The Rain and Mud...

San Antonio Southside's Israel Orihuela along with a pack of tired 5A runners walk, catching their breath, after crossing the finish line covered in mud at the UIL State Championship Saturday. With rain falling all morning, the route at Old Settlers Park was turned into a mud track, some runners slipped and fell, others lost shoes during the meet.

Recent Work

Here is some recent work from the last couple months.

The first few images are from my three days of shooting for the I love Texas Photography Instagram.

Ron Bruno, sits and takes a break from driving at a rest stop off of Hwy 290 near Fredericksburg. Bruno was sending out a daily inspirational message to a group of friends and family about taking on giants, or as he put it, those things that keep you from accomplishing your goals in life. Bruno Makes a drive from Austin to Fredericksburg twice a week to work on building a distillery in Fredericksburg. which is a brand new venture fro him, but he is more than excited trying to figure out how to succeed in this business.

Masters Project Update...

Since finishing my coursework at MU, I started working on my master's project. It is moving a little slower than I originally anticipated (I'm sure to the chagrin of my committee), but I feel like it is progressing. Brief explanation of the project: when I started grad school, I was looking around for topics and stories that I found interesting and that could turn into a larger project. I originally wanted to work off the topic of disappearing small towns in the Midwest, but while researching, I found more than a few articles about how Latino populations were migrating into small towns across the Midwest had how this migration had saved the areas from becoming ghost towns.

Recent Work: Sandhill Farm

Lately, I've been working on a story with writer and friend, Wade Livingston, about three intentional communities near Rutledge, MO. For the past few weeks, I have been spending a significant amount of time at one specific community in Northeastern Missouri, Sandhill Farm. 

Landscapes

For the past few months, I've been wandering around shooting landscapes with a Fuji 6x9. Taking out a tripod and slowing my processes down. Trying to see let the pace of shooting with this camera lead the way.

The photos posted here are from two rolls of film shot on the same day. Snow was deep and the walking was cold.

A Tangible Past or A Hipster Side Project?

For the past few months, I have been running around shooting photos with a Fuji Instax and, more recently, a polaroid SX-70 Sonar. 

I honestly don't remember what got me started on the throwback instant photo kick. I guess since I have been shooting more video and spending so much time looking at a computer screen I needed some time away from the digital workflow. Now if I had enough space and a little extra time, I would set up my darkroom equipment in my duplex. I guess in the absence of such luxury, I jumped into the instant film world.

And I've started to see these cameras fitting into my greater work. On a video shoot in November, I took a quick portrait of two of my subjects and gave them the shot. They fell in love with it, and I think it might have put them a little more at ease as I started to roll on the interview. I’ve discovered that handing people a photo as a keepsake seems to help connect them to me.

In general, photos connect us to people we might not know, but they also do a great job of connecting us to our own pasts. In December my wife and I went down to El Paso, Texas, my hometown. While there, I was going through a box of old photos and saw more than a few polaroids and other prints my parents had snapped back when I was a kid. Looking at the photos in my hands took me back in time by giving me a very tactile link to the past. Memories that were probably buried in my head came forward.

If I have kids I hope they find my boxes of prints and polaroids, helping them link back to their past.

OK, enough with the corny crap. Check out these photos 

#fromthegarage

Updating my website and blog while working on my grad school work has proven to be a lot harder than I thought. But it’s winter break, and I have some time to sit down to start changing and adding things. I’m looking at it as a “pre-spring cleaning/updating” of all things photographic.

Yesterday, I spent some of my downtime from editing work at the Missourian to upload a photo essay I shot from a parking garage here in Columbia, photographed coming and going from class and work. #fromthegarage is now up, and I think its finished. I am pretty happy about it, although I might change my sequencing later.

I also have some video projects I'll be uploading soon, maybe this afternoon, maybe tomorrow, maybe early next week … Who knows?