a cooler for the Spurs - I worked two nights, and they lost two games, and their series, to the Oklahoma City Thunder. With the quiet of summertime now taking over the paper, I'm not sure when I'll hear another request for help.

But I'll keep an extra Diet Coke cold...just in case.

Energy and apathy

Massive celebrations! I've got my first photo show!

How, you ask? (Humor me and ask, would you?)

One of the local libraries has a summer reading program centered on London (the hook is London is hosting the Summer Olympics this year). The Amazing Superwife happens to work at this library, and knew I had a collection of London photos from our trip there a couple of years ago.

(Yes, that's inside information. No, I'm not ashamed.)

I called my show "Toasting London" and put it up last weekend at the Brook Hollow Public Library here in San Antonio. It's a fairly small show - 17 pieces, in total - but it ended up fitting the space well. I did a lot of re-correction and re-cropping of images, and found some new shots in there that I hadn't seen before, which was very rewarding.

How did I celebrate this milestone? (If I was some corporate cliche machine, I'd roll out some nonsense about millstones becoming milestones with enough effort. But I'm not, so nyeah.)

Massive brain-suck! I spent the rest of the weekend playing Skyrim.

Aside from a carnitas burrito from Los Robertos, my celebration was getting sucked into Skyrim. It was an inexpensive celebration, but perhaps lacking in the celebrate. But there was a reason for that.

Sidebar: Skyrim is a prime example of why I rent games before buying.

If it sucks, I can take it back with minimal loss. If it's so damn addicting I can barely leave the couch, I can take it back and remove the temptation from the house. (But it might have snuck onto my Amazon wish list.)

But what this was, really, was recharging and dealing with the post-project hangover. I find that after a big project is completed, I don't want to do anything for at least a couple of days. With several projects winding up at once - stories I've been working on, photo shoots, this photo show - unplugging from work and plugging into something else - was necessary.

So, the celebration continues unabated (the photo show hangs through the end of the summer) and I'm feeling better for having zoned out for a bit.

Movies update: Prometheus was the best thing I've seen this summer since Avengers. All kinds of creepy alien goodness. Men in Black III was agreeable, but didn't really make an impression. Snow White and the Huntsman was decidedly average, on an extreme curve - the visuals were great, but Kristen Stewart was not.

Work update: I've had a new story published by the San Antonio Express-News about our time in Ogunquit after my sister's wedding. There are several other projects on the burner, too.

What, you ask? All in good time...all in good time. As long as I can stay out of Skyrim.

Playing a home-and-home

You can't go home again. - Thomas Wolfe Who says you can't go home? - Jon Bon Jovi

After moving thousands of miles from where I grew up, I've found home has several meanings.

There's the home where I live now. There's home in the sense of the region I grew up in.

And then there's the actual home I grew up in - a cabin deep in the woods of northern New Hampshire. Only one or two of my oldest friends have ever seen that house - we moved when I was 12, and the memory most of my high school friends have of my house is the place we moved to (which hosted a tremendous high school graduation party, but that's a story for another day).

This house was our first home. My father, uncles and grandfather carved a road into the woods and built all the homes on it (except for the newest one, which my aunt lives in). My mother and father built this house when they were young - my dad laughs as he builds in yellowed Kodachromes.

I'm home this week - visiting my mother, and helping my sister with her wedding plans. She's getting married tomorrow, and the chaos has been, well, chaotic. But it's (mostly) been the happy kind of chaos.

I escaped for a bit yesterday afternoon and drove out to the old house, along winding gravel roads and through thick pine forests. The trees looked bigger and the road smaller than I remembered them.

I've still got family on this road, but that house - sold, then abandoned - is going to rack and ruin. Some holes in the roof are covered with blue and gray tarpaulin - others sag open, filled with leaves and pine needles.

A family of satellite dishes is aging in the front yard - two small ones, and one big, black pterodactyl - all postdating our time there. Some goober cut down the giant pine tree in the back yard that I used for a rope swing, dropping the top of the tree on the barn and crushing the side where Mom raised rabbits and pigs. The side that held cows and horses is still standing, but time and weather have taken their toll on the glass.

(I still remember my dad climbing that tree to hang the rope - now I can imagine him ripping into the joker who misplaced the tree's landing spot. "Pretty friggin' poor," he'd say.)

Old nails still jut out of a beam in a shed where I'd hang a punching bag after watching one of the Rocky movies on one of our three channels. A section of wall on the front porch is still scarred from where I was careless with the front porch swing while daydreaming of Prydain or Narnia.

Inside, ticks scurry about, looking for legs to latch onto. (There was an Army-style scrubdown after we got back to the "new" house.) The bookshelves in my old bedroom are empty, with only dust where my pre-teenager baseball cards, books and music once were.

The strongest memories are around the kitchen island - made by my dad, a thick block of wood, dark with oil and Crisco before people worried about cholesterol and grooved from mom's kitchen knife peeling vegetables she just picked out of her garden (with my help).

The wall where I raced Tyco cars with my uncle - the hallway where dad and I would wrestle - the fireplace mom and dad built with granite rocks and concrete...it's been 25 years since I've been in this house, but every piece still holds a story.

Daydreaming about canyon hunting

With the sands of another semester trickling through an educational hourglass, I’ve reached that point where the pile of work looks enormous and the last day seems to be far, far away. While I’d love to blow things off and bury myself in Civilization:Revolution, that’s not how world domination is achieved.

Part of surviving the grind of schoolwork/regular work/freelance work is finding ways to pick up little bursts of inspiration and happiness. For me, that can range from listening to the Red Sox win a game to getting out with my camera and taking pictures of something new.

Another source of inspiration is seeing what other photographers are working on. My fascination for the last couple of weeks has been a blog called A Curious Endeavor.

Written by Kate Lockhart, she's an accomplished photographer and a good writer. Recently, she’s been on a road trip through the Southwest, stopping at some of photography’s holy grails: Monument Valley, the Grand Canyon, and my personal favorites, Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon.

These canyons, which are nestled against the Utah border outside of Page, Arizona, are the source of some of the most famous photographs ever taken. She does a great job capturing the magic of these spots, and her writing is very helpful to photographers planning to visit these places - it’s filled with tips about what to watch for and how to reach certain spots.

One of my photography dreams is to travel the Southwest on a road trip like that. My only taste of it so far has been an afternoon at the Grand Canyon, and it’s only whetted my appetite.

Bring on that homework – the canyons await!

October 27, 2004

The radio whispered in time with the soft whistle of air through tubes, rising, falling and rising again. Outside, the season’s first snow fluttered down, catching the window’s glow before landing on maple leaves still tinged with orange and red. They would be brown and dead when the snow melt uncovered them in the spring.

Inside, framed yellowing photos of men in wool uniforms, wearing caps at the jaunty angle of a seven-year-old boy, covered the walls. Neat stacks of plastic cubes, each holding a ball with faded blue ink on one side, lined a bookcase.

The radio sputtered a bit, and his rheumy eyes rolled in response. “Foulke…” he muttered, squinting in pain and frustration.

A crumpled blue cap with a spoked red B hung from the top right corner bedpost, where it had been religiously placed every night for the last three weeks, after being thrown and catching there during a blowout loss. The effort had cost him a bloody coughing fit, but he couldn’t stand it any longer.

The next night, a miracle had happened, and like people all over New England, he didn’t change a thing for the next three weeks, so the cap stayed where it was.

Now, he couldn’t change anything. He listened, but his eyelids grew heavier and heavier. They settled closed as the radio sputtered again.

“…"Swing and a ground ball, stabbed by Foulke. He has it. He underhands to first. And the Boston Red Sox are the World Champions. For the first time in 86 years, the Red Sox have won baseball's world championship. Can you believe it?"

The roar of the crowd was as loud as if he was sitting at the game…and then it broke off into static, which died out.

The growing storm whipped away the signal, leaving him silent, in silence.

The Way Is Lit By A Firefly

Everyone needs a little career help sometimes.

What do I do about the boss who is driving me crazy? The co-worker constantly talking about minutia? The old guy who does it that way because that’s who we’ve always done it?

Well, if you’re Forbes, you listen to Han Solo.

This was a funny little piece, although logistically flawed to anyone who has spent quality time in the Star Wars universe – Han shooting Greedo was a footnote to the saga, not the reason the war started.

It's good career advice, though, at a time when I've felt the need for some. I’ve been going through a grind the last few weeks – between work, freelancing and school assignments, I’ve been trying to keep my head down and push through the pile.

It’s difficult to keep the inspiration light going when it seems the pile never ends. However, there are some words of wisdom to be had from one of the best characters ever to wear a pretty flowered bonnet on television.

I’m speaking, of course, of Captain Malcolm Reynolds of the starship "Firefly*. Capt. Reynolds and Capt. Solo have a passing character resemblance, but Reynolds is Solo without the Rebel Alliance – a smuggler just trying to get by.

While I'm not planning on starting an interstellar smuggling career (not from lack of trying), Captain Mal had many words of wisdom during the show’s short run. Here are a few particularly inspiring passages.

“I start fightin’ a war, I guarantee you’ll see something new.”

From the 2005 movie “Serenity” (a follow-up movie to the TV series), this always strikes me when I think of people who have been laid off and are forced to come up with a new plan. A character is questioning what side of him he is showing her. It always impresses me when people fight back from bad spots and find a new and even better place.

“We are just too pretty for God to let us die. Look at this chiseled jaw!”

In the middle of a firefight in the first episode of Firefly, Mal keeps his head and sense of humor. It’s a funny moment, but a good example of people keeping calm under pressure. That kind of light moment can do a lot to improve a working environment.

“You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed.”

Here, Mal is talking to one of his passengers, a city-raised doctor who is somewhat terrified of the rough-and-ready Reynolds. Finding a workplace where people are treated fairly – even if they are being laid off – is something to treasure. It can also describe the difference between a good workplace and one poisoned by office gossip.

“May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.” This is something I keep in mind every time I get tired of juggling multiple projects and want to go veg out in front of the tv. This battle to get a new business off the ground, take classes, pick up freelance work and deal with the vagaries of a full-time job will be worth it.

It will. Why? Because you can’t stop the signal.**

*Firefly was a television show that was on Fox for less time that it takes to read this sentence. Go find the DVDs and watch them. Now.

**”Can’t Stop the Signal” was the battlecry of an army of Firefly fans, called Browncoats, who successfully petitioned Universal for the movie “Serenity” after “Firefly” was canceled.

Trains keep a-rollin'

Deep thoughts for a moment…

As life progresses, some patterns seem to appear. Every few months or few years, some subject or person will pop up again that I haven’t thought about or talked to in what seems like forever.

One of those things for me is trains.

It’s funny – railroads are a relative cipher on the American landscape compared to their heyday, but the romantic nature remains. While planes have replaced them for long-distance passenger travel, air travel doesn’t have the visual impact of the passing countryside and the steaming locomotive.

That impact is still felt, too. When I was a rookie reporter, my first big writing project was about trains. I got more feedback from that piece than for anything else I’ve ever written or designed.

Afterward, I was happy to put my notes away and concentrate on new stories, but the subject kept coming back to me.

My father-in-law, who I met just after finishing the train project, is a railroad enthusiast. On a couple of trips back to New England, I’ve taken the train from Boston to his house. When driving to Phoenix from San Antonio, the road ran next to the railroad for miles.

It’s been enough to keep railroads on the periphery of my world.

Over the weekend, I took a train trip from Cedar Park to Burnet. The Hill Country Flyer is a nice little scenic rail trip meant for tourists and people of a certain generation remembering their youth.

While the number of memories floating around the car was perhaps not unexpected, what struck me was the number of adults waving at the train and urging their children to cheer as it passed by.

These adults have lived almost their entire lives with planes and cars as the primary forms of transportation in this country, yet trains still have a nostalgic grip on them, fueled by memories from parents and grandparents.

One grandmother I met this weekend talked about going to the depot after her chores were done and watching the trains come in on Saturday nights with her mother. “That was exciting!” she said, looking for a moment like that young girl.

It still is, and hopefully always will be.

Photography: While I enjoyed the train trip, I'm kind of disappointed in the resulting photos. I may need a dedicated photo project to really get myself back in gear.

Game of Thrones premiere: I'm happy with it, but I hope all the set up they did pays off with more action soon. It seemed as if the whole episode was catching up with everyone. I've read the books, so I know it's a set-up to awesome, but they need to make with the pay-offs to keep the newbies involved.

Opening day: Is this week! Bring on the baseball!

Movie watch: We've started catching up on the Avengers-related movies, starting with Capt. America. The sound on the blu-ray is fantastic. Next up: Iron Man.

Living in Fantasyland

“Zack (*^%ing Grienke!!”

The big man’s forehead reddened, then purpled. “&^(&, Steve*, you do this to me every year! $&*@!”

As we roared in laughter, he paced around the room, crumpling pieces of paper and throwing them in different directions, fuming. Empty Styrofoam cups and plastic bags went flying, before he finally calmed down.

Ah, the raging torrents of emotion, wrought to the surface by fantasy baseball.

It’s one of the touchstones of spring, for me - flowers start to bloom, the air conditioning starts to run constantly, and I get together with a small group of friends to hash out our fantasy baseball auction.

Without delving too deeply into the nerdity, it’s a group of eight guys – one brought his girlfriend one year, and hasn’t lived it down since – sitting around bidding on their favorite American League baseball players. This is New England, after all - none of that National League crap goes here.

This has been my first fantasy league, and the only one that’s ever stuck. The group’s core is made of people I worked with at my first real job – a reporter and editor at a small newspaper in southern New Hampshire.

One of the clichés about newspapers is the camaraderie – long hours, low pay and high stress forge a deeper working relationship than other jobs. These guys are my proof that it exists, and it’s why I fly 1,500 miles to hang out with them for a few hours.

Distance makes it harder now – I’ve only made it one of the last three years, and I can’t remember the last time I saw Steve (the guy who seems to win it EVERY YEAR).

I’m not a charter member of the league – there are a couple of those left – but I’ve been part of it long enough to see most notepads give way to laptops. During the most recent auction, held just a couple of days ago, we retired an old easel and huge sketch pad in favor of a high-definition TV and Google Docs to keep track of who chose which player.

Red Sox players are always expensive – it is New England, after all – but it’s the only time Yankees players might be valued just as highly. Old jokes are revived about Nomaaaaaah, new stories told about the latest indignities of the newspaper business, and the bids go round in circles.

Ironically, the process gets more competitive later in the game – the outburst above was during the last stage of the auction, when a promising pitcher was taken before the outburster’s next pick.

It’s become part of the history of this group, rolled out any time someone gets too excited about losing a bidding war.

After a rousing third-place finish last season, I’m hopeful about this year’s team – since, hope, like baseball, springs eternal.

*Names changed to protect the outburster and bursted-upon.

John Who?

Sweeping sci-fi action movie. Oscar-winning director, coming off a game-changing film. Huge powerhouse studio sinking tons of money into it.

Sounds like the kind of movie that rakes in more money that most third-world countries produce in a year, doesn’t it?

Instead, it’s the “monument to excess”  (and it took one glimpse of the price tag for critics to dust that phrase off) called John Carter.

Now, I admit - this kind of film is my raison d’etre when it comes to summer movies, so I’m inclined to like it if at all possible. The Superwife and I both chew up the epic blockbusters like Girl Scout cookies. We’re right in the heart of the nerdcore that this movie should have been aimed at.

The problem I saw was – well, who WAS this movie aimed at? Or was it aimed at all?

The natural comparison for John Carter is Avatar, the 2009 James Cameron-directed epic. They had many of the same ingredients going in.

When Avatar came out, we were swimming in ads for months, in all forms of media. The marketing campaign was thorough, to say the least. It became an can’t-miss event – the guy who directed Terminator and Titanic is coming out with a big movie! Holy crap, I’ve got to see this!

Do you know the name of the director of John Carter? Do you know what he’s done? Did you hear about it anywhere?

For the record – his name is Andrew Stanton, and he directed Wall-E and Finding Nemo. He’s been a Pixar guy since the beginning.

That might have been good to know, considering the reputation Pixar has crafted.

Disney is Pixar’s parent company now – but based on the storytelling Disney did with the marketing for this movie, Stanton may want to stick with animation.

The story is an old one – based on Edgar Rice Burrough’s novels, the first of which was published in 1912.  So it was the inspiration behind a lot of the minds that came up with films such as Star Wars, and yes, Avatar.

Another point to hammer home, perhaps?

At this point, though, the novels are not widely known. A marketing approach helping people understand what they are in for might have been a good idea. I knew what a Na’vi was for months before one showed up on the big screen – but Jeddaks were a whole new concept.

In short: You’re introducing me to this new world – a new language, new beings, new social structure. In my opinion, it might have been a good approach to give people a Rosetta Stone course before dumping them into this epic tale.

Critics rightfully gave John Carter some lumps, in my mind – it’s a little long, and occasionally a little muddled.

The critics who enjoyed it seemed to have a common theme, though: Embrace it for its innocence. It doesn’t carry most of the heavy messages of Cameron’s Dances with Smurfs – but it’s fun. That’s something that makes it worthwhile all by itself.

I give it three stars out of five for excellent action, a fun storyline and decent chemistry between Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins. For more thoughts about the movie's issues and values, I recommend these thoughts from Mr. Beaks at Ain't it Cool News.

Jokers to the left of me, clowns to the right...and me with an iPoint-and-shoot

Sometimes being a photography nerd can be painful.

Painful in the wallet when your camera is getting fixed.

Painful when your camera is stuck in a Laredo warehouse, waiting for a part.

And painful when you’re faced with a smorgasbord of photo opportunities and are sitting there empty handed.

Such was my situation this past weekend, with day trips to Padre Island National Seashore and the Sherwood Forest Renaissance Faire.

Malaquite Beach – part of the national seashore – is a peaceful stretch of sand that is rarely busy. I’ve never seen it as busy as nearby Port Aransas. It’s where Superwife and I go when we need to get away from it all, and all we have is a day.

Renaissance faires are a blast to photograph, in my opinion. Everyone is in costume, they’re showing off, there are tons of performances, all kinds of animals – it’s photo heaven. If you can’t see a good photo, you aren’t trying.

Without my trusty Sony, I was forced to rely on my iPhone. Now, this was supposed to be one of the ailments of civilization the iPhone was going to cure – people would always have cameras in their pockets.

Frankly, after a weekend with my iPhone 4, I’m not that impressed. I know for some people I’m verging into heresy here, but I found it pretty average – there was a lot of grain on the pictures, particularly when dealing with less than open sunlight. The zoom resulted in soft focus, too.

Now, I didn’t use the multitude of apps that promise to improve the quality of iPhone photos, and they could make a significant difference. I’ll have to investigate the possibilities there to make a real judgment.

That being said, there were a couple of decent images that came from the day at the beach, including the one above. I like this image because of the sand’s swirling movement headed toward the water. It’s empty, but it leaves room for the viewer.

I like empty space photography – it makes you stop and take a second look, perhaps realizing life isn’t always full of beeping, blinking things.