Another shot from post-Hurricane Rita. I think I prefer this one.

My brother Ryan on top of our mom’s house in Orange during cleanup after Hurricane Rita. We were up there surveying our efforts.

I’m pretty sure this was shot in Dallas. I can’t remember why Stacy and I were downtown, but I know I was walking around alone with my new (at that time) Pentacon Six TL. Gotta’ love that f2.8 Zeiss Jena lens.

From Spring of 2004. One of the reject images from my Mouse series. Highlights were blown out.

Annnnnnnd… the wide shot.

I hope you’re not bored with these. I am. It’s only a photoblog.

I used to drive past this water tower to go home every day my senior year. At night sometimes, the intramural field lights would be on right next to it, so it would be lit on one side. Everything around it was still pitch black, so it would stand out quite nicely. I was obsessed with shooting it; not in that I took many pictures of it. I just planned to, and didn’t for the longest time. Partly because I was always on my way somewhere, or because I didn’t have a camera on me. Really just excuses. So I finally had the time and took the ol’ Pentacon Six TL out with my tripod.

I consider it now more of a study, but for some reason back then, I thought I was just going to have something really nice.

You may note that the name of my school used to be Southwest Texas State University, or SWT. My senior year it was actually changed to Texas State University – San Marcos, but they didn’t repaint the water tower until after I graduated. This is why the title will still refer to it at the SWT Water Tower. Oh, I know how much you care.

This was the other entry that was lost. I don’t remember what I said here either. See yesterday’s post for an explanation.

So my host had a hard drive failure and reinstated a copy of the previous day’s site, losing two entries from this site. I know some of you commented on this entry, but feel free to re-enter it. I won’t go on here again about what I did before, because I don’t remember what I said. But for the record, these are from the archives, Spring 2004. My Pentacon Six TL had messed up on this frame, which is why it’s cropped.

After Hurricane Rita

It was pretty wild to see these massive transmission line towers crumpled up like coke cans across the water. This was by far the worst one, but most of them were just bent over about halfway up.

Sorry about the general crappiness of the photos here lately. As you can probably tell, I wasn’t really trying to make art when I went home last. I’m glad I took the cameras, but I won’t be exhibiting these photos anywhere.

After Hurricane Rita

I had no idea this Jack in the Box sign was so massive. Of course, it was clear that the pole was big enough to crush a Jeep, but the sign itself was unreal. I actually saw a photo of this image online before I headed to Southeast Texas, and I intended on taking this shot from that moment.

After Hurricane Rita

Another image of Orange post-Rita. This one was taken in my mother’s bedroom. The eerie thing was that their house was completely the same inside, with the mere exception of no air conditioning and a lack of all basic utilities. You could walk throughout the house and only by passing a window would you be reminded of the destruction that remained outside.

The print of this image shows more detail in the shadow areas than my monitor allows, but you might experience different results. The information is certainly in the negative.

After Hurricane Rita

I shot a good number of images with my Digital Rebel, but really only prefer those shot on film for display here and on my “professional” site.

This is my mom’s backyard after my brother and I did some major cleaning. I’ll give the credit to Ryan, though… he worked for 2 days before I even began helping on the third and final (for me) day. I used a chainsaw for the first time and we chopped up 2 of the roughly 7 or so giant trees in the yard and on the house. The most impressive thing (to me) about this shot is that you can actually see grass. That’s a lot of raking, friends.

In other news, my last day as a photographer for the Texas House of Representatives was Friday, September 30. So I’m looking for work, preferably as a photographer (or related) or even as a web designer. It’s not my first choice, but I have experience and need a paycheck. And it’s a heck of a lot better than working at Old Navy. I hope to have photos from my work at the House online before long, but it’ll take some time. I believe I’ll be able to post them through an open-records request. Obviously I wouldn’t be able to reproduce or sell them. Sorry for the long text.

This is at my mom’s house before Hurricane Rita.