Ralph Barrera is my favorite photographer. And I don’t even say that just because he’s my dad. He’s really a great photographer. He always knows how to be in the right place at the right time, to catch the best image. And his photos are really amazing — they’re well-composed, well-lit, sometimes funny and they’re always interesting.
Ralph lives in Austin, Texas, which made it easy for me to recreate his photos, since I live in Austin, too. Ralph grew up in San Antonio, Texas, with two sisters and two brothers. He is the youngest of his siblings. In high school he enjoyed taking photos, so he decided to pursue a career in photojournalism.
He went to The University of Texas at Austin, where he took photos for the university's daily newspaper. He graduated with a degree in journalism. After college, work took him to Colorado Springs, where he worked for a newspaper that no longer exists.
He got a lot of good experience there but wanted to come back home to Texas, so got a job working for the Austin American-Statesman, where he still works, having been there for over 30 years.
He met his journalist wife at the Statesman, and they got married in 1994, and had three awesome sons. Ralph says their wedding was like a press conference because there were so many photographers there!
As a photographer for the Statesman, he has had many interesting assignments. He’s been to Paris to shoot the Tour de France and to Central America to shoot war and poverty. He has shot presidential inaugurations and Super Bowls. He’s also done lots of less exciting work, such as taking pictures at city council meetings and ribbon-cutting events.
When he isn't taking photos for assignments, he likes to shoot pictures of people and animals and beautiful scenery. We always have wonderful photos from our family vacations.
Most of his photos are in color, but some of them are in black and white. He likes to experiment with different techniques. He does journalism-style photography, but he also shoots studio photos, like of food for the food section of the paper. He also shoots portraits, in the studio and in the field. Working for a newspaper, he has to be able to do all types of photography.
Sports is one of his favorite things to shoot. It can be hard, because, except for basketball, you have to move around a lot and be sure you’re in the right place at the right time. But it’s also very exciting, he says. And it’s fun to be right on the sidelines, where all the action is.
He has earned four Barbara Jordan awards and many other photography awards. His work has been published in many national magazines and several books. His Statesman coworkers respect him and the younger ones are always eager to learn from him.
For my Ralph Barrera re-creation photos, I chose to recreate a frog mural picture, a Stephen F. Austin mural picture and a photo of a dog on a brick porch. It was fun to try to copy his pictures as closely as I could.
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