Slap(shot) to the face

In honor of the Tri-City Americans re-tying the playoff series against their rivals, the Spokane Chiefs, I'll share a stressful Saturday story.

"But you don't get stressed, Kai," you may be yelling at your computer screen. "You, sir, are the picture of calm and composed."

"Calmposed, if you will."

Well, thanks. That's very kind of you. And, yes, I will.

I showed up plenty early to make sure I got a good spot to shoot from, but that turned out to be a wasted effort. The Toyota Center has limited spots to shoot from during regular season play. Between me, the three TV stations and another local photographer, there's just enough room from the designated spot below the press boxes.

Come playoff time, we have to share that space with the folks doing the live telecast and Western Hockey League bigwigs.

Did I say share? I meant forfeit.

I spent the night bouncing around between spots where I had to contend with excited fans jumping up between me and the ice or the dirty glass behind the net. On top of this, everybody was buzzing that Americans co-owner and Washington Capitals goaltender Olie Kolzig was in attendance, so I was on the lookout for somebody whose appearance I wasn't familiar with.

Finally, after regulation ended, we spotted him in the nosebleeds (which really aren't that high in a 6,000-seat arena). I crouched in the aisles after introducing myself to him and grabbed this shot of him laughing a kid who was trying to get the wave started.
After getting that shot, I made the erroneous judgment call to stick around. It was 3-3 going into overtime, so I figured it would be over pretty quick. I ended up running out to the car after the first overtime ended thinking "fuck, fuck, fuck..." over and over to myself and feigning a smile at the guy who yelled out at me, "gotta make deadline, huh?"

My computer was as cranky as I was while I multi tasked it into the ground. I was also responsible for sending a photo to the Spokesman Review and scrambled to find one for them and two for us as the rainbow pinwheel taunted me. One of my 2GB cards refused to download and ended up submitting a menage a trois of goalie photos for them:

And us:


My computer must have been running on the vulgarities I had been muttering because as soon as I sent the last photo through, my computer completely froze up, which somehow ended with some photos moving themselves to the recycle bin and a couple not getting saved. All while not noticing this photo before deadline:

To make matters worse, I had to be out at the Pasco flea market by 8 a.m. the next day.

But that's a story for another day.

Stopping Down the Sun

If there's one technique I'm too fond of, it's this one.

Marathon Monday

I had the pleasure of witnessing and shooting my first Boston Marathon today. Wellesley's campus is the halfway mark and its students form the backbone of the famous "Scream Tunnel," a bit of a misnomer because they're all lined up on one side of the street.

While it's always nice to get paid for shoots, it was pretty fun shooting just for the heck of it, and being able to stop by the beer garden for a brew break sweetened the deal—something I'd never do on a paid gig.

Here are a few of my favorites. You can see more at sportsshooter.com/kaiyau

Walking in Lines and Shadows

It's been nice to have been shooting for myself lately, though it remains to be seen whether this has been a period of improvement for me. My mindset as a photographer is still quite different from when I'm on assignment compared to when I'm on my free time. Everything from how hard I work a scene to how willing I am to approach a stranger is fairly contrasted. There are some influences that facilitate these differences, however, more often than not a friend or family member who doesn't want to watch me make pictures.

Here's a couple more from Boston. One's at Kendall Station, where those MIT bells weren't working, and the other's at the Museum of Fine Arts, where my preconceived notions about the ill effects of sunlight on paintings died.

Orange Siblings

I haven't posted in a while because I've been in Bahstun with my brother visiting my sister, who's snoring right now as my stomach grumbles in anticipation of breakfast. Here's the first few from my trip shot during a nighttime walk through the Wellesley campus.

A new personal record

It's not great, but it's not bad either. I cranked this bad boy out in about 20 minutes, not counting the import time. Editing my own videos whenever possible has taught me a lot about shooting videos, which is still very tough to juggle with shooting stills. I've gone from shooting too little footage and finding myself desperately needing b-roll to having far too much footage to handle, and I've now started migrating toward a happy medium. You can see the video here: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/958/story/153045.html

Let me know if any of this improvement shows through.

I shot a kid

Actually, I seem to shoot a lot of kids lately. It's a problem I have and I can't seem to stop. Really, it's just because they're easy targets.

In unrelated news, I think puns are so funny.

Here's a shot that ran today from a spring break camp at the Boys & Girls Club:

It's not great, but it was one of the fleeting real moments I was able to capture as staffers helped kids finish their pipe cleaner butterflies. I ended up being a major distraction as soon as I walked in, with kids confused about why I had two big cameras and why I wanted pictures of them. I snapped a quick frame of one particularly inquisitive child (who also wanted to know why, if I was indeed a boy, did I have long hair?):
I thought I would win them over by showing them the pic on the back of the camera.

Boy was I right.

Suddenly, everybody wanted his or her picture taken and the room erupted in a cacophony of "Take my picture!" and "Let me see!" Kids were waving things in front of my lens:
and striking goofy poses:
All in all, a pretty entertaining feature hunt.

One of those days

As I started the last half of my eight-day week, I was optimistic. My weekend assignments hadn't been too fun, except for hanging out with the Long family for a bit on Sunday.

"Today will make up for it," I thought.

I understand the job isn't non-stop great assignments, but the trying weekend came at a craptacular junction of having turned 25 away from family and close friends and wrapping up my third week of quitting smoking.

The day started with some feature hunting, which can be tough on Mondays. After a brief cruise, I got a call about a house fire on Pasco-Kahlotus Road—about 30 minutes northeast of the Tri-Cities.

The fire ended up being fairly minor (visually) with an unusual number of responders, partially due to the fact that a fire station happened to be a couple hundred yards away. I headed out, but turned back after two miles because another fire engine was heading toward the house. It still looked pretty tame.

I headed back toward the office until I got a call about a truck in flames that had some oxygen tanks on it. This was way outside of Prosser—about an hour west of the Tri-Cities. After driving the whole length of Bert James Road, six miles of which was gravel full of twists, ups and downs.

As you may have guessed, there was no sign of a truck. I did come across an interesting house that had a back yard full of old vehicles. I stopped and left a card, trying to get a potential future story out of the deal, but as the case has been numerous times, somebody from the Herald had already been in contact.

As I headed back on Highway 240, a brilliant rainbow appeared. I took the first exit and tried to find some clean context to put it against.

Can you see where this is going?

I made my way down to the river in under five minutes, but the rainbow had faded by then. As I grinded my teeth to their roots through the park on the way back to the office empty carded, I stopped to snap this:


That's right. My day of wild goose chases ended with an shot of wild geese drinking rain water from the road.

Whoops

It's probably pretty obvious what the whoops is about. No, not whoops because this photo sucks. See it yet?

Well, somehow I didn't notice while I was shooting it and had to rush to get my proofs printed before the daily budget meeting, so I didn't actually notice it until I had turned it in for consideration.

Maybe it was a subconsciously immature attempt to get a crude penis drawing into print.

Or maybe I just suck.

Doubly.

Which brings me to the second point of this post: the "green" I use to describe myself refers to my inexperience—not my earth-friendly ways. Sure, I recycle and whatnot, but I also continue to patronize restaurants that use styrofoam containers if I like the food.

I also drive the three blocks to work, but that's not out of laziness (which may be hard to believe for those of you who know me). I need my car close by in case a company car is unavailable. Why not just leave my car at the office then? Well, I guess I'm lazy...

Also, last time I took my recyclables to the bins, some astute Tri-Citian had put a sticker that read: "Recycling is for fags and communists," which really made me reconsider my pseudo green ways.