15 days, 11 new friends, thousands of new memories…

I’m starting to think that those folks that blog everyday either a) have a lot of time on their hands, b) are making direct advertising monies (yes, monies) from their blog hits (just check out Strobist, great blog), c) are always at a computer, or d) love what they do, and see the benefit in providing information about said occupation. I think I fit in to the last selection, however, I don’t blog everyday due to the lack of selection A and B, and I would rather not participate in C.

That being said, I apologize for not keeping the posts updated through the past two weeks while Wyman Meinzer and I led a group of students all over the Texas Hill Country and out in to the desert. A typical day for us was wake up at 5:45 a.m., gone by 6:15 a.m., shoot until the light became pretty anemic on some of the most beautiful places in the state, head back to the campus and arrive at approximately one hour before lunch, take a quick break from the photographs, edit a bit, head back out at 4:30 p.m., photograph again until our hearts were content, sometimes stretching in to early morning, get back to campus anywhere between midnight and 2:00 a.m., then start over at 5:45 a.m. All of our students this year allowed us positive attitudes and strong work ethics, even in light of lack of sleep and sometimes with nothing more than a gas station burrito for nourishment (come to think of it, I was probably the only one that ate the burritos).

Nevertheless, we did shoot, and I mean SHOOT. We visited some magnificent areas that over the years Wyman has researched at included in many of his book projects. He has taught the class for ten years now, and fortunately, I have acted as a TA or co-insructor for the past five years. This is such a great opportunity for students to really see what we do professionally, and the best thing about it is they are doing it with us. There is no definite line drawn between all-powerful instructor and measly amateur students (like some workshops I have read horror stories from), rather, we are all in the trenches together, tossing around ideas, critiqueing them, and then photographing what we come up with. Wyman and I are there to fascilitate, and provide professional advice, but we are definitely not squashing ideas to make sure students are shooting only one way.

The images here are only a few of many that I will be posting about the trip. We all took some inspirational photographs, and if not for anything, they will provide good fodder for the blog posts. However, as we tell the students, all the images that we take and edit are useable beyond social media. I hope this happens for those students that came along on the bogus adventure we had at TTU Junction, 2009!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Blog, Learning, People, Photography, Teachings and tagged with Education, Junction, Students, Texas Hill Country, Texas Tech University. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.