Texas DPS roadblock on Highway 16 just northeast of the Possum Kingdom fire on August 31, 2011. Photo by Fort Worth photographer Robert Hart.

My client The Dallas Morning News, hired me to shoot an early morning assignment in Weatherford, Texas. It put me about halfway to Possum Kingdom Lake where this brush fire has been raging out of control for the past two days. I made the trip on my own to see if I could get access to the burned areas. Unfortunately, I arrived after the Texas Forest Service’s press tour, so I was stuck trying to make the best photos possible from four miles away.

I’ve been fishing and canoeing the Morris Sheppard tailrace for 25 years and it’s one of the most beautiful stretches of the Brazos River.

It was painful to watch.

The wind really began to howl around noon and the smoke plume from the main fire quadrupled in size. It appeared that, at least today, the firefighters were losing the battle. According to the Texas Forest Service, 6,200 acres and 30 homes have burned in this fire. They’re saying another 400 homes are threatened.

These and other images by Fort Worth photographer, Robert Hart The Robert Hart Studio are available in my searchable online archive:

Advertising Age writer, Simon Dumenco, aka: The Media Guy, bitch-slapped AOL’s The Huffington Post for stealing data from his story, then providing a “disingenuous link” to his June post titled, “Poor Steve Jobs Had to Go Head to Head With Weinergate . . .”

It seems The Huffington Post picked the story up, cherrypicked the best data and wrapped it up with a flaccid, “See more stats from Ad Age here” link.

THP has thrived by “aggregating” and “curating” content from real publications with real reporters, real editors and real overhead. The New York Times‘ Bill Keller calls it piracy. Here in Fort Worth, we have another word for “aggregating” and “curating.” It’s called rustling and Arianna has assembled an impressive herd since launching THP a few years ago.

When accused of piracy/theft/plagiarism/rustling, etc., Huffington’s defense is that THP’s link drives traffic to the offended sites. It’s this point that Dumenco disputes and disproves with Google Analytics numbers.

The numbers, unlike Huffington, don’t lie.

Read the entire Dumenco story to see The Huffington Post‘s apology for getting caught.

I added three new clients this month: TexasTribune.org, The New York Times and Texas Highways magazine. I’m proud of my new association with all three. I worked quite a bit for The New York Times years ago when I was director of photography at The Times-Picayune.

I had the opportunity to work with TexasTribune.org reporter, Kate Galbraith (@KateGalbraith), out in Midland on the 18th. Her story on Midland’s water shortage and my photo of a high-and-dry pump station at Lake J.B. Thomas were the lede on the front of the Thursday, April 22, 2011, NYT web site:
Thursday April 22, 2011 The New York Times web site.

The current issue (May 2011) of Texas Higways magazine features 11 images on 10 pages that I shot for Kitty Crider’s feature article, “Fort Worth With Kids.”

Griffis Smith, Texas Highways director of photography called the opening photo, “the best photo we’ve published in the magazine this year.” I had to remind Griff that it was still pretty early in the year.
May 2011 issue of Texas Highways magazine.

I can testify that west Texas is currently DRY! I was in Fort Davis and Terlingua three weeks ago when the range fires broke out there. I was helping longtime friend and mentor, Greg Smith, host a gathering of photographers in Terlingua that included my CBS client, John Filo, and couldn’t leave to cover the Fort Davis fire.

The Midland trip for TexasTribune.org required a 20-hour day and an 816-mile drive to shoot at four different locations around Ballinger, Big Spring and Midland. One of our locations was inaccessible due to range fires and while smoke was evident on the constant 40-mph., south crosswind, I never saw flames.

As Kate’s story points out, Midland (and much of west Texas) is in dire straits. Lake J.B. Thomas is at less than three percent capacity.

Our story and photo also made page A21 of the Friday, April 23, 2011 print edition of the NYT–at least in the Texas editions.

These and other images from The Robert Hart Studio are available in my searchable online archive:

It’s not every day that you’re in the studio working with one of your long-time friends and favorite models when 360 West magazine art director, Meda Kessler, emails and writes, “Hey, shoot me a photo of Hendrick’s Gin for our upcoming issue. Shoot whatever you like.” Knowing that I keep a bottle of Hendrick’s in the studio at all times, she assumed, correctly, that I’d be eager to come up with something for the June issue.

If you haven’t tried Hendrick’s, you owe it to yourself to get thee to a spirits store post-haste. A long-time fan of Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire, I have now relegated them to mixer status. The art of the martini is a delicate one and for my money, Hendrick’s is the only gin worthy of my shaker.

Now one of the many great things about working with Meda is that she’s all about collaboration. She wants the photographer to bring his or her vision to everything she assigns. It’s why top photographers all over north Texas are clamoring to shoot for her and it’s why her magazine, now in its 14th issue, is so gorgeous to look at. Meda is one of those rare art directors who hires the best then leaves them alone to do what they do.

She does not feel the need to change or tweak or put her mark on a photographer’s work. Those art directors are the bane of any creative shooter’s existence. They are insufferable. There’s a special ring in hell reserved just for them.

So, with model Liz Ashley in the studio in a new Zac Posen tuxedo, we conspired to create the photo you see here. Liz and I had been talking about the tux shoot for more than a year and the Hendrick’s shoot just fell neatly into place.

Every once in a great while the planets align and stuff just seems to work.

This and other images from The Robert Hart Studio are available in my searchable online archive:

One of my students emailed me a link to a slideshow featuring Time magazine’s top 10 list of doctored photos. Conspicuous in its absence is Time‘s famous distortion of the OJ Simpson image on its June 27, 1994 cover.

Upon publication Time was criticized by minority groups for altering the photograph to make Simpson appear more “sinister.” Newsweek‘s cover photo ran unaltered, making Time‘s treatment all the more blatant. The uproar was so intense that Time immediately pulled the first cover and published a second, more accurate photo.

Time also neglected to include the infamous moving pyramid image in the slideshow, published by National Geographic magazine on its February 1982 cover.

Time, however, had no problem including the covers of TV Guide and Newsweek in the slideshow for similar, yet less egregious, transgressions. I think Time is selling itself short because the OJ cover is certainly in my, and most photojournalists’, top five.

In this video interview at Livebooks.com, photographer/author/lighting shaman, Joe McNally, talks about the role of his blog and the difference it makes in attracting new clients. Great information here for photographers from an outstanding photojournalist/teacher. Check out Joe’s blog.

Tim Oren, managing director and co-founder of the Pacifica Fund, shared his thoughts on the future of reporting via his blog, Tim Oren’s Due Diligence: Letters From an Inhabited Dataspace.

As Yahoo and AOL morph into media companies that employ both reporters and editors, Oren makes some interesting points on the opportunities and the pitfalls of picking up where MSM is leaving off.

50 years ago this week, Miles Davis’ landmark album Kind of Blue was released. Fred Kaplan at Slate has written an excellent piece on the significance of Davis’ seminal work.

In 1959 I was a mere four years old and it would be 15 more years before I’d hear the recording for the first time, while working nights as a photographer for the Arlington Citizen-Journal. Those were late nights that involved shooting countless handshake and check-presentation photos with the occasional Texas Rangers game thrown in. It was the Rangers games and the lure of a lifestyle assignment from one of the greats of local journalism, Margaret Galloway, that kept me coming to work. Those handshake photos that the publisher and his brother, the editor, craved were mind-numbing. Suffice to say that anyone who worked for a small daily still has recurring nightmares about the “grip-and-grin” assignment.

But once the evening’s shooting was done I could wrap myself in the cool black womb of the darkroom and make prints. It was there that I heard Kind of Blue for the first time. Local PBS station, KERA, had a late-night jazz program called “Flight Time” and it was all classic jazz and little talk. Jean Fugett, the dj and a Dallas Cowboys tight end, had an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz and a velvet-smooth voice and delivery that oozed cool. Fugett, an Amherst grad, went on to become a hugely successful attorney and head of TLC Beatrice International Foods. I started my jazz education under his tutelage.

I still recall the moment I heard All Blues for the first time. I stopped printing and stood motionless for the entire 11:33-minute track. I haven’t had a religious experience, but if I ever do, it’s gonna be a close second to that first listen. I was at the local Peaches Records store the next morning to buy the album and the cassette tape.

In the ensuing 34 years, I’ve worn out countless versions: vinyl, cassette, CD and each day, seven days a week, here in the studio, I queue it up in the late afternoon as a segue to cocktail hour. But I enjoy it most when it’s late night and I’m here working on images in the wee hours. The ambulances and cop cars that race up and down Lancaster Avenue are mostly still and it’s just me and Miles.

Here in Texas it’s called, “Calling Bullshit,” and that’s what Malcolm Gladwell does so eloquently in his review in The New Yorker of Chris Anderson’s latest book, “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” (Hyperion; $26.99).

Thank you, Malcolm, for stepping up. I’ll spare you my thoughts on Anderson’s premise, because Gladwell does such a brilliant job of shooting it full of holes.

However, I have emailed Chris Anderson and requested my free copy of “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” because I’m dying to see if this model works for Chris.

I’ll let everyone know when my copy arrives.

Or, I am for the time-being.

The high-sheriffs at his publisher may yet consign me to the composing room floor (do they still have composing rooms?). I received a release yesterday from David, which I signed, granting his publisher permission to use my words.

I think I’m one of a gazillion others included in the book but it’s compliment to have been invited.