Scenes from San Antonio

San Antonio Elvis

We stopped in San Antonio and soaked up the culture. See the full set of photos here.

Wrestling

Traveling salesman

My 21 best photos of 2012

Hattie

It's a tough statement to make when you take photographs every single day, but these are the 21 favorite photos (as of this moment) I shot in the year that just ended. I participated in the 365 project on Flickr as well, and these photos were probably all in this larger, daily-photo set.

Hattie was my favorite portrait of the year (see my 100 Strangers project here). She is 88, cares for her blind husband in Granger, Texas, and was dressed up for an outing to the HEB grocery in Taylor when I asked to take her photo.

Newly-hatched cardinals

I had just seen a cardinal mother outside my window leave her nest with a chunk of eggshell in her mouth and knew I had to take this shot of the fresh baby birds. The third, unhatched egg? It's not a cardinal. See the full story in photos of the birds developing here.

My wife and I went to see Tom Petty perform in Austin, Texas, but found ourselves instead mesmerized by the woman interpreting the show for the hearing impaired. Her name is Barbie and she is now my friend on Facebook.

I was looking to shoot some sort of daily photo at sunset when my son took off across this field behind our house. The light was perfect and reminded me of an Andrew Wyeth painting and/or a shot from a recent Terrence Malick film.

Sign language

My Wyeth painting

See my full set of top photos from 2012 here. Happy New Year!

On the indie set of Western 'Red on Yella, Kill a Fella'

Here's my report for The Austin Chronicle from the set of Duane Graves and Justin Meeks' Western Red on Yella, Kill a Fella. You can also see a slideshow of my photos, including cult actor Michael Berryman in action.

The pair report that Boneboys, which they directed from Kim Henkel's script, is this close (see my fingers inching together?) to a sale.

'Road Stories' photo exhibit is up

Nicholas welcomes you to my latest photo show!

My photo show titled "Road Stories" is up at Star Co. coffee shop in downtown Round Rock, Texas, for the month of May. A party is set from May 12 from 5-7 p.m. featuring a reading of road poems by W. Joe Hoppe.

You can also find the show online here.

My top 11 photos of 2011

I rediscovered a love of photography in 2011, had a photo displayed on Texasmonthly.com and in the Houston headquarters of Stage Stores, put together a small coffee shop photo show and generally had fun with it. See all eleven of my favorite images here.

My favorite photo of the year is of an older gentleman I spotted at the Dairy Queen in Karnes City, Texas. I stopped him on his way out the door, and he looked amused by the notion of posing.



I worked to get a bee in action above some Texas sunflowers that stayed hearty through at least the early stages of our Texas summer drought.



In a non-dry period in Austin, I turned off my windshield wipers on the upper deck of Interstate 35 to catch this dreamy scene.



More to come in the new year...

Walking into the night

I took this photo last night as we were leaving a Dallas nightclub in the wee small hours.

My favorite recent street photo by far.

Remnants of 'True Grit' remain in Granger

Granger, Texas, is Fort Smith, Arkansas, in the Coen brothers' True Grit. I took a lot of photos of the set during its formation and right up until filming. (You can also find photos of the filming on my site if you look around. Just do a search for "Granger.")Today, I again visited the town to see what remnants of the filming remain and to provide a bookend to earlier photos. You can see some of the Old West signage remains on the mostly vacant buildings in the one block of downtown Granger. Buildings constructed specifically for the film are gone--most were only facades.

Take a look and compare to earlier photos here that were taken right before filming began.


Signs for the undertaker remain on this building, which is quite vacant.


This funky shop looks as out of place in modern-day Granger as it would in the film.


More of the signage from the film. Granger's red brick was covered with dirt for the filming and is now returned to its original state.


This bank is next door to where the film's gallows were.


The Granger post office was hidden behind a facade during filming, though customers were led into it by crew to do business during filming.


You can see why the filmmakers liked the look of the wide road.


More signage remaining from the shoot.


This mural was painted over the filming in such a manner that they could restore it to its original look. Nice trick!


A funky antique store was in the thick of things during filming when the sign outside read "post office."


A church is near the corner where antique wagons were stored for the shoot.


Some more film signage.

The Big Sky Where I Live

Facebook is full of photos of the sunset tonight. I was snapping away, too. This is the view out my back door. Yes, I live in the sticks.