WOW... what a fire

I'm too tired right now to think of a better title for this post.... but I know there's a good one out there.

I got an early morning call about a fire at World of Wings. (best chicken wing place in town) The restaurant is in a building with two other businesses. I thought I'd give a sort of play-by-play of what the fire fighters did early Wednesday morning.

First, they put out the fire. (duh) I was not there for this part, so I don't have a photo to show.

Second, they ventilate the building by putting huge fans by the front door and blow the smoke out the back door.

After that, they check on the business next door. It was filled with smoke and water. That's the Assistant Mgr. of this Marine Supply store sitting down in front of her store. (this store sells recreational boating supplies) I'm hoping for a "smoke damage" sale where I can pick up a cooler and floaty key chain for super cheap.


After getting that under control, the Fire Chief goes into the burnt building to look for clues on where and how the fire started. This blaze started in the kitchen somewhere. They pretty much narrowed it down to one area, but don't know the cause yet. (FYI... I smell REALLY bad right now)


Now that leaves one business in this building that we don't know about yet right? Well, thank god, it was unharmed. And it opened right as everything was winding down too. Tall Espresso Macchiato White Mocha Latte Cappuccino Extra Cream on me!

Take a Moment and...

I'm at the half-way point of my 2007 graduation season. I've shot four, and have four to go.

At first, I was not to excited about this stretch of graduations. Having to listen to endless valedictorian speeches where the kids never look up from the paper their reading from, sitting through the countless names that are announced, the screaming family... etc.

But I got to thinking tonight, graduations are a great source of moments. Something photographers live for. Every aspect of a graduation is filled with moments. From the grads hanging out back stage getting ready, to the kid who holds his hands in the air after getting the diploma, to the parents giving their child a hug and a bouquet of balloons.

So I went into tonight's graduation with the mind frame that I can make pictures the entire time. (This attitude got a little help from a can of Red Bull and a Starcrunch)

If you want to become a better photographer, go shoot a graduation. Good photography is about catching moments. And I can't think of a better venue with a bunch of moments all under one roof than a graduation.

Everything from little moments that you happen to be in the right place for...




To big moments that you can prepair for...



For a little background:

In the first shot, the girl is giving the peace sign to a teacher who's sitting a few chairs down from me. (Side Note: This happens to be the same young lady who is cutting down the basketball net from that photo debate thing a while ago)

The second shot is of Toni Fitch hugging "one of my four best friends" after getting the keys to a new car. When I was walking out of the Civic Center following the ceremony, this guy grabbed and said to go wait outside the door. So I kind of new what was going to happen and made sure to be in the right place. Jackpot.

Now, don't get me wrong, I've been to graduations where nothing happens... or maybe I'm just not in the right place when they do happen. But the moments are there, and it's up to the photographer to hunt them down and shoot them.

And cross your fingers that the next four graduations go a well as tonight's did.

While it's true that every dog will have his day, When all the bones are buried, There is barely time to go outside and play

I've always believed the saying that a photograph is just as much a reflection of the photographer as it is the subject in the photograph.

Meaning photographers shoot how they feel, not just what they see.

I'm going to add a little twist to that and say that we also sometimes shoot how we WANT to feel, and not necessarily exactly how we feel.

The past few weeks have been pretty tough... Being the only shooter a the paper plus lots of work plus some other things have really added up.

And I've looked back at some of my recent images and they don't really show how I feel. But they show how how I'd like to feel.

For example: I photographed a girl having a great time while riding a carnival ride with her friends the other weekend. That day sucked for me, I didn't feel like working at all, and it took everything I had to get out of bed that morning. But that image sure doesn't say "having a rough day"

And today, I was on a boat with a search and rescue dog named Sky. Her job was to sniff around the water to find stuff. (in this case it was a man who had drowned a day earlier) When she was finished, her handler told her to stop searching and gave her a treat. Then she became happy-go-lucky-dog-on-a-boat.



This picture sure doesn't say "Matt doesn't want to be working and can't remember his last day off" to me. But isn't that a great picture of a dog!? I thought it was great. She's just chillin in the breeze knowing she did a good job (according to the lady on the right)

I don't know... My mind started to wonder while I was boiling spaghetti noodles tonight. So this might be the sun burn and lack of a good nights sleep talking.

But on a happier note, My boy Nabil called while I was on the boat and told me some good news. He's now working on his Masters Degree in Pittsburgh Penn. What that means is I'll soon be taking a trip to the only city in Penn. that ends in "gh" (that tid-bit brought to you by Nabil)

What that also means is that I can finally wear my Roberto Clemente Jersey in public and not get funny looks.

Anyway, Homor Simpson and Milhouse just rolled past Chief Wiggum in a garbage dumpster, so I should probably go watch that.

Don't Jump

Well, this morning has taken another interesting twist.

While riding around with a couple guys from the D.A. office arresting people who haven't paid child support, we get a call that there is a guy on top of the Houma Twin Spans about to jump.

I cover more fatal wrecks, deadbeat dads, and suicide attempters before 10 a.m. than you do all day.

I'm like a zombie right now and don't feel like working up any more photos to post. But I've put a photo gallery here.

everybody cross your fingers that nothing else happens today. I'm pooped.

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I planned on an early morning Thursday. But this is just nuts.

I went to bed around 11:00 Wednesday night, which is somewhat early for me. I planned to wake up around 3:15 a.m. so I could make it to an assignment at 4:00 a.m. I wasn't too excited about it, but I don't make the news, I just cover it. (The assignment is to go around with the sheriffs office arresting guys who haven't paid their child support)

Around 12:30 a.m. I get a phone call about a fatal wreck down the bayou. So I crawl out of bed and drive about 40 minutes down to the end of the Earth to find a flipped Ford Explorer. Not cool.

(here's a shot of the SUV after it was flipped back upright and the Volunteer fire fighters were looking for insurance and any other kind of paper work to find out who was in the car.)



Quick Lesson: If you're the passenger in a car, in the dark, late at night, on a two-lane highway, don't reach over and grab the wheel to dodge an animal.

It's almost 4:00 in the morning now, and time for my next assignment.

I'll living off Red Bull and Power Bars the rest of the day.

And when I looked the Moon had turned to gold

Got some good captions still coming in for the Caption Contest... I'll try to put together a list of all the captions sooner or later.

It's been a long day and I'm looking forward to being lazy tonight. So I'm not going to spend much time on this post.

But here are a few shots that I like.

This is from an ALMOST full moon... one night short of being full. The cross is on top of a downtown Houma Church.



And here are some shots from my two assignments on Saturday.

First I shot a local Doctor who has a hobby of racing cars... And on Saturday, he tried his luck at racing go-carts. Pretty fun... he said to keep in contact and the next time he goes out, he'll let me drive one.



This weekend is the Thibodaux Volunteer Fireman's Fair. Good Music, Good Food, unfair carnival games, and overpriced rides. The second picture cost me three bucks. (Side Note: If you look between the chains of the second photo... you'll see a dude in jeans and a light blue shirt... that's Raymond, the reporter. He's holding my hat and the rest of my photo gear.)





That's all for now.

Caption Contest !

Winner gets a high-five next time I see them.

Submit your caption via email or the comment section.

Have Fun...

(I took this photo Saturday afternoon.)

A (not so) quick update

I'm not going to touch on all the highlights of my past few weeks, just a few. I'm pretty sure Misty touched on the things I'm going to leave out. So if you'd like to know more about what's going on, check out her blog.

I will touch on a few things though...

Last weekend and this weekend are the annual Blessing of the Fleet celebrations. A priest is aboard a Shrimp Boat and goes down the bayou blessing the other shrimp boats. They file in behind and parade down close to the Gulf. It's pretty neat to see.

Last weekend, Misty and I were on the lead boat for the entire trip. Here are a few shots from that afternoon.







And here's one my buddy Doug shot of Misty and me on the lead boat.



This Sunday there is another Blessing that I plan to cover. I get to ride on one of those boats for a couple hours and they always offer me some type of good food.

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(That's my little Webdings community to separate my thoughts)

Also, last weekend was the Louisiana Press Asso. awards banquet. It's a fun afternoon lunch type event where vendors hook you up with plenty of free stuff. Then, they serve a nice meal and announce the winners of the Annual Contest.

Before the lunch started, people attending the banquet were able to walk around and view the top three winners in each category. (categories range from Best Headline to Best Sports Photo to Best Full Page Color Ad... so the contest covers all aspects of the newspaper). You didn't know the exact place, but the top three were displayed in random order.

While people were viewing the winners, they were given a ballot and asked to go vote for their favorite photo in the entire contest. I'd guess there were about 50 photos to choose from. The photo with the most votes got slugged "Best in Show"

So I did a little campaigning amongst my friends and co-workers in attendance. And ended up winning the "Best in Show" in the entire contest. I don't know how many votes were cast, but I did overhear a group of people I didn't know say they were going to vote for mine, so the voting wasn't totally skewed because of me.

Anyway, it was a photo from a high school graduation I shot last year. One of the students wore his full Marine uniform instead of his cap and gown. I mounted a camera in the cat-walk of the civic center and took pictures with that camera using a remote button. (thanks for the help with that Grant) Turned out pretty well.

Here's the photo...



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And on another winning note, Misty took home a nice chunk of change from the casino the other night. I took home twenty less bucks. She was down to just a few buck left and she hit big on the slot machine. She's planning to put the money towards a new dryer or towards the "take boyfriend to nice dinner" fund. But it's totally up to her how she spends her winnings.

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The past few weeks, Taylor has been playing a youth soccer league. It's pretty much 5-6 year old kids running around like crazy all trying to kick the ball at once. And every now and then, they lose interest and go climb around in the goal. It's fun to watch and I finally busted out my camera tonight and grabbed some shots.

I'm guessing this first shot was taken right as the ball passed inches from my camera. I was lying on the ground with my wide angle hoping the action would come close to me. And it did. The ball was kicked right past my camera. I missed getting the ball in the picture, but I still think it's cool how all the kids are looking right at the camera... that usually never happens when shooting sports.



And the best part of playing youth sports.... the post-game snack. I remember getting a can of Rocky Top or Sam's Choice Soda or some sort of cheap drink. After this game, Taylor got hooked up with a CapriSun and an Oreo Cupcake. I was in charge of holding the CapriSun so she could eat the cupcake. Misty scored a bite of the cupcake and claimed that it tasted bad.




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This morning, I tuned into the last few minutes of Press Your Luck on the Game Show Channel. Anybody remember that show? I started cheering for this guy to win. He had three whammies
and the defending champ passed him 4 pushes. (meaning he's required to Press his Luck four more times). He kept getting Money+Spin. So he ended up passing the champ 2 pushes. And she got a couple Money+Spin. But instead of passing those free spins to the dude with three whammies, she kept pressing her luck. She didn't quite catch up to the amount of money the dude had so she lost. It was the best episode of Press Your Luck I've ever seen with out seeing a Whammy dance across the screen.

You know you always cheered to see the people get whammies. Nobody cares about the Big Bucks or Vacation package.

I can't believe I just did a play by play of a game show.

Alright Alright... I'll post something.

I know it's been a while since I last posted. And here are my list of excuses.

1. I've been working a bunch lately and when I get home after a long day, the last thing I want to do is stare at a computer some more.
2. When I did feel like looking at a computer and posting a blog, our Internet was down. Our provider is undergoing "changes" which means our Internet sometimes doesn't work. But these "changes" have taken over a month so it's really starting to suck.
3. I'm just plain lazy

Now then, let me give you guys a quick rundown of what I've done the past few weeks.

It's mostly been A LOT of work. Spring sports are in full swing, Houma hosted a Harley-Davidson festival, I started a new painting that will take me a while to finish, I've spent quite a few evenings over at Misty's enjoying pizza rolls and whatever activity Taylor is interested in that night, Good Friday crawfish, and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff that I can't remember right now.

I shot a track meet a few weeks ago. In the middle of the meet, they have an event called the "Fat Man Relays" It's when the shot-put and discuss throwers compete in a 4x100 meter relay. And the winning team gets a dozen doughnuts. It doesn't count towards the overall standings of the meet, but it is sure fun to watch the fat guys run 100 yard sprints. Anyway, I got this photo during that race. It doesn't say "fat man relay" but I still thought it was pretty funny.



I did something on Saturday I haven't done in quite a while... paint Easter eggs. Misty, Taylor and I painted about 7 dozen eggs on Saturday night. It was great. Misty picked up some specialty egg painting kit things and what started as your traditional "dipping the eggs into the colors" turned into Taylor splashing the liquid dye all over the table, floor and shirt, and Misty and I using paint brushes to paint our eggs. It was great. Here's a shot of one of my favorite eggs. I discovered an easy way to put some dead looking trees on the egg. Pretty cool I thought. I think Misty came away with the best decorated egg with her swamp scene. But I'll let her show that one off.




Then of course, the Easter bunny paid a visit to Misty and Taylor. Items of interest to Taylor included new ear rings, paint brushes and a chocolate cross. Items of to me included bubbles, jelly beans and Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs.



But before we painted the eggs on Saturday, I hooked myself up with an Easter Present of my own. We went to Sam's Club and picked up a huge bucket of Cheese Balls, a million rolls of toilet paper, a 32-inch flat screen TV, about 3,000 ounces of Gatorade and 5 boxes of Mac and Cheese.

So, on Sunday, we made a nice dent in the bucket of cheese balls and set up my new TV in my room.



Points of interest in this photo.

1. The TV (duh)
2. The Family Guy Bobble head dolls on top of the TV
3. My Guitar Hero guitar
4. My 1985 KC Royals World Series Champions trash can (under TV behind the shelf thing)
5. My comfy office chair I'm sitting in right now.
6. The vacuumed carpet
7. My Kansas State "Growl Towel" and the New Orleans Hornets Equivalent (both currently serving as dust covers for my Printer in the back corner)
8. My last box of Samoas Girl Scout Cookies
   

A big thanks to Misty for helping me clean this section of my room. (there's a reason you're only seeing this corner). I've got a BUNCH of space in my room, but I've taken zero advantage of this space. I moved into this room in July 2005. When I moved in, I just got everything into the room as quick as possible. I didn't think about where things should go, I just put things where they fit. At the time I told myself "Self, I'll just organize all of this later, I'll have plenty of time." Yea, never got around to doing anything.

So Misty went through my little closet, moved some things around and freed up a bunch of space. So a big round of applause for Misty.

I think that pretty much brings everybody up to date with me. If you'd like to see some of my work from the past few weeks, check out some of my recent photo galleries. Oh, and while your there, check out Misty's gallery from something she shot on Friday.

It Cuts Both Ways

Well, now that the high school basketball season is over, I thought I'd share my comments on those two net cutting photos from a while back. (Actually, Seth sent a nice reminder because I had forgot.... much like how I've "forgot" to do my laundry to the point that I'm wearing pants and shirts I haven't worn in years)

Anyway...

First photo:


I took this photo, and sometimes photographers defend an image because of what they went through to get it. Photogs will become attached to their picture because they climbed a ladder, or hung off a ledge or something. But I have to keep reminding myself that what you do to get the photo doesn't always mean it's a good photo. I've shot net cuttings a couple times before and never liked what I got. So when this team started cutting the net, I tried to figure out a way to get something different than what I've gotten before. All the other times I've shot this event, I stood right under the net and looked up a the folks cutting the net. So this time, I ran to the team bench, grabbed a chair and placed it just out-of-bounds along the baseline. Then I held my camera "Hail Mary" style above my head. If could have gotten higher, I would have.

So the fact that I got something different than my other net cutting photos made me REALLY like this one. But, to get specific, I like that I have so many aspects of the event in the photo. The head coach, the cheering girls, the happy parents... etc. The only thing missing is the losing team crying in the background.

The only thing I'd do different would maybe take my flash off camera. The light on the net and the coaches face is pretty harsh because my flash is on my camera. And, of course, if I could have gotten higher, I would have.

Second Photo:


Jim Cenac took this picture. And when I first saw it, I didn't like it. It was too busy. The background is really cluttered with rafters and redness. And that really distracts me from the moment. The net gets lost in the rafters. But I'm glad I asked for thoughts on the two images because nobody really said the rafters bothered them. In fact, Erica said something about how the net and the bars work together and that the player is consumed by a net like pattern. I would have never thought that. I just saw the funky light on the rafters with the shadows of the bars and stuff. The rafters and lighting were problems I had during the other times I've shot net cuttings, so I didn't even try this shot.

I got a call from the coach in the first photo. She was asking for a print of another photo I took, but also said that she wished it wasn't her in the photo. She said she wished it had been one of her players. Like any coach, they'll give credit to their team and not themselves. I agree. I picked the coach photo b/c all the elements in that photo fell into place better than the ones I took with the players. That's a good aspect of #2, it's one of the top players cutting down the net.

(Should be noted that the Ellender girls put t-shirts on at the end of every game after this... covering up their numbers... making it really hard to identify who they were when writing cutlines for the photos.)

Another thing to think about is that the image is from a low angle. A low vantage point gives the subject a dominant feeling. Very "manly" for a lack of a better term. The subject is looking down on the viewer, it's powerful. And it's a vertical image which, on a newspaper page, is very powerful. And the Ellender girls were a very dominant and powerful team. Kind of a stretch... but true.

Final Thoughts:

I'm really glad I got some other thoughts on these two images. To be honest, I was a little upset when I saw #2 huge on the front page and mine small on the sports page. It boiled down to me being attached to the image because what I did to get it. And that's not cool. So to hear some thoughts in favor of both was really cool.

Both images are solid shots. And both get the point across of what happened that night. We could go on forever debating the two images. Both have arguments for and against them.

And what we just did there... debating two images... happened almost every night in college. We'd have 4 people at an event and when we got back and pulled up our photos, everybody would just argue for or against different images. It was great. Sure, it got pretty heated sometimes, but once the decision on what photo to use was made, everybody was cool and couldn't wait to do it again the next night. But that's what I love about photography, everybody sees things differently.

sweet.