Portfolios

Russell Graves

I am passionate about the outdoors.

Since I can remember, I?ve been fascinated with nature, wildlife, agriculture and the outdoors. As a teenager on my family?s cattle ranch, I recall being chastised for searching for white-tailed deer when I was supposed to be looking for lost cattle in the hardwood bottomlands that filter the muddy waters of Bois d?Arc Creek.

I went to school in the tiny Northeast Texas town of Dodd City where I was surrounded by a rural culture that is still strong today. As a boy growing up on the rolling hills of the northern Texas blackland prairie region, my family introduced me to fishing, hunting, camping, trapping, and other outdoor pursuits.

Even after graduating college in the mid-1990?s, I passed up chances to live a more suburban and domesticated lifestyle and made my home in the southeastern Texas Panhandle where cattle, deer, and coyotes outnumber people. I still live in Childress although now I share my home with my wife Kristy and our two young children.

My family and I live a lifestyle that keeps rural traditions close. For 16 years, I taught agricultural science at a small high school where I won numerous awards for my teaching including being named Texas Agriscience Teacher of the Year in 2001, 2003, and 2006 ? a feat never achieved by anyone else. For me, it was an honor to help young people find a sense of purpose and see them achieve their goals and, along the way, help them earn thousands in scholarship dollars because of their affiliation with my agricultural science program.

By contrast to the rural ways in which I am so fond, I?ve embraced modern technology and incorporate multiple technologies for image capture and delivery which is at the vanguard of speed and efficiency for my chosen specialization.

Because of my background as a small town guy, I feel I bring a fresh perspective to my photography, writing, and speeches which makes my work unique. Sometimes I think I may have been born at least fifty years too late because I missed out on rural Texas when the most of the activity in a given area was centered on small towns. I hear old timers talk of little towns in the area and how the tiny burghs bustled on Saturdays as people came to town to socialize and shop. Often I muse about a time I can never experience. Then again, I use my digital camera and am reminded that being a small town Texan in today?s technological age, perhaps right now, I?m living in the good ol? days.