Texas Highways Magazine January 2021

Photography frequently tops the list of what our readers enjoy most about Texas Highways. To kick off our 47th year of capturing Texas’ beauty, I asked Photo Editor Brandon Jakobeit to give us a peek behind the lens and answer some of our most common photography inquiries. What makes a good Texas Highways photo? A good shot is one that tells a story in a single photo—something that sparks an emotional response from the viewer and adds context and substance to the written word. All of our photographers have a deep sense of curiosity, which I think is one of the most important traits in a photographer. What’s your favorite place to photograph in Texas? The Big Bend region. It’s such a visually diverse landscape to explore. Because of how beautifully our photographers capture the…

Texas Highways won big this fall at two competitions recognizing excellence in magazine editorial and design. From the Eddie and Ozzie Awards, hosted by the publishing industry magazine FOLIO, Texas Highways won six honors in the city and regional category, including “Overall Editorial Excellence.” The design team won a top Ozzie Award in the “Feature Design” category for June 2019’s “Sand, Surf, and Sea” and an honorable mention for “Design of a Single Magazine Issue” for November 2019. In the “Newsletter” category, the digital newsletter about Texas wildflowers, “Petal Pusher,” won gold, as did the digital version of Dave Shafer’s “Peeking Through the Pines” photo essay in the “Visual Storytelling” category. Among the magazine’s more than 20 additional wins from the International Regional Magazine Awards, writer-at-large Clayton Maxwell won “Writer…

Marcus J. Guillory The LA-based screenwriter recalled his time as an AstroWorld employee in “For Your Amusement” (Page 12). “It’s one thing to revisit a location from my past, but it’s another thing to revisit the experiences and the emotions connected with that location, particularly when that location no longer exists,” Guillory says. “AstroWorld is still a part of me, a highlight in my identity as a native Houstonian.” Guillory is a writer and producer on BET’s Sacrifice. His debut novel, Red Now and Laters, published in 2014, received a starred Kirkus Review and was shortlisted for the Ernest Gaines Award. Suchi Rudra For “Global Mix” (Page 58), Rudra chatted with 7 Monks Café owner Rashmi Bhat about growing up as a serial expat, an experience that strongly informed the New Braunfels restaurant’s…

Historic Temple The December article on the sites in Corsicana [“Lights, Camera, Corsicana”] omitted an architectural gem—the century-old Temple Beth-El, the only onion-domed synagogue in the Southwest and one of a handful in the U.S. The Moorish Revival house of worship, with its octagonal towers and keyhole windows, has a Texas historical marker and is in the National Register of Historic Places. The building serves as a community center and holds Jewish services once a month. It is located on 15th Street, within sight of Collin Street Bakery. Hollace Ava Weiner, Fort Worth Cactus Correction I don’t know who is responsible for the misidentified cactus on Page 24 [“The Perils of Pilfering Prickly Plants,” December]. The plant pictured is indeed an endangered species in its area of limited occurrence. It is the star cactus,…

Photographer Jason Weingart took multiple shots over two nights to create this composite image of the Perseid meteor shower over the Chihuahuan Desert near Big Bend National Park. The area’s dark skies and moonlike landscape make for an “astrophotographer’s paradise,” says the Austin-based photographer, who teaches workshops in the Big Bend area. “I visualized the image before I created it,” he explains. “I wanted a big, full arch of the summer Milky Way and an explosion of meteors raining down. In all of my years shooting night skies, this is one of my favorite images.”…

Palestine is a town that knows how to celebrate spring. Nature-lovers flock here for the annual Texas Dogwood Trails Celebration, an 83-year tradition that showcases the trees’ delicate white blossoms. Founded in 1846, Palestine grew as an agricultural and timber hub with the arrival of the railroad in 1872. The discovery of oil in 1928 created an economic driver that endures to this day, along with ranching, logging, and NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility. African Americans have long played key roles in Anderson County, a history that Reginald “Reggie” Browne Jr. researched for the 2007 book African-American Roots: Traveling the Boundaries of Anderson County. His work helped inform a new city tour called “Our Black History: Palestine’s Legends & Legacies.” The driving tour stops at sites like Mount Vernon African…