We’re just going through our first real cold spell on the Southern High Plains, and with it we see Fall slowly making its exit and the doldrums of Winter to take its place. That’s not to say that photography during the Winter in West Texas is lacking activity–quite the opposite. The commotion generally just turns to the sky with the slew of geese and cranes that migrate to the region.

This desktop will be the last one with a calendar featured in the lower left corner. I’m going to replace it with…nothing. OK, maybe a logo, but I’m fairly horrible about getting these out on time, and rather than be untimely with something that is supposed to help you keep time (in days at least), I’m going to opt with just providing a monthly desktop image. I don’t think anyone is going to miss the calendar (I certainly will not).

Also, if you haven’t noticed, this is the first blog post since the last calendar was placed on the site. That’s going to change in the next couple of weeks. The past couple months have been a whirlwind to say the latest: Eva Korynn was born at the end of October (the day after my birthday actually), we finalized Storytellers with Peachpit/New Riders, and as of Thursday it is shipping (super excited about this, more to come for sure), holiday travel and fellowship, and a whole other slew of business and end-of-season type wrap-ups that just need to be taken care of before December.

Please forgive the hiatus, but look forward to what’s headed down the pipe. There are some pretty exciting things in the mix! In the meantime, you can catch me on Twitter (serving up anything from photography and music to sociological Americana) or Google+ (slowly getting going over there).

Hope you enjoy the calendars!

Large: 2400 x 1600 pixels

Laptop: 1440 x 960 pixels

iPad: 1024 x 1024 pixels

iPhone/iPod: 960 x 640 pixels

I can’t believe it’s been nearly three weeks since my last post, but the absence has certainly been warranted. Work is steady, the visual subject matter certainly hasn’t lacked any interest, and I’ve been staring at a computer screen so much over the past three months that I’m probably going to need to visit an optometrist (dealer of bad information for photographers)!

Nevertheless, the new month must push on, and with it comes a new look. I made this image in January, but to me, it says more about the color in the sky during the autumn months. I love the graduated shift in color as you move from the bottom of the frame to the top. The moon gives it a “cherry on top” appeal. I’m not normally one for shooting just the sky and no ground, but these colors were pleasantly appealing and certainly acknowledging of the natural beauty we’re blessed with quite a bit in West Texas.

Feel free to download as many as you need. Right click the link, and open it up in a new browser for a more efficient way of saving the file to your computer:

Large: 2400 X 1600 pixels

Laptop: 1440 X 960 pixels

iPad: 1024 X 1024 pixels

iPhone: 960 X 640 pixels

I told a good friend the other day that you know the oppressive heat and the longstanding drought in the southwest United States is starting to really become a problem when folks that aren’t start talking about the weather like farmers. These types of things do indeed affect not only the land and fauna, but the people as well. On my way back from photographing a summer league softball game in Levelland, Texas, for a story on youth athletic competition, I noticed that a large area to the northwest were getting some much needed rain. Rural towns like Sudan and Littlefield, where the rain was dropping, are arguably the worst hit when a drought this extensive takes hold. Seeing this rain in the sky is encouraging, harkening to residents that the drought will end one of these days. Most folks can then go back to being anything but armchair agriculturalists.

Storytelling Tip: Normally, I would try to avoid the presence of power lines, let alone house night lights in a frame like the two above. However, remember what I said about this drought affecting people? Not that I intentionally went looking for the perfect power lines and house lights to fit the frame. Instead, as I was losing light, I decided to stop and zoom in on the thunderstorm at a fairly level (hint the name Levelland) area of the horizon. The sparse, rural spacing of the houses say something about the necessity of water in these parts of the state and nation. Given the environmental circumstances, the extra subject matter in the frame seemed appropriate. They might not be during a wet year, but at the moment, they help fill out the story of the 2011 drought that much more.

Stay cool!

Most of Texas would certainly be happy with a little rain right now, even if it brought with it a bit of ferocity! This menacing looking thunderstorm came in during September, 2007, and it was what some folks in this area call a “gullywasher.” We definitely could use a washing of any kind right now! Drought cycles come and go, but for those of you that live in semi-arid to arid environments know it’s never easy on the land, its flora, fauna, and other inhabitants. It’s certainly not easy when wildfire ignites and makes its way across thousands of acres.

For those interested, the exposure for this hot storm was 1.0 seconds at f/22, ISO 50 (Canon EOS 5D, 17-35mm f/2.8L @ 17mm).

Call me crazy, but as a photographer, environmental phenomena intrigue me. Take yesterday for example: we knew we were getting wind. Not just a breeze, but the kind of wind that puts the huffing and puffing big bad wolf and all his cronies to shame. West Texas is known for several things, two being the immensely flat landscape and the springtime winds. All along the farmland in this area, it’s common to see the periodic row of evergreen cedar and pine trees planted as wind blocks for houses built in the middle of acres and acres of nothing but plowed cotton fields. The wind is a big deal, literally.

Even more unique to this area is what rides on the winds from time to time during this time of the year. Sandstorms (some folks refer to them as dust storms out here, no one has ever settled which is which as far as I’m concerned) occur three to four times annually in this part of Texas. What most transplant West Texans (mostly college students and professors at Texas Tech University) refer to as adverse weather, often in tones of self-deprecation, is in truth a fairly amazing environmental phenomenon that is essentially part of life on the Llano Estacado. Sandstorms are certainly representative of adverse and oppressive weather conditions, signaling drought and loss of valuable soils to inclimate wind. For the ranchers fighting back wildfires that jump fences and entire pastures, and for the farmer needing to plant seed or irrigate dry fields, the wind associated with sandstorms, often gusting 50-plus miles per hour, threaten necessary production.

For photographers, on the other hand, this type of infrequent occurrence is worth noting visually. Yes, I know, sand and cameras don’t mix, especially when the sand is flying in the air at speeds you can’t match on foot. However, taking a little risk may offer an opportunity to tell a little piece of the contextual story. Shoot from inside a vehicle or building, wrap the camera and lens up with a trash bag or jacket, use a prime lens versus a zoom (which serve as dust magnets), do whatever you can to keep your gear clean, if that’s the goal, in order to create environmentally-telling images unique to your region (in this case, West Texas and the Southern High Plains).

The image above was made in late January just outside Floydada, Texas. Living in this area for nearly a decade, I’d seen my fair share of sandstorms and swallowed enough dust in the process. However, I was struck by the large flock of Sandhill Cranes vigorously fighting the high winds in this empty sorghum field. A sizable group of them was rational and remained on the ground, but the rest were continuously attempting to gain purposeful flight, only to be slung around by the west wind. If my eyes were full of grit, I can only imagine how they were handling the debris. I pulled off on a county road running next to the field, killed the engine, rolled down the passenger window, grabbed a 400mm, and filled the frame up with the multitude of elegantly struggling birds. The colors muted by the diffused light, the image speaks to the oppressiveness of the howling wind and flying sand.

No matter where you live in the world, pay attention to the environmental conditions and phenomena unique to your region. This might be the occasional beautiful break in the normal overcast sky, or the infrequent sandstorm in a region where it’s clear and sunny 280 days out of the year. Whatever it is, note it on the calendar, and give it due diligence with your camera. It speaks of your surroundings, and if incorporated with indigenous subject matter, it more fully completes the visual description of a PLACE. Places are where we exist. Why not try to get to know them better?

Sandhill Cranes may be my favorite bird to see in flight. Those slender necks and expansive wings set back on their bodies make for an impressive shape taking to the sky. We’re fortunate in West Texas to play host to thousands upon thousands of these migratory animals, as well as a couple species of geese, and one only has to make a short trip to the empty cotton fields surrounding major cities to see large flocks taking up residence during the day. At night, the cranes roost for the night among many of the area’s playa lakes on the caprock.

I spent yesterday evening traveling the rural highways about an hour and half northeast of Lubbock, Texas, in search of some material for an annual report I’m working to help finish. I ended the evening sitting just outside of a large flock of cranes in a stripped cotton field, waiting for them to make their move to a nearby playa. When the sun was about 10 minutes from hitting the horizon, I noticed in the distance a group of cranes and geese rise up in flight through my binoculars, and it wasn’t too long before the field in front of me erupted with the chortle of hundreds of Sandhills. I had positioned myself and the FJammer where I would be privy to a silhouette, and the West Texas sky did not disappoint!

Using an EF 400mm f/5.6 L, I was able to compress the distance and suck that sun in tighter to the cranes in flight, and the underexposure of the silhouette made for a fantastic mix of brushed fire colors and crisp outlines of the birds. I enjoy the group in the distance as well, giving those in front perspective. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’re familiar by now of the magnificent colors the atmospheric debris in this part of the country exhibits, and this is certainly a prime example!

Not a bad way to start the week, huh?

If you’re interested in learning more about and visiting a prime location for observing Sandhill Cranes, make sure you stop over at the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge, just two hours southwest of Lubbock. This is, as they say, peak time for the bird’s appearance around their lakes.

The past month has seen me shooting more landscape and natural history pieces for clients than portraits, and it’s been a healthy shift for a bit. Sometimes, these breaks or changes in assignments can be just what you need to create more effectively later! On a more recent feature shoot with a local artisan, I felt more creative, seeing shots that I otherwise would have missed a couple months ago…

Or at least that’s how I felt. I don’t think it’s any secret that if you feel your creative juices have momentarily stalled, taking a break from the usual can reinvigorate your storytelling vision when engaging the usual at a later time or date. Every now and then, it’s nice to take that breather, concentrate on something else, then make a more focused, fresh return.

I’ve certainly enjoyed this time, and it’s allowed me to return to where I cut my photographic teeth: rural Texas. The lesser populated areas of West Texas, specifically, have a unique character that largely influences its more urban areas. Hard work, respect, solidarity, hard work, space, stability, and connectedness. Did I mention hard work? When one mentions rural West Texas, one must also recognize how large an area it is, and yet how small those towns are that dot its level plain. I grew up in a small town just west of Fort Worth, Texas, and I can appreciate and have come to enjoy knowing people in the smaller populaces near Lubbock. It truly is a small world west of the Big Empty, especially when you might talk to a farmer shopping for groceries at a larger city’s supermarket one day, and then see him moving implements on his property 60 miles away the next.

This has become the theme for much of the shooting I’ve been doing recently for one designer, and the impetus behind shots like the one above. West Texas is widely recognized for its huge sky and powerful sunsets and sunrises. If you talk to any photographer in this area, they each have their own favorite sunset shot (mine’s on film that’s never been scanned, ha, pristine, huh?). Every one of them, however, will agree that one sunset here is unlike the other in every way. If you happen to be traveling the backroads of rural West Texas, you’re privy to an even more unadulterated view of the large expanse above the horizon, and it really puts things in perspective for you. This particular shot shows indeed how small yet large this area of the state seems to many people, the large impressionistic blaze above the small, one-windmill town of McAdoo (alright, there’s more than one windmill).

You can’t tell me the people that live here don’t look at the sky each morning and night and have a deep appreciation for where they live! I have lived here long enough now that even being in the mountains for weeks on end sometimes has me jonesing for a little flatland. You start to enjoy seeing the sky. It also makes you more cognizant of those characteristics of other places (and other peoples for that matter) that make the “other” genuinely unique. It’s all a matter of perspective!

More to come…

Actually, it really doesn’t take much for a muley like this to hide. I just happened to spook it while doing some wind turbine shooting yesterday for a design house in Lubbock. To be completely honest, it really spooked me, seeing as how it jumped up about ten feet from my path and bounded off to a small lay of water nearby.

This young buck really isn’t worth showing in the grand scheme of wildlife photography (size-wise), but I like how the curiosity at his age allows him to stick around just a little bit, inquisitive on what I’m going to do next. Although I wasn’t out for wildlife yesterday, I still made it back to the FJammer (my wife likes to call my ride such) to grab a 7D and a 400mm f/5.6 L and take a walk around the brush to where this bachelor stood wary. He was smart enough to stand in the shade!

I was watching the sky out my back door a couple evenings ago, and the clouds were reminiscent of those I saw last in the Big Bend area of far West Texas. If you’ve never been out that way, it truly is one of the jewels of the state. We may not have the tallest mountains in the nation, but we certainly rank up there with most unique mountain environments. Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park sit on the outskirts of the Chihuahuan Desert, and while that may not sound too appealing, you’ll be hard pressed to find another location quite as peaceful and genuine. In Texas, this is as wild as the land will get, and that goes a long ways.

The Big Bend National Park encompasses more than 800,000 acres of desert/mountain/river ecosystem, and the Rio Grande separates Mexico from the United States for more than 1,000 miles at this point of Texas. I’m lucky to have photographed on both sides of the river at this area. Needless to state, both sides are exquisite, and I can’t wait for the opportunity to return to both locations. I try to make at least one trip to the Big Bend area once a year. The Spring and early Fall are always nice times to visit due to emergent plant life and monsoon season. The light there is pristine. Just for those techies, the shot above was actually shot on Fujichrome Velvia 50 film, with a Canon EOS 1N w/ 17-35mm f/2.8.

Seeing those clouds the other night made me think about how much I chased West Texas skies years back (still do really), and so you might find a few works on film pop up every now and then.

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!

Rolando Gomez from Lens Diaries wrote at the beginning of this month about the significance Rembrandt lighting for portraits, from the classics all the way up to today’s digitally rendered photographs. His post reminded me of my recent trip to the Denver Art Museum and its collection of impressionist art from the likes of Picasso and Monet (I didn’t see any van Gogh in the museum). I would like to echo Mr. Gomez in saying that paying close attention to how other art forms, classic forms of visual creation in particular, can lead to a very acute eye for form, light, and character in the photographic world.

Take for example the two images provided in this post. West Texas skies are often compared to paintings from a day gone by, and while I have talked to artists that are inspired by the skies, others can relate the skies themselves to other works. The two images included here reminded me of those impressionist-era paintings I saw in Denver. The camera cannot physically provide the rise and pits of the brush strokes you see in this type of painting, however, the colors and the texture provided by depth and contrast are likened to the tangibility offered through the earlier artists’ creations.

Then again, the camera was never designed (at least at conception) to produce the type of three-dimensional feel that Monet did with his harsh strokes and extremely visible globs of paint on the canvases. What the camera does do, however, is allow us to capture those environments and experiences that often remind us of such artistic feel. The broad-brush clouds and the faint grasslands and the pastel-like colors both images reckon toward a 19th-century oil painting in said style. You can even imagine the distant town in the first image as small dots of white raised from the visual plane.

Recognizing and embracing historical art and art styles raises your awareness of similar occurrences in your own work. While a camera can’t quite offer what early impressionists did in the way of actual, physical touch, there are certain things that impressionism did not do in an equally artistically limiting way that our modern-day digital cameras bring to the table. However, there is a visual foundation that transcends all forms of art, and this foundation, whatever it is, is left up to the creator to find and draw from.