austin woman magazine

This month my photos of Lady Bird's office at the LBJ Presidential Library were published in Austin Woman Magazine! They didn't credit them, but they are mine. Still excited to see some of my work in print, even if it is just an exhibit. Check out the full article, including a great photo by White House photographer Frank Wolfe.

April 2013 Issue

dad, diana + the canadian

This is what happens when Dad comes to visit us and brings home a Diana Mini... and then the Canadian shows up for a surprise.

paper and strings

The Zilker Kite Festival has got to be one of the best events in Austin. Anyone take their homemade kites and can enter different kite-flying contests, everyone else just flies their store bought kites. This year we got ours at Toy Joy for a fair price, packed a picnic, and waited an hour in traffic just to find out the road was closed and we should've taken a route to the other side. Oh well, at least we got there before the sun went down and had a great time. A couple years ago I produced a multimedia video for The Daily Texan if you just can't get enough kites. I promised Kyle and Lindsey that I wouldn't be "the photographer"today. What can I say, I can't help it. Here are some photos I took with my iPhone.

Zilker Kite Festival - March 3, 2013

photog friday: the yearbook photographer

This Friday is dedicated to the yearbook photographer and taking all of those horrible pictures of us growing up. Seriously... I don't think there is a single good yearbook photo of me until maybe the last two years of high school, and even then.

I got a little taste of what it's like to be a yearbook photographer today. It was my first official time in a legitimate lighting studio with a friend that I've known since those criminal yearbook photos were taken. It was really neat to have grown up together and be able to photograph her for her first business card. Congratulations to Shan, who is now a real estate agent!

Shan - March 1, 2013

dear bird

photos from the LBJ Presidential Library

February is over! I can't believe tomorrow it will be March. Since I dedicated a whole week to Valentine's Day, I thought it would be nice to post about a last minute assignment that I worked on that week. On Feb. 13, our Supervisory Archivist Claudia Anderson talked to press about the 1934 courtship letters between LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson. The letters have been released to the public, check them out here if you're interested.

praha

Praha

adventureland

Yesterday -- Lindsey, Kyle, and I drove to Killeen, Texas (about an hour from Austin) to visit our cousins that were in town all the way from New York City! On our way to their hotel we discovered a random carnival in the middle of nowhere. Who can say no to lights, fast rides and carny food? We had a lot of fun and I'm fairly certain we gave our cousins the greatest impression of Texans.

Here are two shots from the first time that I photographed the State Fair of Texas in 2009 that never got published in The Daily Texan. Looking back I really like these two pictures... It's interesting how a fair is so bright and fun and filled with many people during the day, but when the sun goes down and everyone starts to filter out there is an eery calmness about the place and it becomes dark and mysterious.

Adventureland - October 2009

photog friday: photojournalism and the presidency

Photojournalism and the Presidency. What a special place to be a photographer... the White House. Pete Souza, Obama's White House photographer sums this up well...

"Imagine someone combing through my photographs of President Obama in 2510. That really makes me realize that this is visual history I am recording with my camera." 

What a special place to be last week but among 13 photojournalists that have had this opportunity. It's one thing to sit in the basement here and look at Okamoto's photos of LBJ all day long, but another to actually talk to the people that were behind the camera. This was a very special night, so here are a few more pictures...

Davide Hume Kennerly, David Valdez, Me, & Eric Draper

night at the museum

Night at the Museum - February 15, 2013

I thought this was a funny moment. This kid sat in the same spot glued to his phone for most of the evening. What was incredibly exciting for me, was not so much for him. The Briscoe Center's exhibit "News to History: Photojournalism and the Presidency" is now open at the LBJ Presidential Library, most of the featured photographers attended the opening on February 15, too. This kid missed out.

color correction

Oh, the color correction debate! This is something I've been wanting to touch on for a while, since I deal with this problem everyday at work. The big question surrounds the digitization of archival photographs and whether they should be left "as is" or color corrected "as it should be?" Now, the real problem here is when you scan a color negative and say it's "as is," meaning that the scan you've got is a representation of what is on the negative, you're wrong. Here's why... Something I think archivists aren't taking into account (especially if they are not scanning the images themselves), is the accuracy of the scanner to auto-detect color. If you are wanting a full frame image you have to crop it yourself. (Editorial note: The scanner I use at work is an EPSON V700 Photo Scanner). When you determine the area to be scanned, it automatically color corrects the image and selects true blacks and whites based on the crop. So if you crop in or out or leave in the black border around the image, you will end up with three totally different looking images. Case in point: the images below... The first was done before I started working at the LBJ Library. The second has been rescanned and edited based on a darkroom print of the same image hanging up in AV Archives (made before they went digital around 2002). Now, being that NARA's definition for digitizing for public access includes "quality control of digital copies and metadata" and "providing public access to the material via online delivery of reliable and authentic copies." I would say the image on the left is not reliable or authentic to the image on the negative; the water in Oregon is obviously not cyan. When rescanned and minimally edited, everyone looks peachy. I didn't get the cyan color cast at all the second time. So which is the reliable and authentic image that should be delivered to the public as an accurate representation of this negative?

D782-9a. Photo by Robert Knudsen. Lady Bird Johnson on a trail in the Multnomah Falls National Scenic Area near Troutdale, Oregon on June 27, 1968.