Its been a while since I’ve posted on this (primary) blog. My music reviews/photos have re-spawned into a new blog called http://whatdoyoumeanimnotonthelist.blogspot.com and given the frequency of live music I’ve witnessed in the past few weeks, that blog has seen more action. It’s mostly a me thing, but hey if I can serve a purpose with it I’m flattered. In all honesty, things have been hectic here. I was offered a staff photo position with PPC and in the end I respectfully declined the offer. I don’t think I’m crazy and I really hope I don’t end up regretting the decision, but I think it was for the best. While I do think a staff photo position would be great at this point in my career / life and while I do think PPC is a great place to start out, the industry and economy is in a tough spot and the offer would mean a significant pay cut with a significant increase in the cost of living, since Houston is an extremely inexpensive place to live with the Baltimore / DC area on the other end of the spectrum. PPC has its ups and downs as does any newspaper or employer really, but as I head into my last month here I am coming to the realization that the feeling of coming (or going) home is going to be somewhat eclipsed by this sadness of leaving the incredible friends I’ve made up here. Math Roth, Drew Smith, Monica Lopposay, Patrick Smith, Nicole, et al. They are all excellent people and even better friends and I am going to miss the hell out of all of them. There are some amazing shooters in Houston that I work with and get advice from, but my Houston life is void of any photographers my age to really socialize and talk to on a level that I do with this group. Enough of the bittersweet symphony here.

Last week I shot an assignment at Laurel Park which is the second largest horse racing track behind Pimlico (of Preakness fame). It was to be a multimedia piece to supplement a story on the Maryland slots debate, which is a huge issue for the state of Maryland and everyone involved. They put me on the story because they wanted multimedia, but it presented itself as a challenge because it really was not an ideal multimedia story, as there are no slots yet, and the story is on opinions and opinions are hard to make into pictures. I did what I could and put a short piece together using a few of my stills I captured during the day and my quick and dirty audio interviews I did with the players. I limited my editing time on this to force myself into getting better with the workflow of producing a piece in a matter of hours. I think it came out decent.My goal is to keep learning new tricks and to be able to pop these suckers out quickly. I’ve also been spending a lot of time teaching myself more about Final Cut and learning the new CS4 suite, more specifically Flash.

Today was an early day with 2 assignments prior to our weekly staff photo meetings. The two assignments were rather vague and were definitely far far away, way beyond our coverage area towards the northeast corner of Maryland near PA and the top of the Chesapeake Bay. The area was absolutely beautiful. Its such a difference to live in the city and drive to these rural areas every day. Unknown to me at the time, both assignments were for our directories we publish as well, so the shots were basically for the cover of phone books for the area. That would explain the area, but no one told me the shots HAD to be skinny verticals. These images are two that I pulled from my take. The one on the left is from a newly renovated church. The shot was my only vertical of the dozen I took at the scene. After the church my assignment was to go look for landscapes and horses in the area. The landscapes were beautiful, but for the most part covered in a thick blanket of fog that made navigating the unfamiliar and thin thoroughfares quite interesting. I did happen upon a nice scene of grazing horses and as I stopped the car and got out to take photos of them, they all slowly came over to me and were really friendly. Horses are awesome. This photo is one of the only verticals, but I think it works. I hope it runs on one of the books. Both images are missing that human element, but I think what I pulled out of the take is a lot better than what I thought I was going to have when I got back to the newsroom and found out that the shots needed to be verticals for the cover. After the studio Drew and I had some most excellent bonding time with the rest of the photo staff, namely Matt and Nicole, who are both awesome. We spontaneously went out for a snowball with some famous Baltimore marsh mellow topping courtesy of Nicole and it was actually pretty epic and I don’t even like marshmallows. I’m really glad that there is such a young and cool bunch out here.