Craig Fritz

Journalism: Photography Columns

This is a selection of "Columns" published weekly in The Albuquerque Tribune. 

  • There is a vast difference between being a fan for big-time professional and college sports, and being a fan of those same sports in high school. With prep sports, there is a more palatable sense of tradition — one that you and your friends took part in or actually shaped. Millions of people can say that in regards to high school sports. Only the smallest percentage can say it in regards to the professional level.Sure, the big time boasts a sea of cameras and slick ESPN newscasters. The athletes are finely tuned machines, loathed if they make a mistake. At preps, miscues and turnovers are standard, but there’s no buffer-zone reinforced by security guards who prevent fans from wishing good luck to the athletes.High schools invite parents and supporters onto the fields and courts to share in their children’s accomplishments and to be part of the “entertainment” rather than just watching it. Pete Padilla and his wife both attended Bernalillo High School. Now, their daughter, Ashley, is a junior and member of the homecoming court there. “They’re here to do it for their parents and fans, not for the cameras,” said Padilla, pictured here keeping Ashley warm at a Sept. 22 football game in which the Bernalillo Spartans defeated the West Las Vegas Dons. “It’s more pure.”
  • Despite a constant barrage of commercials advocating thicker, longer or darker hair — along with the occasional ribbing from friends — many of us just refuse to listen. Eight years ago, Thane Kenny paid $10 for hair clippers. He uses them a few times a week and says, “I haven’t paid a dime since.” Kenny, 42, tends to take the stance that “the people this matters to, don’t matter to me.” The most recent picture he has of himself with a full head of hair is from 17 years ago, when it could touch his belt. He had never noticed his hair was thinning until a friend, whom he thought was kidding, pointed it out. At first, he wanted to keep it while he could, but that changed. “Trying to hang onto the last vestiges now seems silly,” he says. “It took me a year or so to say, ‘So be it. That’s the way it’s going.’ ” Bald, gray, thinning: None of them matter to me. While I know they do to some, for the life of me, I can’t understand why. I will echo Kenny’s opinion: “It really strikes me as silly that there is such a fascination with hair.”
  • It never occurred to Trout Rogers that he was doing anything out of the ordinary when he and his partner, Jennifer, decided to share the responsibility of caring for their daughter, Bemsha, 3, at home. It’s what he has always done. Together, the two “do a lot of art stuff, play music together. We just goof around,” he says. “If she is happy, healthy and laughing half the day, then we are doing it right.” As a result of his being at least a part-time stay-at-home dad, he says that she will grow up with less of an expectation of gender roles. “Mom goes to work, too, and Dad cooks and does the dishes,” he says. Bemsha will know, he says, that she can do whatever she wants, be it staying at home or having a career. Their sharing of responsibility of child care and earning money for the family has had two drawbacks for Trout. The first, he says, is that “we are ineffective users of child care.” They don’t know who to leave their daughter with, outside of one friend and one family member. They haven’t developed those resources because, so far, they haven’t had to. The second is that it often feels like he and his partner are just seeing each other in passing. “It’s tough for Jennifer and me,” he says.
  • There is little obvious activity at 10:30 p.m. on east Central Avenue, but the lights are on at Fine Line Tattoo until 11 p.m. Examples line the walls at the shop, 5511 Central Ave. N.E. Sitting on the desk is Danielle Tanner, trading barbs with male tattoo artists about a compatibility test in a men’s magazine. Tanner says she fills the role of “office manager, receptionist and lackey — everything except artist.” In an environment that courses with testosterone and could be uncomfortable for a woman, Tanner says the men at Fine Line are “like my big brothers.” She doesn’t mind being the only woman working there. “I try to keep the boys in line,” she says. “They know I’m to be respected. They really take care of me.” Although Tanner doesn’t look the part, she says, “Where else do I have a chance to be a tomboy all day long?”
  • It’s easy to enter the Man’s Hat Shop Downtown on Central Avenue with a bit of reverence. It opened in 1946 and is among a handful of area businesses that can boast such deep roots. I am a sucker for people and places that stand the test of time and endure as a vital part of an ever-changing world. This shop one of those places. Western style hats, such as this fur hat being priced by J.W. Brown, are the shop’s bread and butter, but custom ball caps, fedoras and other stylized hats also crowd the shelves. The owner, Stuart Dunlap, credits various factors for the shop’s staying power, but he takes particular pride in service. “We provide a quality product, not something just off the shelf,” he says.It is not so much the hats themselves that draw me in, but the aura of living, breathing history that is embodied there.
  • In some ways, the employees at city swimming pools are uncommon. Mostly in their teens, they have chosen not to work at a mall or a fast-food restaurant but somewhere instead where they can make a difference. “I want to save someone really badly,” says 15-year-old Julian Sanchez (center), who watches Rio Grande Pool from the break room with Thomas Saiz (left), 18. Sanchez comes from a tradition of lifeguarding, he said. Both his sisters were guards, as was his grandfather. However, most of the guards concede that it is rare to pull a swimmer from the water. What they end up doing more often is cleaning the pool and restrooms, watching the clock to see when it is their turn on the lifeguard stand and occasionally blowing their whistle to stop potentially dangerous antics. Head lifeguard April Weber (not shown) says she sometimes feels like a rare breed. She can hear the Albuquerque Biological Park’s train conductor announce to his passengers, “. . . and on your left is Rio Grande Pool.” She politely waves back to sightseers, she says. But while Kathryn Gutierrez (not shown), 16, takes her life-saving role seriously, she also says cool clothes are a perk. “The worst part of being a lifeguard is getting a flip-flop tan,” she says. “I work hard at getting rid of mine.”
  • Aubri Wrye, 8, eyes her ribbon after winning the black-face division of the open class lamb show at the Torrance County Fair in Estancia with her lamb K.P. Aubri went on to win Grand Champion, with her brother taking Reserve Grand Champion. That’s the way it is for the Wryes: They do everything together, feeding, walking and caring for their lambs every day. “We encourage it because it’s something we can do as a family,” says Kasi Wrye, the kids’ mother. “They love the lambs. They watch them from when they are first born.” The time spent with the animals from early in the year to when they are shown in late summer breeds a friendship with the animals while teaching responsibility, Wrye says. The Wryes have about 30 head of ewes for breeding at their home in Estancia. “It’s kind of cool to watch them grow up,” says Aubri. “They are cute when they are born.” And when they’re older? “They get real fat, and they get real mean.”
  • When making the decision to have a baby, Anna Mafchir thought about going on hikes as a family and all the other fun stuff they would do. What she didn’t think about is how long she would be pregnant. “Obviously, I knew there was going to be that nine months,” she says. “All I visualized was Andrew and I reading to the baby.” Now she knows life changes well before the birth. Always active and health conscious, she has changed her daily routine to accommodate her changing body. “I had to let go and just accept that I had to take a nap,” she says. “I can eat ice cream. I hadn’t had it in 10 years.” Her nesting instincts have kicked in. She has been given bags full of clothes for the baby who will join husband Andrew and dog, Niko, in their southeast home. “Where am I gonna put all this?” she wonders while sorting laundry recently. “I don’t even know what all of it is,” she says, showing a padded cloth item that turned out to be for a car seat. The 31-year-old Eldorado High School teacher, normally organized and process-oriented, has embraced all the new experiences, no matter how unpredictable they may have been. “I’m just appreciative that I can feel it,” she says. “It’s something that I have wanted for so long.” Due on Nov. 20, she can look back on her pregnancy fondly but adds, “I'm ready to be the mamma.”
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