the sweetwater project

After a weekend in Sweetwater, Texas, I spent an evening editing photos for The Daily Texan, where I am a photo editor.

I don't know what this is, and I don't know who is reading it, so I suppose some introduction is necessary. I'm Joey Castillo, photojournalist, student and reigning photo editor at The Daily Texan, the student newspaper of the University of Texas at Austin.

I spent the weekend in Sweetwater working on a photo package on wind energy, a force that has transformed a ranching town of 11,000 into a renewable energy powerhouse. Wind has brought 200 new jobs a day and millions of dollars of investment into the small West Texas hamlet. There's even talk of getting a Starbucks.

Anyway, because I'm a photo editor, I don't feel comfortable taking the cool assignments and leaving everyone else with crap, so I brought along two photographers from the staff. That made for a good mix, by my count: three photographers and one reporter piled into a beat-to-hell 2005 Dodge Grand Caravan for the 500-mile weekend.

This was the result.

I have always believed in the power of photographs to tell a story, yet when I looked at our takes, I at first saw just a bunch of wind towers. It took a few minutes to distance myself and remember: this is about people. It's about places. It's not about reducing dependence on foreign oil, or meeting some abstract goal of one-percent renewable energy. It's about Rebecca Gunn saving her ranch. It's about kids playing in the shadow of high technology. It's about Mayor Wortham, who's turned his hometown into the wind kingdom of West Texas. And even though it took ten hours on the road and a solid $20 for film, even though it involved toting home 4x5 negatives soaked in bags of caustic water, even though it entailed two days without a shower and two weeks' worth of phone calls, it was a good trip.

So yeah, I'm a little late to the blog party, but hi guys. I'll be posting as often as I can.