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:

Here’s an excellent story from Rob Haggart’s APhotoEditor.com blog by photographer Bill Cramer on how he and Fast Company photo editor Lisa Parisi negotiated changes in the magazine’s contract that worked for both parties.

There’s also a brief interview with the magazine’s photo director, Leslie Dela Vega.

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:

Location light wizards and photographers extraordinaire, Joe McNally and David Hobby, will roll into town aboard the Flash Bus for a one-day workshop at Dallas’ Hilton Anatole. Make plans to hop aboard the Flash Bus during the Dallas stop on March 24th.

I was a McNally student at the Santa Fe Photography Workshop in the summer of ’09 and I gotta tell you, Joe’s one of the finest instructors I’ve ever worked with. He does a total brain dump and literally makes everything he knows available to his students. He is a joy to learn from. I’ve been to some horrible workshops and seminars where “instructors” talk incessantly about themselves and do no teaching.

Joe and David are the real deal, real teachers dispensing useful, relevant instruction.

Six inches of fresh snow atop a three-inch bed of solid ice put a chill on Friday’s Superbowl XLV crowds in Sundance Square where ESPN is headquartered. The sun played hide-and-seek for a couple of hours before emerging in the early afternoon to begin the thaw.

In mid-October, on assignment for The Dallas Morning News, I shot photos of Irving, Texas residents whose yards were plowed up by a band of marauding wild hogs. In hopes of getting a photo of one of the hogs, I left my contact info with Fred La Vail, whose yard was among those destroyed–in Fred’s case, several times.

Three days later Fred called saying one of the hogs had been trapped a few blocks from his house. I contacted my editor at the DMN to let him know I was enroute. The Dallas Morning News was able to do a followup story and I was able to make my editor/client happy.

Recently The Wall Street Journal published a story on the Texas wild hog problem and featured Fred La Vail and his wife, Sharie, in the video.

According to “The Wall Street Journal” story, the hogs are tearing up lawns in Arlington and Southlake as well.

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

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.

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.

Robert Capa’s, “Falling Soldier” / Magnum Photos

The authenticity of Capa’s famous photo, “Falling Soldier,” has long been debated. The first to question the veracity of the image was Philip Knightly in his book The First Casualty, 34 years ago.

According to barcelonareporter.com a university lecturer, José Manuel Susperregui, who teaches communications studies at the University of the Basque Country, Capa’s photos could not have been shot at the Cerro Muriano front, as Capa claimed.

By identifying the mountain range in Capa’s photos, Susperregui was able to determine the location of the photo as near Espejo, some 25 miles away from Cerro Muriano. It’s a compelling argument and the recent images of the countryside near Espejo are strong evidence.