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.