Bay Bears, a Bishop and a Girl

This entry will cover Friday and Saturday.

Friday May 29 was a bit slow in the office. I took a portrait of a college student my age for a story. J.D. Mercer and Glen were both out of the office so I had to figure out the lighting studio myself. J.D. had given me a "crash course" in the studio the day before when we shot the Splenda picture from my previous blog entry. Anyway, this girl was exceptionally pretty so it was very easy to make a good picture.


Later that day I went to the Bay Bears game. J.D. was there and gave me some simple and effective pointers on shooting baseball. He called it his "philosophy on shooting baseball."





The next day:
Saturday May 30, I covered a ceremony at an Episcopal Church. They were dedicating a newly constructed building, called The Life Center. It is a gym type place with facilities to minister to the youth of the community. The Presiding Bishop of the whole church made an appearance at the ceremony. I could've made a better shot if I would've stopped and thought harder. I feel like I did a lot of "shooting from the hip" style shooting here and I missed out on some very thoughtful images that came to me after the fact.



Later that night, more Bay Bears.

Thursday - Classical Music and a Hot Meal

I returned to work Thursday after two days off. I went to an outdoor market festival looking for features. It was an opportunity to make pictures but I wasn't able to get in gear to do what I wanted to. Hard to explain but I felt a bit unattached, maybe because I had been lazy for two days. Either way, I didn't make any pictures I'm proud of but it was merely a feature hunt, not an assignment so no loss.
Back at the newsroom John David Mercer and I came up with some ideas of how to shoot Splenda packets for a story about Splenda closing its doors after ten years. Neither of us had very much time to spend on this so we set up some lights and made this picture.


Afterwards I went to a classic music concert and made this picture:

It ran front of Metro today (Friday).

Then on the way back to the newsroom I saw a crowd of people gathering in a nearby park. I stopped to check it out and saw that it was a group of 50 or so homeless people. An independent group of Christian youth gives food and clothing to anybody who wants them every Thursday. I had to get back to the newsroom to get the concert image in on deadline but afterwards I went back to the park and made this picture:

It was very dark, I'd like to go back and see about making some more pictures next week. The cutline I am putting in for that picture reads:
Robert Barlow of Mobile accepts a free meal in Cathedral Park late Thursday night, May 28, 2009. A hot meal and clothing are available in Cathedral Park every Thursday night through a community outreach program put on by an independent group of Christian youth. "I've been on top, now I'm on the bottom," said Barlow. "I'll be on top again, it always gets better."

Tuesday and Wednesday - Days off

I have yesterday (Tuesday) and today (Wednesday) off. Softball and Baseball portraits were canned for whatever reason so I have had some time off. In yesterdays paper the images of the boy feeding the birds on the beach and the boy skimboarding on the breaking wave ran front page of Metro section in color. Last night I found out that the paper I work for at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, The Daily Egyptian, is running an image today that I shot of our library during the last week of school. It was an image I shot on a tripod at night using a slow shutter speed to capture the trail of car lights. It was raining out so the reflections of the lights are more vivid. Even though I haven't worked for two days, I'm still being published! Here is a screengrab of the photo and the article. As with every photo I have posted, click it to view it larger:


I also discovered the night before last that I can open commenting to all users, not just people with accounts, so I have done so. Those of you reading can now comment on any of my posts without having to create an account.

Monday - Memorial Day

Today was Memorial Day. I shot some features on the beach this morning. There were lots of people out. I ran into one of the other interns on the beach, a writer named Alex who is a Mobile native. He may turn out to be a good friend for me down here.
Here are a couple beach photos:





Then it started raining. I had to go to west Mobile in the downpouring rain to photograph a local musician at a marina restaurant. While finding my way to the restaurant a rough gravel road chewed up my front bumper. I was mad. But I went on to photograph the musician and the woman he was performing with:





Then on the way back to the newsroom I took a photo of this big muddy puddle in the road. I was hoping someone would go crashing through the puddle spraying water everywhere but all that happened was me standing like a fool in the rain for 15 minutes waiting for this anti-climatic photo.

Memorial Day - Sunday

It was a great day today, I can't say its been the best one because every day has been awesome. I love my job. I had lots of images in the paper and a great Memorial Day weekend photo assignment.
Several photos from Universal Marine Supply (the buoy makers) ran front page of Business section in color.
The image of the women running in the rain ran inside Metro in color, the cutline I wrote for it included a quote from one of the women, "rain we train, thunder we slumber, no excuses."
Also the image of the two women sheltering from wind and rain behind an umbrella on the beach ran front page color in the Metro section.

Today was Memorial Day Sunday. I spent several hours with some veterans from American Legion Post 250 in Theodore, AL. I love spending time with veterans because I am always amazed by their stories, personalities and pure tenacity. These guys were some of the toughest old men I'd ever met but also some of the absolute nicest. I plan on going back to the Legion hall soon because there are many many stories to be told within those walls. For today though, I covered the three Memorial Day ceremonies the Legionnaires held and spent some quality time interacting with them between services at the Legion post.

I tried to capture just a bit of their character but I am far from done. These men truly are amazing and are a living testament to the kind of men and women our country depends on to maintain freedom. Nearly ALL of these men (except for a few) have been told by their doctors that they are disabled, many were told they should not be walking. More than a few have only one working eye or one working lung. Yet they refuse to stop. It is truly inspiring. I look forward to working with these men again, I have several ideas for projects I can do with them.

Here are some of the images:

Memorial Day Weekend - Saturday

The feature I shot yesterday of the girl feeding the birds ran in today's paper on page 3 in color.
Today I went to the beach for features, the images will run with stories about Memorial Day weekend beach-goers. The beaches had plenty of people despite the wind and rain.









I shot this feature on the way home from the newsroom last night, but didn't have it ready for my blog. The woman in the middle is training for the San Diego Marathon.

Friday - end of the first week

The image of the airplane flying low over Mobile Bay ran on the front page of the paper today.


Here are the art photos from last night.
Event 1, donations to a local museum from the son of a deceased local artist:





Event 2, 30-year retrospective gallery from Casey Downing Jr.






While eating lunch in a nearby park I found this feature, a little girl feeding birds.


Its been a good day. Staff Photographer Bill Starling called me a "feature machine," then went on to say that I would have a lot of weight to carry this weekend. There aren't many assignments this weekend and several people are off so I will have to find some features to fill the paper. It should be rainy, hopefully the weather will provide me with some material to make some pictures of people.

Thursday May 21

I shot some pictures of a coast guard plane doing low level operations on the bay this afternoon. We should be running this in the business section Friday.


Here is the generic traffic picture I shot yesterday. I didn't have it ready to go at the time I wrote my blog. I had to get a picture that illustrated a traffic problem on Canal Road so I got gimmicky and threw my 1DM2 on a tripod with an image-stabilized 70-200 and a 1.4x teleconverter and did some slow shutter speed zooms and pans.


I then recropped one of the images from the previous days shoot at Universal Marine Supply. I really like the shot of the man inside the buoy welding but I thought that I left the picture too loose and the man was lost. John David Mercer helped me with the cropping. Here is the updated version, to run with the other photos from the buoy shoot.


Then I shot some pictures at two art museums in Mobile. One was for a story about a local man who found sketches from a famous local artist (his father, now dead) in a drawer in his house. He donated them to the museum. The second museum shoot was for a local artist (Casey Downing) who was having a gallery showing. It was a very fancy event. I will put the pics from the two shoots up tomorrow.

Wednesday May 20

Today we ran one of my beach features from Tuesday. If space allows we will run more later in the week. I went to Universal Marine Supply, the company that makes marine buoys. They are currently under a contract from the Coast Guard but in the past they have made buoys for use all over the world, including Alaska. Here are some pics from UMS:
For this first photo, look closely to the left, there is a man inside the buoy.










I went and shot some traffic pics afterwards but I do not have them up here yet. We are running a story on a particular road that is heavily congested and will not be widened. I'll put whichever photo we use for the story on this blog within a few days.

I then spent another hour or so on the beach after work looking for features. I again had a few "close calls" for making some really nice pictures but I did manage to catch a few moments. I'll throw them into the system tomorrow, no guarentees they will be published, but its always good to have features ready to go if space allows.