Last Saturday I had a rather unusual assignment to cover the 2010 Conference USA Swimming and Diving Championships hosted by my Alma-mater, the University of Houston. As I prepared for the event I realized that out of all the things I have shot in the past and out of all the sports I have shot in the past, I had never shot a swim meet or competition diving. For years I had seen great swim meet photos from local newspaper photographers all the way up to the Olympics, but never had I shot it myself.

So I called some friends for some inspiration.

A few told me that it would be dark and damp (it was) and that I should bring in some lights to light the place up. I would have, but there was little time and the Campus Recreation Center where the meet was being held was a little hard to navigate. Since the competition pool is sandwiched between the dive pool and a training pool, angles for shooting are pretty slim. Even though the conditions were not ideal for photographs I enjoyed myself. I must say, I have complete respect for someone who can swim 66 non-stop laps in an Olympic-sized pool, not to mention one who wins that heat.

After I had made plenty of proper (and identifiable) images of swimmers leaving the block, celebrating, etc, I decided to play around a bit and shoot some more abstract stuff from the venue. With the obligation of identifying the schools and individual swimmers behind me, I felt inspired to follow my instincts and shoot a series of images that played with the color of the water and the natural motion of the event.

I spent some time this past Saturday afternoon with longtime client, Planet Funk Academy at the Wortham Center in Houston’s theater district as they prepared to take the stage. I have photographed the renowned dance academy for nearly 5 years now and although the faces have changed, the energy is still the same. During my tenure as their chief photographer, I have seen kids go from Planet Funk to dancing for top tier pop/hip hop acts and tours, open their own dance studio or even star in feature films.

The group performed their latest theatrical dance show on Saturday night and I was there for a few hours during their prep and tech time. I photographed a few of their run-throughs during tech rehearsal, however I am always most excited to simply wander around backstage while everyone is getting ready and make images there. I have made several images that I particularly love during backstage moments from shows past and even though I had a shorter amount of time on Saturday, I still make some images that I enjoy. They are in the gallery below. I converted several to a very high-contrast black and white which appear first followed by color versions.

As we wrap up the first week of the new year I can’t help but reflect on the past year. There were struggles as there are with anything, but I’d be remised if I didn’t sit back and be thankful for the good things. I met a lot of great people, made a few new clients, learned a ton of great things and made a few decent images along the way.

2009 was the year I was blown away by being accepted as a participant into the Eddie Adams Workshop.
2009 was the year my first major documentary project premiere to a sold out audience of over 250 people.
2009 was the year that documentary project won not 1, but 4 awards including a Gold Remi.
2009 was the year that I owned the copyright for 100% of the images I captured.
2009 was the year that I got to visit 5/7 continents in the span of 4 months.
2009 was a good year.

Here’s to 2010 being even better. The short piece above showcases about 65 of my personal favorites from 2009. They may not have run, they may not have been the best pictures, but they are my special to me in one way or another, so sit back and enjoy.

I have a laundry list of things to do and update and one of the most important things on my “to blog” list is my images from my trip to southern Africa last July. I spent a little over a week exploring various locales from the coastal villages near Cape Town to the border of Mozambique. I worked on an essay on big game hunting near All Days in northern South Africa so stay tuned for a blog about that. In addition to the big game hunting essay I experienced so many species in their natural habitats just wondering about. Sure, we’ve all been to the zoo, but seeing a pride of lion, a huge herd of buffalo and countless elephants free and in the wild is an experience I won’t soon forget. I don’t think I can ever appreciate the zoo after such an experience. I hope that I’ll have another experience in Africa soon as this past trip was absolutely incredible. A gallery of a sampling of my images from the trip is below.

During my visit to Africa in July of last year, I spent a couple of days with Joeseph Ramakokovhu and Ruben Mhiangu of the Marula Lodge. The pair of native South Africans from the Venda and Sotho tribes, respectively, work as trackers for the big game lodge that caters to foreigners. The owner of the Marula Lodge, Gerard and his girlfriend and partner, Linda are experts in their field. Gerard knows just about every species of wildlife, flora and fauna in Africa and Linda, being the director over Africa for SCI, an organization devoted to hunters rights and conservation, is no slouch either. Collectively the couple is a powerhouse of knowledge on not only the region, but wildlife and hunting all over the globe.

Being from Texas, I was raised in a culture of hunting, I used to spend nearly every weekend with my father hunting geese and duck, but over the years I’ve grown a bit disgusted with the thought of killing an animal. I’m no PETA member, nor am I even vegetarian, but the only thing I shoot these days is my camera.

The few days I spent with Gerard and Linda made me appreciate the act of conservation and hunting as long as the hunters are actually honest and educated rather than just out for a cool-looking trophy for their wall. They helped us realize that sometimes we have to hunt elephant because uncontrolled, their species, as destructive as they are, can systematically wipe out hundreds of other, lower, species.

I still don’t intend on picking up a rifle and heading out to the bush, but I did learn, and had a great experience while doing it. This short photo essay entitled “Killing to Conserve” is the result of my time on the Marula Lodge. The first 18 images of the slideshow is how the essay appeared in my most recent portfolio book. The sequencing might change periodically. The rest of the images are outtakes.

Intro: Alldays, a remote village in the Limpopo province of South Africa, is known for its abundance of Mopane tree bush, arid climate and diamond mines. Situated near one of the largest active diamond mines in South Africa is the Marula Lodge, a private game reserve devoted to the preservation of the sport of big game hunting for conservation rather than poaching.

This is my second installment of my 2 part favorites post highlighting my favorite images taken during Houston Chronicle assignments. This post contains images from roughly mid-May 2009 through this past weekend taken from my Houston Chronicle assignments only. I am a regular contributor to my hometown newspaper and get to shoot all kinds of things. A few months ago I posted my January through mid-May favorites and I thought now was a good time to post some selects since then. Some may have made it into the paper, some may have not. They were all taken from images sent to the paper from my various assignments.

*Note: I have consolidated my favorite images from all of 2009 into one nice and neat Photoshelter gallery. View the slideshow of 57 images below!

What a great few weeks. This is my first Fall back in Houston in 3 years. Fall internships have kept me away and its great to be home during this time. I have certainly missed the days when the Houston weather starts to get mild(er) and more importantly I get to cover my hometown Houston Texans and my alma mater, The University of Houston Cougars. I haven’t covered the teams since 2006 so its great to finally get back on the field. I enjoy shooting sports, but its especially exciting when you are shooting a team you root for.

While I was in Florida a few weeks back, my Cougars were beating a then 5th ranked OSU in Oklahoma to propel them to their first AP ranking in about 20 years. The upsets in our bye-week pushed us from 21st to 17th. Everything all week has been building up to Saturday night’s matchup against Big 12 rivals Texas Tech. The atmosphere in and around Robertson Stadium was unlike I have seen since the 2006 CUSA championship game. Former and famed alumni Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler showed up and hung out for the game as well. We had our ranking and we wanted our team to prove it wasn’t a fluke winner and could hang with the big boys.

The game was great with lots of game action and like many other college games, lots of other things to shoot other than the game action. I didn’t get a lot of feature(y) stuff prior to the game, but I highlighted a few of my favorites over on my SportsShooter member page. It is actually featured on their front page as of this morning.

After an incredible 29-28 Houston win and an on field celebration via rushing the field, we were up in the press box editing and transmitting at 12:30am. I left Robertson at 1:30am or so and after celebrating with a few friends, was in bed at about 4:30am.

I woke up 5 hours later to shoot the Texans, Jaguars game.

With high hopes and the meat of our schedule behind us, UH is now ranked 12th in the nation according to this week’s AP poll.

Go Coogs!

So I got a call from a friend and newspaper photo editor to cover the high school season opener (aka Week 0) game between the North Shore Mustangs and the Katy Tigers at Rhodes Stadium in Katy last night. I don’t shoot as much sports as I used to given the fact that my primary work isn’t newspaper stuff, but if I was going to shoot any high school games this year, this was a good one. Texas high school football is legend and this rivalry would prove to be as good as I had hoped. North Shore is in a lower income, eastern Houston neighborhood, with a primarily minority/blue-collar base whereas Katy is in a middle to upper class, primarily white neighborhood. This rivalry means more when you are made aware of the fact that Katy has many state titles under its belt including 2007 and last year, 2008, however last year North Shore was one of Katy’s few losses of last season.

Rhodes Stadium in Katy is one of the nicest high school facilities around (and we have plenty in Houston…Berry Center anyone?) and a little over 14,000 people came out to see this game. That is practically the attendance numbers you would see at many smaller collegiate level football games. To put it in perspective, the catered Italian food in the press box was better than most press box meals I’ve had the pleasure of tasting over the years.

There was a lot going on before the game and since I showed up with plenty of time before the actual game started I tried to shoot some featury stuff. Lots of nice color to play off of.

After I had edited and transmitted my images to the newspaper, I played a bit with a few of the images. I edited a set of diptychs that I put together called “Saturday Night Lights”. The diptych series appears in the gallery below, followed by the single images from the game.

Yes, this is one of these posts. The ones where I preface my blog entry by apologizing for my absence and saying that it won’t happen again, but it’s bound to. At least I have a good excuse. For the past month now Ive been in Brasil with a 10-day visit to Africa. There are thousands of images that I have to mull through yet and I still have a week here in lovely Rio de Janeiro so hopefully I’ll get some more good images in. Once I get back stateside look forward to loads of updates and even more images from my month away.

Before I left on July 7th, I covered Warped Tour 2009 in Houston on the 3rd. It was probably the single worst Warped Tour experience out of all of the dozens Ive been to, but the few stand out performances made up for the day as a whole.