Hello All! I’ve been on a much-needed hiatus from the Internet and my blog, but in the meantime, some good things have happened! If you’re a regular reader, you’ll notice the new Web site digs. Thanks to the folks at GraphPaperPress, they offer an easy way to integrate Photoshelter users’ accounts with their WordPress templates, making my online presence more manageable, and hopefully more accessible for you! Thanks to Charlie Stout as well for helping me streamline this process even more. If you haven’t been over to Charlie’s blog in a while, he’s starting to post some new work from a cross-national project he’s been shooting recently, and it’s worth taking a peek.

Now, as far as the new site goes, it’s a little different than most photog’s blogs go, but hopefully it will be conducive to your experience here. If you click on Blog, you get the blog, just a change in aesthetics. News on the Jerod Foster Photography front is much more visible (and will be kept more updated), as well as a section for Teachings (or at least content that I create with instructional value). Soon, a Videos section will be available as well!

In terms of content, expect the same type of corky, hopefully sometimes helpful, information coming at you…but more! Teaching at Texas Tech University for the past few years has given me the opportunity to speak and instruct on topics I’m passionate about, and I don’t see why that has to stop in the classroom on my end! If you’ve seen my posts in the past, you know they’re experientially-based, and geared for the working photographer. I plan on keeping it that way!

Stay tuned! I’m excited to get this new site off the ground, and I hope you all enjoy the blog!

It’s not like me to take photographs of a cemetery (maybe it’s just getting close to Halloween, no offense). I feel that cemeteries are shot quite enough (mostly in black in white for that matter), however, when a particular cemetery is old enough to sport some pretty interesting heritage, it’s always worth looking in to!

One of the locations that we took our past Junction Intersession photography students was to the Waresville Cemetery in Utopia, Texas (Uvalde County). The founder of the town that the cemetery is named after, Captain William Ware, was a Texas revolutionary, and shortly after he built his house in the area, he passed away. He became the first resident of the cemetery in 1853! That’s an old cemetery in Texas! The cemetery has since grown, but the original allocation of plots is still surrounded by a rock fence, indicative of rock fences of the area.

Like I said, it’s not necessarily my style to photograph cemeteries, but I do have some neat images from years past of this particular one, and this year, I decided to isolate head stones with lights. It’s not common you get a chance to do this, and it was almost like photographing figurative portraits, of course, of the head stones.

I especially like the newer head stones that include a photograph of those that have passed away. This tells so much about this particular person, and if you think, this is what will be viewed as ancient one of these days!

More to come!

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!

Flowers on Mason Mountain, one of the places we take students on our 15-day photo field trip!

Alright! Wyman and I are back at Texas Tech University in Junction, our OTHER place, ha! Each year, Wyman and I come to Junction to lead a 15-day photography workshop that counts as class credit with the university, and each year, we get a totally new batch of eager students who get to see some of the most beautiful locations in the state! The course is unlike almost all photo workshops out there, due to the time spent shooting and the intense pace that we lead it.

To keep everyone abreast, I will be blogging periodically while down here, getting in to some technical information, aesthetics, history, and mischief that we get ourselves wrapped around! We’re finishing up preparing our classroom, which we just use as a storage locker basically for the mounds of gear we bring every year, and we’re up early in the morning! More to come!