POY 2009

So I tried to come up with a nifty term to sum up my 2009 like "The year of the _____" But there's been so much go on with me this year that one word wouldn't be enough.

I'll just list some of highlights.

-I met my nephew Alec.
-And on that note, I became an uncle.
-I competed in an Adventure Race (Run, Bike, Canoe, trivia... etc)
-I trained for and ran a half-marathon
-I lost about 45 lbs
-Unless something crazy happens, I'll finish in the top 10 of the Region 8 NPPA monthly clip contest (I'm currently in 4th with three months still to be judged)
-I've had a couple photos published on the front page of espn.com
-I had the lead image on a USA Today Sports page.

And those are pretty much all I can come up with. Feel free to add any you think I might have missed.

I also gathered up a few of my favorite photos from 2009. These aren't necessarily my best pics, just some of my favorite from the past year.

Big Hit

I considered it a "warm up" to the big Monday night showdown in the Dome between the Saints and Patriots. But last night's LSU game against Arkansas turned out to be pretty exciting. The Tigers pulled out an amazing 33-30 win in overtime.

I made a couple images I liked.

The kicker, who made the field goal to send it into overtime and win it in overtime...

A face mask...

A hurdle...

And a big hit...

KSU band

Marching to the stadium before the KU game. Oh, we won 17-10.

Geddy walk

Taking my dog Geddy for a walk today. Had a little suprise a few
blocks into the walk.

Point Cats!

Game three of the volleyball game against A&M.

Dad and I saw two A&M players at the coffee shop this morning. We
thought about putting "can't dig or kill" drugs in their mocha, but
didn't have any to put in there.

Who Dat Flippin

Pierre Flipping into the end zone for a touchdown during Monday Night Football. WHO DAT!

Trifecta Weekend

The first Trifecta of the year. I'm not sure if I'll have another one or not, but this one was pretty darn awesome.

High School Football on Friday. (Terrebonne at Central)
College football on Saturday. (Texas State at Nicholls State)
Pro Football on Sunday. (Giants at Saints)

Oh, and to make this weekend better, check out this other list of victories (or non-victories)

-Got a cool pic of Terrebonne touchdown... and Terrebonne won so we could use that pic in the paper.
-Manhattan High won to remain undefeated
-Kansas State destroyed Texas A&M
-KU lost (haha!)
-Nebraska Lost
-The Saints blew out the Giants
-Chiefs win first game of season
-and my fantasy team won even though Drew Brees was on my bench.

And to top it all off... I had photos on the front page of espn.com, usatoday.com and cbssports.com during the Saints game on Sunday.

Here are some of my favorite shots from the three games I shot this weekend.

This dude prayed, then pointed to the sky after the National Anthem... and add a cool sunset as a nice bonus.


This is the Terrebonne Touchdown I was all excted about because they ended up winning. It ran lead on the sports section on Saturday.


On Saturday, I went to Thibodaux to shoot Nicholls State vs Texas State. Nicholls was supposed to get blown out, but they ended up losing by 6. (and missed two field goals). I shot the first half from the top of the press box. And got lucky when the Nicholls QB high jumped into the end zone. I didn't get much else from this game... just standard football pics. but I kind of liked this one.

And finally, I shot the Saints game. This first picture ended up on the front page espn.com and cbssports.com.

here's the screen grabs...



and I nailed a pretty sweet shot from a touchdown in the first half. Drew Brees to Robert Mecham.

And to stick with the theme of pointing at things... here's Shockey after a big play pointing at Marques Colston for some reason.


And there you go... three days, three levels of football. (Topped off with a KSU win)

15mph

Quite a Hoot

This morning I went to South Terrebonne High at 6:30 a.m. to meet with State Police. They were handing out free music coupons to students who arrived wearing their seat belts... and tickets to those who arrived not wearing their seat belts.

Near the end of the kids arriving, this girl turns the corner into the parking lot and we see a wing sticking out from the front of her car.

She had hit an owl last night and was too scared to take it off the front of her car. The School Resource Officer took it off for her.

Poor Owl.

HOT ROUTE... HOT ROUTE

Let the games begin... tonight was the first real high school football game of the season. Well, close enough. It was a scrimmage, but the teams played like it was real. The only thing missing tonight... the bands. So the atmosphere wasn't quite the same, but still. It was high school football.

I shot the Terrebonne Parish Football Jamboree tonight. The four public schools in the parish all come to one stadium and play a shortened game.

Here's a few shots. I'm still a little rusty with football, but at least I was able to shoot with sweet light. A few weeks from now, it'll be dark before kickoff.

Ice cream social

Johns ice cream social and outdoor movie night.

Uncle ben and matt

Playing with Alec.

Finished

The real reason to run races... T-shirts and numbers.

Alec and Me

Ba ba ba ba

More Tumba

I swear I'm doing more on this vacation than play with Tumba.

At the game!

In Kansas

Stupid rain

(this is also a test to see if I can post videos to my blog from my
phone. So if you don't see anything, just imagine a video of me
talking about how the rain is keeping me from running right now.)

Unprofessional

I just have to get this off my chest before I explode.

I had a run-in with a New Orleans TV Camera guy today that rubbed me the wrong way. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but as a professional photojournalist, he's a complete jackass. (In my opinion)

Here's the situation. There was a murder in Houma on Sunday night. We usually go out to the neighborhood of the murder the next day for a follow up story. We talk to the victims family and friends. Maybe talk to the suspects family and friends. We do this to get more of the story than the police report says. Personal information about the victim like hobbies and things like that.

So reporter Robert Zullo and I headed out to the neighborhood where the victim lived and was killed. We saw ABC 26 out there too. Usually not a big deal. We do our work, they do theirs.

Zullo and I were talking to the sister and a group of cousins of the murder victim outside the home where he was found dead. They were telling us good information about the victim. The sister of the victim says she has a photo of her brother on her cell phone, as she's telling us about the photo, the ABC 26 cameraman walks up and interrupts her and tells her to let him see the photo. This is as she's showing it to me and Zullo. He then has her hold it in front of his camera so he can get a shot. Then, and this is when I had to roll my eyes and walk away, asks her to stand there an look down at the phone so he can get a shot. Are you kidding me? And you call yourself a journalist?

He then asks her to walk with him to the corner of the house where the body was found. Sooooo... I guess Zullo and I were done with our interview and photos?

And to top it all off... the TV cameraman was wearing jean shorts. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of dress codes, but I do believe you need to dress and act professional while on assignment.

I don't know, maybe I'm thinking too much about this, or maybe it's too soon after for me to logically think, but I just got really ticked at this guy today. I have to add that the reporter for the TV station was in a nice shirt and tie. He did his job very well.

There's been articles in national photojournalist's magazines about TV camera people and how they dress and act. The lead photo to go with the article showed a TV cameraman in jean shorts and a t-shirt at a soldiers funeral. There was a TV guy in Topeka who wore jean shorts every day of the year... no matter the temperature. So I know I'm not the only person to come this situation.

Anyway, that's my rant, I feel better now.

Now I'm off to an assignment where I'll be professional, I'll look professional and I'll follow the journalist ethical standards set fourth by the New York Times, National Press Photographers Asso. and the Society of Professional Journalists.

Road Trip

Took a tour of the bayou this afternoon. I played around with a new
iPhone App I got a few days ago. It's called Camera Bag and you can
process any photo to look like it's been shot from a variety of cameras.

It's Hot

It's been just stupid hot outside the past couple weeks. So I busted out the fish tank and went to a summer day camp where kids were swimming in the pool to get some underwater pictures.

Swampland Time Lapse

I tried my hand at another time lapse tonight. Little more difficult tonight because the light changed a lot during the duration of the time lapse. I also gathered some audio during the game. I just hung out in the dugout for a few innings.

I set my camera to take a picture every 15 seconds. I think it was up there for about 3 hours. It's played back at 15 frames per second and it's 42 seconds long. So you can do the math.

amphibian fatality

I never wish for anybody to get into a wreck. And I never wish for someone to get hurt in a wreck. But, as a photojournalist who covers many car wrecks, sometimes I hope for a wreck between two vehicles that'll make interesting pictures. Maybe a truck hauling seltzer crashes into a van full of clowns. Or something silly and ironic like that.

Well, no clowns were involved in a wreck today, but I still got something pretty funny from a minor accident this afternoon.

A truck traveling south crashed into a car trying to turn left off a bridge. Everybody involved suffered minor injuries... except for the frogs the guy in the truck had just caught.

RIP Frogs.

Orange caps

There was a sale on Gatorade and vitamin water at Rouses today.

I went a little nuts...

Close Call

Ok, so on Saturday I had to go down the bayou to get a photo that showed the vanishing coast line. I knew a couple spots that had some dead trees and water and maybe a fisherman or two. (Just to have a human figure in the frame.) I also wanted a nice sunset in the picture.

I drove down to the spot I had in mind around 5 p.m. to see if anybody was there and maybe make a few frames before the sun started to go down. Nobody was there yet and I just happened to have my fishing pole in my trunk. So I decided to try my luck.

I walked to the edge of the water and stood behind a clump of grass.

After my first cast, I heard a splash right below me in front of the grass. I figured it was a fish jump and was excited that they were active. A couple casts later, I look below me and see this Gator in the water. That splash wasn't quite a fish.

From my best guesses, he was less than his body length away from me when I first walked up to the grass. I'm glad it decided to jump towards the water and not towards me on shore.

phew!

So I took some shots with my wide angle, then ran and grabbed my 400 and got some closer frames. The gator just floated around in the water for a while. Then tried to eat a dead crab that was up against the marsh grass.

The only thing I caught that day was some pictures of a gator and a vanishing coastline photo for Sunday's front page.






Quick change of subject... I finally got around to dumping the photos off my point and shoot camera this morning. Here are some random shots from the past couple weeks.

The attack of the bugs at the New Orleans Zephyrs Game. They didn't bite, they were just all over the place. Good thing it was miniature bat giveaway night. (I've got video I'll post sooner or later)


Shot this while driving to Sulphur for the State Softball Tournament


Shot this at an outdoor music festival in New Orleans.


Name that Skyline! (from my flight back to Louisiana from Kansas in April)

Mardi Gras Indians

Every Thirty Seconds

This is what made shooting graduations a little more fun this year. So all in all I shot a photo gallery, video and time lapse from each graduation I covered this year. Made for a long week, but it was a fun challenge. And I'm finished climbing up to the rafters of the civic center for a while now.

500

I'll start off by saying that today might have been the most frustrating day I've had in quite a while. But I ended it with an awesome run, so everything's fine now.

On Friday, I was assigned to photograph the community band in Thibodaux on Sunday. Normally not a bad assignment, but I really didn't want to have to work on a Sunday, and have to do a video. On Saturday, I was given another Sunday assignment to make a picture of Houma because we were voted "Cleanest City in the State." Then, during the middle of shooting that on Sunday, I get a call to go down the Bayou to shoot fishermen getting ready for Shrimp season, which starts on Monday.

So my day off turned into a full day of work with three assignments.

Oh, and to top it all off, a couple of items in my kitchen cubbard were thrown away because my roommate is super... SUPER clean and has to have everything in order. So I'm out a bag of perfectly fine Wildcat Blend Coffee and Buffalo Chip snack things. (Both of which were Christmas presents from my parents).

One more thing... I missed a BBQ hosted by Emily, the other photograher. She invited the newsroom to her place for some grilled meat.

I didn't break anything or lose my voice yelling... I just rewared myself by going on a run with the new shoes tonight.

After uploading my run to Nike, I saw that I'm only 52 miles away from reaching 500 total miles ran since starting Nike+. So I created a goal to run 52 miles in 8 weeks. Should be pretty simple. Here's my total miles from the past 4 months.

Jan - 21
Feb - 47
Mar - 26
April - 34

(The options on the goal only let me select 4, 8, 12 or 16 months. And I figured 52 miles in a month is a litte much right now. So I went with two months)

So, 25ish miles a month for two months will put me at 500 total miles. Here's the goal I set up.



Now, here are some photos I took this weekend. One from the State Police Open House and the others from the 5k Run for Excellence. (Which I'm dissapointed that I couldn't run this year)

Final thought... I think the judges for the Cleanest City Contest were ether bribed, or didn't get a good view of Houma. I saw the route they took for their judging... never touched the East side of town. I wonder if any of the judges ever asked "Hey, what's on the other side of those two giant bridges? Can we go see?"

13.1 on 10/31

Ouch

Over thrown ball stopped by my shin in the sixth inning.