Riding Obama's coattails

barack the cowboy, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Deadspin picked up my photo of Obama at last year's Austin rally. No credit or links, though. I guess there goes my chance at a career-changing Black Swan event.

UPDATE: Will Leitch, the editor, just wrote me back to say he's adding some links. Thanks to Deadspin for that.

Here are some details on the photo:

The shot was taken at a rally in Austin, TX, on Feb. 23, 2007. Between 15-20,000 people gathered at a concert venue and waited through drizzly weather to hear Obama speak. The hat was handed to Obama during a small meet-and-greet for campaign volunteers after the event. You can actually see me waaaay in the background of this AP photo, in the upper left-hand corner, standing by the fence, wielding a telephoto.

This photo first appeared on the Texas Observer Blog and was quickly picked up by at least the following outlets:

Texans for Obama

NewWest.net

A Daily Kos comment thread, where it was cited as evidence that "the media" likes Obama.

Dimmy Karras

BobGeiger.com

Brains and Eggs

The People's Republic of Seabrook

Dabroots of the Cosmos

It was also forwarded to my boss at the Washington Post by coincidence, so it apparently made the rounds.

Marketing at its finest: "I f$&*!^ing love printing!"

This cracks me up. Via A Photo Editor.

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.

Wrapping up my Jason coverage...

jason at joan grona gallery, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Pictures from the show are up in a set on Flickr now. More photos from our going-away party will be added there later, likely friends-only in case any of Jason's future students go Googling for his email or something and end up on my photos.

As for the above photo, it was a total accident, since I fired the shutter before I had finished adjusting the controls. The effect was an overexposed bounce flash of the wall next to me coupled with a long shutter speed allowing the ambient light to blur in the background. Jason was standing outside of the glow of the light, almost entirely in shadow, which is why the crispness and exposure were preserved. I love the result, that he seems to be floating outside the backdrop. Photography so often is the art of happy accidents.

"The poop must flow."

Storm, originally uploaded by chuckdog.

This weekend we had to send my old friend Jason Willome off on his Hawaii professor adventure. That's right, I'm friends with a guy who has a professor's house in Hawaii with an extra room just for friends to crash. Doesn't get much better than that. Photos of Jason double-fisting hardy mainland ales at his going-away party are forthcoming.

For now, though, I had to pass on this picture from new Flickr friend Chuck City, who I virtually met by virtue of meeting in person his very cool chick, Heather G.

Chuck is stationed in Afghanistan right now, where he — no joke — shuts down Afghani Burger Kings that get their food "from a doo doo meat factory." Anyways, I got back from San Antonio to find that Chuck had commented (from way out in the geopolitical boonies) on a few of my photos, noting one in particular that he thought had an outstanding caption, all of which prompted me to look through his stream and find the picture above.

The caption: "Shit trucks aint scared of no storm. The poop must flow."

Now that is an awesome photo and caption. I could see "The poop must flow" becoming sort of a mantra for life.

Ah, Photoshop

ah, photoshop, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

It only took five months and a prodding email, but I finally touched up a couple shots Adrian and Karri asked me to make suitable for printing. It's always slightly amazing to look at the before/after of an image, so I thought I'd stick this one up. Crazy thing is, I'm not very good with this software compared to most folks who are popular on Flickr, to say nothing of the people who make a living with it.

In which I rediscover the joy of working in black and white

And, for kicks:



There's a narrative quality to B&W that I'd gotten away from.

How could I forget Dolly?

Man, talk about forgotten photos. I recently found some band group shots I took almost a year ago(!) but pretty much forgot about after delivered the images. I found some good stuff in the folder, so I sorted out my favorites for editing ... only to find out the next day that the band had already broken up. Whoops.

I put up a handful of pictures up anyways, just 'cause I thought the stood on their own as interesting pictures. I particularly like this top-down take on Dolly (the band was called The Dolly Partners). Not sure which one I prefer.

Ai yai yai yai!

just awesome, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Weddings present a number of challenges, but the most unexpected for me comes during post-processing and image presentation. The most important task in terms of making your client happy and yourself look good is to simply weed through the hundreds, if not thousands, of frames and put your best shots forward.

The editing ranks as a secondary concern for two reasons: 1) even though it will bug a photographer to no end, most people won't notice if the shot lacks an absolute black and an absolute white with a smooth tonal range in between; and 2) there's really an upper bound on how great any wedding photo can be, especially from an artistic standpoint, which means realizing your particular vision for an image may take it from pretty good to good -- not from good to great, as you'd like.

That hasn't kept me from spending a rather inordinate amount of time on wedding photos these past few weeks, but I can pin that blame on my own perfectionism and sentimentality. When working for a relative stranger, part of the reason I come so cheap is that I make the client play the part of photo editor. They choose the 35-50 shots they like most and I'll give them a quick once over and forget about all the other frames. But when I'm shooting for friends, the workload quickly mushrooms into the hundreds since I'm a sap. My attachment to the people in the pictures influences my decision more than the pictures themselves. That leads me to like a lot more frames -- e.g., "Oh, man, this picture perfectly captures so-and-so's expression" -- as my shutterbug roots run roughshod over my efforts to act like a pro.

Technology, of course, only complicates things. For instance, I'm always torn over whether to put the images on Flickr, because I like to delude myself into thinking that prospective clients or employers might look at my photostream. Do I really want to slap up 200 technically shoddy wedding shots? How to weigh the value of my photostream against public (a few friends) clamoring to conveniently view the photos? C'mon, man, get over yourself. You've got public pictures of you drunk off your gourd; this isn't exactly genius grant application you're putting together... And so on.

As always the advance of technology, to which I owe my psuedo-career behind the lens, is also responsible for the traps I fall in without fail. In the same way that digital photography drastically reduced the price-per-frame -- lowering the bar for entry into the industry far enough to let me in as part of the Flickring masses -- it means I value each frame less, meaning I shoot with more abandon and end up with more fair to middling images. And because each image takes less time to "perfect," it's easier to say "Forget it, I'll do 'em all," and hurry through the edits. If I had to print these by hand, or just pay for the prints, or scan the images first, you can bet I'd be more selective. But I don't have to be, so in the end, I probably spend more time editing the glut, and the resulting large set is inferior to the more condensed alternative. It's visual verbiage.

I know this. Rationally, I get it. Yet I still can't break myself of the compulsion.

Anyways, speaking of verbiage, this whole deal was intended to say that I'll be using the blog to single out the 8-10 worthwhile shots, such as the one above, before they are lost to the depths of my photostream.

(And if you happen to be a client or employer reading this, please start with my Portfolio set before going through my spring break shots. Thanks.)

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?

Craddick escapes

craddick escapes, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

I've been doing a little shooting for the Texas Observer as part of my blogging duties. Last night I finally got a picture that I think stands out from the usual head-and-shoulders stuff common in covering politics.

Aesthetically, this picture may not be out of the ordinary, but, situationally, it came through in the clutch and captures succinctly the end of the drama in the Texas House last night.. It would take hours to explain what happened, but some specifics are in the blog post where the photo appears.

The topper is that I know I'm the only one who got this shot, since I was the lone photographer camped in this corner anticipating this moment. Luckily, one of my coworkers, Patrick Michels, who's a much better shooter than I am, was covering the general action on the floor, which freed me up to lie in wait.

New lens

danka 1, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

To commemorate passing the 60,000 frame mark on my 20d, I present to you shot #60,001. No joke, I've clicked the shutter on my camera 60,000 times in less than three years. Hard to believe.

I also bought myself a new lens (not as a tribute, just by coincidence). It's a 35mm, f/2. Much sturdier than the other low-light lens I'd been using, much better glass, too. Too bad the auto-focus gears whir louder than any lens I've ever had.

Anyways, the point of getting this lens is to mimic Henri Cartier-Bresson. Yes, I'm fully aware that I introduced a post claiming to imitate effing Cartier-Bresson with a picture of my girlfriend's cat. The point is, HCB used a 50mm, f/1.0 super-luminous Leica lens for nearly all of his portraits, and quite possibly, for most of his amazing body of work. It seems to be an ideal lens for creating a noticeable depth of field (hard to do with wide-angle lenses) while still be versatile enough to capture a larger scene with many complementary compositional elements. It's a great lens for just shooting, in the amatuer sense, free from the professional constraints of "getting the shot." There's a certain immediacy to a 50 that's hard to come by anywhere else.

I learned to shoot in high school on an old 50mm, f/1.4, where I found all this out for myself. So one of my first purchases for the 20d was a super-cheap 50mm. But thanks to the "digital zoom" effect, my 50mm performs like a 70-75mm. That's too much zoom.

I made do for a while, but finally had to get the 35. It behaves like a 50, and at f/2, it's not too bad in low light or portraits, like this one that Danka so graciously sat for right after I pulled the lens out of the box. Next stop: international acclaim.

Hey, check it out, I use collections now

faces of dean, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Find 'em here.

Gunner? I hardly know her.

My god. He just burned through what would have been something like 10 rolls of film. Those pulses at the end are due to the camera's internal memory filling up as it dumps images to the card, and even that's happening at an amazing rate. Apparently Canon set out to build the equivalent to one of those stereo systems that threatens to explode right out of a hooptie's trunk. Lord knows there's no practical purpose, but everyone wants one.

Via Strobist.

I couldn't say it any better

so awesome, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Way back in April I went to Dallas with Amanda for her grandmother's birthday bash. I recently came across the photos, which I'd never looked through, and was amazed at how many good shots were in there. Not just good family snapshots, but there was a bunch of artsy stuff, too. The set is interesting because it shows how lasting photos can be interspersed in the middle of taking family keepsakes. Or, to say it another way, how art can spring out of seemingly nowhere.

And nothing, in my mind, is more artistic than this giant birthday card made by Amanda's cousin, who has Down's Syndrome. Sweetest kid in the world, and, in the right hands, his handiwork could be the next great internet meme. For now, it stands in for me: Merry Christmas — I love y'all more than John Wayne.

The ol' ball and chain

The more I inch toward professional photography, the more inescapable weddings seem to be. The pay is pretty all right, but the work is absolutely exhausting. I really can think of few things that are as physically and mentally draining as shooting a wedding for eight or more hours — maybe planning a wedding. And if you edit the photos for the couple, which I always get suckered into, the pay steps down to "not bad, but maybe not worth the effort."

I guess it's equivalent to being a grocery-basket pusher at HEB: it's okay as a first job, but you get out of there as fast as you can.

In spite of all that whining, every wedding yields at least a few great shots, about which a photog should never utter a discouraging word.

POSTSCRIPT: Latest solo wedding was Jon Dobertin's, for those of you who remember that guy from San Antonio. I also helped Wylie with one last weekend.

The art is to be seen, not remembered!

moma from above, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Pictures from my day at the San Francisco MOMA are now up. These scrooges don't allow photography anywhere except in the atrium, even going so far as to make me check my 20d. They also station staff in literally every room to make sure you're not taking pictures or using your cell phone. Actually, I'm okay with the cell phone policy. But still, you'll notice that I saw a massive exhibit on Anselm Kiefer and have nothing to show for it, save a few fading memories. What a load of bull.

Anyways, at least the Optio came through in the clutch when I could get some shots off.

Tiii-iiime is on my side

apprehension, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Amanda volunteered recently to help out with a thing called Deaf Act. It's a theater program for deaf kids around middle school age, maybe a bit younger. Tonight they debuted "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" at the Texas Union theater. The folks in charge of the production had asked for as many volunteer photogs as they could get. They got at least four of us tonight. I think that's almost as many as were at Barack Obama last weekend.

Earlier in the day, when Amanda asked me to shoot, I immediately went through the excuse rolodex, with an early season Spurs-Cavs immediately jumping to mind. But I went of course and, wouldn't you know it, ended up getting some great stuff. The picture above, though, gets at something I wish I could consistently capture: a sense of timelessness. Reid was the first to apply that term to one of my photos, and I think it pins down the special capacity of photography to record something that is simultaneously universal and not generic. Like a good essay, now that I think about it.

Wedding drudgery

dance floor balance, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

My God, I forgot what a chore editing wedding photos can be. Looking ahead to several weddings I have to shoot in the coming months, I went back to the last one I did, which I'd never finished editing and assessed what I did right and wrong. I'm bad about liking too many photos when I shoot a ton like this, and that was the case here, where what started as a two-hour project took more like five. But at least I have an example of what I can do when I really shoot the hell out of a wedding.

Ah, whew, by the end of it I didn't know whether to laugh



cry



dance



cry some more



take a shot



get carried off by a horde of women



or hide under the covers.



Whatever, it's done. High five.