Cable Hoover Photography

2011

2012-01-02T19:45:00.000-08:00

I've never put together a best-of-the-year edit before but since I'm working on a portfolio and website update anyway, I thought I'd give it a shot. I decided to try to boil it all down to ten images - a fairly standard portfolio size for the industry. The edit has changed many, many times over the last couple of days and I'm still not sure I've picked the right ones. Editing is always tricky because you have to try to remove yourself from the memory and circumstance of when the picture was made and look at it objectively. Any photographer will tell you that they have certain photos they are attached to because they recall what it took to make the image and are frequently frustrated when others don't respond as expected. Likewise, there are always pictures that seemed easy and almost superficial in the making but get great response and support from others. While day-to-day editing can largely rely on the needs of the story to dictate final choices, this kind of portfolio editing ultimately aims to reduce everything to a fine balance between pandering to an audience or just serving your own desires. Right now, I'm reasonably happy with it - tell me what you think.

Bikéyah

2011-11-24T21:41:00.000-08:00

Today is Thanksgiving so, having the day off of work, I've spent the day intermediately cooking, cleaning and watching a six-hour documentary about America by British TV personality Stephen Fry. Like looking at Robert Frank's "The Americans", I found it fascinating to see my own country and culture from a foreign perspective, especially on such a uniquely American day as today. A rather ambitious undertaking, Mr. Fry visited all 50 states in six hours of screen time so, clearly, time was at a premium. He covered Manhattan in two minutes, all of Ohio in less than 30 seconds but spent more than 14 minutes on the Navajo Nation; eating frybread in Monument Valley, listening to creation stories underneath the Rainbow Bridge at Lake Powell etc.

I find it hard to describe how I feel about this while I am alternately fascinated by the landscape and culture that surrounds me and frustrated by the remoteness and destitution of this place. After more than three years living and photographing here the only thing I can say definitively about the area is that there is no pretense here. No facade of opulence or posturing of personality; whether out of necessity or tradition, nearly everyone and everything here is honest, genuine and exposed. What Mr. Fry said at the end of his 14 minutes was, "If ever there was a place where humans can feel connected to some sense of the spirit world; this is it." I suppose that's as good a description as any but it did make me proud to call this corner of America my home. Na'Nizhoozhidî nashaa doo adî shîghan - I was born here and here too is where I live. Happy Thanksgiving.

Churros

2011-11-12T21:06:00.000-08:00

Have you ever googled yourself? I bet you found your own linkedin and facebook pages right? I used to google my name frequently just to see where and when my pictures were being used but I haven't done it in a while. I usually got the usual facebook stuff plus a link to this site and my portfolio site and links to other publications that had picked my work up off the AP wire - plus, a random selection of sites offering cable replacements for Hoover vacuums and stuff like that. I searched my name again today and for the first time ever google tried that autofill thing with "cable hoover photography,""cable hoover gallup nm,""cable hoover gallup independent" and of course "cable hoover blog." I suppose that means that other people out there somewhere have been typing my name enough times for google to decide that it's worth saving them the trouble. I'll admit that the thought was a nice little ego boost but it also made me feel bad about not updating my blog in seven or eight months. So, this is what I did today.

After spending all week in Albuquerque for the preps volleyball state tournament I got a tip this morning that there was a sheep and goat sale in Naschitti, NM. I drove 3+ hours from ABQ through Gallup and halfway to Farmington assuming it'd be a big livestock auction with lots of activity and people. Instead, it turned out to be one rancher from Colorado with a few dozen sheep and a 'For Sale' sign. There really was nothing at all to photograph so I set about trying to shoot the sheep in some interesting way - like a kind of sheep landscape or sheep portrait. I guess it turned out ok, nice light and the wind looked cool on these churro sheep - if you're into livestock, google 'navajo churro sheep.' Certainly nothing that'll go into my portfolio but like I said, this is what I did today. If you're still out there and reading this, thanks.

Tag Team

2011-04-22T23:08:00.001-07:00

We had a fairly slow afternoon at the paper today so when a call came in about a large fire just north of town myself and another staff photographer decided we'd both go check it out. It turned out to be a rather harmless trash fire so we just had a good time playing with the nice sunset light and the smoke, shooting photos of each other and joking around with firefighters.

While we all frequently work side by side with photographers from other publications, it's really rare that any two us from the same staff will be at the same scene. It was pretty interesting to look over everything we shot back at the office - it reminded me of the classes and critiques from college. I wish we had more opportunities to do these sort of things in a professional setting, I think it'd be good for us all.

See more of Adron's work here.

Stool Pidgeon

2011-03-06T17:45:00.000-08:00

I was digging through some photos for a website/portfolio update when I came across this one that I meant to post here when I shot it a couple months ago.

This was from an otherwise very boring business page assignment about a local restaurant that's having renovations done. I got the whole tour and photographed the new paint and new counters etc. and as I was leaving I walked past the employee restroom in the back of the kitchen and saw this. The bird had apparently come in through a vent in ceiling while the place was closed for renovations. He seemed healthy so we took him outside and he flew away but I had to shoot it first. Just one of those quirky things that happens when you carry a camera around all the time.

By the way, the big website update is finished today - check it out at www.cablehooverphoto.com - new stuff in every gallery.

Solstice Eclipse

2010-12-21T07:35:00.000-08:00

Early this morning there was a very rare lunar eclipse - the first time since 1638 that it's coincided with the winter solstice. It wasn't the kind of thing that I'd ever shot before but I figured it was an historic event that fell easily in the realm of photojournalism. I'd hoped to find some kind of landmark or skyline to frame it with and add some context but the moon was almost directly overhead. So, the photos are pretty simplistic but it was still a fun shoot and an interesting event.

Rez Ride

2010-12-02T23:24:00.000-08:00

I've obviously been falling down on my blog duties for a while but I had an interesting little adventure today that reminded me to get with the program again.

The Navajo Transit System runs public buses all over the reservation for about two dollars a ride and if you know how to use the system you can get all the way from Crownpoint, NM to Flagstaff Ariz. for six bucks. Today, a reporter and I decide to take a bus ride and document how the system works, who uses it and what they had to say about it. So, we paid our two dollars and got on the bus in Gallup for 5-hour, 130 mile loop out to Crownpoint and back. At first, I wasn't particularly excited about the assignment but it turned out to be far more interesting than I'd expected. The trip itself was rather uneventful but we met a few really good people and I came back with some photos that I'm really happy with.

Kwakwhay

2010-09-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I covered the Hopi Harvest Festival in the traditional village of Sichimovi about two hours northwest of Gallup. It was a long drive and a long day but I got special permission to photograph the festival in a village that normally doesn't allow photography at all. It was a pretty rare opportunity and the people there were all really friendly and welcoming. All in all, a great experience.

NAC Ceremony

2010-08-10T08:15:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I covered a prayer ceremony at a gathering of the Native American Church near Gallup. The Church is a modern, conglomerate religion based on the traditions of several Native tribes and a few new age ideals. They're mildly controversial because of their use of peyote and around here they're frequently scoffed at because teepees and other things the Church uses have no background in Navajo tradition. I wasn't allowed to photograph the actual ceremony so I spent all day waiting around and just shooting people getting ready - chopping firewood and things like that. The prayer went on all through the night and it was only after the sun went down that it became visually interesting.

The other side to this story is that in the week since this photo was published it has become one of the most popular photos I've ever made. I've gotten enormously positive feed back from other photographers and I've received several phone calls and emails from people that want to buy a print. I guess every photographer has one or two photos like this and I suppose that I should be happy about it but, honestly, it makes me a little uncomfortable. I think that most people see this as an idyllic picture postcard of Native American life and I feel bad propagating a Hollywood-ized and inaccurate view of a community that I live with and care about. Secondly, even though the ceremony wasn't genuinely traditional, the people who participated in it did so wholeheartedly and I feel like the people who want to hang the picture on their wall have little or no regard for the people in the photo who were in the middle of a highly spiritual endeavor.

I suppose this is one of the natural failings of photography or at least of me as a photographer. I think if I wanted people to read all this in the photo I should have worked harder to convey those ideas but I honestly can't think of how I would have done it any differently. I guess it's also possible that people are responding to the photo because they see even more in it than I do and maybe I should just have more respect for my audience.

Via Tuolumne

2010-07-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

Last week I took a six day wilderness trip through Yosemite National Park with my brother. We covered a lot of ground so I didn't get to shoot as much as I'd like since it was a hassle to stop and unpack the camera and doing so every five minutes would have really slowed the hike. I mostly shot whenever we stopped for lunch or for camp which left me shooting either in full sunlight or at sunset. So, I didn't get a lot of light variety but I still got a few frames I like.

These are few of the famous (and much photographed) landmarks of the park; Half-Dome, Cathedral Peak, Rafferty & Vogelsang Peaks, Bridalveil Falls and El Capitan.

Ice Lake

2010-06-25T16:57:00.000-07:00

I took weekend hiking and camping trip up the San Juan mountains in southern Colorado this week. It's beautiful country and shooting photos there is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, these are a few of the photos I liked.

Photo(s) of the Week(s): Misc.

2010-06-16T12:59:00.000-07:00

I've been slacking off on the posting for a while so I'm throwing up a bunch. Honestly, I've been in kind of dry spell lately and none of these are really up to the caliber of work that I'd like to post. Part of that is because the summer season is always our slowest time of year and the other part of it is that I've just been a little off my game lately. I think this happens to anybody that works in creative endeavors and I think that is almost always a sign that it's time to mix things up a bit and find new challenges. My solution is this: I'm taking a couple vacations this summer and afterward, I've got a few projects in mind that I'll start working on and I'm also planning on starting to work with multi-media production. Multi-media work, i.e. slide shows with sound and/or video, was an entirely un-thought-off idea when I was studying photojournalism in college but it has now become the industry standard and I'm sadly behind. So, keep looking and I'll soon be posting some wholly new kind of work.

Photo of the Week: Grad Season

2010-05-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

It's that time of the year again - last year I shot tons of graduations but so far this year I've only done this one. I'm not complaining, even one high school graduation can be tedious. It's always the same routine and them same speeches and the the kids are always rowdy and hard to photograph because they all wave and make goofy faces at the camera. The best thing about shooting graduations though is that there is a built-in iconography so almost anything you do has a visual weight. This always sort of frees me up to play with things like silhouettes, details and other things in a way that I often can't. I couldn't pick just one this week - I like all of these but they're all rather impersonal. I suppose that's the downfall of the iconography.

Photo of the Week: Monkeybars

2010-05-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

I think I'm actually a week behind on this one - oh well. Anyway, this is from an assignment about a local elementary school that's trying to raise funds for new playground equipment. Originally, a reporter and I met some of the teachers and parents that are spearheading the campaign after school one day. One of the parents brought her kids so that I could shoot them on the current playground - most people don't realize that as a news photographer, a situation like that is useless to me. I generally can't publish anything that was setup just for my benefit, it's almost analogous to a reporter just making up a story. I shot some photos anyway so that the parents didn't feel like I'd wasted their time and then I made arrangements with the school to come back during regular recess hours. This photo is from the re-shoot days later, I came back with several photos that I liked and actually didn't even turn this one in. This one is kind of an off moment and the other frames fit the story a little better but this is still my favorite.

Know Diddley

2010-05-08T23:50:00.000-07:00

I got the chance tonight to shoot Lil' Bo Diddley - the son of the legendary Bo Diddley. As a blues and guitar fanatic, I make it a point to to get to any blues show I can, no matter how small-time, so I've seen quite a few hacks, wannabes, and second raters trying to make it big riding on the name of a family member or former band mate. Mr. Diddley, however, was the genuine article. I met him after the show and told him how happy I was to see someone that still really knew how to sing the blues and he said "I live it, I love it and I sing it." From anyone else it would have been a corny line but he was the kind of character that could pull it off. Badass.

Photo of the Week: Roundup

2010-05-02T23:09:00.000-07:00

This photo has already generated a fair amount of discussion so it was an easy pick this week. In addition to the Gallup Police, Gallup is also the home base for the McKinley County Sheriff's office and the state police for the region and because of our proximity to the Navajo reservation, those agencies frequently have to co-ordinate with the Navajo Police and the Apache County Sheriff. I know that makes it sound like there are cops swarming everywhere but nearly every one of those departments is underfunded and understaffed. One of the ways they compensate the shortages is and inter-agency warrant roundup - all the cops get together with federal grant money to close out dozens of outstanding warrants at the same time. These two guys were among the crowd that was hauled into a local gymnasium to be processed. Nearly everyone there hid their face or tried to turn their back when they saw my camera and this guy obviously took it a step further.

Photo of the Week: Anonymous

2010-04-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

This is from a structure fire I got called out to earlier this week. It was a weird story about a dispute between neighbors that culminated in burned-down storage shed. The shed went up so fast that there was nothing left but a charred spot on the ground by the time I got there so I set to shooting the firefighters cleaning up, picking through the rubble and hosing down the random sparks. I really like this photo but I couldn't get close enough to the scene to get this firefighter's name so we couldn't publish it in the paper. Instead, we ran one where the firefighters aren't as identifiable.

Photo of the Week: 5'6''

2010-04-20T20:12:00.000-07:00

I had a difficult time deciding which photo to post this week. I had two others that I was considering and both were from more interesting stories than this but when I looked at them all side-by-side this one stood out. This is from the high jump competition at our local high school track meet. Shooting sports usually reminds me of one of those 'shoot the tin ducks' game that you see at the carnival - you always know where the action is so you just take aim and fire. If you miss, you just shrug it off 'cause you know there's another duck on the way. I like this because it was a slightly different technique. I saw the frame with the uprights and the yellow landing pad before anyone jumped so I framed it up and shot several jumpers until one gave me just the right expression and body language - still the same principal I guess but I wasn't tracking the action like in most sports.

Laid Over

2010-04-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

This is a short essay I shot while taking a vacation at the end of last summer. I just got a new computer and I've been digging through old files trying to get things organized and I found these. I never had an excuse to publish them or show them before and when I found them I realized that I liked the essay a lot more than I when I shot them. This started as a way to pass the time while I had lay-overs in airports and saw lots of other people waiting around too. I started shooting them just as a way to occupy myself - I think I'll keep it up whe
never I'm stuck in an airport in the future. These are from airports in Albuquerque, Denver, Atlanta and Phoenix.

Photo of the Week: Youth Wrestler

2010-04-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

This is from an assignment I had to cover about a youth wrestling program in Window Rock a few days ago. The people that organize the program have applied for grant money to help launch similar programs throughout the rez because there's a shortage of positive things to occupy local youth. As I composed this I was thinking more about the monotone blues and trying to keep the lines of the tiles straight in the frame when the kid looked up at me. Normally, I wouldn't use a photo where the subject was making eye contact with the camera but I think it really works here - I guess there's an exception to every rule.

Photo of the Week: Mary Lou Nelson

2010-04-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

I just realized that I haven't posted anything on here in almost five months! For anyone still reading this, I'm sorry - I'm going to start keeping up with this again. I'm starting a regular post where I'll show my favorite photo each week and talk about it a little.

This is a portrait I shot for a story about how some of the rural areas around Gallup are being ignored by the US census. This woman is a 20-year widow who lives alone west of town and was annoyed that she hadn't yet received her census form. She called several government offices and got only the automated recordings and eventually called our paper out of frustration. Portraiture has always been a little difficult for me, it's just not the kind of photography that I do well. I frequently compare photography music, saying that there are photographers who do portraiture and commercial studio work where the skill of that kind of photography is the ability pre-visualize your work and control the variables. Those people are like classical musicians, but people like me are more like jazz musicians where the work is improvisational and spontaneous. I would never say that either way is better, it's like comparing Miles Davis to Mozart. This photo is one of the very rare examples of when I was faced with having to work the other way and was very happy with the results.

Halloween Dance Party

2009-11-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

It's a tradition here in Gallup to have a local band concert and dance party on Halloween at the historic El Rancho hotel. Since I was neither drinking nor dancing, I decided to photograph the event instead. Happy Halloween!

R.O. Hawthorne

2009-10-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

Since I've been in Gallup, I've had several opportunities to photograph the Navajo Code Talkers but it's always been during a parade, ceremony or otherwise staged event. Last week I had to cover a press conference about a disbursement of left over John McCain campaign funds being donated to a proposed Navajo Military Academy. The academy is the brain-child of Roy Hawthorne, one of the few remaining Code Talkers and I met him outside before the conference, talked to him for a while and took a few pictures. For those of you who don't know about the Code Talkers, they were a group of Navajo soldiers in the US Marine Corps during WWII who used the Navajo language to broadcast coded, secure messages - they are all local heroes around here and it was a real privilege to meet and photograph Mr. Hawthorne.

Spider Sense

2009-09-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't gotten a lot of work done lately, in fact, I spent most of this week just lying on my couch. Some time ago, I was bitten three times by what now appears to be a brown recluse spider and the doctor sentenced me to bed rest for a while. The bites, one near my knee, one one my ankle and one on my foot caused my left leg to be so swollen from the knee down to the toes that it was almost comical to look at. The worst of the bites is now starting to fester and decay - an effect of the recluse venom called necrosis - it is very unpleasant and very, very painful. Being bed-ridden and bored I decided to pull out the macro lens and document the phenomenon. It sure is exciting living in the desert...

Ceremonial: Powwow

2009-08-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

Been crazy busy here in Gallup with the 88th Annual Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial this week - I've had rodeos, pageants, parades, powwow's and even a half-marathon to cover that were all associated with the ceremonial. The rodeos and pageants are all pretty standard so I'm posting some powwow stuff instead.

Ceremonial: Night Parade

2009-08-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

I don't have a lot of time right now but I've been asked to post some things from the Ceremonial. These are from the night parade tonight - I took a chance on the lighting and it worked out great. More later.

4th

2009-07-04T22:19:00.000-07:00

I was busy as hell today running around shooting 4th of July stuff all over the place. Now I'm exhausted so I won't say much about these. They are a photo of the fireworks display after the rodeo in Window Rock and a backup dancer from a Native hip hop concert at the new casino - strangely monotone selection today. Happy 4th!!!

'Tis the Season

2009-07-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

When I moved to Gallup about a year ago one of the old-timers at the Journal told me I'd better get used to shooting lots of rodeo. It didn't sound very appealling to me at the time but the rodeo season here just started and so far, I'm really enjoying it. Rodeo is the kind of event that's got so much happening and so much going on visually that I find it difficult to stay focused on the job I'm supposed to be doing. I shot this frame between events at the rodeo last night - I'm still not sure if I like it but I've gotten some nice feedback on it so I'm throwing it up here. Tell me what you think.

Dibe'

2009-06-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

I got to photograph a traditional sheep butchering today - I'd heard tons of stories about it but I'd never seen anything like it. I found the whole thing really fascinating and I ended up shooting far more photos than I'll ever need so I'm throwing a bunch of them on here. This edit is a little sheep-centric, I'll probably re-edit it to be a little more human-centric when I turn stuff in for the paper. There are tons of clubs and institutions around here that hold these kind of demos to help keep traditions alive; I've photographed a blue-corn mush demo twice, a frybread contest, a Navajo astronomy workshop and a weaving class already but this was certainly unique. The butchering is part of the competition for the Miss Navajo pageant and the pageant office held the workshop today to help teach young girls who may compete for the title one day.

Graduation Blackout

2009-05-28T19:21:00.000-07:00

I've been shooting tons of graduation ceremonies lately - that's just the way it goes this time of year. Anyone who has sat through even one high school graduation ceremony know how tedious they can be but I knew we were going to run a special photo page for it so I just had fun with it and got a few photos that I really like. By far, the most interesting ceremony I went to was the one Wingate, N.M. - about two minutes into the first speech a lightning strike blacked out the whole town. We all sat there in the dark for thirty or forty minutes before they decided to postpone the ceremony. During the blackout I shot this little feature of these two sisters looking at photos on the back of a digital camera.

When I grow up...

2009-05-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

I had to cover Gallup's first annual Trauma Prevention Day today - just a small kind of fair where they handed out pamphlets about local hospitals and health programs and some politicians rallied funds for a proposed new trauma center. There were several little booths and demos and in the middle of it some fire department cadets performed a practice vehicle extraction. They dissected some old pick-up with the jaws-of-life and "rescued" a CPR dummy. Before they started, I asked the chief "how close can I get" he said I could get as close as I wanted to but I don't think he realized what I meant. When I finally wound up standing in the bed of the truck amidst the flying glass the chief came over, removed his helmet and put it on my head. Being that it was a staged event, I didn't get any photos that were particularly exciting but I had fun doing it and I felt like a little kid playing fireman in my silly hat. A couple weeks ago my stepmother told me I should get a real job so that I'm not broke all the time - screw that, my job is too much fun.

Down

2009-05-16T14:58:00.000-07:00

I had an assignment today to cover a children's activity at the Gallup airport - small plane pilots were volunteering their time to fly kids over the town and teach them about airplanes and stuff like that. One pilot had a vintage 1947 Ercoupe sport plane - a really cool little two-seater with an open air cockpit. I was on a waiting list to go up in a Cesna that could carry more people (there was no point in me riding in a two-seater since I needed photos of the kids) but the guy with the Ercoupe offered to take me up anyway after the kids had all had a turn - I never got the chance. About fifteen minutes after I talked to the guy his plane caught some kind of temperature inversion and dropped like a stone. I guess that's fairly common out here in the high desert and the pilot reportedly did his job well, he and the kid he was carrying got out of it with just a few bruises. What a weird day.

These photos are; a crowd watching as the plane makes it's final take-off, the pilot standing by his plane on the tarmac and of course, the scene of the crash.

Boss Man

2009-04-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

I first met the Navajo Nation president when I moved to Gallup in July - I had to cover a press conference in Window Rock, AZ and he was there. Apparently, he noticed I was a new face and he came over, shook my hand and introduced himself. He was a super nice guy and I have very little knowledge and no opinion about his politics but the one thing I noticed was this huge belt buckle that said 'Joe Shirley -President'. There was something about it that just struck me as odd and I've been trying to get a photo of it ever since.

I think my friend Lydell said it best: I described the buckle to him and he asked "Like he wrestled someone to get it?"

Ya- it's something like that.

Alex

2009-04-15T19:55:00.000-07:00

I guess April is National Autism Awareness Month - we're doing a story about it the paper tomorrow. I spent a couple days hanging out with this kid, Alex, he's 17 years old and has fairly severe autism but he's still graduating from high school this year. He and his family are all good people and I had a good time working on the this project and I'm thinking about continuing it - we'll see... We're running four or five photos with the story tomorrow but I had a few more I liked so, of course, I'm posting a couple of them here. These are, Alex in his bedroom with a toy car and Alex's grandmother helping him down the track during Special Olympics practice.

Springtime in Gallup

2009-03-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Two days ago it was seventy degrees and sunny, today it was nineteen degrees and we got three inches of snow (so far). I always thought the weather in Albuquerque was wacky but it's got nothing on Gallup!

They sent me out to find weather features for the paper today - I ended up with a photo of a guy using his cell phone to photograph a flower bed covered in snow. It wasn't a super great photo but it got the point across. At one point while I was wondering around in the snow the clouds cleared for a few minutes and the sun hit this little stand of trees - I don't have a lot of excuses to just shoot pretty pictures lately but I couldn't let this go.

Ice

2009-03-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

This is little bit different kind of post for me - it's not really about my work and these aren't my photos but this is a good story and I've go some good photos so I'm posting it here.

Last Saturday I finished my work about 5 o'clock and was going to head into Albuquerque for the weekend. My friend was on spring break from UNM and we had plans to ride motorcycles around and go to the hot springs in Jemez and just generally have a fun weekend. The weather in Gallup was beautiful, my friend told me the weather in Abq. was nice and I'd already been to Grants that morning for an assignment and the roads were fine so I assumed my trip would be a breeze. However, I came over the continental divide about half-way between Gallup and Grants and there was this freak ice storm. I was a couple mile from the next exit and I had no where to go, I tried to slow the bike down as best I could but I didn't want to use the brakes on the ice. I started down-shifting and dragging my feet for stability. I was doing about 40 when I laid the bike down and went sliding down I40 on my back. I rushed back to bike and tried to lift it out of the way of oncoming traffic, two men whose car had also slid off the road ran out to help me but they didn't speak any english. In the middle of our effort maneuver the bike across the ice, one of the men started screaming in my face in frantic spanish. I just stared at him dumbly until he screamed louder, pointed over my shoulder and ran away. I turned to see that a semi-truck had slid sideways on the highway and was coming at me broadside. I dove over the bike into a ditch and the rear wheels of the truck missed the bike by about an inch. We managed to get the bike out of the way and after a few minutes police showed up escorted me and the bike to the nearest exit where I left the bike locked up behind a scary road-side liquor store.

These photos are from the next day when I went back to pick up the bike. Brian and I went back out to Thoreau to pick up the bike from the weird liquor store and he shot these photos of me as I did a little duct tape patch job on the bike. I bruised my leg pretty bad but I'm otherwise fine and the damage on the bike is mostly cosmetic. It could have been a lot worse.

Check out more of Brian's stuff at www.brianleddy.com

Launch!!

2009-03-11T19:48:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note today - my new website is finally up and running! Check it out at www.cablehooverphoto.com - it's just a simple image portfolio right now but there should be more to it in time, we're still working out a few bugs. Let me know what you think of the photos - what you like, what you don't like - I'm always open to critique and the portfolio is constant work-in-progress.

superstar...

2009-03-04T22:23:00.000-08:00

When I was in high school we had a quarterback on our football team who was the star of the team and the pride of the school. He ended up with a full scholarship to Auburn or some other prestigious school like that and we were all sure he'd go pro and be rich and famous within ten years. I never heard exactly what happened to him but I guess he injured his leg playing in college and never turned pro. So it goes. I suppose every high school in the country has a star athlete or something that everyone assumes will be famous one day and I'm sure most of the stories turn out like our quarterback's did. Here in Gallup, it's a basketball player named Alfonzo Hubbard - the kid is good, really good. I've shot dozens of photos of him through the course of the basketball season but I grabbed this impromptu portrait as he was giving an interview after the team won the district championship last week. I really like this photo and I hope he does well, it'd be cool to see one of those stories come true.

The Quad!

2009-02-16T21:54:00.000-08:00

I just realized that I haven't posted anything here in a while - been crazy busy with basketball season and stuff. Saturday I got to cover the Mt Taylor Quadrathalon, a 42-mile bike/run/x-country ski/snowshoe race from downtown Grants, NM to the 11,000ft summit of Mt Taylor. I think it was almost as exhausting to cover the race as it would be to run it - I had to stop and sleep in my truck for an hour after I left Grants. I ended up with more than a dozen photos that I liked and the paper only ran about 5 so I'm throwing some of the extras up here. These are; a racer in her pre-race 'meditation', a bus load of team racers riding to the relay point, a crowd of cyclists leaving the start and skier in front of a large snow drift.

Ninety-two

2009-01-04T12:05:00.000-08:00

This woman was a waitress at the old train station restaurant here in Gallup. The restaurant was reasonably famous and part of a network of train stops called Harvey Houses - we were doing a kind of retrospective about the place so we interviewed her for the paper. When I showed up to take her photo she had this page of old photos of herself and some other 'Harvey Girls.' I posed her holding the photos but then she just set the page in her lap and held on to it for the whole interview and I kept shooting. I really like this photo but I'm not sure why. I'm thinking now about starting a whole project about elderly people and how they spend their time.

New Year's Powwow

2009-01-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

I spent my new year's eve at a powwow at the local high school. It seemed sort of odd at the time, it just wasn't the kind of thing I ever expected to be doing on new year's eve. Apparently, it's a fairly long-standing tradition around here - they throw this powwow and forbid anyone from bringing alcohol, it's supposed to be a fun alternate to going out and getting wasted. Thousands of people show up and I guess it's good for the community and stuff but it still seemed a little weird to me.
I was struggling to find a photo that would say this wasn't just a powwow - I wanted something that said it was new year's. Obviously, there were no champagne glasses, fireworks or any other typical new year's icons. This sleeping kid was the best I could find - it's not great but at least it gave me a reason to use the phrase 'late-night powwow' in the caption. Happy New Year's!

Holiday Stuff

2008-12-18T18:18:00.000-08:00

It looks like I'll be especially busy over the next week so I thought I'd throw up a few here all at once. These are a few outtakes from the holiday parade and a GPD (Gallup Police Department) holiday fundraiser. Happy Holidays!

Masani

2008-11-29T10:26:00.000-08:00

This might be one of the best photos I've ever taken - I had to photograph the grand opening of the new Navajo casino and despite some controversy, thousands of people showed up. When they cut the ribbon, the massive crowd rushed the door and overwhelmed the security forces. Somewhere in the confusion I ended up on top of a concrete pylon where I could shoot down on the crowd. Security finally regained control and those who hadn't forced through were left waiting their turn in the tightly-packed throng. This woman's face really caught my attention and I started shooting her hoping to personalize the crowd a little bit. I was thrilled with photo but the story was published the same day as part of the homeless project and there just wasn't space for this photo.

Homeless

2008-11-29T10:13:00.002-08:00

I guess November is national homelessness awareness month - at the paper we ran a special three-part story about the local homeless shelter and some of the people who stay there. I spent one full day at the shelter and even stayed the night. I also spent several subsequent days following around a few of the guys and taking photos. It really was an enlightening experience and I met some really good people. Of course, I wound up with more photos than we could run in the paper - this is one of my favorites from the project and I was disappointed that it didn't make the cut. This guy lives out of his van and has it jammed full of bizarre things that he's collected. He was a strange character but he was good for photos.

Sports Page Part 2

2008-11-09T16:11:00.000-08:00

I couldn't f-ing believe they ran this photo - they didn't just run it either, they ran it huge and it looked great (one of the few that looked better in print than it does on the screen). I was supposed to shoot the Gallup High School cross country team getting ready for the state tournament but they spent almost their entire practice time sitting in a classroom going over rules and regs for the state meet and getting a pep talk from the coach. By the time the coach finally sent them out for a "quick run", it was so dark outside that I could hardly shoot at all. So, I was sort of forced to use these slow shutter speeds - I'm not sure I would have thought to try this otherwise.

Election Day

2008-11-09T15:55:00.000-08:00

Brian Leddy (the other Independent photographer) and I thought they were going to give us a photo page for the day after voting day. We went crazy all over town at polling places, campaign headquarters, after parties, etc. and we turned in a ton of great stuff. However, they didn't run the photo page and just ran several of the pics as stand-alone photos throughout the paper. It worked out alright but I still think a photo page would have been really nice. This is my favorite photo of the ones that got cut - I think that this woman pondering over her ballot tells a nice little story. I don't know if Brian's stuff from that day is available anywhere but check out his site at brianleddy.com - he's really good and I'm usually pretty proud of our little two-man team.

Yeegobama!

2008-11-02T14:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I was supposed to photograph the staff of the Barack Obama campaign on the Navajo Nation - I guess nobody told them I was coming. I waited there for almost three hours and no one ever showed up, I later found out that they were all at a rally in Tuba City. I heard that most of the staff were people that were too young to vote but they wanted to get involved with the campaign anyway. I would say that I was surprised to find out that this tiny, old trailer was the campaign headquarters for the entire rez but, honestly, I wasn't surprised. I think it's kind of funny but it's also pretty inspirational - as far as I know, McCain has no headquarters on the Navajo Nation.

Wolves & Pumpkins

2008-11-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

I had this fun assignment for Halloween - south of Gallup about 50 miles there is a wolf sanctuary that's about 70% wildlife advocate and 30% tourist trap. They threw a halloween party and charged $30 per person for the chance to tour the facilities and camp among the wolves (the wolves are in cages). During the tour, they gave the wolves pumpkins that were stuffed with meat - the wolves liked the treat, the tourists liked the spectacle and I got invited inside the cages to take pictures. It was kind of a fluff assignment but it was fun. I got lots of cool photos, the paper ran several but here are a couple that didn't make the cut. - Happy Halloween!

Not Right for the Sports Page

2008-10-26T12:54:00.000-07:00

Actually, I haven't checked to see if the sports editor ran this or not - I'm usually surprised by what he let's us get away with but this might be pushing it a little. Where I went to high school nobody gave damn about the cross country team but around here it's hugely popular and I have to shoot it all the time. Invariably, it's just a photo of some guy running so I'm always struggling to find something different and interesting - I like this one.

Better in Black and White

2008-10-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

This was from a weird story about a series of festivals and events that happens along NM53 between Grants and Zuni. This girl is holding the prize cake for a cake walk at the San Rafael church (San Rafael is about 5 miles south of Grants) - I thought her stance and expression were really classic. I kind of imagined it as a black and white photo when I shot it but we run every page in color at the Independent so I'm posting the b&w here.

Pep Rally Bonfire

2008-10-26T12:21:00.000-07:00

A year or two ago Gallup finally outgrew it's one high school so they created a new one and split up the student body. Right now, the new school is new enough that everything it does makes the news - I shot their first-ever football game and a story about them still struggling to get textbooks. This was from their first-ever homecoming pep rally - they had a huge bonfire and various other high school activities. I had a good time there and got lots of good stuff but this one didn't run. I just liked the fire behind this kid's mohawk - it just seemed to embody that weird hyper teenage energy.

New Stuff

2008-10-26T12:12:00.000-07:00

I finally found a way to get semi-regular internet access again so I'll try to keep up with this thing a little better. This photo isn't really new, I shot it a couple months back at the Navajo Nation Fair. These Apache Crown Dancer are a crowd favorite at all the fairs, powwows and parades around here - their costumes are so striking that it's hard to get a bad photo really. I had two from that night that I liked and the other one ran in the paper so I thought I'd throw this one up here.

Full swing

2008-08-03T19:20:00.000-07:00

This little league softball team won the state championship and I shot their last practices before they left for regionals in Texas. It was the first time since I started that I felt like I was really shooting consistently well so I'm posting everything that I turned in to the paper. They only published two but I really like them as a group. By the way, by shear coincidence the girl in the last photo with the purple shirt is the same girl in the back of the dance group below - this is a small town.

One for the portfolio

2008-08-03T18:55:00.000-07:00

I had this assignment last week to shoot a portrait of this three-person dance troupe. I've never been great at posed photos or artificial lighting so I was really worried about it. Sometimes I think that apprehension is good, it makes you try harder - the portrait turned out great and I think it might be the first thing from the Independent that'll go into my portfolio. What do you think?

PVC homage

2008-08-03T18:47:00.000-07:00

Shot this as a feature last week - sorry Pat, after teching for a couple years things seemed to have rubbed off.

First Week

2008-07-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

This one basically sums up my first week in Gallup - the 2nd Annual Pinedale motorcycle rally and hoop dancing. What else can you say?

Outtake #3

2008-07-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

Shot this yesterday and the Grants Fire and Ice motorcycle rally - there was this stunt group there that I saw at an event last year in Albuquerque. This might be one of my all-time favorite photos, it reminds me of a friend of mine.

I just liked this one

2008-07-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

The Independent did publish this - I didn't think they would because it's a little distant for typical newspaper work but so far I've been really happy with the pictures they've chosen. I had to cover a story about a 5k walk/run in Twin Lakes on the Navajo Nation - the event was designed to promote community health. They've apparently been doing these regularly for 8 or ten years and they're pretty popular - everybody from trained athletes to families with little kids showed up and either ran or walked the 3 miles. This woman wouldn't tell me how old she was - she was dead last but she finished anyway.

Outtake #2

2008-07-19T13:24:00.001-07:00

Been offline for a while with the move and everything but I'm finally getting everything together again - this is the first outtake from the Independent that I like. The photo they published from this story was shot from a pretty weird angle and I didn't think they'd like it but I guess they did. This one's a little more mellow but I like it, the other one with the weird angle feels a little forced and gimmicky to me but I think they took it because there isn't really anything happening in this photo. Here's the link to the other one - http://www.gallupindependent.com/2008/07july/071808home.html

Photo-A-Day #9

2008-07-08T11:08:00.000-07:00

This is strictly technical exercise - I guess there's some new fad in digital photography called HDR or high-dynamic-range imaging, this is what it looks like. The subject came up at work yesterday and when I looked up examples on the internet I couldn't tell what it was supposed to do so I tried it myself. Here's how it works, you shoot a picture with the correctly metered exposure and then shoot the same picture four more times with +1, -1, +2 and -2 exposures and then merge them all together with Photoshop. Supposedly, it gives you a super-wide tonal range because you end up with a perfect exposure on every part of the image. When I looked up examples yesterday I was wholly unimpressed - everything just looked overly digitized and kind of flat. After trying it myself, I'm even less impressed - it washed out my highlights, flattened my shadows and made the whole thing difficult to work with. It seems like instead of getting the best parts of the various exposures I got all the worst parts. Maybe I did something wrong - if anyone out there understands the process better please explain it to me otherwise I'll write it off as a gimmicky waste-of-time.

Photo-A-Day #8

2008-07-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

I may have pushed this one a little too far - I heard a rumor several years ago that out-of-focus photography is an art form in some asian countries, I'm not sure if that's true but I always thought it was intriguing. Apparently, the argument behind it is similar to the concept behind impressionist painting. I like the idea that art is the only possible trully subjective way for humans to communicate - I don't think that's it's something that a lot of photographers think about and it's something that journalists deliberately try to avoid. As the argument goes, language is inherently flawed because all words have literal meanings and can only communicate objective ideas - using only words, you will never be able to tell someone how you feel, only what you think. For me, photography has always struggled with a similar problem - a camera is at least considered to be an objective tool so it's very difficult to make a photograph ABOUT something rather than a photograph OF something. This is an overly simplistic attempt to do that - maybe I've been reading too much philosophy lately.

Photo-A-Day #7

2008-07-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

I was pretty busy yesterday and I didn't think I'd get a chance to shoot anything but after I got home I heard the fireworks still going outside so I did the best I could. I think these were being launched from the Isotopes game - I was too far away to get photos that really showed the festivities but I like it like this as an accent to the cityscape. The "road closed" sign seems like it should have some symbolic weight too but I can't really explain it.

Photo-A-Day #6

2008-07-03T20:03:00.000-07:00

I was at work when it started to rain - I thought it might be a good chance to take some pictures so I grabbed my camera and went outside. Well everytime it rains, half the office comes out just to watch the weather and today wasn't any different. I shot a bunch of other weird stuff that I didn't like but I turned around and saw fellow photographer Pat Vasquez-Cunningham standing there so I made this little portait. Pat's shot plenty of photos of me and it seemed appropriate to return the favor.

Photo-A-Day #5

2008-07-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

This was always supposed to be just a visual exercise but I thought about and realized that even more than getting back in the habit of thinking visually, I've got to get used to journalism again. With that in mind, I wanted to shoot something that told a story or at least had a story behind it. This is a photo of Aaron Wilson - he'll be my replacement at the Albuquerque Journal. I've been training him all week, in this photo he's sitting at my old desk doing my old job. I haven't had much to do at work this week - I just watch over Aaron's shoulder and make sure everything is going smoothly so I've got lots of time to play with my camera and post blogs.

Photo-A-Day #4

2008-07-01T08:38:00.000-07:00

After yesterday's photo and my ruminations about what my "style" was or wasn't like I got to thinking about what that style was if wasn't about light and shadow. I think I've always had a knack for formal composition so I got up this morning and tried to photograph the same subject with a more formal style - this is what I came up with. I like this one the most of all the pics so far, none of them are very interesting but in the context of a strictly visual exercise I think this is the most successful.

Photo-A-Day #3

2008-06-30T18:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what to say about this one, I got home from work, opened the curtains and the light was nice so I shot it. It's never really been my style to play with light this much or to let the shadows be so dark - I think it's something that I picked up from working with the other photographers at the Journal. I like it, I think it adds a little depth to my pics and I hope I can keep it up in more practical settings.

Photo-A-Day #2

2008-06-29T21:21:00.000-07:00

I was at the book store today and I was struck by the visual quality of being completely surrounded by nothing but shelves full of books. It wasn't really the most interesting subject but I was intrigued by the challenge of commuticating the monotonous absolution into a single frame. I went through several strategies like showing as many shelves as possible, shooting the shelves straight on so that the frame was nothing but books, weird compressed angles that were really formal looking - I looked through them all when I got home and found that this was the most effective frame. Somehow the others were too literal and it seemed like leaving half the frame in shadow was the best way to communicate a visual vastness that I couldn't otherwise fit into a single frame. I'm still not sure that the picture is successful and it's a boring photo either way but I guess I learned something from it.

Photo-A-Day #1

2008-06-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

Since I haven't been shooting regularly for a while, I'm a little nervous about jumping into a regular staff photographer position without getting a little bit of warm up first so I started yesterday with a little photo-a-day project that I'll keep going for the next couple weeks at least. I think a lot photographers do this when they need to get over some obstacle or frustration in their work and I haven't done this since college. The point isn't really to make anything amazing or to work with any particular theme - I just want to get myself in the habit of thinking visually again. This is the first photo from this little exercise, it's a photo of the cab of my truck and the side of my apartment building that I shot as I was leaving to run some errands last night. It's pretty stupid and essentially empty but I had fun playing with the failing daylight and the mixed light from the parking lot floods and dome light of my truck.

First Outtake

2008-06-29T12:05:00.000-07:00

Last week I had to drive out to Gallup for my interview with the Independent, the managing editor wanted me to shoot an assignment as a kind test but the photo desk didn't have any open assignments waiting. Later I was coming back from lunch with Jeff Jones, the photo editor/senior photographer, and we saw a group of old Model A Fords at a park. We thought it might make a decent feature and since they were still looking for something for me to shoot we stopped. The photos they published can be seen here:

http://www.gallupindependent.com/2008/06June/061908.html

They couldn't publish them with my name on them because I was still an employee of a different newspaper and there's some kind of contractual issue. I also shot the above photo then. I think that it's a more interesting compostion than the photos that were published but the woman in the pic froze-up in front of my camera and the photo looks a little too staged and portrait-like for newspaper work and the lamp post over her head really bothers me too. Obviously, it was appropriate to cut this photo but I thought it was an interesting first outtake from my upcoming work at the Independent.

Shooting Again

2008-06-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

After a couple years working at the tech desk at the Albuquerque Journal I recently got a job at the Gallup Independent, I'll be starting there in the middle of July and finally shooting regularly again which I couldn't do at the Journal. I figure this is the beggining of the real photography career I've been working toward for most of my life so I think it's time to start acting like the professional I should be, this blog is part of that and hopefully I'll soon launch my own website where I'll post my portfolio and other finished work. On this blog it'll mostly be works-in-progress, outtakes from assignments at the Independent and other personal photos that I've got no other place to display.