Buddy and Bill

I met one of the coolest guys ever today.

I had a couple hours of light left and decided to drive out to the Saline Lake just west of Winnfield. I made a few pictures of the lake and bumped into a family out skeet shooting. I hung out with them for a bit then decided to hit up another section of the lake for the final few minutes of light.

I turned off the highway and saw something hanging from a tree. Curiosity got the best of me so I pulled over and walked up to the tree.

As I photographed what hung from the tree, the owner of the land drove up behind me, rolled down his window and gave me a "who the hell are you?" kind of look. I told him that I photographing the tree and he just busted out laughing.

He went on to tell me that he was responsible for the tree so I asked if I could take his picture. He said no problem.

We got to chatting about whatever and he started playing with his dog.

So meet Bill and his 1-year-old puppy Buddy.

He told me his wife passed away a year ago and a neighbor told him he needed a buddy around and gave him a puppy from a litter. It was obvious they were best friends. Buddy kept trying to get come up to the window and Bill would say "Go ahead, get back to your room." and Buddy would jump to the back seat of the truck.

Oh, and what hung from the tree that got me to stop? Catfish Heads. Bill's a fisherman and caught them all in the Red River. They were all caught with in the past few months.

Saline lake

Danger

Pretzel with Cheese

I've been updating facebook more than this blog during the trip. Sorry
about that.

Anyway...

The Shreveport portion of the road trip is about done. The bowl game
was a lot of fun. I didn't make many good images, but still had a good
time.

I slept in this morning... Past checkout. Then came across the Red
River to Bossier city. I just finished up a pretzel with cheese and am
about to hit the road back to Winfield.

I really don't have any plans... Except to take back roads and take
pictures.

Hitting the road

I'm all set for my trip north.

Go away or I shall taunt you a second time

I had to try it.

Wow

I don't really know what to say

Never Enough Time

Well, most of the people who read this thing probably already know... but I have a photo in the MSNBC 2008 Year in Pictures slide show. It's the second time I've had a photo end up this collection of images. The last time was in 2006 with my photo of a ladybug crawling across a fence.

Anyway, feel free to go vote for your favorite picture. And like I told my KSU photo folks... my picture really can't stand up to some of the major history that happened this year like Obama, Michael Phelps, the war.. but it's cool to be included next to some historic moments.

I'll leave you with something kind of funny I over heard tonight at a soccer game. I almost said something, but then thought I better not.

The Terrebonne soccer team was bringing the ball down the field and were close to the goal. They were passing back and fourth trying to set up a shot to score. And the Ref blew the whistle and signaled that it was halftime.

A lady in the stands started yelling "We were about to shoot the ball! How can you call halftime when we're about to shoot?"

At first I thought she was just trying to be silly. But she kept yelling at the ref as he walked off the field. "OH Come on sir! What were you thinking?" She yelled a few other phrases, then started complaining to the people around her about how stupid it was for the ref to stop the game.

Really? Welcome to sports lady.

I looked at some fans from the other team and gave them one of those "can you believe that psycho?" look.

So here's a shot from the game tonight. A really nice fog came through and made for some fun pictures. I was really hoping some nice action would happen right in front of me, but no luck. So you get a ref just standing there in his yellow shirt.

Bon fire.

Tonights menu...

Chicken and sausage Jambalya, green beans and chicken wings from KFC.

And they have some cookies too.

Nice

Dinner domain and range

I came to the basketball game an hour early tonight knowing there'd be
a hospitality room. It's HLB's early season tournament.

So I'm enjoying some spaghetti made by the cooking class in the
algebra room before the HLB game.

And I'm shooting this tourney every night this week. And that's not by
chance ether.

Remote

Tonight was the first of two games between Terrebonne and Ellender high. This match is usually a huge, standing room only type game. So I wanted to do it up big and set up a remote camera somewhere.

I wanted to put one on the backboard, but there's still some things I need to figure out before I can do that.

So I put one against the wall pointing into a section of the crowd that usually gets pretty crazy. So I was able to stand on the floor and shoot the game... and have a button in my pocket that fired the camera on the wall.

But for whatever reason, this game was a bummer when it comes to crowd size. And the group of dudes that usually get out of control, just sat there all game.

see....

Now imagine how awesome this could have been if they stood up, threw their hands in the air and yelled and jumped and hugged and high-fived. But nope, they just sat there.

But I was happy that the remote worked and the camera battery lasted the entire game. So in my mind, this experiment was a success.

And you know I had to take some shots of me. I think that's a requirement for setting up remote cameras... you have to take a picture of yourself just for fun.

Enjoy what could have been! (and none of those nacho trays you see are mine... I only had two bucks and their Nachos were $2.50)

Stupid Ducks

The main reason for this post is to get my mind off that KSU loss to Oregon. I was able to watch it and got so frustrated I needed to do something to get my mind away from basketball.

So I looked through my photos from the Saints game today. In no particular order here are a few of my favorites from the Saints' 29-25 win over Atlanta this afternoon at the Dome.

Welcome to Basketball Season

I just thought this was cool. I'm sure I got some weird looks standing in the lane to get this angle on the rack of balls.... but hey, they didn't have any half-time entertainment so somebody had to do something right?

Crazy Two Days

Before I get into this post... let me start off by saying that this isn't a complaint or anything. It's just Monday and Tuesday have been really busy. The other two photographers have been on vacation, leaving me to be the only shooter between the two papers. And I've done quite a bit in these 48 hours.

Lets Start on Monday... And keep in mind that these are just the assignments. I've also been archiving like crazy and other odds and ends around the office.

9:45 am: I get a call saying U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon will be at the Senior Citizens hang out in Thibodaux at 10:30.

10:30 am: Arrive at Senior Citizens hang out and get an easy picture of the Congressman chatting.



12:30 pm: During a lunch of Shells and Cheese, I get a call saying the Gustav and Ike book arrived... so I spend first part of afternoon burning DVD's and looking at the AWESOME book.

4:00 pm: Go to the YMCA and shoot the employees cleaning up... they plan to open on Monday. They've been closed since the storms.



6:30 pm: Drive to H.L. Bourgeois High School and catch the second half of a lousy girls basketball game. I don't shoot it, I just set up my lights and eat a thing of nachos.

7:15: pm: The boys game starts. It's a great game. Huge dunks, fast breaks, it was a back and fourth game. HLB ended up losing by 5. And just FYI... when my parents came to a game a few years back, they sat right under that giant green S on the left side of the frame.



8:15 pm: Get called from the game to go shoot a wreck on Bayou Blue road. Turns out nothing happened. And I miss an amazing finish to the game. Oh well.

11:00 pm: Finally get home after working up all my photos. I have a bowl of Lucky Charms (Ok, I have two bowls) And I hit the sack.

3:30 am: Please see previous post

Ok... Now lets do Tuesday.

10:30 am: Drive to Schriever to photograph a family and their dog for a story we're doing on the Louisiana State Dog... The Catahoula. This is Zeke, a very hyper puppy.



12:00 pm: Drive to Dulac to hang out at Grand Caillou Elementary School. They opened up for the first time since Gustav this week. The kids are finally back at their own school. Here they're standing in line to get a snack during recess. After this I told the reporter that I think adults should have recess too.


2:00 pm: Drive through a neighborhood on the way back up the bayou to find someone working to raise a house for a flood map story. This guy was working on a wheel chair ramp outside a house he raised. Close enough.



3:00 pm: Go home for a Lunchables lunch and do a little work on my website (and, again, see previous blog post)

4:15 pm: Drive to Thibodaux to shoot girls soccer. Terrebonne beat E.D. White 6-0. Or, I should probably say... #4 beat E.D. White 6-0. Yep, this chick scored all 6 goals. That's just stupid.



6:30 pm: Drive to Gray to shoot another family who owns a Louisiana State Dog. This is Spike. I think I've decided that this will by my next dog. They were awesome dogs. Very smart. They're a little big for where I'm living now though.



7:30 pm: Drive back to Thibodaux and hang out with the Thibodaux Volunteer Fire Co. #1 at Bubba's 2 Bar and Grill. The fire company celebrated 150 years in service. They had some really good gumbo to eat... I had two bowls.


Here's a quick rundown.

2-Days of work
9-assignments
20.5-hours worked
200+ - Miles driven
about 600 - Pictures taken (give or take a few because I deleted some after downloading)

Now it's about 11:00 pm and I'm exhausted. But I've made some pretty awesome photos... even though I wasn't able to spend near as much time as I wanted with each assignment. But such is the life of a small daily newspaper photographer.

This Sounds Awesome!

A little Switcharoo

I don't really know how most people get to this blog... but if you visit www.mattstamey.com first, I'm sure you noticed quite a change. If not, check it out here. I spent Sunday playing around with my website and think I've come up with something I like.

I've still got a lot of work to do. but I think it's to a point where I can make it live. There's not much content on it right now, but that will change soon.

So if you see any bugs, or have any suggestions, feel free to let me know.

Now then... This weekend was pretty uneventful. The circus was in town and I shot the Friday night show. For an hour before the show, people can come down to the floor and interact with the performers. It's a good chance to get photos of locals rather than the out-of-town performers. There were a couple dudes in the ring juggling and a bunch of people watching (including me) Their assistant lady tapped me on the shoulder and said something (she was Russian so I really didn't understand her). But I realized that she wanted me to go out in the ring with the jugglers.

The two guys started juggling around me, tossing their pins on ether side of me and walking in a circle around me. It was pretty crazy.

So of course I took photos.

Other than that, I didn't do much this weekend. But "my teams" or teams that I was cheering for all lost this weekend. Here's the list.

-Thibodaux High School (made an unexpected run in the playoffs but lost on Friday in the quarterfinals)

-Oregon State (I picked them in the Jimmy C contest and they got spanked)

-Missouri (I've always gone for Mizzou in the border war)

-Oklahoma State (I just don't like OU and wanted them to lose)

-KSU basketball (Lost to Kentucky by 2)

-KSU basketball (Lost to Iowa by 2)

-Saints (Lost to Tampa Bay by 3)

-Chiefs (Well, I guess they won, but I haven't really followed them this year)

The only thing I have hope for is my fantasy team... the team I'm playing has one player left who plays on Monday night, and I'm up by about 8 points. So everybody cheer against Owen Daniels and hope he doesn't score and fumbles a lot. Or just doesn't do anything.

I'm going to get back to watching Men in Black and folding laundry. Have a good week .

Happy Thanksgiving

Little Something New

The Trifecta

At least once a year I'm able to pull off the Trifecta. It came a little late this year, but it happened.

Friday: St. James High School football
Saturday: LSU vs Ole Miss College football
Monday: Green Bay at New Orleans pro football

Now, I know what you're thinking... "Matt, that's not a perfect Trifecta because you had Sunday off "

Alright, alright, that's fair. But I might not have shot football on Sunday, but I did go to the Metallica concert in New Orleans.

So between hard hits and heavy metal, I'm ready for a Thanksgiving break.

here are some random images in no particular order from this weekend.

One

Metallica playing my favorite Metallica song.

New addition.

Anybody remember that part in 40 year old virgin when he's talking
about his toy collection and he says "do you have any idea how hard it
is for a 10 year old boy to not open this!"

That's kind of how I feel.

My new computer arrived yesterday and I haven't had the chance to bust
it out.

I worked all day yesterday, and I have to get going to baton rouge for
the LSU game now.

So my plan is to adjust my fantasy team tomorrow on my new computer.

I hope it came with more apple stickers.