A Day in Mason

So yesterday I spent the day in Mason, a small town about 100 miles south of San Angelo. If I had to pick any town in our coverage area to live in, it would be Mason. It's just on the edge of the Texas Hill Country, quiet, three miles from the Llano River and has a ton of cool houses for sale.
I was working on our quarterly business journal, just roaming around town making photos. I came across this door on the side of an antique mall on the town square and had to stop. I was attracted to all the patched cracks spreading from the door in the original brick of the building. Nothing really special, just thought it was interesting.

At the Finish Line

This past weekend, a Standard-Times sports writer and I headed down to the state track meet in Austin. This is an annual trip that I get to take and I always have a blast shooting it. I would normally go down for the entire week to shoot the state tennis and golf meets, but do to an extra heavy work load, we had to string it out to an Austin local. One of my favorite things to shoot at the state meet is the finish line. You never know what you might see. Sometimes athletes scream for joy, others weep in defeat, while some simply collapse from exhaustion. Such was the case of Water Valley High School's Dylan Doss who fell to the ground after his 3200-meter race on Friday. It literally came down to a dead sprint with another competitor with just 20 yards to go. Doss came in second by just a half second. It was a great race, the best of the day actually. If you would like to see a gallery of the photos I made you can see them HERE.
SIDE NOTE: I have two videos for you today. The first is a time-lapse of the exploding Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland shot by Sean Stiegemeier. Very cool stuff. The second is of a young photographer in San Francisco who just had her first photo exhibit. How young you ask? Watch and find out.


Iceland, Eyjafjallajökull - May 1st and 2nd, 2010 from Sean Stiegemeier on Vimeo.

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Camp Re-Revisited

On the Learning page in today's Standard-Times ran the photo package of the Sterling City students at camp. Overall I was pleased with the layout, although I would have liked to have been a part of the layout and design of the pages. There are a few things I wold have changed including the CAMP! logo. I think it's a little to big and distracting with a center page placement. I also would have made the top photo on the first page the dominant photo, and switched the photo of the kids playing dominoes with the canoe frame on the second page. Okay, so I would have made several changes, but it's not my job to complain about the design and just go with the flow. I'm just happy with getting the opportunity to shoot a photo page
SIDE NOTE: The editors of The New York Times' photoblog Lens put out a call for entries to the world to submit photos taken a the exact same time. That time was May 2, 2010 at 15:00 U.T.C. The editors have put together an online interactive gallery of all the images that were submitted. You can see the gallery HERE. Set some time aside because it will you a while to get through them all. Have fun.

Camp Revisited

The summer between my junior and senior year of high school, I worked at a summer camp for the first time. It was only for the second half of the summer (about six weeks), but on the first day there I met two of the guys that would eventually stand next to me seven years later when Brooke and I were married. I would go on to work summer camp at Sky Ranch for another five years as well as serve as an intern for two years. I loved camp life. And this past Wednesday I was able to relive the past for a day. The Sterling City elementary and middle school kids in the fourth through sixth grades get to go on a three-day, overnight trip to a camp near San Antonio for a series of outdoor education classes. They hike, learn to shoot air rifles and bows, swim and canoe in the Frio River. We are going to put together a story and photo package for the Learning page that will run in tomorrow's edition of the Standard-Times. I had a blast photographing these kids, many who had never left home before.



And then reality set back in and I was back to shooting what most of my year has been dominated by... sports. The Lone Star Conference Championships track meet was held at Angelo State University this year, and the girls team had a real shot of winning the conference title. Because of my already heavy work schedule from earlier in the week, I was only able to work about four hours on Saturday which meant that I was only going to get to shoot the field events running that day. I did, however, manage to sneak in the first few laps of the steeple chase before having to head back to the office to submit photos. I love shooting the steeple chase. The last time I had the chance to shoot it was in 2004. Photographing the runners coming through the water pit and seeing the agony on their faces as they trudge on is pure photographic heaven. I know that sounds mean, but hey, I don't get to shoot it very often so I'm going to soak up the opportunity when it's presented to me. I know that this is a rather lackluster photo, but I was in a hurry and didn't want to be late on deadline.

Wedding Bells

Last weekend, Brooke and I traveled to Lubbock to attend the wedding of our dear friends Shawna and Clint. They have been together for several years and last Saturday was the big day. Clint is the base player for the band "Thrift Store Cowboys" and was playing at The Steel Penny in San Angelo. That's where Shawna and Clint met and have been together ever since. They were married on Clint's family ranch south of Lubbock. It was a cool place to shoot in a very beautiful place. One of the photos that I made and liked the most was of Pearl, the violinist for the band, as she played while the wedding party marched down the aisle. I think what I like most about the photo is her stance in the frame. It has an old world feel to it with a present day twist.