Messenger photo by Joe Duty

A pair of happy feet in child’s gum rubber-soled shoes curl up on a father’s sneaker. The father’s foot perches on an orange, well-worn basketball.

To the boy, his father is a giant possessing strength beyond imagination. He can pick him up as easy as he’d pick up a toy soldier. His knowledge of the world seems limitless. He can lift his heart with simple encouragement or freeze his soul with righteous anger. His words and actions are the foundation for his son’s life.

Our roaming photographer captured this image at a recent gathering at the high school gym in Paradise. The parents gathered with their children to pray for their coaches. The coaches are another building block, another piece in the jigsaw puzzle of experiences that cobble together who we are, who we become.

Our photographer captured a subtle detail in the scene, one static step in a child’s rolling and bouncing journey.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

“Guilt upon the conscience, like rust upon iron, both defiles and consumes it, gnawing and creeping into it, as that does which at last eats out the very heart and substance of the metal.”
- Bishop Robert South, English theologian, 1634-1716

Traces of dirt clinging to cracked, black tires. Rust peeled backward by time attached to metal like strange, alien fruit. The wheel goes round, bending out of sight on a jagged, rusted curve.

Eventually everything reaches a level beyond the repair of varnish. An end lies embedded in a future hidden from our vantage. A circular conclusion to an unborn beginning.

The frame grows old and unused. The dings and dust of life collect on the body. An individual life and story exists behind every bruise, every blemish. Life is the process of weathering down. What matters, what lives on beyond the frame, is how the process, whether righteous or ignoble, occurs.

Our roaming photographer captured this image last Saturday at the Wise County Swap Meet. Drawn to the captivating lines, he used a macro lens to emphasize the details of decay, the hidden stories behind a now neglected lifetime.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” – Carl Sagan

Clear, pure water pours from bottle to glass. Mute translucence fades into vague backgrounds as light glints off liquid motion.

Water flows silent beneath us, drifts above us, courses through us. Water brushes the world over creating a liquid-covered planet floating like a precarious sphere of ice through black void. The earth itself is but a splash of water in a cup. There’s nowhere to go outside the round rim of atmosphere. The need to maintain the purity and cleanliness in our watery lifeboat is paramount.

Our roaming photographer captured the simple task of water being poured into a glass at a New York City restaurant. The simplicity of the image and the motion of the water captured his eye. The lens is focused on the water in motion, allowing the rest of the composition to fade to blur. The black emptiness in the top right third allows gives the eye a place from which to wander.

The pure liquid respite captured in a safe confine of solid fragile glass mimics our tiny splash of life in a vast, harsh cosmos.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

“Don’t you realize that the sea is the home of water? All water is off on a journey unless it’s in the sea, and it’s homesick, and bound to make its way home someday.”
- Zora Neale Hurston

Light from the scoreboard reflects off rippling blue water like fresh, pink-red blood. The swimmer moves shark-like through it.

Wearing a mercurial shroud, his human body, already 60 percent water, shimmers and breaks like a fragile shell around life, completing the transformation. He swims forward, backward through the depths of evolutionary history. A primitive creature shifts swift through waves under strobe lightning flashes, beneath the red glow of volcanoes erupting through seas.

He moves smooth as molecules. Now, moving faster, breaking apart like waves into water, and finally, base elements.

Our roaming photographer captured this image at a recent swim meet in Denton. The light from the scoreboard provided a red frame on the water for the portrait. He waited until a Decatur swimmer moved through the perfect spot. The water shrouding the swimmer added intrigue to the shot. Swimmer and photog both got closer to home in their respective elements.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

The sound of hooves plop like heavy drops of liquid metal on the dusty gray asphalt streets of downtown Cowtown.

Equine muscles ripple like static waves under a sheen, brown coat. Eyes shimmering, but dark as coal, stare at the unnatural surface. Somewhere behind those watery eyes, in some nestled strand of genetic material winding like a million staircases into memory, the horse yearns for grass waving over soft earth.

The hard road stares back, reflecting its purpose for thin-wheeled bicycles and combustion engines spinning thick rubber tires.

Our roaming photographer captured this image last Saturday at the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo All Western Parade.

The all horse and wagon and walking affair allows for no motorized vehicles and draws an estimated crowd of 100,000.

Landscapes and cultures collide as crowds throng to view steps of the past plod through the present.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

Strands of Christmas lights zig-zag across the trunk of the classic ride. The lines draw the beholder’s eye back and forth across the composition, peering for new details.

The storefronts of Halsell Street, outlined in golden glowing bulbs, reflect in the mirror-like silver bumper. Electric icicles jostle over it on a string. The white paint on the ’55 Chevy transforms to red from lava-like taillights.

Our roaming photographer captured this image at Bridgeport’s lighted Christmas parade Dec. 8.

The joy and colors reflect from the car. The vehicle’s white paint provides a clean slate, like a pure soul, primed to return whatever it receives from the world around it.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

Opaque rays pour through a misty morning. A sole soul wanders through an empty park listening to ghostly echoes of laughter, feeling out uncertain traces of tears smeared into fog. A horizon fades to white. The figure moves like one taking tentative steps into afterlife.

Our roaming photographer captured this image at a city park in Houston.

The fog provided an interesting backdrop and created a lonesome melancholy. Shooting it in a park, a place associated with people and companionship, added to the sense of isolation.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

Shadows streak over well-trodden earth like what’s left below when the sun rises behind a graceful line of skyborne birds.

Hearts fueled on fresh air and virtue gallop long strides on the sacred path to glory. Though lost in a sea of like minds and bodies and blurred shadows in a field, the individual effort somehow still shines outward.

Our roaming photographer captured this image at the state cross country meet Saturday at Round Rock. When covering an event that included so many local teams, he searched for a shot that portrays runners without revealing individual competitors.

The shadows show the running, provide a mystery, while the feet and legs in motion gives a human element. The type of sneaker and the way the laces are tied provides the individuality needed. It makes each runner, even in partial view and shadow, their own character, just like the angle of every photograph taken reveals the uniqueness of every photographer behind the lens.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

Dew beads on a pumpkin under harvest morning moonlight. Streaks like veins on an ancient croon-like witch race over orange skin toward a green, knotted stem. A detail tells the tale.

Even the supernatural follows themes and rules. The pumpkin appears again and again in legends. In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” a shattered pumpkin is discovered at the scene where the strict teacher Ichabod Crane vanishes. The jack-o-lantern represents the soul of a stingy Irishman named Jack forced to roam Earth forever after playing tricks on the Devil. It appears in “Cinderella” and “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

Our roaming photographer captured this image at a local pumpkin patch.

The composition demonstrates a perfect example of the first lesson of photography: the rule of thirds. Using the guideline an image should be divided into nine equal parts made up of two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The main subject is then placed within these points. The green stem of the pumpkin is placed within one of these intersections.

The rule of thirds creates more intrigue. When a subject sits in the center, the eye stops there. A subject placed into one of the intersections causes the eye to move across the image. The dark veins on the pumpkin skin emphasize the subject further.

Even the world of mystery and the incredible require recurring themes to tell a good story. The same can be said for remarkable photography.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

The sun hides behind veils of gray. Shadows vanish.

Umbrellas lift upright like vinyl turtle shells. They provide shelter from the storm like a righteous life shelters the conscience from misery – a shield to heaven’s tears. Painful pangs of memories pelt the membrane of the mind, collecting in cool, stirring puddles.

But the grayness, the misery, the huddled sheltering, soothes. Not just the hard dry land beneath, but also the troubled soul. The moist sobs from an uncertain sky show a seemingly disinterested world mimicking a sad human heart. Makes one feel not so alone. There is understanding out there.

Our roaming photographer captured this image at Alvord’s Homecoming Parade last Friday. He wanted to give sight to the sound of rain tapping on fragile shelters – solace found in misery.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

Water cascades into flame over scorching earth to pass into wind’s mist. Elements pass from one realm to another like ancient life formed in boiling seas crawling to sandy shores and taking flight with translucent wings.

What creative force looms behind the scenes as untouchable and mysterious as dark matter?

Our roaming photographer captured this image last Saturday at Rhome’s Pioneer Days. His attention was drawn to the ancient elements artfully colliding in dance-like movements to create something completely new and independent of all that made it.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

An old bicycle silent as the past leans slightly on its kickstand.

The pastel pink and blue relic, spotted with rust, highlighted with streaks of nickel and silver, used to whir down streets and alleys, circle in driveways, and bring joy from its mere simplicity.

A smile from a child’s first ride was so powerful it’s still imprinted somewhere in the bicycle’s rusty DNA chain. It was a smile that spread like sunshine across the blue expanse, brought to reality the abstract idea of freedom.

Our roaming photographer captured the image at last weekend’s swap meet at the Sheriff’s Posse Rodeo Grounds in Decatur. The clouds overhead blocked the sun and limited shadows. A wide-open aperture used available light only.

The bicycle stands out. It’s crammed among old, loud combustion engines. Each one valued for memories they recall.

But the bicycle is different because the rider provided the engine. Her or his willpower was the fuel. It determined the speed, the reliability, the power, of the vehicle.

The bicycle is more than memory or history. It’s life itself. It only stops moving forward when we stop giving effort. Then, like a headstone, it’s propped up on its kickstand in the grass as a reminder of what was.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

Crystal water cascades over pink petals in a perfect paradise.

In Southern California there are no seasons. It hardly ever rains. The weather is almost always comfortable.

Meanwhile, in North Texas, we’ve dealt with a second harsh summer. Temperatures grew so high it felt like blood boiled beneath the skin when standing in the sun. The daytime was painful. The sun, an ultimate source of life, became an enemy.

But now fall starts to creep upon us. The white, glaring skies shift to a deeper blue. The daytime becomes embracing. Out of our discomfort, we’ve grown a greater appreciation of the mild.

In our consumer driven society we are barraged by items and ideas to make us feel more comfortable. Commercials and vendors constantly try to make our lives easier – create a life of all play and no work, no discomfort.

But how do you know what feels good if you don’t know what hurts? How can you appreciate pleasure without first undergoing pain?

Our roaming photographer captured this detailed image at a hotel in Santa Barbara, just a short drive up the coast from Los Angeles.

The intricate lines and bright colors of the flowers draw attention. The water and palm trees in the background set the scene and give a sense of place. It’s an incredibly comforting image shot in a locale of constant comfort.

The connotations of comfort overwhelms and also softens those who never leave it.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

“Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.” – George Will

Preparation is everything.

The high school game of football is only 48 minutes long, but the preparation is perpetual.

It begins in the high heat of summer as a rising sun breaks up the day. It ends after shadows grow long and the purple velvet blanket of night swallows the day.

All the practice in the world doesn’t prepare one for the speed of the moment when the lights are on and the fans teeter on their seats wanting nothing less than a triumph. At that point an unseen skill is required, an instinct for the game is needed. All the training in the world can’t give that to you.

Our roaming photographer captured this image of preseason at the Decatur Eagle practice field.

Several players and a coach stand out in sharp focus. Others move in a blur. The uprights rise like a religious symbol scripted into the reddening sky at dawn.

He searched for a photo that could symbolize two-a-days anywhere. Like the young athletes before him, the proper preparation allowed him to take the shot. But it was instinct that allowed him to find it.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

” … and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks …” – Isaiah 2:4

Pencils plunge into yellowed grass. Halfway buried like forgotten tools, they resemble old plows left behind for modern convenience.

The yellow No. 2 pencil, once a staple of the classroom, a ubiquitous implement in education, appears destined to fade like the horse and plow. A useless decoration like old machinery in a front yard with lantana crawling green and blooming orange around rusted spokes.

Our roaming photographer used just available light to capture the image. Bringing only the center pencil into focus was necessary to keep the image from being too busy, too distracting to the eye. He keeps it simple, following basic rules of photography to make an interesting photograph.

The once sharp edges of the pencils are buried in the sand as the clamor for technology to be the savior of the classroom rings louder and louder.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

A single spark starts a prairie fire.

Rolling brittle land, dense with dried brush and scrub, continues to exist in the midst of water poverty. Scrawny cedars, flammable as matchsticks, stand guard like angry, thin, starved men ripe to burst with fiery orange-red rage.

Then, almost impossibly, a storm appears in the sky in an instant like a thought. Lightning crackles like energy across a synapse. It just takes one to touch down and make contact with an environment that is ready. The fire spreads like an idea. And not some pop culture consumption notion, but one that harkens a change in a manner of living. One that signals revolutionary return.

But somehow it’s always stopped. Barriers abound. An innate fear prevents full fruition.

Our roaming photographer caught this solitary flicker burning right through a fence. A solitary thought attempting to persist in an embattled wild prairie fire in the heart of the Grasslands, symbolizing how a single spark can spark a revolution, a new day of prosperity; if it’s allowed to flourish.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

“I will endure to be burned, to be bound, to be beaten, and to be killed by the sword.” – oath of the gladiator in Gaius Petronius’ Satyricon

A horde of helmets storm the field. They tear through banners and clouds of smoke.

The sky’s blue darkens in autumn. The sun sets sooner. And on Friday nights, spectators gather in every small Texas town’s version of the Coliseum.

Horns blare like the hearkening of knights onto a medieval field. The setting sun dips like the flesh of a brilliant backlit blood orange into the west behind Bull Memorial Stadium.

The aggressive nature of the sport, red in tooth and claw, mimics the harsh laws of nature. The normally tranquil masses teem for concussive shots and shattered bones. The strong, quick and furious are praised; the weak cast aside.

The empire demands spectacle. Youth dreaming of fame are eager to give blood.

Our roaming photographer captured this image last fall in Bridgeport. The rigid lines of the stadium contrasted with the soft edges of the clouds at sunset. But the round shapes of the people and instruments and bright lights mimic nature’s lines, like the brutal sport on the field mimics nature’s laws.

And as our young gladiators take the field, remember the words they said in ancient Rome before they entered the arena, bestowed with fanfare.

“Ave, Caesar, morituri te salutant.”
(Hail, Caesar, those who are about to die salute you.)

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

A county road north of the tree-lined, lazy, winding waters of the West Fork of the Trinity River offers a place for introspection.

Arrow signs marked by the warning and cautionary colors of sunflower yellow and sunset orange point haphazard from tangles of rusted barbed wire.

Our roaming photographer captured this image last Monday. He was on assignment to get a photo of a pipeline project running from Boyd to Bowie. While looking for a different angle he found a right corner of county road by a pasture.

A cow grazes like a relic from the past while arrows point anywhere but here. How do you maintain the ways of the past while etching through our turbulent present? We live in the pop star economy. Ways tried and true for hundreds of years ditched for new impermanence. Every day a new idea, a different way to provide.

The possibilities are limitless, but what we really need might have been right in front of us, grazing lazily, all along.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

“Cars aren’t merely modes of transit or material possessions to Texans; they are something of a state treasure. We share a special, almost religious attachment to the automobile, rooted, I suppose, in our mythological relationship to the horse, our economic underpinnings in the oil industry, and the inescapable fact that to get anywhere in this state, you have to cover a lot of ground.”
- Jim Atkinson

The automobile reflects the idea of America and Americans better than fireworks or barbecues. Freedom, sprawl, ingenuity, violence, independence, adventure, excess and pride tie into the relationship between man and car in America.

Our landscapes are designed around the car. Drive-throughs, drive-ins, parking decks, parking lots, highways and suburbia are automobile-induced creations.

A black 2006 Chevy Corvette provides a surface like a sleek ebony pool. It absorbs and reflects the immediate environment. A line of buildings on the Decatur Square fills the space on the bumper. The courthouse rises divided on the hood, giving an instant sense of place. And an automotive enthusiast provides the action of the photograph. He is captured taking a phone photo of another automobile.

Our roaming photographer captured this image last month at Cruisin’ Days on the Square. A staple of the summer in Wise, he looked to the double reflection to provide a unique shot.

The automobile reflects America. It represents opportunity and endless possibilities.

Messenger photo by Joe Duty

History sits in the front seat like a passenger. We carry it with us wherever we go. No matter how far we travel we are composites of all that has passed before us. Every detail, from a small stone we step over to a massive granite courthouse that blankets us in cool shadow, plays a role in who we are today.

Pink fuzzy dice recall the seedy notes of Decatur’s past and the phrase “Eighter from Decatur.” It came from a time when gambling was common in this part of the country. There are several possibilities to the origin, but my favorite and I think most likely is found in Cliff D. Cates’ “The Pioneer History of Wise County.”

Ada was a popular black girl who lived in Decatur, according to Cates. Supposedly, when black cowboys who worked at the Waggoner Ranch were trying to role an eight in craps, they’d exclaim “Ada from Decatur, County Seat of Wise.” This phrase for good luck caught on and became known throughout the world in gambling circles.

Our roaming photographer captured this image already framed in the front windshield of a Jeep parked at the Decatur Square early this spring. The reflection of the courthouse provides an instant sense of place. The dice further emphasizes the location. The shot didn’t require anything technical, just a bit of luck, timing and a shout-out to Ada.