14 years is a lifetime...

The photo you are looking at is the first photo of me and my sister Danielle. The last time I had seen her I was 18 years old and she was 8. Let that sink in for a moment.... The last time that this young lady standing next to me was in the same room as I, she barely passed my knees. Now do your spirit fingers as I fade into the back story.

It was the summer of 1999 I had just graduated high school. I found out that day that my real dad had come down to see me graduate. It was a total suprise, because of things beyond our control my mom and real dad got a divorce when I was 3 and I went with my mom. My real dad had moved out of Texas for sometime and we just lost contact. So here I was 18 yrs old talking to my real dad and realizing, that he had a family going. Him and his wife had 3 little girls. June, Danielle, and Jasmine. They were the cutest little girls I had ever seen. I spent the day with them, we ate at a Mexican restaurant in the mall. As they left, we said our goodbyes and promised to keep in touch.

That was the last contact I had with my real dad or his side of the family. Not by choice really, but you have to understand I was 18 and had the whole world ahead of me. It wasn't long before I moved out of Texas, and semmingly I almost forgot I had this side of my family. Just as much as I forgot the family I grew up with. I did a lot of traveling for the next 10 years or so. 

Once I made it back to Texas for good, I made a few searches for my family and always came up empty handed. You see 5 years ago the internet was not what it is now. Anywho, the idea of how my dad's family ended up was something that was in the back my mind constantly. I had been searching for them for a good 5 years. My wife Stacy, and I had a conversation about it one day. She asked me if I ever wondered about my 3 little sisters. "Of course!"  I responded "I think about them all the time!" About 2 weeks later I get home from work and Stacy has a rather precarious grin on her face. "Whats the matter?" I asked. "Dont be mad babe" she said.

Now the plot thickens.

See behind the scenes, Stacy knew that I wondered about them. She searched for days to come up with something. Then one day she found a facebook profile that kinda looked like me and alot like my real dad. Her name was Jamine Cobarrubias. Which was my former last name. So I sit down and stare at her profile pic for a few moments. Stacy was very supportive and asked if I was going to mesage her. 

"I don't know...I mean I don't want to come off as sounding like one of those creepers ya know?" 

"Just send her a message, you'll feel better" 

So not knowing what to say in the least. I messaged Jasmine on march 7. 

"So weird question, who is your father because I think we may be related?"

Here is wher the nail biting happened. I was certain she would think I was weird, crazy, a spammer or all of the above. And then the little message notification lit up on Facebook. Here is her exact response.

Omg...are you martin as in benito's son??

No way!!! I thought to myself. Am I really talking to someone I was related to? It was this exact moment that a wave of emotion overcame me. I was excited, nervous, sad, and happy all at once. Stacy in a few days did what I could not in 5 years. I stayed up the rest of the night connecting with my other sisters and eventually my real dad. It was an amazing feeling knowing that they were all alive and well. 

Six months later

I get a text from my sister Danielle she and her girlfriend had taken a vacation to the Honduras and on their way back they had a layover in Dallas, TX. She told me that she would be here for about 8 hours!!! OMG this is awesome! I thought to myself. 

So the day finally comes, and I miscalculated by a day. I thought she was coming in on a saturday. She was in dallas at 8 am that friday morning. OH NO!!! I work til 5pm. I ran over to my boss and explained that "Right now in DFW airport, my long lost sister is waiting to hang out with me. I havent seen her in 14 years. So I was wondering. 

"Since I am working tomorrow, is it possible to take half a day and go spend time with my sis???" 

"Yeah of course!"

So if you are still reading, this I thank you. Its a little long winded, but I wanted you all to know how great of a story this actually is. I pick up Danielle and her girlfriend. Now not knowing what she liked or what she wanted to do, we drove into Downtown Dallas. We walked around for a bit, then Stopped at Sonny Bryans for dinner, and chatted about life in general. Then Danielle expressed that she wanted to see renunion tower. You may know it as the big ball in dallas lol. 

Let's hoof it on over. Its only a mile and thats like a 12 min walk. (yes I'm delusional) Over the years I have found that people are more willing to do something if you downplay something. It was more like a 30 min walk lol. We get inside and a lady at the front desk asks me if I was there for dinner rehersal. No we are just going to the observation floor. 

"I'm sorry but thats closed until October"

I almost dropped an F bomb on this lady. Only because we walked for a mile and it was a total let down to not be able to show my sister the observation deck.

Anywho, that was my long short story of how my sister and I made this photo possible. Now some more interesting photos of my day with her. :)

BTW. I totally forgot to mention that my sister's girlfriend Maria is totally awesome. She kept all of us laughing.

Til next time my friends.

Never Had a Voice to Protest...

A Zombie Hides My Face.

The title and the first sentence of this blog are from one of my favorite Stone Sour songs.

It is called Bother if you are into Rock Music.

With that aside, not wanting to be tied down to the proclivities of sitting at the house, yet another saturday. I decided to look online to see if anyone was doing anything cool like protesting Syria. I happened to stumble across a group called Overpasses for the Impeachment of Obama. After reading about their cause and realizing they would be protesting pretty close to where I live, as a photographer, I was elated in the idea of stretching my proverbial "photojournalist wings" so to speak. Reading on they were only protesting from 10am-12pm. It was a narrow window in the grand scheme of things, especially when I glanced down and realized it was 9.40am.

Here is where I shall denote my political stance, or lack there of. Actually its quite complicated, seeing as how we as a nation have stepped outside the boundries of Republican or Democrat. We have become a nation sated in "Death and Destruction". Now I sit back and laugh because the punk rockers had it right all along.  All joking aside though, it is a time when "The People" are losing their voice when it comes to the power of protest. I fear that the brother and sister known as Government and Corporation have outgrown the masses. If you are still following me here, what I am saying is that we can all scream until our veins collpase, but the agenda of our protest is falling on deaf ears. So there it is, I pledge no allegiance to either side of the fence, I am here to document history and truth in the making...

Rolling up on set, so to speak, I noted that on the overpass a few people had already gathered. They were waving the U.S. Flag and Texas Flag almost as if to call attention to a time of duress. I was in the Wal-Mart parking lot getting my gear together, and I noticed some people grabbing home made signs. As I walked up to the protestors, I was surprised to find how open and friendly they were. They, at first, kept an open eye on me to make sure I was not there to crash the party. After speaking to a woman for a few moments they gave me the go-ahead to take some photos. 

What is also interesting to note, is that the woman with whom I spoke with is part of a few different protesting crowds. Seeing the locution of Molon Labe across the torso of her shirt was a quick annotation that she was part of the Pro-Gun Right culture. It was first used by King Leonidis in response to the Persian army, when they ordered the surrender of weapons. ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ!!! Screamed the spartans, which meant
"Come and Take'em!" Another interesting viewpoint is that age, gender, and ethnicity had no role in this protest. It was pretty cool to see people from all different backgrounds on this overpass protesting towards something that they felt in their hearts was a disservice to the American people.

                              

Again, I was taken back by the sheer hospitality of this group. It was not long before I was shaking hands with a man who went by the sobriquet of Tex. "Hi my friends call me Tex" said a man with his hand outstretched to receive a handshake from me. "Oh hey man, nice to meet you! I saw you guys on the overpass and I wanted to come up and take a few photos of you guys if you don't mind" I said as I firmly shook his hand. He went on to tell me that the reason they were up there to protest for the impeachment of our commander in chief. "Basically our country no longer fears the people, and they are turning a blind eye to the atrocities in Benghazi" Tex stated. I could see the conviction in his eyes for reason of waking up early to make signs and waive flags. I was speaking with a man who whole heartily felt that we are a nation in turmoil, or in shambles if you will.

It was actually a pretty amazing feeling seeing history in the making, and I being able to document that with my camera. I have a feeling that there will be more coming. More protests, more voices, signs, flags, and most importantly the youth of our nation. It was awesome to see a younger crowd out there standing alongside adults. If children are in recognition of the detriment that we as a public have allowed to happen, then you know something on a grand scale is on the horizon, for the future of our nation.

All in all, I was humbled by the idea of a group of people getting up on a saturday morning to go out and excercise their first ammendment right. Also, it was great to hear the immediate feed back of the passer-by's as they honked in recognition of their cause. Here are a few more photos of this lovely group of people. 

I am Martin Bravo, and if you enjoyed reading please click to follow, because I will be performing more freelance photojournalism for all to see and share.

                                

150 Million Light Bulbs

What do 730 days and 150 million lightbulbs have in common???

730 days is exactly 2 years. Which is exactly how long, I have actively tried to photograph lightning to no avail. Lightning has the energy in a single bolt to power 150 million lightbulbs. I mean, I have caught shots of lightning before, but it was always followed by the premise of chance. What I was looking for was something better than this. Before the Arcs and Zeus' spear, I'll give a little backstory.

It started in the year 2011. I had just purchased my Canon 60D. Not a real pro photog camera, but for someone who has had little experience in terms of photography, this was a huge milestone for me. I had my camera for a little less than a month before I installed Magic Lantern. This is like a hack that allows you to use extra features in your camera. One of the features was motion detect. You can either do it by difference in exposure or sound. Now I had seen some posts by other photographers who used it for lightning photography, and alas the seed was planted.

It was an idea that stuck with me for a few months. Finally it came, a pretty hefty lightning storm. Even then I was still learning how to shoot in manual, so I knew less then on how to properly expose for 2 completely different exposures. See when shooting lightning at night you have to take into account how bright the bolts will be. Too short and the picture is all black. Too long and you will have an overexposed sky. Needless to say my first few attempts were shoddy at best. 

Even funnier still was that, on occasion, I would see friends using their iphones to post photos of thunderstorms and it would have lightning streaking across the sky. Needless to say as a photographer this is a little heartwrenching. Still like an inmate, at Alcatraz patiently I bided my time. 

Fast forward 2 years.

It was the first night of Sept 2013. There was a storm brewing, quickly I grabbed my camera and ran outside. I took a few test shots and set my camera up with motion detect. I wasn't even fully finished setting up when a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky. I looked down and my camera had taken a shot. I scrolled through my menu to get to the photo, and Eureka I had caught the streak of lightning in perfect exposure!!!! About 45 min and a couple more shots later I retired back to the house. In total I got 2 solid photos of lightning. I love both photos for different reasons. I never understood how photographers could spend months and years to get "That Shot" until now....

In this photo, I love how the bolt shows motion moving to the left. Ending with electrical fingers reaching out as far as it can.

This shot, I love how the lightning gives the "Raining Hell" feeling to the viewer.

And now for some interesting Lightning Facts:

• Each second there are 50 to 100 Cloud-to-Ground Lightning Strikes to the Earth world-wide.

• Most lightning strikes average 2 to 3 miles long and carry a current of 10000 Amps at 100 million Volts.
• The temperature of a typical lightning bolt is hotter than the surface of the Sun!

• Lightning Strikes create powerful radio waves in the frequency range of 3 KHz (audio, VLF) through 10 MHz (shortwave radio). The VLF (3000 Hz to 30000 Hz) "lightning signatures" can travel around the world, allowing monitoring of world-wide lightning. The shortwave "lightning signatures can travel half-way around the Earth (the night-time side of the Earth). The best region to listen for distant shortwave lightning signatures is from 2 MHz through 7 MHz. After 3 AM local time you can listen to 3 MHz and hear the beautiful dispersion-ringing of the static as it bounces back-and-forth between the earth and ionosphere. It can at times sound like hundreds of tiny bells ringing at once!
• An average instance of lightning lasts about a quarter of a second and consists of 3-4 strikes.
• You can hear thunder from about 12 miles from the starting point.
• Lightning bolts travel at speeds of up to 60,000 miles per second.
• The average length of a single lightning bolt is 2-3 miles.
• A single lightning bolt travels through twisted paths in the air that can be as wide as one of your fingers or between six and ten miles.
• The temperature of a typical lightning bolt can reach 50,000 F degrees – that is 5 times greater than the temperature of the surface of the Sun.
• Glass forms when lightning strikes into sandy soil. After a storm you can find strips of glass in the sand.
• If you have wet clothes on, lightning will do you less harm.
• In March of 1991 a single six-hour storm stretching over Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri caused more than 15,000 lightning strikes. During the storm the skies were ablaze with almost constant lightning.
• Lightning hits the Empire State Building (NY, USA) about 23 times a year.
• Lightning strikes also occur on Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus.
• The Aztecs believed that lightning accompanied the dead, splitting the earth and making its way into its depths.
• In the Middle Ages it was believed that church bells expelled evil spirits. Thunder and lightning were regarded as diabolical, so during a thunderstorm monks tried to constantly ring the bells. As a result the victims of lightning very often were bell-ringers.
• The irrational fear of lightning is known as keraunophobia. The fear of thunder is termed brontophobia.
• There are from 100 to 1000 instances of ball lightning at the same time on Earth, but the chance you’ll see at least one in your lifetime is just 0.01%.
• On average, about 200 people are killed by lightning in the United States every year.
• The state of Florida holds the title of the “Deadliest State.” There are twice as many lightning casualties as in any other state. 10% of all people struck by lightning were in Florida at the time.
• The chance to be killed by lightning is 1 in 2,000.000. You have the same chance dying from falling out of bed.
• Never talk on the phone while a storm is breaking outside. Not only do cell phones “attract” lightning, but about 1% of all lightning deaths in the U.S. are a result of people talking inside the home on a corded phone during a thunderstorm.
• About 71% of all people struck by lightning survive. The fatal cases are usually the result of cardiac arrest. However, those who survive often suffer from serious health and psychological problems like loss of memory or sensitivity, insomnia, impaired hearing, or constant pain.