Greg Ruedas is in trouble again. After months on monitored probation, paperwork snafus were keeping him from having his ankle monitor removed. Two weeks later, he got frustrated and cut it off.

Greg and his brother Gabriel are still technically on parole, but they’re now in a facility in Dallas that holds non-serious parole violations. If nothing else goes wrong, they’ll still be freed men soon enough. In their absence, their family keeps going. Toby is off parole and holding a job at a sign-making plant. Grandma goes to church alone. Izabelle is turning 15, and the family is busy preparing for her quinceanera.

Have some photos.

Toby has a $8.50 /hr job working in a sign printing shop with his cousin.

Toby and his wife commute 100 miles each day from Marble Falls to Austin so that he can find work.

Toby moves emulsion-coated signs to the enlarger.

Toby's cousin, who got him the job. He's helped many members of the family find employment.

The neighbor raises a flock of always-crowing roosters

Izabelle is celebrating her quinceanera next month.

Her dream is to be a doctor and her biggest dream is to meet Hannah Montana.

His dream is to work in an auto shop and have a "cool car"

Lunch with the Ruedas: chicken and rice.

Bridget

Grandma and Toby

Playing with friends

Toby and Izabelle in the yard

Gabriel's wife and child. Gabriel, like Greg, is in a facility in Dallas for a parole violation.

Reading together

Toby

Toby and Blondie, one of the new puppies.

Toby's girlfirend is five months pregnant.

Steven Hesch, assistant brewer at the North by Northwest Restaurant and Brewery, leans against one of the eight giant cylinders that fill the restaurant’s brewing cage. The rising price of wheat and other grains has forced the brewer to both raise prices and cut margins. According to Brewmaster Donald Thompson, their primary grain supplier has also been fraught with shortages and has stopped accepting new customers.

Part of an article on the rising cost of wheat and its impact on college students; in the original article, the captions were cut to about ten words each. Hurray for the internet!

Arthur Leighton tosses pizza dough at the Slices and Ices. Like many other restaurants and bakeries, the off-campus eatery has raised prices to compensate for the increase in materials expenditures.

Ben Willcott, co-owner and baker at Texas French Bread, stands by a pallet of high-gluten flour, which he said has more than doubled in price this year from $12 to $25 a bag; a magnitude of change that he had never before experienced. “Imagine if this had happened to the price of cars,” he said.

Baker Ben Willcott empties a bag of flour into a mixer at Texas French Bread. Willcott is making ciabatta bread with high-gluten, high-protein wheat, “which is the flour that has gotten really expensive,” he says.

The rapid rise in food prices is probably the most important news item that most people don’t care about. It’s unprecedented, huge, most likely permanent, and below the discretionary spending radar of many first-worlders. Hatians are eating clay, food riots are destabilizing countries, and to quote the Economist, “fill up an SUV’s fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year.” Biodiesel subsidies are not the only contributor of course, or even the most important, but it’s a lot more controllable than curbing demand for meat in Asia and a good example of the different way this crisis affects the rich and the poor. Also, corn biodiesel takes more energy to produce than it releases.

Feel free to write your representative.

Ben Willcott, co-owner and baker at Texas French Bread, stands by a pallet of high-gluten flour, which he said has more than doubled in price this year from $12 to $25 a bag;

Baker Ben Willcott empties a bag of flour into a mixer at Texas French Bread. Willcott is making ciabatta bread with high-gluten, high-protein wheat, "which is the flour that has gotten really expensive," he says.

Ben Willcott tosses dough into a bin.

Aurthur Leighton tosses pizza dough at the Slices and Ices. Like many other restaurants and bakeries, the off-campus eatery has raised prices to compensate for the increase in materials expenditures.

Slices and Ices

Steven Hesch, assistant brewer at the North by Northwest Restaurant and Brewery, leans against one of the eight giant cylinders that fill the restaurant's brewing cage.

The brewmaster at North by Northwest

Alexis Blackman plays in the street near the future site of Park Place Village, a new residential area for the chronically homeless. Her father, Greg Blackman, is opposed to the development. “I wouldn’t mind if they could tell me there wouldn’t be sexual offenders and violent offenders there,” he said, “I’m not a rich person; I can’t afford to move away like other people.”

Mobile Loaves and Fishes, an Austin charity group, had at long last secured a location to resettle the chronically homeless, including ex-felons and sex offenders. A noble cause that I personally find appealing–you can’t make problems disappear by ignoring them, especially if the problems are also people. The assignment was to shoot a photograph of the future site.

When I got to the site, there was nothing there. A packing depot, a few homes and a lot of trees. No bus station, no grocery store, not much of anything. I knocked on a door to ask where the new site would be, and ended up photographing Mr. Blackman’s children instead as they played on the street.

It’s true that the photograph doesn’t show you where the site would be located, but I think it tells the story better than a photograph of trees and some dirty asphalt. The site’s on the street, and the street is where Mr. Blackman says he’ll no longer allow his children to play.

It’s a conundrum: people have to live somewhere, but why here? The people who live here say it’s because it’s far away, poor, out of sight and without a neighborhood association that is able to legally protest. “Why do you have to put all the homeless people together anyway–wouldn’t it be better if they were spread out through the city?” I can’t say I disagree; I hope Austin is making n opportunity, not a ghetto.

Here’s the photo we actually ran. Not sure which one I like better.

Speaking of boring-sounding assignments, another notable one this month was photographing a “video game club.” Imagining people staring slack-jawed at monitor was bad enough; what’s worse was that the club wasn’t even meeting that week. I ended up going to a LAN party that just happened to have some of the club officers attending–I decided before I went inside that I wanted to take a photograph of faces, not televisions. Everyone knows what a television looks like; I wanted to show what fun looked like.

I softened them up by playing games with them for two hours. Like to say I held my own. Okay, I had a blast and it was a lot more fun than the standard hang-around-till-they-forgot-you-are-there. Then I got in real close, waited for a moment of high Pokemon drama and did some faces. The game controller is the obligatory “these people are not watching The Simpson’s” prop.

From left to right: Bryan Kuhn, Erin Lenth, Brad Stein, and Daniel Aguilar enjoy a round of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Nintendo Wii.

I went ahead and shoe-horned in a few random photographs that won’t deserve their own entry. I have a lot of catching up to do.

UT Tennis: Sometimes I wish sports photos could occasionally omit the ball.

Andrea's pipe cleaner camera

Izabelle and Alexis Blackman play in the street near the future site of "Park Place Village," a new residential community for the chronically homeless. Their father, Greg Blackman, is opposed to the new development. "I wouldn't mind if they

Alexis Blackman plays in the street near the future site of "Park Place Village," a new residential community for the chronically homeless. Their father, Greg Blackman, is opposed to the new development. "I wouldn't mind if they could tell me there wouldn

Angle would have been better, but I was holding the reflector!

Assisting Larissa with lighting; car as chariot.

Courtney Dudley

Jen and James Tsou Wedding

Jen and James Tsou Wedding

From left to right: Bryan Kuhn, Erin Lenth, Brad Stein, and Daniel Aguilar enjoy a round of Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the Nintendo Wii.

“What’s the difference between a Turkic and a Turkish? Turkic people are many different people across the Balkans. Turkish people are just people from Turkey.” A short soundslides from the first UT Turkic festival.

Photo-Illustration for Oil Is Dumb, an environmental student company. It’s not the most original of photographs, but at least it actually was about a lightbulb contest.

More conference photos. Above: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot speaks about the importance of enforcing cybercrimes. After the jump: Former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos delivers a keynote address to his audience at the Texas Union on Thursday. Lagos, who was elected as a Socialist candidate in January 2000, spoke of his experiences and warned against the dangers of unfettered capitalism. No promises on color accuracy here; I’m editing at The Texan’s office.

The Associated Press bought this photograph from myself and the Texan; there’s a slim but non-zero chance it was printed in many places. That does make me happy, as does being close enough to hear the secret serviceman yell “Show me your hards! Everyone keep your hands up!” Perhaps I’ll be jaded one day, but for now, “Hurray! Hurrah!”

Presidential hopeful Barak Obama shakes the hands of supporters at the Texas Democratic Party Watch Party shortly after his Austin debate with Hillary Clinton.

Obama-2

Obama-3

Obama-4

Pre-debate rally and press event at a local Texas coffee shop. Though it may look like there aren’t any journalists in the photographs, the truth was that one out of every five people were probably carrying a laminated badge. More photos of Chelsea after the jump.

Chelsea Clinton Rally-9

Overview

Journalists talking to journalists.

Chelsea Clinton Rally-6

Chelsea Clinton Rally-5

Gauss the dog endorses Hillary Clinton.

Tags bear the names of early women voters and are being sold as fundraisers.

Chelsea Clinton signs a shirt.

Chelsea Clinton

Holly Riedelbach (left) and Kelsey Ehlert (right) have been up since 5:30 AM preparing for the event.

Chelsea Clinton (left) signs a supporter's banner.

Chelsea Clinton

Chelsea Clinton

Chelsea Clinton

Chelsea Clinton Rally-15

Ann Richard's daughter.

Photo for Amanda: Amanda Judice and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)

Chelsea Clinton Rally-12

Chelsea Clinton Rally-11

Amanda Judice

Josh Ybarra, of the band Vinyl Dharma

I think he’s just a fantastic guy, on both technical and humanitarian levels. Getting the opportunity to photograph him was intense; originally his handlers told us that it wasn’t allowed, but Andrew (a new photographer at the Texan) and myself managed to sweet-talk the event staff into letting us take photographs while Maya interviewed him.

They opened the door and shushed us in, and it was a pretty intense 30-45 seconds trying to make a good photograph out of a man sitting at a table talking–literally 30 seconds before his staffer made a “throat-cut” gesture. I took nine exposures in total; this was the eighth.

I took sound too, out of habit and practice, but I’m not sure what to do with it. I could transcribe the more inane parts of the public Q&A session:

Student: Hi Bill! When I start up Windows Media Player on my XP Computer, it always gives me a bunch of error messages. If I upgrade to Windows Vista, will the errors go away?
Mr. Gates: I guarantee that if you upgrade to Vista, there will be different error messages.

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