Art Cars are a unique Houston institution, and I was fortunate during a recent assignment for Texas Co-Op Power to work on a story featuring the Houston Art Car Museum, and a colorful character named “Scrapdaddy.”

Mark “Scrapdaddy” Bradford is the Leonardo da Vinci of the Art Car world.  Not merely content to cover classic cars with hot glue gun affixed collections of things, Bradford actually is a unique combination of artist, welder, and engineer.  His outdoor studio, near the railroad tracks in the Rice Military area, looks like Fred Sanford’s house.  His studio may look like a scrapyard, littered with projects past and present, but recycling old metal is the lifeblood of Bradford’s sculptures.

If you’ve lived in Houston for any period of time, you’ve probably seen Bradford’s creations around town:  Giant 20 foot armor plated Armadillos, lizards made of airline galley spoons, fire breathing creatures with legs that move, and multi-legged creatures torn from the pages of a 1950′s science fiction movie.  His creations, really more moving sculpture than car, not only look fascinating, they have to work.

After photographing several of his creations in the Art Car Museum for the story, I just had to meet him.  Reluctantly, he agreed to a short portrait.  You get the impression he would much rather be welding his next piece together than stopping to pose for pictures with something from his past.

As the annual Art Car Parade rolls around this weekend, there will be around 200,000 people on hand who can’t wait to see what kind of contraption he’s cooked up this year.

"Spoonazoid", made up of over 6000 discarded American Airlines spoons.

A detail of "Spoonazoid."

UH cornerback DJ Hayden, the 12th pick in the NFL draft.

I recently photographed DJ Hayden, a cornerback from the University of Houston, who surprised many by being selected number 12 by the Oakland Raiders in the first round of Thursday night’s 2013 NFL Draft.  Hayden survived a freak injury: a November 2012 collision with a teammate in practice that ruptured his inferior vena cava, which is fatal 95% of the time, and normally only seen in serious car injuries.  Medical personnel rushed him to the hospital and saved his life, but his stock in the draft dropped with the uncertainty about his condition, with many pundits not even picking him in the first round.

I photographed DJ for a story leading up to the draft in Sports Illustrated, and of course we wanted to make a telling picture that spoke to the seriousness of his injury.  Normally, we might have scrubbed the shoot due to the rain and dreary weather, but we decided to press on, as the moody sky sort of went with the tone of the story.  DJ posed shirtless, baring a scar that went completely down the center of his abdomen. ( His last words to doctors before they split him open to repair his torn vein were, “Ok, just don’t mess up my abs…”)

We used two Profoto 7B’s on the UH practice field late in the day.  We decided to use a Plume Wafer 75 with a Lighttools grid from the right side, to just barely light the edge of DJ’s face, with a little bit of spill highlighting the scar on his wrist from the many needles and transfusions he endured during his hospital stay.  We used a regular 7″ reflector with a 3-degree grid with a Cinefoil snoot to highlight the scar on the chest and abdomen.  Andres Quintero, my assistant on the shoot, operated the 3-degree grid by hand to make sure it stayed in the optimum position as we shot.

With the under-exposed gray stormy sky, the result was a dramatic portrait that told the story of what DJ Hayden had been through en route to the 2013 draft.

The March cover of Air & Space, with Col Bud Day on the cover.

I’ve had a keen interest in military aviation since childhood…when other kids were reading Curious George and other children’s books, I was reading military biographies and books about World War II and Vietnam.  I remember one summer day, when I was in about 3rd or 4th grade, while returning books to our local public library, one of the elderly librarians tried to usher me from the “grown up books” to the “kid’s section” on the other side of the building.  One of the other librarians quickly corrected her, “He’s ok, Mabel….he just returned a book titled Guerilla Warfare and Terrorism. ” After that, Mabel left me alone.  (I actually can’t remember what her name was…… Mabel just seems like the perfect name for an old lady librarian).

I thought being a fighter pilot would be cool, I even requested info on the Air Force Academy at one point during junior high or early high school.  20/400 vision, however, and projectile vomiting during a simple Cessna 172 plane ride with a friend conspired to keep me out of the ejection seat.

After photographing the Doolittle Raiders a few years ago, one of my friends from the assignment, Matt Jolley, of Warbird Radio recommended me to some of the nice folks at Wings over Houston, the annual airshow here in the Houston area. I had mentioned to him an idea about a personal project, trying to photograph environmental portraits of notable pilots.  The people with the autograph tent at WoH were nice enough to let me set up in their area and shoot simple, white background portraits of the pilots who were there signing autographs.  I was able to photograph Col. Bud Anderson (a triple ace in the P-51 during WWII), Col. Dick Cole (Doolitle’s co-pilot on the WWII Doolittle Raid on Tokyo), Gen. Boots Blesse (a famous Sabre jet ace from the Korean war) and several others during my weekend there.  I was also lucky enough to meet and photograph former POW and Medal of Honor recipient Col. Bud Day.

The photos were interesting facial studies, but I lamented the limitations of the white background.  I would have loved to have captured each of them with their respective airplanes, but during mid-day sun at a packed airshow, it was just not in the cards.

Several months later, John Simmons, one of my buddies from the WoH event sent me an incredible video of Bud Day, eagerly climbing into the cockpit of an F-100 Super Sabre just like the one he had flown in Vietnam and going up for a flight!  The video was from the Collings Foundation, a non-profit foundation that owns and maintains not just World War II era prop planes, but also several Vietnam era jets, at….get this…..Ellington Field in Houston, Texas.  The F-100, painted just like Bud’s Misty 1 Vietnam bird is one of two in the world in flying condition.

John went to work, getting us permission from Rick Harris of the Collings Foundation to use the airplane.  We made arrangements to photograph Bud, who lives in Florida, during a visit to see his son George, a former F-16 pilot, who now works as a SWA captain in Houston.

A few months later, there we were before sunrise on a warm summer morning in Houston, pulling the F-100 out of the hangar and towing it to the proper spot on the taxiway.  We had scouted a few days before, using the iphone app LightTrac to position the plane.

Bud showed up in his flight suit, with his boots and Nomex gloves on – he was definitely ready to fly the plane if necessary!  His son George also wore his flight suit.  Part of my plan was to do a nice group shot of the father and son fighter pilots together.

We started shooting before dawn – long exposures on a tripod with battery powered strobes.  Nathan Lindstrom assisted on the shoot and did a great job.  We used a Profoto 7B with a  Plume Wafer Hexoval 180 on the side, and a Wafer 100 on another 7B boomed in front of the face as a fill.

We next moved onto the backlit side of the plane, and photographed the Col.’s Day together and also the elder Col. Day alone, again using the same lighting setup.  Fortunately, the sun came out for a few minutes before going back under a layer of clouds. The sunrise was beautiful!

We next moved to a shot with a long lens looking at the signature angle of the F-100 – straight up the open nose air intake.  We carefully framed Col. Day in the foreground and backlit him from each side with a Profoto 7B and a Wafer 100 on each side.  We then boomed in a  Chimera small strip bank powered by an Acute 600.   Although 87 years old, and with his body ravaged by years of torture and POW abuse, in this pose, with this light, in front of the F-100, Bud Day looked like he could still kick some serious ass.

We finished with a 3/4 side lit portrait, with his glasses off, which showed off the MISTY patch on his flight suit.

We did some group shots with the Collings Foundation folks who had so generously donated their time and effort to showcase the plane, and some USAF U-2 pilots, who had gathered during the shoot.  All USAF pilots go through survival training at the AF Survival School at Fairchild AFB, named in Col. Day’s honor.  It was like watching a bunch of NBA rookies meeting Michael Jordan for the first time.

After packing up, the whole crew adjourned to a nearby Ihop for a truly memorable breakfast.  I could literally sit and listen to George and his dad tell flying stories for hours.  It was a fantastic experience.

After the shoot, I sent a few of the photos to my editor at Air & Space magazine, just on the off chance that they might be working on a story related to Col. Day, MISTY, or the F-100.  Several months later, as it turns out, there was a story on the MISTY program in the works.  They eventually decided to use one of the photographs of Col. Day on the cover of the issue, with another one running inside.

I didn’t want to jinx anything, so I didn’t mention it to Bud or George until the cover was posted online.  I’ve worked for many magazines, and covers often get pulled or changed at the 11th hour.

It was really an honor and a highlight to finally be able to make the call to Col. Day and let him know that not only was there a story on MISTY in the current issue of Air & Space, but that he had made the cover!  This was truly one of the coolest things I’ve been able to work on, and I’m grateful to A&S, the Day family, Rick Harris and John Simmons for making this happen.

A little background on Col. George “Bud” Day:  He joined the Marines and fought in World War II just after high school.  He came back to the US and earned a law degree, then continued in the Air Force flying fighter jets in Korea and eventually Vietnam.   He miraculously survived a no-chute ejection the 1950′s.   At an age and mission count when other pilots were retiring, he volunteered for another tour and came up with the MISTY Fast Forward Air Control (Fast FAC) program, of which he was the commander.  MISTY pilots flew low and fast over North Vietnam, marking targets including SAM missile sites for other aircraft to attack.  It was so dangerous that it was an all volunteer squadron.

During one of these MISTY missions in 1967, Col. Day was shot down and captured.  Badly hurt and barefoot, he escaped after a few days and evaded the enemy for 12-15 days, subsisting on frogs and berries, traversing miles of enemy territory and crossing the river into South Vietnam.  He was within a mile or two of an American base when he was shot twice and recaptured.  He spent the next 5 years 7 months in the “Hanoi Hilton” being tortured along with other notable POW pilots like Sen. John McCain and Admiral James Stockdale.  For his valor, he was awarded the Air Force Cross and the Congressional Medal of Honor.  Today he is the most decorated living service member.  After returning from Vietnam, he received 13 medical waivers and continued flying.  He eventually amassed over 8000 hours – nearly 5000 of those in fighter aircraft.    As if that weren’t enough, he retired and went to work as an attorney, eventually suing the US Government on behalf of veterans who were not getting promised medical benefits and won.  As a result, millions of veterans (my late mother-in-law among them), have benefitted from the program, called Tri-Care for Life.

Here’s a cool behind the scenes video my friend John Simmons put together of the shoot:

The labs were very tight and cluttered spaces – lots of scientific equipment everywhere, lots of hoses and pipes, and very few clean simple backgrounds.  We decided to shoot several different lab techs and scientists working with their respective equipment on white.  This was a serious challenge, as there was not ample room to do a normally lit white background.  We settled on placing a 6 x 6 scrim jim behind the subjects, just to de-clutter the room, and give the retoucher clean images of the subject and foreground equipment to work with.  This worked well, but it was a very tight squeeze all day.  To look good in B&W, the light needed to be fairly dramatic and contrast-y.  We used gridded softboxes, a Wafer 100 and a Wafer 75 in some cases, both with Lighttools 30 degree grids.

We also had great fun creating the macro images.  Kelly Clark, our art director, would work with us to pick out various interesting pieces of scientific equipment, and we would then set up lighting and photograph details, often with the Canon 100mm macro, which is just an incredibly sharp piece of glass.  It was interesting to create tight abstract views of everyday science equipment.

One of the cool shots we did, came about during the scouting trip.  We noticed that several of the scientists would write in wax pencil on the plexiglas cover of their lab enclosures….math formulas, notes, etc.  We decided it looked pretty interesting, and ran out to Home Depot to get a clean new piece of plexi to recreate the same look on white in the lab.  (Apologies to Neil Leifer and his iconic Bear Bryant portrait. )

Andrew Loehman did a great job digital teching for the day, and Nathan Lindstrom assisted.  Juan Guadiana, a stellar Houston-based retoucher did a masterful job of cutting out our subjects with their equipment for the final ads.  These were not easy to do.  Andrea Kaye, the art buyer at McCann Erickson, Valerie Sena, the account manager, and Kelly Clark, the art director were wonderful to work with, and we were able to enjoy a fantastic Tex-Mex meal with our ExxonMobil client at El Real, a cool new restaurant in the former Tower Theater during their brief visit to Houston.

Our model, rhythmic gymnast Olga Karmansky. (Photo by Robert Seale)

I returned recently from speaking and doing a lighting workshop at the Photoshelter Luminance conference, September 11-13 at the TriBeca Performing Arts Center in New York City.  Luminance was far from a typical photo industry conference or convention.  Photoshelter founder Allen Murabayashi and the great folks at Photoshelter put together a unique event, bringing in a wide variety of speakers from the technology world to compliment the usual suspects from the photo industry.

On the bill for the three day event were interesting and varied speakers like:

Eric Cheng, DP at Lytro; Lucas Allen Buick, Hipstamatic CEO; Chris Chabot, Google ; Amy Dresser, retoucher; Sara Friedlander, VP of Christie’s; Eileen Gittins, CEO/Founder of Blurb; Taylor Jones, Dear Photograph; Craig Peters, Getty Images; Donald Pettit, NASA Astronaut; Alan Taylor, The Atlantic; Cory West, Engineering Manager, Facebook, and also wonderful photographers like Peter Yang, David Burnett, Barbara Davidson, and Michael Muller.  Each speaker gave a short, 20 minute eye opening talk in the spirit of the TED conference.

On the first day of the event, held at  ROOT Drive in Studios, in NYC, I, along with lighting genius Joe McNally, Atlanta commercial photographer Zack Arias, and Miami celebrity portrait photographer Brian Smith, held lighting workshops in separate studio spaces there.  (Bill Cramer, a Philadelphia photographer and founder of Wonderful Machine gave a separate session on business practices.)

The most overqualified assistant ever? Photoshelter Chairman Allen Murabayashi helping us get our lighting setup together. (Photo by Robert Seale)

I felt super intimidated to speak and do my little demo in such good company, but I was very lucky to have some super overqualified assistant help, including Photoshelter folks Allen Murabayashi, Sarah Jacobs, and stellar music photographer Chris Owyoung helping out.

Our model, Olga Karmansky, a rhythmic gymnast, was wonderful and patient during two back to back lighting sessions.  We had a short window of time, so we concentrated on doing multiple lighting looks from one setup in the studio.  We were able to create several different looks without moving the model at all – very similar to the lighting talk and demo I gave at the Photoshelter event in Austin.

Allen and Photoshelter CEO Andrew Fingerman put together a hell of an event.  It was wonderful to hang out with the other photographers and speakers, especially a speakers dinner on the first night, and a wonderful get together with my good friends:  bay area baseball photographer  Brad Mangin, and Boston commercial photographer and ASMP president Shawn Henry.  It was also great to meet the young, super sharp and vibrant Photoshelter team, many of whom I had talked to over the phone over the years, but never met in person.  These are creative, smart people that you wish you could work in an office with every day.

Hopefully Andrew and Allen will be able to make this an annual event!

Close up of Olga Karmansky during the lighting demo. (Photo by Robert Seale)

Olga, photographed with a 5 degree grid during the lighting demo. (Photo by Robert Seale)

Allen introducing the speakers. (Photo by Michael Treola)

Shaking hands with Joe McNally arriving at the studio. (Photo by Michael Treola)

McNally shooting in the studio downstairs. (Photo by Michael Treola)

Seale shooting during the lighting workshop. (Photo by Michael Treola)

Zack Arias speaking to his class. (Photo by Michael Treola)

Brian Smith speaking during his lighting workshop - note the model is ASMP president Shawn Henry. (Photo by Michael Treola)

Mary Lou Retton, photographed at her home in 2008.

Since the 2012 Summer Olympics in London is in full swing, I thought it might be interesting to pull together a collection of some of my favorite Olympic sports portraits.  I’ve had the fabulous opportunity to photograph several notable athletes, and I’m hoping to meet and photograph more of these folks in the future.

I photographed 1984 Olympic gymnastics champion Mary Lou Retton with her daughters in their backyard a few years ago for a magazine.  Mary Lou, now in her early 40′s,  is in incredible shape and is still incredibly fit and ripped.   It was a fun shoot, but it’s interesting to note that at least one of them was much more interested in being an equestrian than a future gymnast.  They were all good sports, though and played along for a memorable photo.

I’ve photographed Steven Lopez several times.  He won the gold in Taekwondo at the Olympics in 2000 and 2004, and a bronze in 2008.  He’s in London competing again on the 2012 Olympic team.

Laura Wilkinson, who won a gold medal with a horrendous broken foot in 2000, was a joy to photograph, and was willing to try several different concepts, including a waterline shot, and some slow shutter flash shots of her diving during sunset.  She also competed in the 2004 and 2008 Olympics.  Today, she is a motivational speaker and has her own foundation.

Stuart Holden, a professional soccer player, was on the 2008 US Olympic soccer team.  Although he’s had a string of injuries, he’s still playing professionally in Europe.

Bicycle motocross champion Kyle Bennett was on the US Olympic BMX team in 2008.

I photographed Peggy Fleming, who won the gold in figure skating in 1968.   After a breast cancer scare in the late 90′s she became an outspoken advocate for breast cancer awareness and early testing.  She stays in fabulous shape (she’s 60 in this photo…) with a regimen of yoga and running.

Raj Bhavsar is an incredible gymnast who won the bronze in 2008.  He was also an alternate on the 2004 team.  He has two gymnastics elements named after him, and is most well known for his prowess on the rings.  After retiring from competitive gymnastics, he is now performing with Cirque de Soleil.

Jeremy Lin posing for a high flying pass on his first day back in Houston. This photo was featured as a double truck in Sports Illustrated. © 2012 Robert Seale

As Jeremy Lin was in the process of inking his deal with the Houston Rockets last week, I got a call from Sports Illustrated.  Often in sports, when a star player is traded to another team, there is a big fancy press conference to introduce the player to the media.  Usually the player stands at a podium with the new owner, professes his love for the new city and holds up a freshly minted jersey with his name on the back.  Interviews follow with all the local media outlets:  radio stations, TV stations, teenage sports bloggers, and typically, the surviving newspaper in town.

What most people don’t see, is the behind the scenes photo shoots.  Put together in a rush, the sleepy player gets herded to multiple locations throughout the building to pose for the NBA, a magazine or two, the local paper, and a host of team sponsor PSA’s.  It’s a challenging situation, very similar to “media day” shoots that we all engage in during preseason training camps. Each photographer or news outlet gets the player for a couple of minutes and they produce the best sports portrait they can.

After I hung up with the SI photo editor, I immediately called my good friend, Rockets photographer Bill Baptist, who I knew would be doing the same gig for the NBA.  I found out that we were scheduled to be on one half of the practice court, since the other half was being used for the press conference setup.  Billy had to do two large setups, so he generously offered to have our shoot moved to the empty arena floor.  I quickly jumped at the chance and agreed that a larger room would be beneficial for all of us.  This way, we wouldn’t be crossing cords or competing for space.  Plus, the last time Billy and I were that close together, I’m pretty sure he kicked my ass at tennis.

Stellar assistant Nathan Lindstrom and I showed up to the Toyota Center the next morning with a ton of gear, and made our way to the main arena floor.  An empty arena makes a great photo studio, but unfortunately, it really was empty:  as in, no floor!  Since the arena hosts a different event almost every night, the wood basketball floor was in storage – along with the basketball goals, etc.

With the help of some friendly folks at the arena, we were able to get one of the basketball goals rolled out onto the empty concrete floor.  I figured that, even if the floor didn’t show, we could at least utilize the goal as a background element for context.

We put together lighting setups in two locations:  A wide angle view with the goal in the background, backlit on both sides with Profoto 8A’s and  large Chimera gridded softboxes.  We used a Plume Wafer Hexoval 180 as the main light near the camera.

On the other setup, we put together a seamless paper backdrop with two different lighting setups:  a three light setup with two Plume Wafer 100′s with Lighttools grids, and a Profoto Beauty dish on a boom just above the camera.  The other setup was another Wafer Hexoval 180 to the right of the camera.  We used three Profoto Acute 600′s for power on the seamless setup.

Lin showed up in a brand new red Rockets uni and made his way to our set.  After shaking his hand and welcoming him to Texas, we quickly put him through both seamless lighting setups, and then standing and dribbling poses on the backlit concrete floor setup.

Part of Lin’s appeal is his status as a young, springy, high-flying point guard.  He looked great flying through the air, going to he hoop, and passing in mid air to his Knicks teammates during the a few months of “Linsanity” last season.  At the end of the shoot, I asked Lin how his knee was feeling.

He said it felt great.

Great enough to jump on a concrete floor?

Sure, he said.

Ok then, let’s do it.

I placed the camera, a Canon EOS1DS Mk III on the floor, and proceeded to shoot Lin leaping straight in the air with the basketball goal in the background.  He looked great – our only minor tweak being that of changing his hand positions during the jump.  At the end of the shoot, I handed him a towel, shook his hand and said thanks.  I looked down at my watch and a mere 12 minutes had passed.

He left the arena soon after and was mobbed……not by New York paparazzi, but by mouth-watering Houston real estate agents, eager to spend at least some of his 25 million bucks.

Austin photographer and ilovetexasphoto contributor Destry Jaimes interviewed me recently for a photographer feature on the site, asking me about my work, education, and influences, and featuring some of my favorite photos.  If you’re a photographer or photo enthusiast in Texas, or a photo editor producing jobs in our state, this site needs to be in your bookmarks toolbar.

A copy slide of my first Chronicle photo. I was later asked if this marine died from radiation overexposure from my Metz 45 flash.

Twenty years ago today my career officially began as a professional photographer.

It all started with a pre-dawn phone call in the winter of 1992 from George Honeycutt, then Director of Photography at the Houston Chronicle (in those days, George worked from 6am-2pm, and I…..well, I did not).  Working as photo editor of the school paper and co-editor of the college yearbook, I was just getting to bed some mornings as George was showing up for work.  Anyway, the phone rings, and there’s a gruff voice on the other end of the line, “Seale, you got any tickets?”

In those days, the Chronicle had great company cars, full size Ford Broncos, and they even issued one to the intern, so your driving record, not just your photo ability, was a consideration.

So with my unblemished driving record intact, I began one of the most formative experiences of my life:  a summer internship at the Houston Chronicle.

During the spring of 92, I visited the paper a couple of times, going on “ride-alongs” with staff photographers Howard Castleberry and Dave Einsel, who both showed me around the department.  Howard even offered to let me live at his house for the summer virtually rent-free, so I could be closer to the newspaper ( an incredible gesture, for which I’m very grateful).

There was nothing cooler than a big city newspaper, particularly one like the Chronicle in those days.  You parked across the street, then went through the press room up a freight elevator into the composing area (ah, the smells!), past the newsroom and into the photo department.  Each photographer had his own private darkroom (left over from the black and white days).  There was a community area where everyone got their mail, typed captions, and, at night – hung out and watched TV.  There was George’s office, on the end, which reeked of 30 years of cigarette smoke, and then a beautiful studio, with lights mounted to the ceiling on rails.  There were two large community darkrooms:  A BW darkroom with two rows of Leitz enlargers, and giant trays in a center island, with the final wash tank going through a wall to the well lit office area.  The color darkroom, had fewer enlargers, a giant Noritsu machine to develop film (just like a one hour photo lab!), and a cool device called a Photovix, where you could view your negatives on a television monitor.  All the chemicals were mixed and stored in gravity fed tanks upstairs.  There were 4 full time printers on staff, because photographers were “supposed to be out taking pictures”….George designed it all.  Most of the staff wore blue jeans to work every day, and they all had these impressive arrays of police ID’s, season credentials, and sharpies around their necks.  Everyone had police scanners, and two way radios in their cars.  They carried cell phones.  The Gordon Gekko kind.  It was awesome.

The Chronicle had hired their last staffer straight out of his internship.   I quickly got it in my head, that if I did a good job, that I too would be hired, either by them, or at the very least, by some other newspaper at the end of my summer there.  I literally did not take a day off for almost 4 months.  Even if it was my scheduled day off, I would troll for “wild art” or accompany other photographers on assignments, hoping to build a set of portfolio pictures good enough to land me a job.

My first day was supposed to be the Tuesday after the Memorial Day holiday.  All the interns (over 20 as I recall in all departments), were supposed to have a meeting in the managing editor’s office and then go to lunch.

Being super gung-ho, and scrambling frantically to replace pictures in my portfolio, I decided to spend Memorial Day at the VA cemetery, photographing the ceremonies there, not for publication, but just to get experience and maybe make a portfolio picture.  Another photographer was already assigned and I wasn’t officially working there yet.

After shooting my photos, I drove down later that night to the paper just to process film (a free Noritsu machine!  Free film!  Cool!).  While viewing my contact sheets on the Photovix, a copy editor walked by.  “These are great!”, he said….and pretty soon they had two of my photos mocked up for the next day’s paper.  I was shocked that they were even considering my photos at all.

I was terrified at the time that the staffer assigned to the VA cemetery assignment was going to kill me the next day.  After all, he had turned in his assignment and I don’t even think he knew I was there.  It was a touchy situation, I felt guilty, but I was lucky, he was congratulatory the next day, and became one of my good friends.  It was a very classy gesture to such a young insensitive punk.

It was an awesome feeling to walk into that intern meeting on Tuesday with both section fronts.  They had run my photos, both verticals, as the main art on Page 1 and the Metro front.  Tommy Miller, the ME, a gentle, nice man who just passed away earlier this year, said something like, “well, I guess you don’t need my help-keep up the good work.”

From there on George treated me like one of the staff, and continued to feed me good assignments all summer (much better assignments than I deserved).  He even kept me on for an extra month or so at the end.  George was tough – he was an icon straight out of the cigar chomping, fedora-wearing days of journalism.  He had been the NPPA photographer of the year early in his career.  There was no coddling or hand holding, just a quiet, intimidating presence.  He was like a football coach that you didn’t want to ever disappoint.   I didn’t get hired by the Chronicle, but I did land a job at the Augusta (Ga) Chronicle, and a year after that I was back in Houston working for the Houston Post.

The photos were not my best.  Certainly not adept at lighting that day, I had blasted one of the veterans  I photographed with a Metz 45 “Potato-masher” flash to bring the exposure of the sky down  during the mid-day ceremony.  Later in the year, my ego bubble was burst during a portfolio review at the Atlanta Seminar when the reviewer said, “Did this guy survive the radiation? – you blasted the shit out of him.”

I feel like I got in on the newspaper business just in time.  Digital photography was in its infancy, we still shot film, sports photography still required the skill of manual focus, and there were older guys, like Curtis McGee, still on staff who could tell you stories about the flash powder days.  I got to work with great photographers and learned a lot from guys like Buster Dean, Kerwin Plevka, E. Joe Deering, Steve Ueckert, Carlos Rios, Richard Carson, Paul Howell, Steve Campbell, and John Everett, each brought something different to the table.  The paper spent money and covered big stories in those days:  Dave Einsel spent several months doing a 40 page special section on Columbus’ impact on the New World, and Castleberry  jetted off to Somalia to cover the famine and fighting there for over a month.  It was an incredible experience, and some of the wisdom and advice from that summer still resonates through my head daily.  While many of my friends graduated from college and went the assisting route, I was lucky enough to spend my summer at the Chronicle, driving all over Houston and getting to push the shutter button every day.

I shudder to think what might have happened had George not called me that winter morning in 1992.