First, let me thank all of you who have stuck with my blog so far! I’ve been trying very hard to keep a Monday, Wednesday, Friday post schedule and I realize I missed Friday. So sorry about that! I was out shooting and couldn’t get to a point where I could blog.
Sometimes staff photographers get sick, or go on vacation, or have to take furlough days, or have other reasons why they’re not in the office. Those days are when I shine.
Those are the days when freelancers are called in to do the so-called “daily” assignments. Daily assignments aren’t usually big festivals or large sporting events or anything terribly exciting or significant; sometimes they’re not even very visual. They’re the things that staff photographers can swing by, shoot for half an hour and have way more images than they’d ever need.
Saturday was one of those days. Laura McKenzie is the staff photographer over at the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung and she called me last week to take over some of her assignments while she was out of town over the weekend. I’ve been freelancing there for the last 3 years or so, mostly for sports, but lately they’ve been giving me more news shoots.
I woke up early on Saturday and drove down to New Braunfels for a volunteer cemetery cleaning program. Yep, exciting. Actually, it was very interesting to hear about the oldest cemetery in the city and the plans they have for it.
They washed the headstones with mild soap, water and brushes, and they did this thing called “switching.” Switching was strange to watch, but difficult to capture on a still camera. Each person held two metal wires (with a 90 degree bend), one in each hand and walked over grave sites. As they walked, the wires would rotate away from each other, indicating a body had been buried underneath. Once they were off of the grave site, the wires would rotate back together.
Supposedly this happens because the natural magnetic field in the dirt was disturbed when a hole was dug and then the dirt was replaced after burial. It was bizarre to watch.
I stayed there for a while, then headed over to Main Plaza, where a Save our Schools rally was just getting underway.
I’ve shot a couple of rallies and they’re mostly peaceful people with a point they want to get across to the public. This point was loud and clear – don’t fire teachers. It was made even more poignant by the very cute children holding signs most of them made themselves. It’s hard to say no to a six-year-old with a hand-made sign that says “I love my teacher.”
To make the point even more clear, the boy above sat down on the grass with markers and paint and began to make a sign. He didn’t get very far before he had to ask an adult, “how do you spell teacher?” If that doesn’t help their cause, I don’t know what does.
After the rally, I made my way home to send in photos, then went back out to shoot the Old Settler’s Music Festival for the Austin American Statesman. That was not a typical daily assignment (well, maybe it is for Austin), so it doesn’t fit in this post. And the photos haven’t been published yet, so I’ll wait until they have before I post them here.
It was a busy weekend, but sometimes it’s nice to get back to the old daily grind.