CROSSCOUNTRY

ONLY IN AMERICA (VII)

FIDDLERS: MY FIRST ANNIVERSARY IN DECATUR

Some newspaper photographers (actually, many of them) say you know you've been at the same paper for quite sometime when you start shooting the same assignments again. In fact, when I came to Decatur a year ago, one of my first jobs, if not the very first one, was to photograph the Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention in Athens, AL. Funny enough, last weekend I had the same assignment.

It's been a great year professionally. Above all, I have a job as a photojournalist, which is something very difficult to get these days, especially for someone, like me, relatively new in this industry. But, on top of that, I'm very lucky to be working with great colleagues who have become real friends.

ONLY IN AMERICA (VI)

IT'S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR (AGAIN!)

The 2009-10 football season started last week


But before that, we spent a couple of weeks taking portraits of selected players for the football special section published on Sunday. I was in charge of the cover, and for that I took the players out of the usual places (locker rooms, football fields) and photographed them in different spots of their respective towns. Behind each of those portraits there's a long story (maybe I'll tell them some other time...)






The nice thing about the first two weeks is that you still can shoot the first 10 minutes of the game without using flash. Come mid September and you can forget about it... well, unless you have a nice Nikon D3 and shoot at 6400 ISO. My newspaper bought one of those a couple of weeks ago. Problem is there's 3 photogs shooting HS football, and the most veteran will probably get to use it (which I completely understand: the guy has spent 15 years shooting football with flash... I think he deserves better). As for the rest of us mortals... well that's -shooting with flash- actually the meaning I give to "Friday Night Lights."

TRIATHLON

Ode to ANDREI PUNGOVSCHI...

It was the first time I tried this tilted-camera panning.

Ode to Michelangelo...

ONLY IN AMERICA (V)

This one is pretty obvious...

ONLY IN AMERICA (IV)

Little Miss pageant



I mean..., this girl is only 2 years old! She didn't even know what the heck she was doing there and why all those older people were looking at her (they were actually JUDGING her).
My opinion about these pageants? I'd rather keep it for myself.

ONLY IN AMERICA (III)

OK, OK, it's true: there are air shows in other places, too. But, for me, the occasion for this third "Only in America" post represents rather the opportunity to photograph something like this from up there. I mean, I was the ONLY photojournalist at the air field. Didn't have to fight with anyone else to get a spot to fly with the "Red Thunder" air show team. In short, ONLY IN AMERICA you can find air shows in a small town like Courtland, AL. In fact, so small that they don't even have a newspaper; so, when the newspaper photographer from the bigger town goes there, the organizers make it really easy for you.
Besides having a lot of fun (see last picture), I learned a couple of things from this experience:

- It's pretty difficult to photograph the other planes if yours has the wings on the belly, instead of on top. Your own wings get in the way most of the time.
- I asked my pilot to leave the canopy open on my side because I didn't want to shoot through glass. This is better for the pictures, but a) you get really cold (specially if you are wearing just a t-shirt) and b) the wind is so strong you can hardly hold the camera steady.
- With acrobatic, or rather "aerobatic", teams like this one you don't really need to carry a long lens with you unless you want to take a picture of the other planes' pilot's eyes. They fly so, so, so freaking close to each other (see 3rd. picture) that a 17-35 mm. lens will do. And anyway, there's no room in the cockpit for a second camera.