VA Roundtable

Monty Hays of Kennewick, who suffered hearing loss in Vietnam, cups his ears to help him hear panel members sharing stories of their dealings with the Veterans Affairs system at Worksource in Kennewick. Hays says that he has been repeatedly denied benefits by the VA. "I'm scared to even file a claim anymore," he says.

Some Color

The first shot is from a tasting event sponsored by the chamber of commerce that featured local restaurants, wineries and breweries. The second is from a circus-themed bowling party for Junior Achievement.

Some recent sports

So, I know. It's pretty weak to do these updates all on the same day, but I'm trying to make an effort to update more regularly. Here are a few sports shots I liked from the last month or so. I wish the background was cleaner on the soccer shot, but I like the triangle formed by the heads at the peak of action. Even better was that I was supposed to get a shot of that kid for a sports feature anyways. The baseball shot is nothing really special, but I liked that the dirt is still flying in the air from picking up the grounder. I still hate shooting baseball, but I'm getting better at it, at least.

Spot News Sunday

A couple Sundays ago was my last Sunday on that shift rotation. I'd heard for some time that Sundays can get hairy with breaking news and as the only photographer on duty, that prospect left me excited and nervous simultaneously. After seven weeks of boring Sundays, it finally hit the fan when a body was found in the river at the same time a house in Benton City caught fire.

It's weird to be thinking of aesthetics when covering a house fire. The trees and the light clouds in the sky made this house seem like it was so picturesque before it burned. I tried working the scenery to accent the sense of loss in the absence of emotional homeowners.

From there, I hustled back to a park in Richland in the hopes I'd get to cover the body recovery. That haste (and the speeding ticket risk that came with it) turned into a hurry-up-and-wait situation. Camping out on the opposite bank was as close as I could get to the crews waiting by the body, which had gotten stuck on an island. I put a 300/2.8 with a 1.4x teleconverter on my 30D, effectively having a 672mm lens and the resulting images is still substantially cropped. After 45 minutes of waiting and tiring out my left arm and wrist, they finally worked out the jurisdictional logistics and I got a serviceable shot. Still, I was glad to have heard both of these come over the scanner and still made it to the Fever football game with a quarter and a half left.

Don't mistake my excitement for sadism, however. It's not that I want bad things to happen.

I just want to be ready to cover them when they inevitably do.

Recent Multimedia

Well. I'm terrible at updating. Not that there are any people really checking in, I suspect, though if there's never anything new to see, why bother checking, right? Vicious cycle. Blah.

Blah.

Anyway, here's a multimedia piece I did recently. Happy to hear any feedback.

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/958/story/135390.html

Seniors' Super Bowl Party

The paper mixed things up this year and we covered a Super Bowl party at a senior community instead of the usual bar coverage. Sure, nobody was wearing jerseys from either team, no faces were painted and a few people didn't fully understand the game, but they did have a betting pool and the people that were into it were animated. I only wish I could've stayed the whole game to get the reaction to that amazing fourth quarter—especially Eli's Houdini-esque escape and the ridiculous Tyree helmet-aided catch.

CUTLINE: Vintage residents Helen Nostrant celebrates while Ed Slezak bemoans a Giants third down conversion in the second quarter.

Prep Sports, Week 1

I had been warned by my collegiate colleagues from UO that I should've enjoyed Mac Court as much as I could while I was still there because the prep sports arenas I would eventually be shooting in would be dimly lit with nasty lighting.

I was pleasantly surprised when I shot my first two high school basketball games to find not only adequate lighting, but infinitely more freedom to choose where I shot from. I plan on taking advantage of this fact at the next game I shoot and hope to have a new addition to my portfolio soon.