Yes, South Padre Island, Texas, has a new photographer temporarily on board. It is a crowded place for photographers, so I am doing the usual multiple income streams in order to cross-pollinate my bank account.
I have relocated my personal base of operations to better cover some business adventures in Port Isabel, Texas, and at the same time explore more photographic opportunities in a place I once called home – the Borderlands of the Rio Grande Valley.
Obviously, I am available to do offshore photography (above water right now), and that includes trips with fishing charters that need a photographer on board, leaving out of South Padre Island and Port Isabel, Texas. The Lower Laguna Madre is fertile ground for flats stories, with photography and the fly fishing is off the charts here! That will be running full-speed-ahead in 2023, and I have my skiff and drone so that I can cover a lot of water in the beautiful Bay.
I also am free to cover any photojournalism that pops up, as it always does on the Lower Laguna Madre and South Padre Island.
An example of the video services available would be this video, my first outing shooting video with the new Nikon mirrorless camera. If you go by the watch count, I would say it is a fairly successful first outing.
A few things have become apparent while watching the local news networks on TV the last few months. First, they seem to be operating with a skeleton crew. Sometimes you can hear the echoes (a bad thing by the way) inside the studio, and the lack of staff leads to some lack of reach. They never reach the Coast nowadays. A tsunami could wipe out the Island, and the news rooms would hardly notice. Second, the lack of personnel also leads to lack of response. That is something this old crust needs to get accustomed to – zero responses, especially in the Borderlands.
In one way, if I really want to “WORK” at photography down here, I will REALLY have to work at it! In another way? How about the freedom to create, and bring people a fresh perspective of the most beautiful spot on the entire Texas Gulf Coast? I think I may just choose the “other way” of dealing with my own presence in my homelands.