Wall

The Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall made a long stop in Grand Island over the holiday weekend.  While it’s only a 3/5 replica of the one in Washington it proved to be a very moving experience for many. I’d always thought of the memorial as just that: a place to pay honor and respect to those who died in the Vietnam War.  Marlin Seeman put it in a different light for me.  One I think veterans relate to more so than another: “My name would have been right there,” Seeman said. “If I hadn’t turned my head, if I had raised my head, that bullet might have killed me.”

Youthful Exuberance

Late last week we were working on an advance about a program today at the local water park to encourage kids to stay active and safe throughout the summer.  It was late in the afternoon and I was in jeans.  I was going to stop by shoot a bit and then head home.  That was before I saw Entisar Gebraeil and her sister playing in the shallow end.  There’s something contagious about children’s exuberance and utter joy at simple things.  I photographed them for quite a while hoping I adaquetly captured what I saw.

Read the story about the “Catch the Wave” event.

Just a Feature

New chapters

I shot a wedding this weekend for the paper.  It wasn’t the ceremony, just a few last minute preparations shots for a story we did about June weddings.  It was a bit funny since the photos ran on my first anniversary.  Weddings represent a lot of things, and the main theme is change. 

While my final day hasn’t been set, I’ll be leaving Grand Island.  My wife and I are going to be moving to Albuquerque.  She’ll begin as a full time therapist at Desert Hills, a residential treatment center, and I … well I’m still looking for something.  I have a feeling that I’ll be working on digging up some freelance work and quite possibly shooting a few weddings.  The other thing I’ll be doing is preparing to begin taking classes in PHP and SQL programming and other web based systems and languages.

The change will be awesome and we’re both looking forward to all of the possibilities while not getting too terrified of the uncertainties. Grand Island over the past 10+ years has been wonderful to me and allowed me to grow as a person and in my profession. I’ll definitely miss it here.

Hail Mary

There’s an old adage that luck is the combination of preparation and opportunity.  That may be true, but there are still intangibles working in a “Hail Mary.”  In photography, a “Hail Mary” is when a photographer holds a camera over their head to shoot down on scene.  They are shooting blind since they can’t see through the viewfinder.  You’ll see this primarily after football games as the photographers in the second, third, fourth and fifth rows of the scrum try to get the all important shot of coaches shaking hands.

It’s an attempt of last resort, like the football variation, and (for me at least) results in a good shot 5 percent of the time or less.  It’s a technique not to be relied on.  But… When it works, it works.

Like this shot from Grand Island Central Catholic’s graduation on Sunday.  I joined the melee in the lobby of the gym as the graduates left the ceremony and began celebrating their accomplishment.  These two hugged right in front of me.  Then in almost slow motion they both leaned their heads back in joy.  I raised the camera over my head and let the motor drive fly.

When it works, it works.

Reactions on the field

Last week I shot the Class B, District 5 soccer tournament in York.  A two day event in generally cold and blustery conditions.  That didn’t keep the games from being pretty good.  Soccer is an interesting sport to shoot because the field is so big and the action takes place all over the place.  It’s not like football where you have an idea of where each play is going to go.  And it’s not like tennis where the ball is going to the person you’re photographing.  So we follow the ball and try to anticipate plays on corner kicks and find the person heading the ball before it gets there.  The best part about soccer and tournament play in particular is the reaction to goals.  In the first image today Hastings celebrates it’s overtime goal to put them up 2-1 over Central Catholic.  That also ended up being the final score.  After the end I was able to get a shot of the other side of the field as a Central Catholic player reacts to the celebration in the background. 

On the girls field I was able to get another happy shot, this time of Northwest after they scored their only goal of their game against Hastings on a buzzer beater shot.  They ended up falling 2-1.

Two places at once

Have you ever been in two places at once and been able to prove it?  Oh sure I’ve been places physically and mentally off in another world.  I’m not sure that was good for either of us.  Or is it either of me? Either way I was probably just mentally off.

Tuesday during Central Catholic’s district soccer game in York I tempted the natural laws by trying to be in two places at once.  For the second time in two weeks I set up a remote camera to try and capture an image without being behind the camera.  This time, I’m glad to say, worked out much better than the last. 

I started off with a wide angle lens attched to a camera I set up on a stand behind the net where the Crusaders would be shooting.  To trigger the camera I had a remote trigger attached to a radio recevier that picked up a signal from the transmitter I held in my hand.  Whenever the action got good around the net, I’d hit the button and hope I wasn’t too far away.  Meanwhile I could still shoot with my other camera that I had in hand.  The results weren’t too good after the first half.  The wide angle lens made the players too small in the frame and most of the time I was a touch too far away for the radio signal to get picked up by the receiver.  I’m pretty sure the latter problem was because the receiver was close to the ground.

So I switched things up.  I replaced the lens with a longer lens, moved the camera back and raised it up about a foot off the ground.  Back to work I went, but this time I was shooting Central Catholic’s Zach Karn defend his goal.  There weren’t many chances for good frames, but I did get one I liked.

The best parts are the lessons learned which I’ll apply next time I try to be in two places at once.

Mike George—MMA Fighter

I had the pleasure of meeting Mike George this week.  He’s a native of Grand Island, now living in Hastings, who has become a professional MMA fighter.  We shot this portrait after he worked out at the Hard Knock’s Gym. This weekend he’s on the Tri-State Cagefighting card at the Heartland Events Center.  Here you can read about Mike and see a couple of other images.

Track Meet

I love shooting track.  No more hot and smelly gymnasiums from basketball.  I get to be outside in the sun.  Soaking up Vitamin D. Feeling the cool breeze blow around me, and sneezing at the pollen. There is usually plenty of sun which means I can shoot with lots of depth of field. It’s great! But there is always a downside.  Lately whenever I’ve had to cover a track meet, I have also had to cover something afterwards.  This forces me to focus on the early events.  These are the field events from the long jump, triple jump, and high jump to the shot put the discus and pole vault.  Add to that the longer races where runners don’t need to compete for the finals and it sounds like an easy day.  Up until your third or fourth meet of the year.  I’ve been finding myself shooting the same events like the long jump.  We’ve got talented kids competing in it, but one shot of sand flying is very similar to another.  Last Saturday I was finishing up at the Aurora Invitational and wandered over to the boys high jump competition.  They were no where close to done, but I needed to get a shot or two.  Needing a different way to shoot it from my previous meets I noticed the red mat and blue sky complemented each other.  Toss in Aurora’s Sam Shaw in his red uniform and we’ve got something interesting. Clean background, nice shape to Sam’s jump, simple composition and simple color all adds up to a nice way to end the meet and show the same event in a new way.

Climbing out of the pit

Crane Season

Every year the sandhill cranes arrive on their annual migration from the southern U.S. and Mexico to the northern tiers of Canada and Alaska.  And every year I trudge out to find out if I’m any sort of wildlife photographer. Turns out I’m not.

It’s not that I can’t get a good shot of cranes.  But the most interesting pictures are when they’re on the roost in the middle of the Platte River.  I’ve only ever awoken at 4 a.m. to crawl into a blind once. I took some decent photographs, but nothing that really stands out as something interesting and different.  So most years I drive around trying to photograph them while the feed in the area fields, mostly amidst the corn stalk stubble, where they forrage for leftover corn from the previous year’s harvest. And I get acceptable shots.

For this one picture I was able to drive up on the shoulder of the road to where the cranes were pretty close, seeing as I was carrying a 400mm lens with a doubler. The lines of the field created nice backdrop and the crane in the middle kept looking up while walking away from me with his buddies. Not too bad, but it doesn’t match the work done by Michael Forsberg or my friend Rick Rasmussen.

Maggie Fields

After the basketball tournament I came back to my first assignment: photograph Maggie Fields using an eye tracking system to communicate. The day was pretty open so I was able to spend more than two hours with the precocious youngster during speech, occupational, and physical therapy. She has an infectious personality, great big smile and brigth blue eyes.  You can’t visit her without smiling.

Maggie, 4, choked on a bug when she was eight months old, cutting off oxygen to her brain.  The result was various therapies to help her re-learn everything.  But communication was tough.  Last September Maggie started using the DynaVox Vmax with EyeMax system.  The system has a camera that tracks her eye movement.  When she holds her gaze over an icon it speaks the word for her. As Mark Coddington said in the story: “It’s opened up a whole new world of communication and personality that even her family members had never seen — all through those huge, bright blue eyes.”

Looking Back on a Decade

Here’s one of the first photos I shot for The Grand Island Independent, which was published Feb. 5, 2000.

As of this week, I’ve been at the Grand Island Independent for 10 years. I never thought that I’d be here this long. Ten years ago, fresh from several internships in Indiana and Michigan, I came out to Nebraska for my first full-time, benefit laden j-o-b. I had made it.  I was an adult.  I had a career. And this place was going to be a stepping stone. I’d be here 2-5 years and then I’d be off to a bigger better paper. And then from there off again to where I’d be for the rest of my career.

That plan never materialized. Life, the industry and the economy got in the way. Some things happened and others didn’t. Along the way I’ve learned a lot.  Mostly I learned I can’t change the world. I can’t even budge it an inch if I really, really try and lift with my legs. What I did learn is I can have an impact in this little corner of it.  I can show the good in people.  That across color and culture lines we have more in common than not. That we have a shared sense of humanity and good in the world.  That when asked we’ll come together to help anyone in need. And that’s a good thing, to quote Martha Stewart.

The paper is a lot different that ten years ago. When I came here, I had my trusty film bodies: a Nikon N90s and an FM2 as backup with three to four lenses. I took out a loan to buy a 300mm 2.8 manual focus lens and a used light kit.  After a few years, I added an F4s to the mix.  A couple of years later we transitioned into digital.  My hands didn’t smell like developer, bleach and fixer when I go home.  (I secretly miss that a little bit.)  Digital has allowed me to stay at an assignment longer and turn the images around faster.  I can post images to the web immediatly after something happened. That’s better for us as a paper and an industry as well as for readers. Going digital has improved aspects of my photography like portraiture because I can immediately see lighting effects and adjust accordingly.

Regardless of what tools I’ve got in my hand, what hasn’t changed is my commitment to telling the stories of people around me.  And that is what really matters in photojournalism.  Ultimately it’s not about me as a photographer, but the subject.  I’m privileged to be able use my vision and skill to tell their story.

Robert Pore asked me today if I was going to be around in ten years.  Well…. I just don’t know.

Thanks Independent. Thanks Grand Island.

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Enough deep stuff.  Here’s a couple of pictures from my first month back in February 2000.

This one really ticked off one of my bosses at the time.  (It was published on the front page within a week of my start date.) He hated the photo because there was no face, it was a weird angle, and it was too close to being a silhouette.  I thought it worked for capturing the story about the weather in February.  It was really warm and this kid was playing basketball outside on a beautiful day in short sleeves.

And a last one.  Well, I just like it.  It was a couple of weeks after the last one.

Man of the Year

Every year the Grand Island Independent chooses a Man and Woman of the Year. A story is written a portrait taken and they are honored on the front page, one on Dec. 31 with the other Jan. 1.

I was lucky enough to photograph the subjects this year. I tried to think of a cool location for the shoot, but all of the ideas met road blocks. So I asked Greg Ulmer at Grand Island Senior High School if I could use their small stage. It is a large space with black curtains and stage lights. I thought a simple portrait, a subject along in space, would work best. And it did. I supplemented the stage lights with three more of my own. Very successful indeed.

Man of the Year Don Dunn’s story.

Woman of the Year Dori Bush’s story.

Break-a-thon

State Volleyball

CAPTION: Turning herself in a circle while  bouncing the ball lightly off the wall, Katie Brand works on her touch Thursday before facing Wood River at Lincoln Northeast High School during the first round of the Class C1 state volleyball tournament. Central Catholic won 3-0. (Independent/Scott Kingsley)

One of the great tragedies of working at a newspaper is that there isn’t always space in the paper for everything.  This is especially true when working state tournaments.  We’re always on the lookout for interesting behind the scenes kinds of photos.  Sometimes we’re lucky enough to be in locker rooms, and other times we have to just keep our eyes open.  It’s good we can have blogs these days so some of these photos see the lightof day.

Outtakes

After three straight weeks of shooting football in the dark, cold rain, I was treated Wednesday with two afternoon games. It was a gorgeous day and since they started early, it’s a lot easier to get more than just a photo or two.  This one didn’t make the paper but it is in our daily gallery. You can sort through our outtakes as well from the game.

Vigil against domestic abuse

Welding always makes for pretty pictures

Upended

Niles Paul is upended on a punt return during last Saturday’s game against Florida Atlantic. I thought I had a pretty good game for it being the first of the season. See how I did my checking out the Game Gallery.