After traveling over 3,000 miles for more than seven weeks all across the U.S., it is hard to come home and answer something as simple as –

“How has your summer been?”

No one really wants to know, it is a polite question, a conversation starter.
Sure, like I want to tell them all about my journey and watch as they impatiently look for a quick exit. Instead, I respond — “Good and how about you?”

Actually, one of the reasons I make that journey every year is to participate in a journalism workshop in San Antonio. The Urban Journalism Workshop and I have been friends for 15 years and I love seeing old friends (counselors), making news ones (students) and teaching my favorite subject — the news.

Urban Journalism Workshop students conduct interviews.

The Lone Star State

To get there is an 18-hour experience dealing with construction, rain and large tractor trailers hell bent on parking on my back bumper. Sure, I could complain about my long drive to Texas but I prefer to be thankful I was not one of those truck drivers traveling through the state. To put it into perspective, the distance across Texas was more than two-thirds the distance of my trip to Texas. Or, 857 miles to El Paso.

On a side note, it is a standing tradition to play Texas-themed music as we cross the state line. It is a great mix of Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett and other bands. Only this year did I realize my daughter knows all the words to ‘Family Tradition’ — too funny.

A sign just west of the Texas state line gives cheerful news to those crossing the state.

For the first half of the trip, I shot junior tennis in College Station which gave me a chance to try out my new iPhone app — Hipstamatic. At first annoying, it soon became my favorite app during my travels. In between long days of shooting, I played with the app at the Texas A&M facility. In fact, most of the photos on this blog are shot using Hipstamatic.

Texas A&M’s campus plays host to the Texas Grand Slam, a tournament consisting of over 1,200 junior tennis athletes.

The Texas Grand Slam in College Station.

If I could choose one word to describe conditions at the tennis center it would be — freakishly and ridiculously hot. Ok, more than one word but that is how miserable it got on the court. We finally bought some oven mitts to protect our butts and kept on shooting.

Though I loved sitting on a 120-degree court shooting tennis all day, I was ready for the workshop. The workshop is held at San Antonio College where I first started my career in journalism. Remember how everyone talks about the good ole’ days in college. I remember eating Top Ramen and fighting for the last piece of cheese. Being poor had its advantages… yeah I’m not sure what those were but I survived.

So anyways, I have been teaching photojournalism for 15 years at this workshop, almost longer than some of the students have been alive.

The workshop is an intense two-week crash course into the world of journalism. Students have to apply before being interviewed and finally being accepted. After that we get them 24/7 and teach them everything we know about journalism. In the end, they produce a paper filled with stories and photos. It really is a cool workshop; I only wish we had one in the Lowcountry.

After all this time, I still love teaching here. Being around energetic young people soaking up all the information they can, like a sponge. It is encouraging. Will they all go onto be journalist, no but they can definitely take the skills they learn here and use them in whatever field they choose.

I might add that during this workshop I was playing a game of soccer in honor of the World Cup and broke two toes on my left foot. This made the rest of my journey a bit harder but not impossible.

During breaks in the workshop, the kids and I spent our time in my hometown of Bulverde with the family. While there we star gazed and swam a lot. One night, we got out a telescope and watched the moon. After a couple of minutes, I was able to line up the iPhone with the telescope and got a great shot of the moon.

Before long, the workshop was over and I was on the road again to Puerto Rico. I do not usually shoot weddings but after a bit of pleading, I was coerced into traveling to the island for a wedding on the beach. As glamorous as that sounds, I was a nervous wreck because it rained most of the time we were there. Great, my first wedding, a destination wedding no less and it was going to get rained out.

As if my prayers were being answered, an evening storm went right past us and the wedding went smoothly. If all weddings were like that, I could see myself shooting more of them.

Week 6

I will state that my brain was mush by this point and all I wanted was to sleep in my own bed. Of course, I couldn’t do that because I still needed to travel to Chattanooga, Tenn. for one more tournament.

That is a beautiful area. I was blown away by the countryside but it was the unique features of the city that really caught my eye. Downtown Chattanooga has some interesting architecture. I crossed multiple bridges including one made of glass — kinda freaky since I am not a fan of heights. One of the more interesting sights, a long set of steps leading to the river. What made these steps so unique was the water flowing down them.

At the bottom of the steps was a small pool and a water fountain on the edge of the river.

As beautiful as it was, I was anxious to jump on a plane back to Houston, gather the kids and all the stuff my wife bought in Puerto Rico and drive back to South Carolina. Hard to believe I was about six hours away from South Caroline before I jumped on that plane back to Texas only to drive 18 hours back.

As exhausted as I was, it was impossible to travel all the way home without checking out the Gulf Oil Spill and its affect on the beaches. I stopped in Mobile, Ala. and visited Dauphin Island. I did not see oil but I did see cleanup crews and the view of the ocean was hampered by large piles of sand.

Buoys surrounded the island but life went on as normal. People still visited the beach and the area was free of oil.

Undeterred, I traveled to Penniscola, Fla. the next day to visit one last beach. The traffic was horrible because Jimmy Buffet was performing a benefit on the beach. I traveled along, stopping often to see what the beaches looked like.

Finally, I found a cleaning crew walking along a portion of the beach so I jumped out of my vehicle and raced with camera in hand up the beach. I knew I was going to find dead animals and stained sand as I loaded another card in the camera.

What I found was a couple of guys sweeping small pieces of oil into pans while a group of Seagulls watched. That was it?! I have seen nastier scenes along the beaches in Texas. Do my pictures tell the whole story, obviously not. I am glad though that crews are doing a great job of keeping the area clean.

So, to sum up, I traveled over 3,000 miles, shot over 20,000 images, visited family, photographed my first wedding, shot the moon but couldn’t find Uranus, looked for oil and after seven weeks, I finally slept in my own bed — all for the children.