art, photography, random thought, travel, writing

new austin skyline

last week, i had a few days of commercial shoots down in austin. it was great to finally get back down there.

but austin is a rapidly changing city… understatement of the year.

i’m amazed every time i revisit this old haunt of mine. i mean, i’m not that old. am i?

i first moved to austin for college in 1999. wow… last century, huh?

okay, but in the bigger scheme of things, it wasn’t that long ago.

even still, the skyline is almost unrecognizable now from those days.

at least five of the tallest buildings were not there in 2000…

towering over zilker park. it’s really shaping up. from a visual point-of-view at least, it’s kind of growing on me.

from south congress… still a magnificent view.

i must admit, 9 times out of 10, i’d rather see mountains. and austin as a city has changed in many ways of which i’m not a huge fan. but i’m not here to bash development or urban growth.

the “progress” of man is not an easy force to stop. and change isn’t always bad.

i love that austin hasn’t totally lost it’s identity. it’s still the weirdest, most expressive little city in our fair country.

hippie + cowboy = something pretty damn honest and (at the very least) interesting to look at.

you don’t believe me? look at Willie. or perhaps Kinky. enough said.

now, all we have to do is kick all (literally ALL) of those rotten politicians out and perhaps we’d have quite the utopia…

all images and content © andrew r. slaton | photographer 2011

art, photography, random thought, travel, writing

south louisiana red fishin’

a few weeks ago, i had the priviledge of fishing the gulf for reds.

my good friends and clients took me on one of their corporate retreats to capture the activities of the weekend.

i didn’t fish much, but as you can image, i shot a ton. it was just too much fun…

we landed in new orleans, one of my favorite cities. but after a long cajun lunch and a few beverages, we headed south. way south.

in fact, i didn’t even know where we were going actually existed. thought it was all marsh land. no highways, buildings, people, etc.

i was obviously wrong. happens every once in a while…

we stayed at woodland plantation, a fantastic old set of 100+ year old structures.

one of which is the famous house on the southern comfort bottle.

local cat and mouse game.

but that mouse bites back.

so the next morning we rose early to a dense, eerie fog over the gulf.

we headed out, deep into the byways and bayous of deep south louisiana. the light was gorgeous for me. bad for fishing.

the fog finally cleared in the afternoon and we started catching a few fish.

back at the plantation, we could see the massive ships coming up the mighty mississippi river over the levee.

there it is… recognize it?

spirits hall was a 138 year old church, converted into what else… a bar!

beautiful on the inside.

the next day there was still plenty more fishing to do…

and alligators to watch…

it was a fantastic experience.

meeting these guys, the great food and drink, and of course that famous south louisiana hospitality.

i love my job.

all images and content © andrew r. slaton | photographer 2011

art, photography, random thought, travel, writing

big bend birthday, year 2

if something happens at the same time two years in a row, does it become tradition? could we say “our annual big bend birthday extravaganza”? well, i’m going to. starting now.

elle and i took our annual big bend birthday extravaganza a little early this year. you see, some friends of ours decided to get married out in marathon at the gage hotel the day before elle’s birthday. “great!” we thought.

another good excuse to create/ continue, a short-run, but beloved “tradition”.

“what do you want to do for your birthday?” i enthusiastically asked elle a few weeks before her birthday last year.

“i wanna go backpackin’!” she screeched back.

well, there aren’t many places to go backpacking in texas, unfortunately. and my favorite place, big bend national park is about a nine hour drive from dallas.

so… in spite of the drive, we decided we would hike the chisos mountains of big bend (see sharing big bend).

this year, it really wasn’t much different. her enthusiasm was the same; wide-eyed, youthful, jubilant.

the main difference was that we decided to wander the desert this time, instead of the mountains.

we camped at a bend in the river, so our view (even though camping in texas), we could see the rio grande, mexico, and then the chisos in texas. it’s one of my favorite views in the park. makes you think a lot about borders and survival, and how small we really are…

as night fell, the stars caught our attention. oh the stars.

the next day we woke up and my front left tire was completely flat. the road we were on claims many tires, and personally, it has claimed more tires (and cars for that matter) than i care to remember. the river road. it’s a 50+ mile long 4×4 “road”, if you can call it that in some places.

three years ago, my fourth vehicle found it’s final resting place on that road. long story… i’ll tell the whole thing if you ask me.

anyway, back to the task at hand… i put the donut tire on, and we fled the chihuahuan desert to find a new tire.

we had fun on the drive to alpine. elle was a belle about it. even though it killed an entire day for us.

there may or may not have been a few swigs of wine on the way back from alpine, but i’ll never tell.

the next day we hiked into santa elena canyon, one of the park’s many popular attractions.

later that day, we also hiked one of the hidden gems of big bend, cattail falls.

and then later that evening, we did another short hike up the lost mine trail in the chisos.

that night we stayed at grapevine hills, just like we did the first night one year before.

it caused us to be a bit reflective, and think on the past year. and laugh a bit at how far we’ve come together.

we had some dinner and some wine, and talked about where we are going. love and marriage, etc. life. together.

we can do this. life together. some of it will be mountain tops, and some will be the lowlands. but we seem to have a knack, and more than that, a commitment, to hiking through all of it together. and i think that’s pretty stinking beautiful.

we woke up bright and early.

we had to leave that day to make my friend’s rehearsal dinner in marfa that evening.

but we had just enough time for one more hike…

our sojourn to balanced rock wasn’t very long but we took our time, it was beautiful.

winding through earthen spires of stone and sage and sotol. the desert began to funnel us toward something. neither of us had hiked this before though, so we didn’t know where or what. but we kept going, though the landscape at times was eerie and foreboding.

along the way, ellie would jump up on the tallest rock around and scream with joy.

and that made me smile. how couldn’t it?

and then we reached balanced rock. it’s somewhat of a big bend cliche.

but then again, aren’t cliches cliche for a reason?

it was really amazing. like the stonehenge of the desert, though clearly not human-born.

massive boulders balanced perfectly with one another for centuries, millennia.

resting on one another. creating something good. awe-inspiring.

art, family, film making, music, photography, random thought, travel, writing

a real vacation

i travel a lot. but it would be a bit of a stretch to say that my traveling is “vacation”.

it’s not that i don’t enjoy the destinations, or have real moments of relaxation, it’s just that when i travel, it’s usually with a purpose. and that purpose does not involve sitting still or vegging out.

so this year, now that i have a travel companion… we took a real vacation.

anna maria island, florida. it’s a small island south west of tampa, with caribbean clear water and white sand beaches. they say that it not very well known to outsiders, but it’s where floridians go to get away.

the beaches were uncrowded and beautiful. it was truly relaxing.