"Failgate" and Football

This weekend I got to shoot Central's first home game, as well as its accompanying tailgate festivities. No one was happy about the new 6-beer/no music rules, which you can read about here.

Shelby Township senior Billy Georges, far left, Saginaw Valley State University junior Devon Dunikowski, center, and Washington junior Ryan Pawczuk protest the new tailgate regulations Saturday afternoon in Lot 63.

FOOTBALL
I also shot college football! Nothing stellar came of it, but I look forward to getting better and shooting more. Poor Alcorn State - Central pwned them 48-0.

There's a CMLife slideshow with more photos, and here's my flickr set. Actually, I got a few photos on the front page today!

Long Day and Longer Days to Come

Tomorrow night I have a single due for my first photo story in my JRN 422 class. I am documenting the life of Russ and Karen Attwater of Mount Pleasant as they prepare for Russ' second heart surgery and continue their daily fight against Karen's blood cancer.

Russ Attwater sits with a cup of coffee Friday in his Mount Pleasant homeat about 9:20 p.m. after starting his day at 6:00 a.m. and working for six and a half hours, only sleeping a few hours a night. His wife Karen talks with him about a variety of topics, the biggest on both their minds being Russ' open heart surgery, which has yet to be scheduled because of a recent staph infection that could further endanger his life during operation. Russ has an appointment on Monday with a heart surgeon in Grand Rapids to determine whether he is ready for his second bypass surgery.

These are wonderful people with a wonderful relationship, and they are allowing me full access to all events. I plan to stick with this at least through the semester. I just hope I can come through photographically; this is such an important story to me.

Fire Up Chips!

Thursday night I shot the annual Wares Fair (free stuff for all!) and Fire Up Fest, a pre-first home football game ritual. I didn't make print, but some of my shots are featured in the CMLife slideshow.

Hesteria senior Alisha LeFevre cheers along with the color guard and band at Fire Up Fest Thursday night in Kelly/Shorts stadium.

East Kentwood senior Nicole DiMartino sings and motions along with the song "Sweet Caroline" with the color guard and band at the Fire Up Fest event Saturday night in the Kelly/Shorts stadium.

For more stills, go here.

Little People

Finally getting around to organizing photos from the weekend, and most are of children. I covered the Monarch Release Celebration at the Ziibiwing Center in Mount Pleasant for CMLife on Saturday. There was a neat dance demonstration, but lighting was low. Tried to use blur motion to my advantage, but it didn't pan out as I'd hoped. I couldn't get faces to focus.

Jakob Lunhan, 9, of Mount Pleasant, observes a monarch butterfly about to enter the wild Saturday afternoon at the Monarch Release Celebration at the Ziibiwing Center, 6650 E. Broadway Rd.

Sunday morning came and I was assigned to shoot the Buddy Walk, which is an annual event to raise awareness of Down syndrome. I was so blessed to cover this...those little kids are full of light. At one point, I was photographing a tiny girl with Down syndrome held by someone and about three frames in, she held out her arms and the lady handed her to me. Ethically, I had to get back to work, but I almost burst into tears. In the thirty seconds I was holding her, that little girl fueled my spirit for the week. Her name was Amanda.

Amanda Jones, 2, left, of Farwell, shares a smile with Lily "Chow Chow" Hyman, 2, of Beal City, at the the 2nd annual Buddy Walk at Chipp-a-Waters Park Sunday afternoon. The Buddy Walk raises awareness of Down Syndrome.

Sarah Wilson, 5, of Mount Pleasant, has a bite of cake with her sister, Katie, 3, and father, Jeff, during the 2nd annual Mount Pleasant Buddy Walk at Chipp-a-Waters Park Sunday afternoon.

Maddie Mondrella, 4, is carried partway through the Buddy Walk at Chip A Waters Park Sunday afternoon. Maddie is one of many children supported by "teams" of friends and family who attended the Buddy Walk to raise awareness for Down Syndrome.

Job Shadowing

For my JRN 422 ("The Photographic Process") aka PJ bootcamp - class I went job shadowing on Friday. If you follow my blog you can see my initial feelings here. My good buddy Jake May drove me to Jackson, MI, and I tailed Dave Weatherwax at the Jackson Citizen Patriot at 1PM till 11 PM, covering two assignments. The first was a piece on Northwest High School's mascot, and the second was to cover a high school football game between Concord and Springport high schools.

Here's my best shot of the night:

Springport sophomore Keith Nebelung tries to escape the hold of Concord junior Devin Matteson at the varsity game Friday, September 11 at Concord football field.

I was in a world of confusion and frustration. Dave loaned me the CitPat office’s Nikon D2H, which was definitely a step up from my own D60, but I’m not familiar with the D2H at all. Focusing the D2H was one of the biggest issues. For fear of backfocus, we set an autofocus button separate from the shutter, and I always use the half-shutter on my own camera to autofocus. I was also shooting with a long lens for the first time – I borrowed a 70-200 mm 2.8 Sigma from the Journalism Department for the occasion.

I had never shot football before that night, and while I grew up an avid Packer fan, I don’t know football well so even finding the right action was a challenge. When I ran through photos, an embarrassing portion were of the fakeout runner – no football in sight.

Lighting wasn’t easy either – by halftime the sun was disappearing and the Concord field is very poorly lit, so we had to start using flash. Not bounce flash, but direct flash, which made for even poorer pictures in my mind as I continued to battle rising panic.

Dave was patient with me and helped me figure out the settings of the D2H, and gave me frequent pointers – where it was okay to stand by the sidelines, how best to set my flash, to stay ten yards ahead of the plays, and to make sure to snap frames of the scoreboard to help remember what happened in different plays. At times, he reminded me to take the camera off my face, saving my butt from a stampede of sidelined players as they ran along with plays.

Shooting football was exciting, but by the end of the game I was furious with myself. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t manage to get more than a few decent frames. Out of 500 photos, there were only about five I felt were worth much. The images were blurry, back-focused, out of focus, too dark, not of the ball, of a chaotic dog pile of nothing, or off-kilter of feet or grass. But Dave said if a photographer comes out of a game with nine or ten usable frames, that’s a good day. He also reminded me that if you beat yourself up over a shoot that’s already done, you’ll never enjoy your job.

I even shot my first car accident – as we (Jake May and I) left the office, there was a squeal of tires and a crunch of metal and we booked it, hearts in our mouths, around the corner to a crash within a minute of it happening. For the first time, I was cussed out for photographing something.

For more images from my job shadowing experience, check out the set on my Flickr.

Alien Youth

This is the first protest I've ever shot. Pretty exciting stuff, however small the turnout...these kids were fairly scattered and could use some source backup, but I agree 100% with the importance of shopping at farmers markets and buying local.

Observing the Third Party Movement group was interesting; they conducted themselves more like Rothbury-happy hippies or sixties throwback kids than anything.

Cutline: Hudsonville senior Ryan Dacey of Third Party Movement RSO combats Walmart with fellow Third Party members Thursday evening at the stoplight at East Blue Grass Road and Encore Boulevard.

Cutline: Jenison sophomore Kyle Landstra, right, and Grand Rapids senior Jack Buck of Third Party Movement RSO rally against Wal-Mart Corporation at the intersection of East Blue Grass Road and Encore Boulevard.

The top two photos ran in Friday's paper. This bottom shot didn't make it due to the line running so directly behind the head; but I'm still pretty fond of the shot. Lesson learned - watch my backgrounds like a hawk.

Policemen attended not long after the protest began and the Third Partiers weren't the only ones reprimanded - an officer gave me a talking-to, also. The protesters had been handing out fliers to passing cars and I had been occasionally weaving through traffic for a different perspective on the situation; must've come off as careless in traffic, because I was chastised along with protesters for endangering ourselves! First time I've dealt with cops in the name of journalism, too bad none of those frames turned out nicely.

Urban Hula Hooping

Thursday afternoon I walked out of an especially frustrating math class but my day brightened when I came across a guy leaping from rock to rock and shimmying out a mad hula...camera action was necessary.

Traverse City senior Ryan Mertaugh launches off a sculpture in front of Anspach while maintaining a steady hula Thursday afternoon. "The idea is to find any stationary object and hula off of it," says Mertaugh, who wants to start a new trend called 'urban hula hooping.'

This is the kind of sport I can get into.

Hot off the Press...ure of Making it Home

I just walked in from job shadowing. I have to record initial reactions from the past couple of days or so before things get less fresh.

I'm exhausted.

In the past two days I shot a protest, was reprimanded by a cop, slept short hours, traversed the state, ate little to nothing (in my neurotic hypoglycemia world), worked alongside a photojournalist professional, shot high school football for the first time, shot with a long lens for the first time, shot with a D2H for the first time, sprinted to the scene of a midnight accident, was cussed out and threatened for photographing, connected with talented and dedicated news visionaries (yeah, visionaries, real live everyday brilliant existing people without whom I would not feel the way I do right now), crashed a hasty four hours, trucked it back to Mt. P., immediately re-focused on home paper assignments for the new day...

...and came home with not a single photo I really like. Visually, I tanked. At this point I'm not enthused about the images I made; I also might disgust the realists with the small corner of things that I experienced and the big way that I feel from it, but I went and I saw and heard and I sweat and I learned and I am doing it.

This is what I want - and I know right now what I sometimes forget - that I will, I will get better - I will make the kind of images I've always drooled over in National Geographic and TIME and LIFE and The New York Times - there are so many days when I feel that I can't and I never will but regardless of where I do, I can.

I will make pictures that matter.

Theatre!

Tuesday night I shot the dress rehearsal for this weekend's Red Herring production - a film noir parody drama. I acted in high school, so shooting a play was interesting as well as entertaining. The actors are all doing a great job; if you're in Mount Pleasant I recommend you cough up the five bucks and go see it! All photos copyright CMLife.

Cutline: Barryton senior Katarina Behrmann, "Maggie," questions Molly Epstein, "Mrs. Kravitz," about the circumstances of a corpse while Chris Krause, "Woody the photographer," captures the scene during Tuesday night's Red Herring dress rehearsal in Bush Theatre." (As printed in CMLife Wednesday, September 9, 2009).

Love, Toast, Text, Haiku

Cutline: Missa Coffman, director of photography in the Art Department, puts a new spin on toast and texting Thursday afternoon at the faculty art show reception in the University Art Gallery. Coffman has invited people to compose haiku messages to loved ones and text them to her; selected messages are painted on bread with dyed milk and toasted. Texters have the option to include a phone number in their message in order for Coffman to relay the toast message via picture text.

Thursday afternoon I shot the faculty art show reception for CMLife and got to see one of my own professors, Missa Coffman, in action. She did a demonstration piece using - drumroll please - toast and texting.

I love this project for its originality; it is postmodern in so many ways, including that the finished products are edible! (What's more fun than the idea of eating art?!) I'm also intrigued by the conceptual premise of it - that art today can be made so simply, using the barrage of new technologies we have available to us, including cell phone cameras.

For more images, feel free to go here.

Skate Standalones

Wednesday night Jake, Matt, and I went feature hunting - Cauy is a pretty phenomenal skater, for a 9-year-old kid.

Cutline: Cauy George, 9, left, and Lars George, 7, survey the action at the skate park in Island Park Wednesday night.

Cutline: Cauy George of Mount Pleasant makes a jump at the skate park in Island Park Wednesday night. Cauy is 9 years old and has been skating for about a year and a half, according to father Jason George.

Character in a View

...just something to chew on until I figure out how exactly I want to roll with the whole blog project.

I took this at a friend's apartment on Mackinac Island; it's one of my favorite images from the summer . I was working on the island just for the busy part of the tourist season, and it was a pretty interesting time.

Although this is a still life, I think it sums things up rather nicely...what an amazing view and flower arrangement, not to mention my little arachnid friend near the top right corner.