It’s time to saddle-up and head west again. Marfa is holding its third annual film festival May 5-9 and I’ll be there covering it for clients old and new.

Elizabeth Redwine, of Redwine Campaigne, the agency handling publicity for the festival, told me this morning that Lou Reed’s film Red Shirley is featured at the festival and it marks Reed’s directorial debut. Diane Bell, director and writer of Obseldia and many more films, will be on hand as well. The whole festival lineup lists an impressive menu of films and filmmakers. Of course, the best thing about any gathering in Marfa is the opportunity to meet other artists, and the film festival will pack them in.

It’s also an excuse to slide down to Terlingua and sip fine whisky with Blair and hop over to Valentine to check in on Boyd. Although I expect Boyd will turn up at the festival his ownself. In fact, I expect the two of them will make an appearance.

Hey, it only cost a dollar.

Here’s an excellent example of why microstock really lowers the value of your marketing message. Because it isn’t YOUR message. It’s a generic sea of white faces that anyone with a dollar can purchase and brand as their own.

Next time a client says, “But I can get that at microstock for a dollar,” send them to this link.

Thanks to Chris Barton at Fair Trade Photographer for this revealing peek at how microstock sausage gets made.

My first-ever hard drive failure occurred five weeks ago. It came after more than 15 years of digital photography and, like death and taxes, I suppose it was inevitable. Unfortunately, the manner in which it failed meant that it cost me images from a week-long West Texas excursion that I can’t recover. I can re-visit and I can re-shoot but I won’t recover THOSE images.

So, $1,200 and five weeks and multiple missed-deadlines and lost-sales later, I’m left with a harsh lesson: Stuff breaks. More specifically, “Brand new, out-of-the-box G-Tech stuff breaks.”

Did I backup, you ask? Well, no, because I didn’t get the chance to backup. Like most traveling photographers, I carry a compact hard drive that I use to dump images until I’m back in the office and can transfer them to my studio RAID. I’ve used that drive for 18 months with no issues and, in fact, that drive performed perfectly. It was the brand-spanking-new 500 GB G-Tech drive that I transferred those images to that failed.

The back story: On returning from West Texas I purchased the new 500 GB drive because I wanted more traveling capacity and so I could give the 250 GB drive to my son who was returning to college at the end of the week. I transferred the images, 49 gigabytes, to the new drive, cleaned the 250 and handed it to my son.

When I arrived at the studio the next morning and attempted to transfer the images to the RAID, the transfer would time out and ultimately fail. I tried for several hours, ran disk warrior and cursed G-Tech before taking the drive to my local genius bar for a complete diagnostic. They hooked me up with a local data recovery company and a mere $400 and three weeks later, I had 49 gigs of mostly-corrupt, mostly-unusable images from out west.

Yesterday I returned the drive and exchanged it for a 500 GB LaCie. My G-Tech days are done. I’ve ceased cursing the name of the G-Tech CEO, whomever she or he might be. I’ve ceased kicking myself for not testing the new drive first and I’m now at peace with it.

But not really.

This comes, ironically, just three months after I worked as an assistant on a three-day advertising shoot for a colleague. I insisted that we back up everything on two hard drives in the field each day. She didn’t see the need but humored me and I slept soundly after each day’s shooting.

There’s another lesson in here and it has to do with redundancy and flawed processes and accountability. And as a sole-proprietor/owner-operator, I can tell you two things about my boss: He’s a prick and he’s fallible–but he’s infinitely smarter than he was five weeks ago and he’s now backing up on two hard drives in the field.

I made this image in my pasture Thursday, Feb. 11, at 11:30 p.m., while snow was still falling. I was struck by how much ambient light was reflected by the snow. The sky was completely overcast and save for the light above my barn door, off camera right, there was no light source nearby. My neighbor’s porch light is visible in the distance.

It was a 2.5-second exposure at f4, ISO 100.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the mountains of Colorado and Wyoming and I’ve seen big snow, but never in my back pasture. The stillness was overwhelming–no cars on the streets, so it was silent all around. My part of Texas was sleeping under a 12-inch blanket of downy snow.

During my recent working trip to NYC I was, as always, fascinated its denizens. These are random glimpses of New Yorkers being New Yorkers–and they do it better than anyone else.

While working in NYC last month I had the opportunity to photograph Marfa NYC, a restaurant/bar inspired by Marfa, Texas. It’s located at 101 2nd Street, a few yards from 1st Avenue. Jesse and I were enroute to the Sunshine Cinema on Houston to see The Road and didn’t have time to stop. We paused long enough to peek through the window and make a photograph. I noticed the art on the back wall, barely visible in this image, and thought the cow skull painting looked familiar but I couldn’t place it.

Fast forward to January 6, last Wednesday, when I’m roughly 1,800 miles from Marfa NYC parked in front of Prada Marfa. It’s the sculpture installation created by artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset that sits on a lonely stretch of West Texas highway 90 just outside Valentine. It debuted in 2005 and has been baffling unsuspecting tourists for more than four years.

Despite the fact that it’s one of the most photographed curiosities in West Texas, I wanted images for my agency, ZumaPress, in L.A. I arrived at the site shortly after 4 p.m., and began shooting. Thirty minutes later a white Suburban rolled up, turned and backed up to the front door. A guy in a long black duster and black cowboy hat proceeded to pull out a ladder, unlock the door and go inside. I yelled at him from across the road, “I’ve been waiting here for a week, I thought you guys were never gonna open.” He’d probably heard that same lame-assed line a million times before but he chuckled and shouted, “We never open.”

I crossed the road and introduced myself while he fiddled with one of the dead flourescent ballasts in the ceiling. He told me his name was Boyd Elder and said, “I grew up here and I maintain this piece for the artists.” Boyd and I chatted and I asked him what he did for a living, “I’m an artist, I’ve been making art since I was five, he said.”

He was waiting on an electrician to show up to repair the faulty light and it gave us an opportunity to talk and get acquainted over a pair of frosty Shiners from my ice chest. I noticed Boyd was down to the end of a cigar and asked him if he’d like to try one of mine. We shared a couple of Casa Magnas while Boyd talked about his art and growing up in far west Texas. During that conversation we learned that we had a bunch of mutual friends in the area, Bob and Christi Dillard, owners of the Ft. Davis Mountain Dispatch, Roy Hamric, writer, photographer, university professor now in Thailand and Blair Pittman, in Terlingua, author and former National Geographic photographer. I learned that Boyd had worked closely with The Eagles in the 70s and was responsible for a lot of their album cover art. He mentioned a new restaurant/bar in New York’s East Village and that he had paintings hanging in that establishment. “I was there just two weeks ago and I photographed it,” I told him.

It was Boyd’s paintings I’d seen hanging on the back wall of the restaurant. They’re barely visible in the image I’ve posted here. I promised Boyd I’d email him the photo when I got wherever I was going to sleep that night.

The electrician didn’t show and Boyd had work to do, so I told him I’d planned to shoot after dark and I’d call him if the electrician turned up. Two hours later Boyd called me from his ranch house and asked about the electrician. I told him the only person I’d seen was a beautiful costume designer from NYC who’d stopped to photograph the sculpture.

Boyd asked me how I felt about homemade chile rellenos and I asked him for directions. The rellenos (in Shiner beer batter perfected by Miss Rita) were fabulous as was the company, the cigars, the Aberlour 16, the Shiners and the music.

I ended up bunking at Boyd’s and can’t wait to get back. I’m mailing him an 11×14 print of the Marfa NYC image and a handful of cigars.

National Geographic Traveler photographers Eddie Soloway and Michael Melford are teaching a one-day workshop on nature and outdoor photography at the University of Dallas on Nov. 8.

I saw Soloway’s work while attending the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop in July and he’s both a brilliant photographer and excellent lecturer. “Poet with a camera” comes closest to describing Soloway. He sees, he doesn’t merely photograph. His images are both lyrical and intuitive. Most important, from the perspective of a workshop attendee, he’s an excellent teacher.

There are at least 10 bajillion workshops out there these days and the majority of them are a waste of time and money. It’s critical that a workshop leader also be a talented teacher. Far too many “workshops” are day-long, top-down, this-is-why-I’m-brilliant egofests. It’s far cheaper and less frustrating to buy the megalomaniac’s book and pass on his lecture. Better yet, check the book out of the library.

Never, never, never sign up for a workshop without first speaking to someone who’s a former student of the workshop leader. Check references. Friends don’t let friends attend bad workshops.

Soloway is the real deal. Like Joe McNally, this guy can both teach and inspire.

These guys are on tour, so for more information about this workshop and others offered worldwide by the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, check out the Web site.

David’s got an excellent bts (behind the scene) world debut video up at Strobist.com from the making of a Hypernova music video using a Canon 1Ds Mk III and the Profoto Pro-8a Air strobe.

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.

My friend, John Grace, who wears the hell out of a tuxedo, stopped by the studio recently for a head shot. We did plenty of formal-looking portraits but this little “James Bond” moment occurred when John thought I wasn’t looking. It seems the best photos always do!

He straightened his cuff, and paused at just the right instant. It was a simple Profoto 600 monolight in a 36″ softbox, camera right and speedlight with a Honl grid for hairlight. I’m still playing with the speedlights and liking them better all the time.