Category Archives: Photography

Oklahoma’s Swon Brothers in Atlanta

October 17, 2013 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I was lucky enough to have planned a trip to Atlanta (not Dallas!) on OU-Texas weekend this year. By coincidence, my friend Greg Cook and the now-famous Swon Brothers were there, too, so I spent Saturday night at Wild Bill’s country bar in Duluth, Georgia.

As last season’s finalists in NBC’s “The Voice,” the Swon Brothers (whose dad, Kelly, went to my tiny hometown high school in Oklahoma) probably now need no introductions from me. They’re talented; they’re young; and now the brothers (Zach and Colton) are well on the road to country music fame. They put on a fine show late Saturday night just outside Atlanta. Colton Swon is the blonde; Zach has the beard; the third face in some of those pictures is their lead guitarist, Eric Gillette.

I’ve mentioned my friends, Greg and Heath, and their band, Ricochet (of 1996 “Her Daddy’s Money” fame), many times. Greg has recently taken on a new role, as tour manager for the Swon Brothers. Those young guys are lucky to have him — a smart, sensible hometown friend who just happens to have 20 years experience in exactly the same (tough) business. Their odds of success just got even better. That’s Greg, mostly in silhouette, in the foreground of the shots below — shown in his new role literally outside the spotlights.

Finally: Yes, of course I have a gratuitous picture of the prettiest girl in Wild Bill’s saloon. Don’t worry: my chatting up of young Riley the Beertender (college senior and future grade school teacher) quickly moved to half-serious inquiries whether she and her mom look much alike — and whether her mother was single.

Amen Corner: Angels on the Santa Fe Plaza

September 24, 2013 by Jeff C | Comments Off

Saturday afternoon on the Santa Fe Plaza isn’t all turquoise and silver. Each corner had a duo dressed like this. A little creepy, for sure. Those angelic, silver-faced kids did not seem very happy to be out there in the Saturday sun of Santa Fe (or to have their pictures taken). I felt like maybe I should have rescued them.

Santa Fe September

September 23, 2013 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I spent last week in (and around) Santa Fe learning photography from Nevada Wier. She’s a National Geographic veteran photographer and a true world adventurer who lives in Santa Fe when she’s not in places like rural China or India or Myanmar. I came here because her photographic ‘style’ is very much what I TRY to do. My images here are a seemingly random group — the product of several smallish ‘assignments’ we did last week. The goal was not so much to gather perfect images of Santa Fe, but to practice some ideas that will work in the rest of the world. I learned a lot.

One of the assignments is in a separate post from the New Mexico State Fair. Another was to go grab a local and take some on-the-spot portraits that might reveal a little of their character — much as you might do in a more-exotic global destination. I drove to the small town of Cerillos and vowed to just grab the first person I saw and see if I could make the best of it. I wound up working instead with the third person I saw — the young cowboy’ you see in the handful of pictures below (and the big close-up above). Zach makes his living on his family’s horse ranch. I found him unloading firewood at a house near downtown Cerrillos. He was a great sport and, as it turned out, a fine impromptu model. In that last super-close-up shot, I asked him to just think about his family and his horses and his ranch, and how those things made him feel; that’s my favorite shot of the day.

Finally, a huge thank-you shout-out to my former law partner Kathy Patrick and her husband, Art Murphy. They let me spend the week in their adobe swankienda on the northwest side of Santa Fe. I was living it up with the whole place to myself!

Turquoise Midway: The State Fair of New Mexico

September 22, 2013 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I went to the fair in Albuquerque on a photo project. I’d missed the pig races and the calf scramble, so I was left to wander around the vendors and games and midway.

Regular followers of this blog will recall my post from a few weeks back about the police department raffle of an assault rifle I saw in northern Texas. Thus I was especially amused to see that even in New Mexico, your five-year old can play a carnival game and win an inflatable AK-47 in the colors of the American flag. Stating the obvious: New Mexico isn’t very far from Texas.

I wound up spending so much time at the “Spin Out” ride (below) I forgot to get myself a corndog. The efficient, solo ride operator was moving loads of passengers safely onto and off of the ride like clockwork. I watched about 15 cycles, so I had the whole process memorized. Predictably, he was way too busy to stop and let me take a real ‘portrait.’

I ran across this guy on the way back to my car as the night was winding down. He was sitting there counting money. He said his name was George Jones. When I asked if he could sing, he said everybody always asks him that. He also said that he coudn’t sing worth a damn.

The Way Out West: San Francisco and Santa Cruz, CA

September 8, 2013 by Jeff C | Comments Off

I was a week early and about a billion dollars short of being able to compete in the America’s Cup sailing race, which started Saturday in San Francisco bay. (I also lack the requisite sailing know-how). But the fog parted long enough last week to let me watch the USA Team (Oracle) practicing for the big event. Those boats can go 50mph! They have a 140-ft-tall vertical rigid “wing” rather than a traditional canvas sail, and they essentially just fly along a few feet above the water with a tiny surfboard-sized fin sticking into the surf to keep them on track.

I spent a week sightseeing and visiting friends in San Francisco and in Santa Cruz, which is 60 miles to the south, on the north side of Monterrey Bay. The San Francisco Bay area is hardly the furthest point in the U.S. away from Texas (or Oklahoma) – at least if you’re just measuring miles. But the people and the ‘culture’ may be as far from ‘Texan’ as anywhere in America. There are a surprising number of white men in dreadlocks.

Rest assured that every restaurant menu in Santa Cruz will include the words “sustainable,” “local,” “organic” “gluten,” and “GMO.” I went with friends to a vegan café where every item on the menu had a name like “I Am Renewed” and “I Am Accepting.” Ironically, the “I Am Fulfilled” was a smallish vegan salad. I had the “I Am Transformed” (which tasted a lot like a black bean taco), with a side of “I Am Refreshed.” (And I Am NotMakingThisUp).

AND: The Mexican food restaurants do not serve chile con queso!! It’s anarchy out there, I tell you!

The urban-looking pictures are San Francisco; the lighthouse, the giant redwood the seal and the coastline are around Santa Cruz. The fancy place in the first two shots is the Palace of Fine Arts. The iconic row of “Painted Lady” houses is at Alamo Park. In the orange sunrise shot, that’s Alcatraz you see peeking through the fog. The graffiti truck and the American flag are in China Town. All the nighttime shots are of (and around) the Ferry Terminal and the Bay Bridge to Oakland. A big thanks to my Costa Rica / Leadville buddies Peter and Jana Thomsen for hosting me in Santa Cruz, and to their niece Kasondra for being my tour guide in San Francisco.