The tough part about always being the guy behind the camera is that you're never* in the photo.

Chris Wilkins, the driving force behind the Texas BBQ Posse, is a professional photographer. So are a lot of posse members. But Chris is the guy who's always ready with his lenses and flash when we pull up to a new joint. He's the guy who's always walking in with at least two cameras around his neck. He's the guy who's always in perfect position to record the moment when a pitmaster agrees to take us around back and show us where the magic happens.

Which means, as I said, that he's seldom in the shot.

So here's my amateur-shooter's** gift to readers of the Posse blog: A Portrait of the Artist as a Hungry Man. (Looking closely, it appears that Chris might have three cameras around his neck.)

*One exception is the group picture that Chris always makes when we go on a tour. For those, he uses the shutter timer and joins us in the frame. Once, to get this shot, I saw him use a beer can as a tripod.

**Want to know just how amateur a shooter I am? Well, I count four telephone poles in the background in photo above, and I'm impressed that I don't have a single one growing out of Wikins' head. (OK, one's close...)