Jero's Picture Journal

ALABAMA CRAZY WEATHER

2012-01-09T14:16:00.004-06:00

Only a couple of days ago we were freezing around here and then, Thursday, while driving back from an assignment, I saw this scene. It was January 5 and the weather was warm enough for that guy to be fishing in the water until after sunset! It wouldn't surprise me anymore if tomorrow we have a snow storm or something like that...

MY FIRST TV COMMERCIAL

2011-12-14T14:31:00.003-06:00

I'm wondering whether this is the beginning of the end, if my photojournalism days might be numbered... I sure hope not.

Go to www.Shelter-Partners.org for more information on this program.

Produced by Mobo Studios
Directed by Jeronimo Nisa
Music by Kevin MacLeod

Post Production: Ryan Sims
Camera: Jeronimo Nisa, Ryan Sims, Suhyun "Dawn" Shim
Producers: Michelle Amaral, Gwena Sims
Dog trainer/owner: Jessica Bush

Cast:
Homeless Dog: Judy
Mom: Maree Jones
Dad: Russell Jones
Son: Dalton Jones

Location:
Home of Tamela and Darrell Seymour in Birmingham, AL

SWEET HOME ALABAMA

2011-11-25T16:08:00.006-06:00

Slices of everyday life that remind me of the fact that I actually live and work here.

(It looks like their team wasn't doing too well...)

HOUSE OF HORROR

2011-10-15T16:33:00.011-05:00

Yeah, it's that time of the year...
A new haunted house in Courtland, AL. These guys have done an awesome work transforming the old Courtland High School into something magical. The place is, obviously, so dark that there was no way to take "action" pictures. So I settled for a portrait with three of the many actors. For this portrait I used a 5-second exposure during which we "painted" with a flashlight, and then, before the 5 seconds were over, I triggered a strobe hidden behind the actor on the left.

The next day, I did a video about the house. It was difficult to convey what the place is like without giving too much away at the same time. I was lucky that night there was a full moon and clouds.

You can watch it bigger on this link:Haunted House of Horror from Jeronimo Nisa on Vimeo.

IRONMAN 5

2011-08-21T19:15:00.004-05:00

This year, we planned to feature the "iron men" of each team (yeah, those guys who work out even when they don't have to) in our high school football preview special section. So, I thought it would be cool to do something related to the movie Ironman. I hadn't seen it, so when I finally watched it, I thought it would be easier to go for the look of the first Ironman, the more rustic one that the protagonist builds when he's a prisoner of the Taliban (or whoever they are). Actually, to go for the building process itself.

The picture above, which I took for the cover, would have been impossible to make without the help of my friend Ryan Sims and Bill Pettey, the owner of "Pettey Machine Works," the place where the photo shoot took place. Ryan built the "iron" mask just a couple of hours before the shoot and helped me with the lighting greatly. Mr. Petty, besides providing the location and some of the props, fixed the smoke machine (which got busted at the beginning of the shoot) and made sparks on command with his welding equipment.

- "Arc reactors" (those lights on the kids' chests): $18.00 (found in the camping dept. at Walmart).
- All of the other props: borrowed.
- Working with Ryan, Bill and the kids: PRICELESS.

A short life

2011-08-09T17:26:00.003-05:00

Terrella Joan Otto reaches for her two-month-old puppy, Tookie, as paramedic Cassey Rutherford and Decatur firefighters try to resuscitate the dog, who was in Otto's house when a fire started. Despite the efforts, Tookie didn't make it.

Distractions backstage

2011-08-01T21:26:00.004-05:00

ANOTHER FASHION SHOW...

2011-05-29T19:44:00.002-05:00

TORNADOES. TERRIBLE. SAD.

2011-05-17T21:40:00.005-05:00

RAINY DAYS

2011-04-27T11:23:00.003-05:00

30 minutes = amount of time I spent in the rain to get the picture above.

Honestly, for me baseball (and softball) is the most boring sport to photograph. So, imagine how much more boring is to photograph a baseball practice. But if, due to rain, the practice is inside a gym, then it becomes the mother of all boredom (I know, I know, it's the American pastime and blah, blah, blah... It must be just me). Anyway, I started playing around with slow shutter speed, panning and using the folded stands as a graphic element. I threw this picture in, together with the "safe shots," and (oh, surprise, surprise) it got printed. Something must be changing... and I'm grateful for that.

DISCO BOWLING

2011-03-14T14:53:00.007-05:00

While looking for some stuff I shot last year, I came across pictures I took at an event here in Decatur. A local organization had organized a bowling night (probably there was some fundraising involved or something like that). Yes, in this newspaper, we shot "party pics" from time to time (more often than we would like to, I should add...). That kind of assignments basically consist in photos of people posing for the camera and cheesy-smiling. But when I arrived at the bowling alley, I saw all these people dressed in 70s outfits and the assignment got a bit more interesting. I completely forgot about the bowling and decided to focus on the costumes. Then I discovered an orange and blue wall, and that was it. Went back to my car to get a couple of strobes, umbrellas and stands and told the bowlers that I was setting up a photo booth and whoever wanted could have their picture taken. All of them showed up, got really into character and had a great time. These are just a few of many portraits I took that night.

SNOW, MUSIC, REFLECTIONS AND BASKETBALL

2011-03-06T20:53:00.002-06:00

... and a fogged up lens.

IS THIS THE WARM SOUTH? C'mon, you gotta be kidding...

2011-01-11T19:49:00.007-06:00

If you ask me, I'm sick and tired of snow and, specifically, snow pictures. But, hey, it's so rare to see stuff like this in Alabama, that I thought I should post some images here just for historical purposes.
These next three pictures are just outside my apartment:

Today, just before sunset, the sun came out for the first time since Saturday. It was only 20 minutes or so, but I drove out of town to get something in the countryside before it was completely dark, and I found this stuff (I swear I didn't know there was a camel there; apparently it's been in that enclosure for a long time, but I noticed it it only today, right in the snow... very proper):

This is my favorite one of these days, and the very last one I took today, right before the sun disappeared again. It made me feel I was in Montana or a place like that...

Watching cranes

2010-12-22T21:38:00.005-06:00

FALL GRADUATION

2010-12-19T21:44:00.004-06:00

...who on earth likes speeches?

HOW CRUEL...

2010-12-19T21:39:00.002-06:00

A TICKET TO NEW HAMPSHIRE

2010-12-12T14:02:00.026-06:00

A few weeks ago, Michelle shared with me her idea about how to raise funds for the Shelby Humane Society (Shelby Co., Alabama) of which she's a board member and a volunteer. Shelby Humane Society's Shelter Partners Program moves rescued pets from Shelby County, which is experiencing extreme animal overpopulation, to shelters in New Hampshire where the success and enforcement of animal and spay and neuter laws and initiatives limit the number of pets available for adoption. With rare exceptions, the dogs and puppies transferred are placed with adoptive families within a few days of becoming available for adoption at the NH shelters. Obviously, the trip costs money (about $50 per dog), and Michelle wanted to find donors who would sponsor individual pups' trips up north by buying Christmas tree ornaments containing the picture of the particular dog they would like to sponsor.

So, I volunteered to take "studio portraits" of shelter animals. I photographed about 80 dogs and cats in a small room at the shelter, using a black piece of fabric as a background (or the bare white wall for the darker dogs) and two strobes shooting through umbrellas. Now, that's easier said that done, because those guys are not gonna keep still on the exact spot where you want them to be. It actually was a huge exercise of imagination and patience and I could NEVER have done it without the help of Leon and Amber, who work at the shelter. Leon was great holding the dogs while keeping himself out of the frame, and so was Amber, who did all sorts of things to make the pets look (more or less) in the direction of the camera.

All sorts of things happened during the photo shoot, most memorable of which was the funny pitbull who, as soon as he entered the room and before any of us knew it, peed all over my camera bag and then came to lick my face as if nothing had happened (thank God the bag was closed and there wasn't any damage to report about...)

Then, we needed a campaign poster and they chose George as the poster boy (the 2 first pictures above). The idea was all Michelle's. There's no photoshop involved: I wanted to do everything real, on camera. George is a pitbull that had been in the shelter for 10 months and, therefore, was risking being euthanized. A couple of days after the campaign kicked off, George was adopted.

I'm not a "pet photographer," mind you, but this project was really worth it. In less than two weeks since the campaign started, the shelter has already reached more than half of its fundraising target, and even some of those dogs have been adopted, meaning that their tickets to New Hampshire will be used by other dogs.

MORE PICTURES HERE: http://shsornaments.blogspot.com

FIRE?

2010-11-28T17:44:00.002-06:00

SMALL TOWN FALL FASHION SHOW

2010-11-08T21:44:00.003-06:00

ROBOTIC LIGHTS

2010-11-08T14:21:00.006-06:00

A little video piece I did for the upcoming opening of the Alabama Robotics Center, a big deal, which happens to be in our town. Since I couldn't film inside (they're really anal about secrecy), I shot these lights that everybody can see from Hwy 31 in the evening (for the "special effects" I used a lensbaby and moved quite a lot while filming).

TOASTMASTERS: HALLOWEEN MEETING

2010-10-22T15:41:00.003-05:00

JUMP ROPE

2010-10-22T15:39:00.002-05:00

ONLY IN AMERICA IX

2010-10-06T22:01:00.002-05:00

ONLY IN AMERICA VIII (or is it only in the Deep South?)

2010-09-26T13:42:00.005-05:00

Auburn head coach Gene Chizick (upper middle) prays with both teams at the end of the game between Auburn and South Carolina at Jordan-Hare Stadium Saturday, September 25, 2010.

TEENS AND WEDDINGS

2010-09-24T23:59:00.002-05:00

No comment...

CIVIL WAR PORTRAITS

2010-09-18T20:20:00.004-05:00

These portraits were published in our weekly photo column. The text I've copied below accompanied the pictures.

On Saturday, September 4th, I had the assignment of taking pictures of the Civil War battle reenactment at Point Mallard Park. Since my coworker Gary Cosby Jr. had already covered the event extensively (and very well, as usual) the previous day, I thought of doing something different that wasn’t necessarily focused on the battle itself. And so, the night before, I came up with this idea of doing a series of old-looking portraits using a lensbaby.

Lensbabies are small, compact lenses mounted inside flexible ridged rubber tubes, much like vacuum cleaner hoses. The front standard can be manipulated off axis to move the sharpest area of focus (called the "sweet spot") to almost anywhere in the frame. Therefore the important part of the subject can be rendered fairly sharp with everything else out of focus, even if it is the same distance from the camera.

I did take a couple of pictures of the battle, but this only confirmed that I should go with my plan, because the light was terrible: the bright, high summer sun at 2 p.m. kept all the actors’ faces in the most absolute darkness, and whenever I tried to change my angle in order to get a better light, the parking lot and baseball fields appeared in the background, which obviously didn’t fit in a Civil War scene.

My big discovery that day was Wendell R. Decker (in the first picture above). This photographer from Bowling Green, Ky., takes vintage pictures with a "sliding box" camera from the 1850s (on his right in the picture). The camera hasn't been modified and Decker uses the same technique that was used during the Civil War. He makes his own tintypes or ferrotypes (a direct positive on a sheet of iron metal) and ambrotypes (on glass sheets). He travels with assistant Suzy McGill across the country, from one Civil War reenactment to the next, taking pictures of both re-enactors and the public. I got so excited listening to him, learning about his work and the way that old camera works that I almost forgot that the battle had begun…

Like the lensbaby, old portrait lenses of days of yore frequently had a lot of spherical aberration, which gives the effect of concentrating your attention to the in-focus area (the "sweet spot). And this is why I thought I could get a more "old photography" look if I used one of them.

And this I promise: my next post, whatever it is, won't be about portraits...

DON'T EVER MESS WITH THIS LADY

2010-09-07T18:18:00.003-05:00

Sixty nine year-old Ethel Jones poses with her .38 caliber snubnose revolver behind the glass door window she shattered when she fired three shots at a burglar who broke into her house Monday, August 30, 2010 in Decatur. An 18-year-old suspect was taken to Huntsville Hospital with a gunshot to the abdomen.

I asked her to be behind the broken glass with her revolver, and she stood there aiming that pistol straight at me!

- Excuse me, Mrs. Jones, is the gun loaded?

- Of course, what's it good for if it's not loaded?

- Ahem... Is the safe on?

- Oh, don't worry. Like I say, guns don't shoot if you don't pull the trigger.

- Well, in that case, could you please point at some other place? You can hold it like James Bond if you want...

RED CARPET

2010-09-02T00:42:00.004-05:00

Jamie Hall, center left, waitress at The Brick Deli & Tavern, won tickets to Los Angeles and the Emmy Awards. Hall is taking with her coworker Jasmine Young, center right. They will be on the red carpet watching the stars walk before the show.

A couple of days ago, the life styles editor asked me to take a picture of two waitresses who had won tickets to be at the Emmy awards in L.A. They would also be allowed to be next to the red carpet watching the TV stars walk by. The image of two Decatur women being on the red carpet in Hollywood surrounded by paparazzi and fans came to my mind. We asked them to bring some of their friends to the photo shoot to be Hollywood extras. My plan was to give them cameras with strobes that I would triggered with a remote so as to have all the flashes firing at the same time. In order to be on the safe side, I took with me an "Alien Bee" light with a soft box to be used as the key light and thought of using the strobes just as secondary lights, but when I got to the Princess Theatre, the place I secured as a shooting location, I changed my mind: "What the hell," I said to myself, "let's use only the paparazzi strobes and see what happens..." And the picture above is the result.

On a side note, the subjects forgot to tell their friends about it. When they showed up without extras, I asked them to go back to the bar (it's only a block away) and bring at least 6 of their customers. It was easy. "Free beer for whoever comes to play as an extra" was all they had to say...

Sports Illustrated covers...

2010-08-25T00:13:00.020-05:00

No, no. These pictures are NOT Sports Illustrated covers, but like I said to one of the kids photographed for this project, "dude, this is most likely the closest you'll be to being featured on a SI cover, and probably the closest I'll be to shooting something similar to an SI cover; so, let's take some pictures that may have the feel of it" (like a good and polite Alabamian teenager, all he said was, "Yes, Sir!").

Like last year, I was asked to do the portraits for the cover of my newspaper's high school 2010-2011 season football preview special edition. The theme for this year was Alabama's football blue collar tradition. The players featured both on the cover and inside would be hardworking footballers. So, I came up with this idea of photographing them with blue collar job props. I love it when you can control your portrait shoots, decide the time, the location and how you're gonna do it. Besides borrowing the tools and props (big thanks to Decatur Utilities, the Fire Station #2 and Mike Weems, the maintenance manager at the apartments where I live), I also got permission to shoot in an impressive location: an old warehouse with lots of really cool backgrounds and amazing light. It would also have made things much easier to have all the kids at the same time in the same place, as opposed to spending a couple of weeks traveling to different towns to get the job done. But guess what? The building was condemned and shut down by the city the day before the shoot! Eventually, I had to look for 4 different locations and the day of the shoot, there was this procession of cars (photographer, kids and some parents and grandparents) going from one spot to the next...

But hey, after all, I did feel like an SI photographer: between the kids and their family members, I worked with 8 assistants!

PIERCE MCGRADY

TAYLOR HOWARD

DESMOND LAVELLE

AUSTIN BORDEN

Newspaper photographer's emotional roller-coaster

2010-06-23T20:28:00.002-05:00

These pictures were taken within an hour. Above, graduates walk with candles towards a future of hope. Below, in a road rage shooting, a 20-year-old's future disappeared when he was killed by the guy being arrested (the kid crying inside a police car was either the victim's brother or friend).

Rainy night, train & sky

2010-06-23T20:18:00.001-05:00

MORE PAINTING WITH LIGHT

2010-06-07T17:54:00.005-05:00

Beginning Saturday, phone users will have to dial the area code (256) if they want to talk on the phone here -even for the shortest of distances.

Photographer's note: Photoshop was not used in the making of this photograph. Everything is on camera. A laser pointer, a small flashlight, two empty cans, a glass coffee table, black fabric and, finally, two strobes were used in this 30-second exposure.

The editors needed a photo illustration for the next day, but when I left the office at 10 p.m. hadn't been able to do it yet. So, I ended up doing it at my apartment (and finishing at 2 a.m.). This was the set up:

GIFT

2010-05-02T23:56:00.004-05:00

FROM A WEEKLY PHOTO COLUMN CALLED "PHOTOGRAPHER'S CHOICE"

Very often, when I'm on assignment, a lot of people look at my camera and say, "Oh, that's a big camera, man! You sure can take good pictures with that!" Some of them even ask, "How many megapixels?" And sometimes I jokingly answer with another question, "Mega... what?" Of course, I more or less know what megapixels are, but the point I'd like to make is that good pictures are not the product of the camera's size.

Any professional photojournalist will tell you this: Good pictures come from hard work. But I would add that, many times, the ability to capture good, intimate moments is mostly a gift the subjects give us when they let us into their lives, tell us their stories and allow us to spend as much time as we need with them.

That's precisely the case of of Carlo and Orlene Gentile, two performers with the Zoppe' Circus, who were in Decatur last year. Zoppe' is one of the few family circuses left in the Country, and the Gentiles, with their two children, Gianluca and Giulia, are "a family within the family." Although I had previously taken pictures of their performances, I really wanted to see how real life in a circus is, and they were willing to have me with them for a whole day.

That is why I was able to capture some intimate moments, such as Orlene breast feeding her daughter, Giulia, between the afternoon and the evening shows, or the "historic family moment" (as Carlo put it) of little Gianluca using the potty in their trailer for the first time.

This is not about my skill to document those moments. I don't even know if these two pictures can really convey what we all felt in those situations. This is rather about the gift that they gave me and for which I'm most grateful.

FIRST ATTEMPTS WITH A (BORROWED) LENSBABY

2010-04-18T23:11:00.003-05:00

A CITY MANAGER FOR DECATUR?

2010-04-17T12:50:00.002-05:00

Some days ago, I was asked to do a photo illustration for a story about the city vote on a change of government in Decatur, from a mayoral system to a city manager system. After thinking about it, I came up with the idea in the picture above.
This is the first time I've used photoshop to combine two different images. I usually do all my photo illustrations on camera: it's more challenging and, therefore, more fun. But obviously, I couldn't do this idea on camera. Anyway, it was a challenge to find the right spot to photograph part of downtown, find someone and photograph him in the same light (which was impossible since the clouds disappeared one hour after shooting the first picture), and then putting everything together. And, in the process, I learned from my colleague Gary Cosby Jr. some photoshop stuff of which I had no idea.

By the way, 2 days later, the majority of citizens voted YES to change the form of government, but I don't think my picture had anything to do with that...

A GREAT PROJECT

2010-04-05T00:20:00.006-05:00

Today, Easter Sunday, the Decatur Daily published a project that my coworker Gary Cosby Jr. (pictured above with his late son Reece in the center of the cover) has been working on for months. I'm not going to write anything about it. I'd rather just provide a link to Gary's blog and you'll take it from there. It is absolutely worth checking. All you have to do is CLICK HERE

WATERCOLORS

2010-03-11T17:29:00.002-06:00

A rained-out baseball game led me to mess around for a little while before driving to the next assignment.

LIGHTPAINTING

2010-03-01T00:16:00.006-06:00

Sloane Bibb creates multimedia art using a wide array of materials, from old magazines' cutouts to speedometers, old car parts to you-name-it. In this image, he's seen with his latest work-in-progress.

Some days ago, I was reading in Jim Richardson's blog the behind-the scenes, or "making-of", of his photographs for the story about the Hebrides islands published in the February issue of National Geographic. When I saw the images in the magazine several weeks before, I thought he had used strobes in his picture of the stones of Callanish. Instead, he writes in his blog, he used the technique known as "painting with light." Then I said to myself, "dude, you haven't painted with light since that assignment for Rita Reed's class in 2006!" Suddenly, I felt the urge of doing some lightpainting as soon as I found a subject that lend itself to this technique. Little I knew that, on the very next day, I'd have the opportunity to do it. One of my assignments for that day was to photograph a Decatur artist who was having a solo exhibit in Santa Fe, NM. I didn't know anything about him and had no time to research before going to the photo shoot. But when I arrived at the warehouse where he works and saw all the cool things he does, but arranged (or, I should say, "disarranged") in absolute chaotic fashion, it dawned on me: if I could sort of isolate all the clutter by pointing light at specific things, I would get something more interesting and, even more, I could portray an artist by using an "artistic" technique. Went back to the car to get a tripod and a flashlight (or "torch" for those more familiar with the British term) and arranged the scene. The selected frame was my fourth and final attempt. I wish I'd had more time to perfect the portrait, but Sloane had to leave to pick someone up, and I reluctantly settled with whatever I had. Thanks to Sloane for playing along and not moving or breathing for 15 seconds, and thanks to his 6-year-old son, Calwell, for turning the lights on and off. Also thanks to great photographers like Jim Richardson who lead the way and, by sharing their knowledge with the rest of mortals, inspire and teach us.

For those with technical curiosity: this is a 15-second exposure, f/6.3, ISO 100 and focal length of 31 mm.

Some stuff from last year (III) - a couple of portraits

2010-02-14T21:25:00.011-06:00

This portrait was trickier than it seems. The sun was behind and to the left, and obviously, the water was several stops brighter than the boys' faces. I needed to capture the water (it was part of the story) and underexpose it to bring up the blue color. Problem was the only place to put the stand with a flash and umbrella was on top on a rock over the water, which was impossible. But then, my boss, who was driving home and knew I was taking a picture by the river, stopped and came down to se how things were going. He ended up on that rock, in a tricky balance, holding the flash and the umbrella. How cool is having your own photo editor working as your lighting assistant?
The National Council of Boy Scouts of America awarded Alex Standridge, left, a Medal of Merit after he pulled fellow scout Julian Lucky, right, to safety during a canoe trip on the Buffalo River in Tennessee last year.

We often receive calls, or they just show up at the newspaper's door, from people who have or caught big things: a 6-foot catfish, a huge cabbage, a monstrous pumpkin... Usually we take a picture in the parking lot, and that's it. One Sunday, I got a call from this man, Paul Hastings, saying that a tomato grown in his back yard was 18' 14" in circumference and weighed 2.5 pounds. I met him in the parking lot, but when I saw his hat and how photogenic he was, decided I wanted to take a portrait in the studio (I think I used 4 lights). Soon enough I had forgotten about the tomato and was concentrating in his face.

Angie Anders with her 2009 World Champion halter horse, Emmie, at Anders' farm in Hartselle.

I asked Daniel, an online editor at the Decatur Daily, to model in this photo illustration for a story about the Alabama and Auburn radio stations as part of our Iron Bowl previews. I've got to say he's a great actor.

Some stuff from last year (II)

2010-02-08T00:05:00.008-06:00

Can't even remember what this was. I just like the excitement and the colors...

That kind of picture that I've tried to take so many times, but there's always something that makes it wrong. Not that this time I got it, but at least I came pretty close.

It was real hard to keep shooting while witnessing this man's pain.
Keith Barber moans in pain as his son, Joey, and his mother, Faye Barber, loosen the bandages on his left arm Monday, July 6, 2009. Barber, 49, has been paralyzed and unable to talk since a traffic accident almost two years ago.

I saw these guys playing on the street on my way to an assignment. I decided to stop and then hanged out with them until I got something I liked. Needless to say I got late to wherever I was going to.

Some stuff from last year (I)

2010-02-07T23:45:00.004-06:00

While sorting out archives, burning CDs, throwing away crappy work, and, in general, those things that we usually do earlier in the new year, I came across some pictures that I like for one reason or another, but I never posted here. So here it comes the first batch of those.

The woman on the left is the wife of the guy in the ambulance. He was the victim of a hit-and-run. Fortunately he recovered.

One of the many fires I photographed last year. I just like this one picture. The way the firefighter is framed, I guess.

An osprey bringing a dead fish to the nest built on an electric power tower.

This lady, Harriette Rost, has been caring for her husband, Tom, since he had a stroke in May 2006. Harriette` invented and then marketed a simple device for pulling him up and turning him in bed.

PROMOS

2009-12-15T20:03:00.005-06:00

In our newspaper (like any other newspaper, I guess) we shoot a lot of promos for upcoming plays and musicals. Who would have ever thought that this area of North Alabama was so rich in cultural events?
Anyway, we are sent to "take pictures of a rehearsal" (that's what the photo request says), and, at least for me, nothing beats the actors/singers movements and expressions combined with real stage lighting. But more often than not, what happens is that there's no rehearsal, the lights are not on (and nobody knows where the switch is) or simply they're not meeting at the theater, but at someone's house or, even worse, at a school gym. Invariably, the conversation goes more or less like this:

They: So, how would you like to take our picture?
Me: Oh, you just start your rehearsal and I'll be shooting. You do your thing, and I'll do mine.
They: Rehearsal? Oh, no, no... We came here just for the picture. There's no rehearsal today.

I used to get very upset by this kind of situations, but recently I've changed my approach to that. If this is going to happen over and over again, there's no point in getting upset. So, one fine day, I decided that is these are just promo photo shoots (not documentary photojournalism) I was going to take it easy and treat them as promos, using my own lighting (usually two off-camera flashes with shoot-through umbrellas) and trying to give the final product a rather magazine/poster look. I'm now having more fun doing it, trying new stuff everytime and, most important, learning something new each time. Here's some recent pics:

From a Burt Bacharach revisited show

From a Decatur Civic Chorus musical

From the original Athens, AL musical "We interrupt this program... Pearl Harbor remembered"

SUNSET IN THE LAKE

2009-12-15T14:28:00.001-06:00

PEERING OUT

2009-12-15T14:09:00.002-06:00

Trying to get something a bit different out of the countless christmas parades we shoot every year.

THANKSGIVING LUNCH (another year...)

2009-12-15T13:54:00.002-06:00

Like a year ago, this year I had to work on thanksgiving day, too. Again, I wasn't allowed to show recognizable prison inmates' faces. Obviously, I didn't want to take a picture similar to last year's (it's somewhere on this blog). I saw this little girl who was helping her mom to serve soda to the inmates and decided to follow her and see what happened. The light was coming from a window very high up behind her, so her face was very dark most of the time. But then she came next to that inmate and the light reflected off his orange/white jail suit onto the girl's face. I focused on her and hoped the guy turned his face so it wouldn't be recognizable... And it actually happened.
I think the girl's facial expression is priceless.

CROSSCOUNTRY

2009-10-09T21:30:00.001-05:00

ONLY IN AMERICA (VII)

2009-10-06T19:51:00.004-05:00

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)

2009-09-01T19:29:00.006-05:00

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

2009-07-19T21:50:00.009-05:00

Ode to ANDREI PUNGOVSCHI...

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

Ode to Michelangelo...

ONLY IN AMERICA (V)

2009-07-12T20:37:00.004-05:00

This one is pretty obvious...

ONLY IN AMERICA (IV)

2009-07-07T20:53:00.002-05:00

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)

2009-06-22T19:51:00.005-05:00

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.

MI PUEBLO

2009-06-17T22:00:00.003-05:00

After seeing the winners gallery in this year's BOP, I decided to try a bit of heavy toning with a random picture that I had taken one random day from the other side of the river. I have to admit it: didn't do a good job. Photoshop is not my thing...

BALLOONS, BALLOONS!

2009-06-01T17:39:00.005-05:00

JANITOR & COWBOY (II)

2009-05-26T21:32:00.007-05:00

A couple of months back, I posted some pictures here, the very first ones I took of a story I was working on. I finished it and it was published two sundays ago. I think I'm lucky to work for a newspaper that gave me 2 and a half pages for that. Not the kind of thing we're used to in these times of less and less print. Yeah, true, it was in the lifestyles section, but who really cares?

I also did an audio slideshow for the newspaper's website. You can listen to Collis Crayton and see more pictures by CLIKING HERE

ONLY IN AMERICA (II)

2009-05-21T00:38:00.002-05:00

The worshipers' ghosts in the Coca-Cola temple.

ONLY IN AMERICA (I)

2009-05-07T00:10:00.006-05:00

I've come to the realization that many of the things that Americans take for granted, that I myself take for granted (after having lived here for over 3 years), are not that "normal", or rather common, in other places. Since this blog has now visitors from Europe (mainly Spain), I'm going to start posting pictures about events/people that may seem common or normal for most US citizens, but which, for others not so used to them, still carry that distinctive American Flavor. After all, I'm a foreigner here and, as such, still have the capacity to be surprised by those exclusive "American things."

And let's start with something I shot last weekend in Athens, Alabama. A rodeo clinic conducted, among others, by ex-rodeo champion and bareback instructor David Fowler, from Rome, Georgia.

AMERICAN GIRL (II)

2009-04-26T21:41:00.001-05:00

Only in America...

AMERICAN GIRL

2009-04-16T21:50:00.005-05:00

Only in America, only in America...

WEEKEND IN NASHVILLE

2009-04-11T15:48:00.042-05:00

   From left, me, Jim Yates and Bonnie Montgomery (photograph by Jim Yates)

Usually I don't post pictures of me, but a couple of weekends ago, I had such a blast visiting my friends Bonnie and Jim in Nashville, TN, that I've absolutely got to leave some kind of visual record here.

When Jim and Bonnie moved to Nashville over a year ago, Jim thought he had to have a band because everybody in Nashville does (including Bonnie). One fine day, Jim was riding his bicycle down Shelby Avenue and noticed the Shelby Avenue Baptist Church. "That's it," he thought, "I've got the name for the band!" And that's how "The Shelby Avenue Baptist Singers" (TSABS) were born.
Bonnie has several serious musical ventures, including her opera (www.billyblytheopera.com) and her folk music (www.myspace.com/montgomerytrucking). "Shelby is my little creature," says Jim, "and I don't want to give the impression that Shelby is Bonnie's main Nashville musical outlet. She endures The Singers for me and has a fine band of her own."
In reality, TSABS has many, many members, as many as people are wise enough to drag their asses to that wonderful city to visit Bonnie and Jim. Tradition dictates that, each time they have a visitor, they'll 1) take a square picture reminiscent of those old gospel albums, and 2) Hosts and guests will record a church hymn. Usually, the guest has to add a special contribution.
I was no exception, and they asked me to add that little something to "Where you there." I didn't know what to do. Had never played that song before; but, after listening to Bonnie play it on the piano, I asked them to give me some minutes to go outside with a guitar and see what I could come up with...

   (photograph by Jim Yates)

...and what I came up with was a little monster in which I mixed folk style chords with some more Latin/Jazzy ones. It's really an awful way to cook up music, but we sort of liked it (must have been the Jack Daniels...)

   (photograph by Jim Yates)

   (Photograph by Bonnie)

Thank God, Bonnie came to the rescue and fixed everything with her wonderful voice.

Jim is the most handy guy I've ever met (well, with the exception of my father). For the album cover picture, he made a soft box with just a card box and two white trash bags (borrowed from his neighbor, in the purest Yates tradition). All in 5 minutes. Here it is, the invention and its satisfied inventor:

And you folks can hear "Where You There?" and all "The Shelby Avenue Baptist Singers" previous recordings and see Jim's wonderfully crafted photographs by clicking HERE

Then, we went to downtown Nashville to just dive and drown ourselves in live music...

If y'all really like music, Nashville is the place to live. No kidding.

THESE ARE FOR MICHELLE

2009-04-01T21:41:00.008-05:00

INSPIRATION AND PUSH

2009-03-11T19:55:00.012-05:00

I was looking at Paolo Pellegrin's portrait series of Hollywood stars with my colleague Gary Cosby, a guy I admire a lot, both as a person and as a photographer. We were trying to figure out the type of lighting and how Pellegrin used it. Looking at good stuff like that can really bring you down when you consider how far you're from that level of photographic quality, but it can also inspire you and push you to try new things.
Right after our discussion, I went out to photograph Macey Warren, 18, and Jerry Reed, 86, the youngest and oldest Red Cross volunteers in the Morgan-Lawrence County chapter. While I was driving to the Red Cross office, I thought, "Well, they're not Hollywood stars, but this is a portrait and I'm going to push myself to do something new today." So, I completely changed what I had in mind and looked around the Red Cross office to see what I could do. The final results are a far cry from Pellegrin's stuff, obviously. Also, one thing is what you visualize and another what you actually get, but I'm glad I tried. As Gary told me once, if you don't push yourself and try something different in each of our more than frequent portrait situations, you're dead...

Volunteer Jerry Reed, 86, is reflected in a Norman Rockwell poster at the Red Cross office in Decatur.

Volunteer Macy Warren, 18, outside the Red Cross office in Decatur.

NET

2009-03-11T19:45:00.007-05:00

I don't know why, but usually I try hard to avoid the net when shooting tennis. This time I decided to include it, and... it's not too bad.

LEFTIES

2009-03-06T21:11:00.004-06:00

This season Hartselle has seven left-handed pitchers, from left, Hayden McCaghren, Chad Girado, Houston Cleveland, Josh Chop, Luke Bole, Trace Austin and Ryan Joy.

FINALLY, MY DOCUMENTARY ONLINE!

2009-02-26T11:34:00.010-06:00

It was aired by KCPT (Kansas City PBS) on January 29, 2009. Since then, a lot of people have asked me to put it on Youtube, but I was looking for something a bit different and not so overcrowded. At last, I came across this website, "Openfilm" (thanks to Derek Frey, though he doesn't know it) and after sending the file for approval, they put it up yesterday. They got rid of the letterbox format and, because of the ratio conversion, some of the still pictures have been cropped, but other than that it's OK.
TO WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY CLICK HERE
Suggestion: Press "pause" and let it upload for some minutes, otherwise it gets jumpy and freezes from time to time.

CLEANING UP

2009-02-20T18:05:00.005-06:00

A Cullman County Jail inmate cleans up after a long day of basketball regional finals at Wallace State College in Hanceville, AL.

EX-TEACHER, JANITOR, COWBOY (I)

2009-02-15T21:33:00.016-06:00

Besides the daily assignments, I'm also doing a project about Collis Crayton, a former teacher who now works as a janitor at a high school in Decatur. I met Collis while shooting a basketball game at that school. Besides his formal job, he's the president (and a bit of do-it-all) of a quarter horse club.
Maybe I should narrow my story down to either his work as a janitor or as a horse carer-breeder-lover, but for now I'm doing both. I just like the contrast...

I'm posting here a few of my first images. Any ideas/suggestions will be very welcome.

SURPRISE CONCERT

2009-02-06T15:16:00.018-06:00

The other day, I had an assignment that wasn't very clear (at least for me). There was supposed to be a youth meeting at a church in Decatur. So I went and then found out that it was actually a concert by Fee. I'm told that these guys actually are one of the hottest Christian Rock bands of the moment. I thought that would be good for an audio slideshow, but I hadn't taken the recorder with me. So, during a break, I went backstage and told the band leader, Steve Fee, my idea. He called the road manager and he gave me a CD and the permission to use their music. A couple of days later, besides the photo package in the newspaper, we put this thing on the website: AUDIO SLIDESHOW: CLICK HERE

I had a great time shooting this, and was thinking all the time, "I'm being paid to do this... how cool is that?"

IT'S BASKETBALL SEASON

2009-01-22T01:41:00.006-06:00

Yeah, we're at the peak of the season, and I'm the "basketball photographer." Not because I'm an expert in this sport (which I had shot only once before), but simply because I'm the night shift guy and I get to shoot an average of 6 games a week. But before I post some of my basketball shots (a completelty new experience for me), let's get to the cheerleaders...

Hatton High senior cheerleader Courtney Elkins was selected to perform with the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA) in the New Year's parade in London on December 26.
I had to meet this girl at her school's gym. I'd thought the way I wanted to photograph her. But no way: when I got there, there were like thousands of other students in the gym. This is something that happens often to newspaper photographers: we need to change our plans and think fast on our feet. So, "let's look for a different place." Found a hall. A window. 2 flashes, one behind her to provide some rim and another one to the right. Jump! that's it. Got it. And luckily enough, her skirt was covering her underwear so that my paper could publish the picture...

TWO PICTURES AND A MOVIE

2008-12-30T22:02:00.008-06:00

Some days ago, I watched "Memento" with Michelle. The title means "remember" in Latin. It's a crazy story (I'm still trying to figure it out) about this guy whose memory got completely messed up after his wife was killed. He actually doesn't have any short-term memory at all; so, he always carries a polaroid with him, takes pictures and then, before he forgets why he took that picture, writes down, on the polaroid's frame, the name of that person or place and a note about it.

When the movie was over, I remembered something that had happened a couple of weeks earlier. It has to do with two pictures. This is the first one:

I took it during an assignment about a church that provides a bus service to pick up children in rural areas and so make it easier for them to attend their Sunday activities. Certainly, it's not a Pulitzer prize winner, but I was satisfied with the fact that I did a decent job balancing the afternoon light outside with the light inside thanks to some flash bounced off the bus ceiling.
A few days later, Brennen Smith, one of my colleagues at the Decatur Daily, took this picture at an animal shelter:

And then I saw it! My picture was there, in the newspaper where those puppies were peeing and craping (can you see it?). I laughed out loud, but also thought about the short life of newspapers pictures: you take it, turn it in, it's printed in the paper the next day, and probably that same day shit is thrown on it or it's used to clean something. That's sad, dude, very sad.

So, after I watched that crazy movie, this fact came to my mind and then I thought, "Yes, it's true, a picture in a newspaper lasts for just one day -or even less. But, hey, what about the people in the photograph? Probably they'll keep a copy of that day's newspaper for much longer than that. Maybe they'll even show it to their grandchildren many years from now. That picture, whether it's good or not so good, will remind them of the past. They'll be happy to have a visual, tangible proof of that memory... just like the crazy guy in the movie."

I don't know if any of this makes sense, but this thought at least has made me to be (or try to be) even more respectful with the people I photograph and more aware about the fact that most of them will probably keep their picture for years.
I think it's a positive thought to end this roller-coaster year of 2008.
I wish a great 2009 for y'all!

THANKSGIVING DAY MEAL

2008-12-08T13:45:00.004-06:00

REMEMBERING RITA REED

2008-11-26T19:02:00.010-06:00

In just two days I found myself in two different situations that made me think (with gratitude) of Rita's class and, specifically, the "multiple flash" assignment. Yes, current students, that's not only something you've got to do to pass that class; you'll have to use it in real life, and without warning...
The first one was a rehearsal of a musical performed by 2 actors/singers. It was in a hotel lobby and the lighting situation was really F-light: on one hand, day light coming from windows (but not enough to make the picture printable by our old print press); on the other, fluorescent lights on the ceiling and incandescent/energy saving lamps on the tables. Decided to do my own lighting with two flash units I had. One on camera, bouncing off the ceiling for overall lighting. The other one, a slave, sitting in front of the piano and bouncing off the music sheet, to light the singers' faces.
The result is not too bad, and this is the pic I chose for publication. Only after having turned it in, I realized that the flash unit was visible! but only after a second or third look (it's sort of camouflaged by the piece of furniture behind it, and I hadn't even noticed it while toning the picture!). Did you actually noticed it?

The other assignment, on the very next day, was at a country music bar that has family-friendly karaoke on Thursdays. I swear the only lights there were those little christmas bulbs, which is to say: there was no light. I needed to capture the "family atmosphere", and that implied more than one layer. I put a slave unit on top of one of the amplifiers to give some light to the stage (you can't see it: it's behind the lady) and used the unit on camera to bounce light off the ceiling on the lady dancing with her grandson (funny: I didn't know it at the moment, but the guy singing on the stage was her boyfriend... all in the family, I guess).

THANK YOU RITA!

COLD

2008-11-26T18:25:00.003-06:00

GOOD THINGS, BAD THINGS

2008-11-15T22:00:00.005-06:00

One of the good things about being a photographer is that, most of the time, you don't work in an office. One of the bad things about being a photographer is that, sometimes, you don't work in an office...

COACH STALLINGS

2008-11-15T20:00:00.006-06:00

I didn't know who Gene Stallings was... mortal sin! (at least in Alabama). Among other achievements, he was the Alabama coach when the Tide won its last national championship. Let's put it this way: if Bear Bryant was a god, Stallings was the pope. He was at the dedication ceremony of a playground for special need kids. It was named after his late son, John Mark, who had Down syndrome and died not long ago at 46 years of age. A young man called Harley Truman, also with Down syndrome, went to greet Stallings after his speech and that's the moment in the first picture above.
The former coach also spoke at a church service. After taking the usual speech shots (to be on the safe side), I went around the huge gym to try to get something a bit different...

GOODBYE MICHIGAN, HELLO AGAIN ALABAMA

2008-10-09T11:54:00.026-05:00

Downtown Bay City, MI

I think it was a wise decision to leave Michigan before winter hits hard that part of the world and come back to the warm south, changing the waters of the Saginaw bay in Lake Huron for those of the Tennessee River in northern Alabama.

Saginaw Bay

Saginaw Bay

Tennessee River, Decatur, AL

Now, seriously, I'd have happily finished my internship at the Bay City Times if I hadn't gotten a job in Decatur, AL. It was great to work with the people at the Times. That internship gave me the chance to do a lot of new things, mainly to do video again (I hadn't touched the camera or the editing program since I finished my documentary in February this year). I shot and produced 6 pieces in 3 months (baycitytimes. blip.tv), which is not too bad. I'm grateful to Mike Randolph for that; not only because he gave the time to do it, but also because I learned I great deal from him. Thanks Mike!

Also, I had the opportunity to shoot some things I'd never shot before, like high school football, cross country, swimming, soccer... I at long last started to understand those Friday nights and what a big deal they are in American life. As an European person, I never quite understood all the excitement until I got in the midst of it. But, hey, now that I'm in Alabama, and I'm always doing the night shift, I'm fully into it (pity that those HS stadium lights suck and you've got to use flash if you want the get anything. At least, in Michigan there was daylight until 8 p.m. or so...). I'm going to throw in here some of the pics I took in the last couple of weeks in Bay City.

These little dudes are the Little League State champions.

Hats off!
Diving champ

Nice light to work with

Winner
Labor Day weekend feature

Sisters

Encircled...

But no doubt my best memories from Bay City are the great moments I spent with my friend, roommate and fellow photo intern Scott Mussell. Oh, those long nights of talking, drinking, philosophizing, listening to the Rolling Stones, watching David Lynch's films, the Big Lebowski... Here's Scott:

WAKE UP CALL & portraits

2008-09-09T16:10:00.000-05:00

I haven't updated this blog for almost 3 months, shortly before I left Alabama and move to Michigan. That's a lot of time. Probably I wouldn't be writing this if I hadn't had a phone interview with a photo editor yesterday in which he told me that, when people apply for jobs, he's more interested in looking at their blogs than their portfolios...

So, I thought, where to start? I've shot a lot of stuff over the past 3 months. Come to think of it, a big deal of our daily work is portraits, and yet I hardly post portraits here. So, I'm going to throw a few of them that I've taken since I moved to Bay City.

Portrait of a biking/hiking trail promoter. I had never taken any in-motion portrait before. The idea came up while driving to the state park where the trail is. I took it with a very slow shutter speed, panning and flash (-1 stop).

I had been taking portraits of volleyball teams for the season previews and got sick of the usual poses with the ball or behind the net and all that kind of stuff. So, this time I decided to do something different. I pictured the team in my mind as an all-girl rock band and my photo was their album cover, and this is what I got. It may not look as a "volleyball portrait," but the girls were very excited about it.

Figure-of-eight auto racing champ

Faithful voter: Charles Hamm's American flag has only 48 stars. "This is the flag under which I served," he says. The Monitor Towship resident has voted in every major election since World War II, saying it's his duty as an American.
The paper published the horizontal picture. I like the old look of the vertical one. My idea was to make it look a bit like a "World War II" picture shooting it with a very shallow depth of field and then taking the color saturation down.

James Murray and his son, Aevrik, were both born on the same day at the same time: June 20 at 2:33 a.m. James, in 1985 and Aevrik, in 2008.

This 16-year-old girl is a weight lifting champ. I asked her to give me a mean look, but I don't think this is mean enough; she still looks very lovely for a weight lifter...

More City Stages

2008-06-20T19:40:00.000-05:00

3 days of shooting music, music and also music. Thousands of pictures. These are just a few, a random selection (you know the trick: shoot the 3 first songs and then you're kicked out).

The Roots

Shooter Jennings (like going back to the early 70's)

Old Crow Medicine Show

Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals

Interpreter that translated the main bands' lyrics into sign language (I don't know why I keep referring to him as "The Prophet")

Joe Bonamassa

If I had been in the crowd...

2008-06-20T19:18:00.000-05:00

... instead of taking pictures for the paper at the Buddy Guy concert, I would have been the fan on the center-right. I swear.

Buddy Guy... What a Guy! He's 70-something and still can make you feel the blues like nobody else's business.

SOME MEMORIES

2008-06-11T20:05:00.000-05:00

While browsing through my archives trying to find a particular picture, I came across two photos, almost forgotten, that brought me some memories.

I shot the first one at a game between the US women's soccer national team and Australia. It was the first time (and only one so far) that I was to shoot a professional soccer game and, obviously, I was pretty excited about it. To tell the truth, the action on the field wasn't very good and the crowd was really small (maybe not even 1,000). So, all in all, not a very exciting atmosphere. It was only towards the end of the game that I realized that most of the spectators were schoolgirls that probably didn't care much about the defensive gaps or the midfield tactics: they were there mainly to get an autograph from one of their soccer heroes.

To me the look on this girl's face (her name is Mackenzie Johnston), who was hoping to have her ball autographed by Abby Wambach, said it all. And that's why I like it better than any other picture I took at that event. Fortunately, this time the sports page designer felt the same way and played the picture bigger than the action shots.

I shot the second one for a section called "Fashion Ambush." It's about fashion but not about models; just ordinary people at their work places. It has to be a full body picture and shot quickly (no lights or umbrellas or other stuff); so, usually we take these pictures outside. This time, the problem was a HUGE thunderstorm with tons of water and strong wind... OK, let's do it inside. And you know how office light usually is: yes, as one of my teachers used to put it (I believe she still does), it's F-LIGHT (which usually means both: fluorescent light and f* light). To make things worse, this 60-something year old wonderful lady, whose name is Michael Boutwell (yes, yes, that's correct: Michael) had had foot surgery and was wearing one of those medical boots and a big bandage. Anyway, long story short, I went back to the newsroom with the picture below and very, very disappointed:

But a couple of days after the picture was published, I got a message from Mrs. Boutwell. I'll copy here a couple of lines:

"You may not remember me, but I am the lady at Blue Cross that you came to take pictures of for the 'Fashion Ambush' article, that could not keep her mouth shut! I must say you may the subject look better than ever before. The picture was great. I had so much fun with this and appreciate all your time and patience. I am sure in your line of work all over the world you meet
many interesting people and I am just a little drop in the big bucket. Anyway, thanks again and good luck in all your endeavors and in your career (...)

Michael
P.S. You mentioned your Mom might have foot surgery. Remember I had the boot on from surgery. Hope she does well."

Isn't this amazing? While we photographers are all concerned about composition, light and so on, and about hitting a home run almost everytime we take a picture, "normal" people can be extraordinary happy with just A picture. And this simple anecdote made me think that if, in our line of work, we can make someone happy, that's far more exciting than taking an award-winning photograph (granted: this is also a consolation for those of us who have never won an award...)

Nikon flashes

2008-05-28T14:01:00.000-05:00

I'm definitely a Canon shooter, but when it comes to flashes I think Nikons are better. I had to take some portraits of these HS football players (Jeremy Cox, Brandon Heavens and Harris Gaston). The assignment was at noon; so I took with me the strobes, umbrellas, reflectors, battery packs and all that stuff. But when I got there I realized I had left the light stands on my desk in the newsroom. Didn't want to ask anyone to hold the lights because the grass had been watered just before the photo shoot and you never know what weird things electricity may do. Long story short, I decided to use just my off camera flash (we shoot with Nikons here in Birmingham). I had tried similar things before with a Canon flash before and never got results like these ones. And although it's not a killer portrait, at least Nikon saved my ass.
Thanks to Angelo (a student who happened to be there) for holding the flash and to the field keeper (forgot his name) for holding the helmet.
I stole the idea from portrait Jeremy Harmon shot in Provo about a year ago...

DOG PARADE

2008-05-21T18:37:00.001-05:00

Cooling off

???!!!???

Toy Bowl

2008-05-17T19:33:00.001-05:00

Coppelia

2008-05-05T12:33:00.001-05:00

I'm trying to put together a multimedia package of a production by the Alabama Ballet. Will post it here when it's finished. This is one of the behind-the-scenes moments that I like.

Little (very little) town festival

2008-05-01T17:38:00.000-05:00

There's another I-almost-fainted-while-taking-it picture like this one somewhere in the blog, but I like this wider angle better.

Karaoke nights in Bham

2008-03-25T09:19:00.000-05:00

Bouncing the flash off a black ceiling makes it really soft, almost unnoticeable.

From the photo column "In Focus"

2008-03-20T23:54:00.000-05:00

Michelle Amaral, foreground, and teacher Megha Gavin take a moment to reflect and find quietness before their American Tribal Style belly dance class.

Actor, director, choreographer and singer Carl Dean shows "Alabama Idol" actresses how to dance a song during a rehearsal at the Comedy Club.

That's the difference

2008-03-16T16:43:00.000-05:00

The difference between high school basketball in the US and the rest of the world is not only the higher level of the sport in this country; it's also this:

In Europe, 16-year-old girls playing a final would be happy if even their parents were watching. Media? not even in their wildest dreams. That's pros' territory, exclusively.

Cleaning up

2008-03-09T16:23:00.000-05:00

After one week inside a big arena for 10-12 hours a day shooting the state basketball finals, I was fortunate enough to go out on a sunny saturday to take pictures of this church group that was doing some cleaning, fixing and building in a small community in the countryside.

Some worked, some played...

There's a cemetery close to my house

2008-03-05T23:26:00.000-06:00

I took this one for a friend of mine

Weather features...

2008-03-02T23:37:00.000-06:00

... or how to turn a weather feature into a skateboard feature (not yet at Brandon Kruse's levels, but I'm trying real hard). And yes, this is how february looks in Alabama.

Thanks to Amanda Lucier for the inspiration...

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

2008-02-23T17:01:00.000-06:00

Nichelle Gainey, CEO of Silverstone International. Probably one of the most beautiful CEOs you'll ever meet...

Blowing off

2008-02-20T23:39:00.000-06:00

There's nothing special about this one, but I'm posting it just because it took me a lot of dead leaves, dirt and bugs all over my head (and the camera too...)

Cat show

2008-02-09T23:24:00.001-06:00

Man, this is the weirdest cat I've ever seen. At the beginning I thought that thing should be in a different kind of show, but then I saw about 30 cats like him... Anyways, this one won in the "Sphynx" category and he's seen below, craddle by his owner and breeder. Actually, this dude ("Skinzin B-B-Bad2DaBone" is his name) is totally camera friendly and we ended up making friends...

Obama in 'Bama

2008-02-09T13:45:00.000-06:00

Christmas in Barcelona

2008-01-03T17:22:00.000-06:00

Ok, I know, this is not photojournalism, but it's my blog and I can do with it whatever I want, can't I? I hadn't seen my family for two years, so I just took pictures of them while I was in Barcelona for 10 days. Here's a few of those shots.

Julia, my sister, and Chesco, my brother in law.

My dad, on the right, and two of his brothers.

My three nephews, from left, Chesco, Daniel and Javi.

Goin' back to Missouri

2007-09-10T13:27:00.000-05:00

I still have to post some images from my last weeks in Provo, but right now this one -the only picture i took on my way back to Columbia- is the only thing I have on me. It was in Colorado, while driving through the Copper Mountain Pass in the Rockies. I was in a hurry, so I hadn't planned to stop to take pictures during the trip (so much so that my camera was in the trunk), but it would have been silly to turn down this gift from Mother Nature.

Llama Fest at the Krishna Temple

2007-08-04T19:45:00.000-05:00

Kids always find ways to have fun that have nothing to do either with llamas or with Krishna...

Doomed Trailer Park

2007-07-30T16:04:00.000-05:00

Isaac Ramirez looks out his trailer's window Friday, July 27, 2007. Isaac is one of nine siblings, of which eight live in the trailer at the park that will be dismantled to make way for the North Park commercial development in Spanish Fork.

501st. Legion, Alpine Garrison

2007-07-21T18:40:00.000-05:00

Seriously, I'm enjoying being a newspaper photographer (ok, ok, just an intern) more each day. Not even in my wildest dreams I'd have imagined that one day I'd get to shoot Darth Vader & co. I enjoyed this assignment, using the lighting kit on location for the first time. I can't say that the members of the 501st. had as much fun as I did because it was 100 degrees out there and those costumes were not meant for this kind of weather. But the kids that were in the park at that time DID have fun...