Another blog bites the dust

At some point in the past year, I finally admitted to myself what should have been obvious: I don't really enjoy writing anymore. Not like I used to. And especially not in any way that would make this space interesting. So I'm killing this text-heavy blog and moving to a photo-based format.

Head over to: http://www.mattwrightphotography.com/blog/.

I'll still post the occasional line or two of news, so it should be a good way to keep in touch. But hopefully the new blog will act as a better, more consistent, showcase for my work, which would make it more of a companion for my website, as I once intended here. Let me know if you see any problems, that the RSS checks out, etc.

Adios,
---Matt

The big news, a week late

Finally, finally, I got myself a full-time gig out here in San Francisco. Last week, a German e-commerce company called asknet offered me a job. I gladly accepted and start in a week. The company specializes in setting up online "shopping carts" for clients, both front-end and back-end. I'll be working as a point of contact between clients and developers, bringing to bear my intimidating copy editing skills, my well-honed QA abilities, and my journalism-crafted knack for talking on the phone.

By far the best perk is that the development team works in Germany, so in January I'll be heading overseas to the town of Karlsruhe to meet everyone and brush up on the tech stuff. Then, when I get back, the SF office is conveniently located two miles (and three subway stops) from my new apartment.

The apartment would be the little news of late, I guess. For the second time in less than three months, Amanda and I had to uproot everything and find/move in to a new place. We were subletting from this crazy woman, and how that ended is a long, kinda boring, story for some other time. But it's over, and now we live in a pricey studio literally across the street from Amanda's work. Seriously, you can see the side of her store from our kitchen window. Can't beat that commute.

All this stuff, plus what I've been doing for the last three months, deserves more details and more photos. But my camera's been in the shop for over a month and counting right now. My desktop (with photo archive) is still boxed up from the move. And, as Seemay once perfectly put it, the last six weeks of hustling for a job have made me completely sick of talking about myself. Hopefully with things settled down and the future finally secure, I can get back to the hobbies I've neglected.

Weddings join the party

spin your momma round and round, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Yesterday I decided to go an extra step and put some information about the weddings I've shot on my site. The main order of business, though, was trimming the fat from the Flickr set. It's now down to a slim 23 photos (which is still more than double a standard portfolio, but I figure wedding shoppers want to see more than photo editors).

Check it out: Set | Slide Show

Several shots from Leslie and Bryan's sordid affair made it into the set, including a couple that I had never got around to editing. I did hate to leave out this one, which was great, but too similar to the shot above. Sadly, Clare's scandalous booze heist also didn't make the cut. Nor did Leslie's thwarted escape attempt, since, out of context, it kind of conveys the opposite of love and marriage.

Professionalism rides again

For the second time in six weeks out here, I found myself in search of a new job and a new apartment. I think the word for this move, as a whole, is "harried." More on all that later.

For now, Amanda and I have the apartment taken care of. Hopefully, within a month, we'll finally be settled in for the next year. In the meantime, I've decided to take a stab at working in a photography print shop, if I can find one that'll take me. That meant mattwrightphotography.com needed some shining. Turns out I had neglected it for the better part of a year. I'm sure that looked great to prospective clients.

It's in better shape now. Among the highlights are an up-to-date main page, a new little icon for your browser (although it's still not great), photo titles that I can't quite get to look as good as Kriston's, an updated About page (with the above photo by Wylie Maercklein), and an overhauled Black & White Portfolio -- now with photos taken since 2003! Like I said, this was long overdue.

Comments, suggestions, corrections, adulation are welcome.

On the road again and again

Man, when I told the Observer that I'd need to quit about halfway through August, I envisioned myself with two full weeks of idle bliss. Before the move, I thought, there would be stacks of books, a photo project, even time for computer upgrades — while hitting the pool every day.

In reality it's been rushed as all hell. Only through some truly Stove Top-level coincidences have I been able to get everything done that I needed to. And now I'm about to embark on a road trip to make the Joads proud before the big cross-country enchilada.

Tomorrow, it's up early to get down to S.A. Meet Grady there, then we're off to Corpus to see my grandmother. We'll leave that same night to go to Houston. That way we can spend Thursday with family out there. Then Friday, we wake up and head back to Austin (via College Station to drop off Grady's stuff), where I still have to load up the car, try to see all my friends, and drop a few threes at Hancock before I leave.

Next Tuesday, Amanda and I make the big departure. It'll be Austin to Roswell one day. Roswell to Flagstaff the next. Then Flagstaff to Vegas, where we'll pause for a day to visit family and lose money. Saturday, we'll wake up early and make our triumphant entrance to the Bay Area, hopefully before rush hour.

It's gonna be wild, and probably more exciting than the internet, so I'll see you suckers in a week or two.

It's official: We outta here

San Francisco, here we come. Our weekend in the city confirmed it.

The short version:

We found a great apartment in a really amazing part of town. Amanda got a really promising job at a small boutique, located maybe 10-15 minutes on foot from our place. That's like 5 minutes, tops, by bike. I lined up some seasonal photography work doing little league portraits. And that sealed it. We move in September 1. After a road trip through Vegas. Sweet.

The long version:

Amanda and I had already been thinking about moving when the Post laying me off really kick-started things. Once I made the difficult decision to leave the Texas Observer, we started looking for new jobs in earnest. We concentrated on San Francisco because I loved my visits out there so much and it seemed like a good job market, but we applied other places, too. Despite months of dogged Craigslisting and exploiting our social netowrks, our inboxes were hardly brimming with options.

Come the weekend before last, we had a trip lined up to SF to explore our only leads: one apartment that sounded ideal, one job interview for Amanda, and one interview/training session for me. Obviously, they all worked out.

The apartment is most exciting, so I'll start with it.

We're renting two rooms from a middle-aged woman, R., who works as a stagehand. R.'s apartment has a quirky layout that works perfectly for our situation. The front door opens onto a short staircase that spits you out at my and Amanda's bedroom door. The room has hardwoods floors, a decent-sized closet (with built-in dresser), some shelves below a window, and it comes furnished with a nice bed and little desk. The room is connected directly to a living area that is up against the front of the building and the front wall is nothing but windows. It also comes furnished with a (now decorative) fireplace, cable TV, and a kitty-ready couch. R. got it from some friends who owned cats, so it's nice but "gently loved," as she put it, meaning the cats can scratch to the heart's content.

The rest of the apartment is R.'s TV room, which is a converted bedroom at the front of the building; her bedroom; and the big kitchen/dining area/greenhouse/washateria. That's right, in one big open space is a large kitchen with something like 15 feet of counter space, a little table for eating, and a back area where R. grows plants and has a washer and dryer. And in the very back of all that is a door that leads to a little garden with benches and trees and some veggies in pots.

If all that wasn't great enough, the apartment is located about a block from the corner of 16th and Valencia — "the center of the universe," R. called it.

Check out this map:



We live at the green arrow. As you can see, we're two blocks from the BART, aka the subway. Amanda's job is about half a mile to the north (one route would take her past the U.S. Mint).

Then, if you find Valencia and follow it south, for pretty much the entire length of that map there are nothing but shops, restaurants, bars, and bookstores. And there are more down many of the side streets. In all, I'd guess I saw between two and three dozen restaurants of every variety and ethnicity when we walked down that strip. The most common: Mexican food. Hell yes.

A couple blocks to the west of Valencia is Dolores Park, a perfect, hilly oasis in the middle of the city. This place was Dog Central when we went. Everyone there seemed to be either napping under the palm trees or throwing tennis balls down the hills for the their dogs. Amanda's got puppy fever now. For good measure, the park also boasts a full size basketball court and about six or seven tennis courts open to the public.

Go north from the park and you'll hit a coffee shop called Maxfield's, which looks very promising (that is, it serves $12 pitchers). Go east a couple blocks and you'll run into a mini-Whole Foods. I've forgotten the name, but it looks like any other little corner store until you walk in and see the place crammed from top to bottom with fresh, organic, local produce and a huge selection of chocolates, cheeses, and wines. And I didn't even get a chance to check out the hoppin' butcher's station. Good gawd, man.

Oh crap, I'm out of time, but that's the basic gist. The other stuff: Amanda's job is with a little boutique that barely has 10 employees. They're expanding, though, and the intimate nature of the place could allow Amanda to quickly work her way up to doing buying and planning for each season's clothes. She thinks that would be a blast. It's also likely this place will put her on salary soon if she does a good job.

The most important qualification for my job is that you be on time, which tells you everthing you need to know. But, hey, it's work. I've also got leads on some copyediting, and I plan on applying to be a portrait studio manager. I'm also signed up for this vision/brain study at the local university. I'll get paid well for about 15-20 hours a month of work. They'll be scanning my brain while I look at tests, or something, not entirely sure. But if it goes well, I'll get a sweet ass detailed picture of my brain from the MRI they take. They're paying me to get my brain photographed! YES.

Will update soon

Moved out of old apt. Went to SF. Lined up everything necessary to move to SF. Got real sick. Busy week. Details soon.

That's life

lone star summer, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Not alcoholism, of course, even if I did just lose a job. That picture, though, says "Texas summer nights" to me as well as any I've taken, and for the last week or so it really has been summertime, living easy, etc.

I just realized that I never once mentioned on this blog that I was leaving the Washington Post. I guess actually the Post left me, and Austin. And I did tell anyone who would care about this news in person, anyways.

But it's now officially done. Adios, office by the capitol. Adios, sifting through endless news stories and answering phones. Adios, set schedule. Adios, insurance. (Hello, Cobra.)

Still got the Observer gig going, although I've already told them I'm almost certainly going to have to leave in mid-August. The lease on our apartment only runs through July, although we can stay at friends' and families' places around town for a couple weeks. But for now Amanda and I no closer to knowing what comes next than we were weeks ago.

I'm surprisingly non-worried about the whole deal. I sweated for a few days, then I said, eh, and started reading some good books (The Black Swan and The Corner, both highly recommended.)

And as for leaving the Post, it wasn't exactly gut-wrenching either. I was ready for a chance of pace, and it's weird working for a satellite office of a company (and industry) in flux and in a panic. From a distance, my impression of working in the D.C. newsroom could be equated to signing up for one of those prescription drug studies. Yeah, you might make out with some good dough, but it seems a little like walking into a social experiment. The politics and bureaucracy of such a high-profile institution sound like dubious waters to jump into.

That said, I enjoyed the job I had, and everyone I worked with, from my immediate boss, Sylvia (now back in D.C. with a new beat), to my editors to the other reporters I talked to on the phone were all real nice, professional, everything you'd expect. (And that's not just kissing ass in case anyone from the company ever stumbles across this blog, although that couldn't hurt.)

But the Post right now is all mixed-up, like most newspapers. It still produces some of the best and most meaningful journalism around, but it also produces a ton of bullshit. Like I said, weird to observe in bits and pieces from afar.

I could say more, but I don't know if it'd be interesting to anyone outside of journalism. I'll think on it. Sucks that already I've had to censor what I write on here because I want to be able to use it in job applications — and not have it ruin job references, for that matter. I mean, I've known the bureau was shutting down — excuse me, the company decided to reallocate resources to cover the 2008 presidential campaign — for like five months. I just couldn't say anything because it wasn't public knowledge in D.C. Closing bureaus, domestic and foreign, is a touchy subject in the industry these days.

Giving it away

the internet loves me, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Hark all ye Googlers who search for Howard Dean, for the first hit shall be Wikipedia. Go forth and my picture will be revealed, and you shall know that I received nothing for it.

These days I hate the idea of giving photos away, but I keep getting talked into it. Original shot here.

Death Comes for the Optio

from the depths, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

There was but one (glaring) design flaw in my waterproof Optio WPi: it sunk.

Several weeks ago the inevitable finally happened. The camera succumbed to the depths of a Central Texas river, laudably in the service of chasing down a loose beer. I realized almost immediately that I had forgotten to check if the strap was on my wrist before flopping off my tube, but the thing was nowhere in sight.

Even after struggling upstream, enlisting the help of some nerd wearing goggles, and then diving around for half an hour myself, it was no use. Two and a half years, 10,000 frames, a lot of annoyed friends, and several hours worth of low-fi audio recordings ... as well as crappy image quality, a poor auto-focus system, sluggish shutter response, and terrible color reproduction.

The last surviving underwater pictures turned out to be from the Turtle Pond at UT, which kind of puts the couple hundred dollar loss in perspective.

BONUS: Turtle Pond fiction?

The San Francisco Retreat

danny in a void, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Hot damn, there's like three puns in that one use of retreat.

Obviously, it's been a long week, with the end of the legislative session and all, so I'm really looking forward to my trip tomorrow back to the Bay.

Leslie and Bryan's wedding is the main event, but I'll also be meeting Danny out there so we can keep the 15-year dynamic duo going. I'm especially eager to see Leslie, Clare, and Amy all together in one place for the first time since ... college? Eesh, might be for me. And, of course, I can't wait to hang out with Seemay, Reid, Chad, and the gang. Why did 80 percent of the close friends I made in college move to the Bay Area? I guess once you visit the answer is self-evident.

Anyways, need to cut this short, because I still have an insane amount to do between now and take-off in like 18 hours. I can't believe I'll have to be back in Austin and working again within less than 72 hours of my departure. Isn't a journalist's life grand?

The puns, by the way:
1. Re-treat — as in, to treat myself again.
2. Retreat — as in, I give up trying to understand the Lege and must flee the scene.
3. Retreat — as in, a sojourn to a place of tranquility, peacefulness, and a distinct absence of gavels.

For the record

I'm starting to wonder if I'll ever get a chance to edit another photo or write a real blog post before I get my first ulcer. It's been that kind of February.

Sacrificial birthday lamb

sacrificial birthday lamb, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Sorry, little guy, but you were delicious. You, too, rapini and dijon-rosemary torta. Not so much you, fried olives. Day 3 of birthday blowout 2007 tonight. Weekend birthdays rule.

Observer blog goes live; visitors to Observer main page confused

observer marquee, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

And we're off! After something like eight months of planning, almost as many months of searching for a writer, and six months of Molly Ivins columns serving as filler, the Texas Observer Blog launched today. If you really, really, really like Texas politics, update your bookmarks.

My new job — whose duties I performed entirely in my pajamas, by the way — kicked off with, let's say, a bit more fanfare than I'm used to. The above image greets anyone who happens upon the Observer's main page. Flattering, for sure, and almost as surely a chorus of readers around the state are asking, "Matt who?" I was giving the web guy, who had to slap the image together this afternoon, a hard time because it looks like people should have some clue who I am. It's the perfect cap to what has been a surprisingly wild and weird couple weeks, all starting that Tuesday after Christmas when my Post editor sent me to Oklahoma (that story should run soon, by the way).

Anyways, it's no coincidence that 80th Texas Legislature begins officially tomorrow, with the first order of business being a wild and wooly House speaker race, which I prefer to call Craddick vs. Pitts: Pandemonium at the Podium. Oh, the crazy life and times of a journalist!

Good tidings

wright family portrait 2006, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Whoa, big news down here. Today, on what was supposed to be a slow day with my boss at the Post out of town, all kinds of stuff went down. First, my editor assigned my a story in Oklahoma, due end of day Thursday. So I'm flying out very, very first thing tomorrow (actually, at this point, today).

And while I was making reservations, the phone rang, and who would it be but the Texas Observer — with a job offer to boot. So it's official, starting next week, I have three jobs, one of them getting paid to blog. Weird. As Kriston said earlier, "Welcome to the life."

All this sandwiched between the two sides of the family's Christmas shenanigans. To Tulsa!

Intel dump

This is going to sound pretty dumb, but the last few times I've sat down to write something, I can't stop worrying about the fact that I've never actually told y'all what I'm doing with my life these days. Feel free to skip this, but I need to purge all this what's-going-on information. I think the best way to keep this from being too epic will be to go all Seemay-style and do it in outline form.

I. Career

1. Part-time

A. The Washington Post

i. News aide — it's my job to make sure my boss, the bureau chief, has everything she needs to do her job

ii. Tasks: research; some interviews; ordering office supplies; scrounging through newspapers for stories that my boss might want to cover or need to track

iii. My little in: each week I write a 200-word story on something light and off-beat from our coverage area for the Sunday paper's Coast to Coast section

iv. Coverage area: Texas, New Mexico, OU Sucks, Arkansas, and very, very occasionally parts of Louisiana not named New Orleans

v. Perks: Every so often I can sneak longer feature stories and/or photos into the inside pages of the paper

vi. Drawbacks: None, except I wish it were full time

B. PK Grocery

i. Sandwich Boy — Louis from Visitors is in charge of catering at this upscale neighborhood grocery store/deli in South Austin (near SoCo, etc.), and I help him out three nights a week

ii. Duties: roast tomatoes, roast mushrooms, overcome my gut-wrenching aversion to mayo in order to make dressings, slice a bunch of shit

iii. Perks: learning to cook something besides just breakfast tacos and pasta with mushroom-cream sauce; Louis is my boss; free kick-ass sandwich with every shift

iv. Draw-backs: low pay, limited hours, having to go straight to this job from the Post two nights a week

C. Seeking: The Texas Observer

i. Blogger — on Texas politics

ii. Status: Interviewed two weeks ago, submitted my sample blog post to them last week, hoping to hear back soon

2. On the side

A. Photography

i. Weddings, you can never escape weddings

ii. Hoping to get more editorial work with Daemmrich Photography, which hired me for one shoot on election day and liked my work

iii. Very rare licensing opportunities — and someday I will have a print sale

3. Fresh resume fodder (less than one year removed)

A. NCS Pearson, where I copyedited the TAKS test and felt morally culpable for the pandemic of boredom desending upon today's youths

B. Enspire Learning, where I copyedited textbooks, but this time on the computer — all the boredom with double the eye strain

Disclaimer: I would be a total jerk if I didn't mention that my actual employers were nothing but great to me and both companies are great places to work

II. Social life

1. Relationship: still going strong; living together in semi-filthy apartment near campus; two-year anniversary in Feb.

2. Friends: many in Austin, with even more coming to visit seemingly every month

A. Hancock Bowlerz, me, Danny, Benavides, and Paul: in 3rd heading into playoffs

B. Hancock Ballerz: don't play often enough

C. Fantasy basketball: The San Antonio Breakfast Tacos have been devestated by injuries (Peja, Jameer Nelson, Kevin Martin) and suspensions (J.R. Smith) but will bounce back

3. Family: relieved that I haven't left Texas yet

4. Cats: kick ass

III. Art

1. Photography

A. Currently: shooting, always shooting, continuously, every day, probably too much — and yet, I've somehow managed to not be able to find time to shoot for the blog Austinist anymore

B. Accomplishments: Had something resembling a first exhibition when I put some work up for the East Austin Studio Tour

C. Projects: Always want to do more with my website; wish I had more focus to what I shot; need to shoot more for myself, with patience, and less with the "on-assignment, gun away" mindset

D. Frustrations: Digital workflow is backed up like a left guard's toilet; still feel like I'm missing something about RAW; wondering if photography on the web will always value color saturation above everything else; perfectionism in editing leads to way too much time at the computer; impulse to chronicle every memorable moment probably just counterproductive; the work that pays usually sucks

2. Writing

A. Currently: jack squat

3. Reading

A. Non-fiction

i. The New Yorker is the only publication I read regularly

ii. Just finished George Packer's The Assassins' Gate, simply an incredible book about the Iraq war and worth reading every bit as much today as the day it came out

iii. Concentrated photography studies on the pioneers of modernism, masters of black and white, specifically Dre and the Two Eds (Kertesz, Weston, and Steichen)

iv. Up next: Mencken's account of the Scopes Monkey Trial and then the search for a comprehensive book on W. Eugene Smith

B. Fiction

i. Just finished Willa Cather's My Antonia!, a beautiful book about memory

ii. Failed again to finish The Brothers Karamazov; made it half way this time

4. Music and Movies — I can't remeber the last time I saw a movie that I wanted to own on DVD or heard a band that I had go see live, buy a T-shirt, and recommend to everyone I knew

5. TV — I desperately need to download season four of The Wire (stupid Grande charges too much for digital cable)

IV. Fun and Adventure

1. Travel

A. Washington D.C. (for Post training)

B. Europe (for foreign-culture training)

C. San Francisco (for the-good-life training)

Wow, okay, I think that's about it. It better be.

The federal government: It's faaaaan-tastic!

bob inman 2, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Taking a break from weddings real quick, I do pursue this other career that actually delivers paychecks on a regular basis. Last Tuesday I finally got an article in the Post that was more than three paragraphs. Had to slide in the side door of the paper, onto the Federal Page, which is devoted entirely to the drama and intrigue of our beloved bureaucracy.

The subject: Whatever happened to Admiral Bobby Inman. You'll have to click through for all the exciting details, including my riveting photo credit.

I feel ya, dude

men of greatness cropped, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Wow, what a weekend. The East Austin Studio Tour was a smash success, and I got a Wii. I'm exhausted. Thanksgiving can't get here soon enough.

Hi! I'm "Wal-Mart Distribution Center." You might remember me from such blogs as...

walmart distribution center, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

It's been new-job madness down here in Austin. Quit my old copy editing job at Enspire. Started working with Louis at the grocery store and deli where he's a night manager. Shot a wedding in S.A. Overhauled my portfolio. Picked up freelance work with a studio in town. Fantasy basketball season just started. Have been meeting with financial planners for the first time in my life. Am in the process of applying for a job blogging with the Texas Observer. And the first East Austin Studio Tour for Lion, Tiger, Bear is this weekend.

Poor Austinist probably thinks I've gone native and thrown myself full fledge into print journalism or stock photography, it's been so long since I posted there. That's what you get when you got an all-volunteer staff.

Anyways, the above image still leads off my portfolio. You can see the rest of the updated, slim-downed showcase here. For the first time, I must say, this collection has a little something going for it, a little cohesiveness, instead of the slapdash feel of old.

Checking in

Quick update: sorry for the disappearance. I went to San Fran for a mini vacation last week. Touched down yesterday with a wicked head cold. Have been couped up under covers all day today. Will return soon. The Left Coast is a helluva place.