Tag Archive for 'NY Times'

Texas Hill Country Blue Bonnets and smiles

Published on May 16, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: America, Blue Bonnets, Clip, Escapes, flowers, Highway 281, Hill Country, Indian Paint Brush, iPhone, montage, NY Times, Texas, travel.

I had an amazingly fun assignment to drive down Texas Highway 281 and Hill Country for the New York Times Escapes section. There is nothing like an amazing field of Blue Bonnets to make smiles appear from nothing. Just love em. There are also Indian Paint Brush, Indian Blanket, Winecup, Black Eyed Susan, Daisies, and probably 15 others I am forgetting. Please let me know if you see any I did not mention.

There is nothing much to add beyond these bad ass flower pics…so I’ll just let you check them out. The Times ended up using a picture I took of a family feeding an Addax at Fossil Rim State Park. It is a cool place offering 1,700 acres of land for 1,100 animals to roam freely in large pastures. But…there were no flowers so I didn’t show them. I also had to shoot an iPhone Montage with it. I also included a couple other random snaps from the trip.

Crawford, Texas Post Bush

Published on May 12, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: America, assignment, Clip, Crawford, George W. Bush, NY Times, Texas.

As the spring comes to a close and the humidity of summer begins, I am less than a week from departing for Italy to continue production on Campania Infelix (unhappy country). Be sure to join the Unhappy Country documentary facebook page to get news on the project throughout the summer.

I have several updates to share before I leave, so I’ll just get right to it.

A month or so ago I drove down to Crawford, Texas to do a followup on the town after years of tourism and media frenzy surrounding President George W. Bush’s ranch. If you’ll remember, there were the Cindy Sheehan protests, which created the media circus in the first place. Bush was also known to invite world leaders to actually hold meetings in Crawford. The President’s presence in Crawford brought activists and media as well as tourists bringing money and numbers to this small country town.

New York Times reporter James McKinley was interested in what this town is up to after eight years of Bush. Apparently not much. Of the five memorabilia shops operating, only one remains. Crawford only has one main street…and several of the stores are no longer in business. One of the stores, The Yellow Rose, still houses all the memorabilia, only to see it collect dust.

“Yet long gone are the days when this town of 750 people played host to foreign heads of state or teemed with journalists, protesters and White House officials.

And as Mr. Bush has settled into a quiet retirement in Dallas, appearing rarely and seldom speaking about politics, so too has this town near which he spent his vacations in office.

He still comes to his 1,400-acre ranch on holidays and on some weekends, but he does not arrive with the thwap-thwap-thwap of helicopters anymore. He slips quietly through town in a black sport utility vehicle and leaves just as quietly, townspeople say. ”

What remains are the local people…who for the most part are obviously Bush supporters. There is the local coffee shop restaurant, and a new bank, and the sole remaining memorabilia store. Crawford, Texas seems to have returned to what it was…another small Texas country town.

The Times ran a cool little slide show of Crawford, Texas with the story and a nice clip in the paper.

Texas Politics & Kay Bailey Hutchison for the NY Times

Published on March 15, 2010 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments Tags: America, assignment, Clip, Kay Bailey Hutchison, NY Times, people, politics, Texas.

Texas had its gubernatorial primary elections a couple weeks back. It was just the primaries, but this is Texas, and we all know no Democrat has even a chance of running this state. The Republican ticket sure got heated though as Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison sparred in a heated campaign. There was also Debra Medina making some noise, but she never really had chance.

I had two assignments in a week to cover Kay Bailey during the end of her campaign. She started strong and looked good in the polls until the last few weeks when she simply fell behind. She was pleasant enough as she shifted through the smiles and handshakes of a seasoned politician. Yet, you could see there was no drive left in her campaign. The tour bus made all the usual stops around the DFW area, resting at all-American cafes, retirement homes, and town-hall style Republican meetings. The other media and I only had access to one leg of the drive between locations, but that was more than enough time to catch Kay Bailey dividing her gifted cupcakes amongst her team.

I also shot the Kay Bailey watch party. Everyone pretty much knew she was going to loose, but the media attention was spectacular considering it was only the primary election. I must say, I am surprised the New York Times found such interest in state politics.The watch party was at Eddie Deen’s Ranch near downtown Dallas. It was very fitting for Texas…the walls are lined with western themed store fronts and the place has obviously hosted a line dance or three.

I do like politics.

***I would like to point out that I was mistakenly given credit for Ben Sklar’s photo of Governor Rick Perry in the sweet clip that ran on the front of the National section. I did take the other two.

Tea Party for NY Times

Published on February 21, 2010 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: America, Clip, NY Times, people, rant, Tea Party, Texas.

Back in September when President Obama had high hopes for the now impossible passage of the health care bill, the Tea Party movement was just gaining attention. I had a two day shoot for The New York Times, one in Waco and the other in Dallas, to cover rallies by these people as they traversed the country towards Washington. The rallies culminated in a large overly stimulating and uneventful protest in the capital. I use the term “these people” in an unusually derogatory manner, at least for me. Let me explain…It is unimaginable for me to see how these people feel so strongly against Barack Obama and government in general, yet do so in such a hateful and ignorant manner. Forgetting the clearly ridiculous signs and shouts portraying Obama as a Nazi, which are so undeniably offensive it is barely worth noting, these claims of the Democrat’s direction towards socialism really get me going. How is having affordable health care socialist? How is raising taxes on overly rich people communist? Obama is so far for nationalizing government it is almost comedic to listen these critiques. I see this movement attracting more people. I am not so much offended by their expressing ignorant and hateful ideas, as much as I’m simply shocked by the ease at which people can believe this stuff. The likes of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are obviously just personalities looking to gain power, or maybe just money, but how can so many American’s follow their phony ideals so blindly. At times, I question the intelligence of this country. Even for a Republican party that is working non-stop to defame and humiliate our president with a no vote on everything, the Tea Party takes it to another level. Perhaps it will work against them…speaking out against the GOP may turn out hurting both the Tea Party and the old elephants.

What was so interesting at these rallies is the urgent desire to appeal toward peoples patriotic hearts as a method to attract followers. Is it really that patriotic to bash the president presiding over two wars and such a deep economic crisis?

Take a look at the great article by David Barstow on the NY Times website. He has a great article describing the general platform (or lack there of) for the Tea Party Movement. He does a great job describing how there is no one group which dominates or defines the ideology of the Tea Party. Rather, the party attracts a number of groups who have nowhere else to turn.

“The Tea Party movement defies easy definition, largely because there is no single Tea Party. At the grass-roots level, it consists of hundreds of autonomous Tea Party groups, widely varying in size and priorities, each influenced by the peculiarities of local history,” writes Barstow.

“Local Tea Party groups are often loosely affiliated with one of several competing national Tea Party organizations. In the background, offering advice and organizational muscle, are an array of conservative lobbying groups, most notably FreedomWorks. Further complicating matters, Tea Party events have become a magnet for other groups and causes — including gun rights activists, anti-tax crusaders, libertarians, militia organizers, the “birthers” who doubt President Obama’s citizenship, Lyndon LaRouche supporters and proponents of the sovereign states movement.”

I hope this works out in the end by making it difficult for any one leader to gain too much popularity as a result of trying to reach too many different ignorant minds.

The Times also ran a nice slide show which featured 5 of my photos. Despite running my images 5 months after I shot them, they did run a huge picture in color. That was pleasing.

T. Boone Pickens for The New York Times

Published on January 18, 2010 in Uncategorized. 5 Comments Tags: America, Clip, NY Times, portrait, T. Boone Pickens, Texas.

I got to take a portrait of oil man turned wind man T. Boone Pickens for The New York Times. He is continuing his advertising push to promote wind energy and natural gas as a way to get off our oil problems. He claims it is a matter of national security. The man has some points. He also avoids others.

I did shoot a speech, but by far, the highlight was taking his portrait and visiting his office in Dallas. The only other office with more of a “museum” feel is the Perot offices. Boone (what a name!) has a great Western painting collection. The best place to take the portrait was his office. I had some other ideas, but after waiting two hours for Mr. Pickens to finish his lunch I only had three minutes to shoot. After three minutes (exactly three minutes…17 frames to be exact) I was told “you got it.” I think I did OK. Without being sarcastic, this is not to say Boone is rude. He was extremely nice and I was impressed to see he remembered my name immediately (after all, Matt is an odd one.) He introduced me to people wherever we went and we had a great conversation about his amazingly large ranch in Texas.

The New York Times ran a great 5 column picture in print. I also liked the shot of Boone looking out the window into downtown Dallas. The curtains give it a cool old look. You can see the article written by Cliff Krauss online.

Cleaning Our Industries for NY Times

Published on December 15, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: America, assignment, Clip, industry, NY Times, Texas.

First…there are some BIG announcements coming soon. Be sure to stay tuned in the next few days for the fun!

I am still waiting on several assignments to publish, but did see the NY Times finally run this article by Cliff Krauss and Jad Mouawad on the cleaning process for the millions of gallons of water used to fracture shale rock in order to release the natural gas.

The story on natural gas seems to be getting bigger and bigger…as does the industry itself. I’m not sure if I am going to continue taking pictures, but I do find myself continually saying, “time to buy stock in natural gas.”

While natural gas is a cleaner energy then the burning of coal, I am worried about the environmental impacts of draining and sucking our shale deposit’s gas reserves. Once gone, won’t this free flowing cash cycle end?

Many of these wells are built in urban places…golf courses and country clubs are not resistant to offers of money. “Hazards like methane contamination of drinking water wells, long known in regions where gas production was common, are spreading to populous areas that have little history of coping with such risks, but happen to sit atop shale beds.”

Also, look at ALL this extra crap which is used in the process. When the drills enter the ground they mix massive amounts of water, sand, and chemicals to separate rock and help gas flow. Of course, these companies process, clean, and distill the excess water to be reused again. While the science says it is cleaned, I continue to wonder where the mistakes show up and how much waste goes unreported. More striking is the unknown affects on the ground water around these wells. From the article, “A string of incidents in places like Wyoming and Pennsylvania in recent years has pointed to a possible link between hydraulic fracturing and pollution of groundwater supplies. In the worst case, such pollution could damage crucial supplies of water used for drinking and agriculture.”

This is obviously bad politics for these massive companies, although there is relatively low toxicity found (or reported). It’s the same story as companies claim their methods are sound and environmentalists claim there hasn’t been enough research. We’ll see who is correct.

Stay tuned for the BIG news!