Much has happened photographically since I last posted. I did my first work review with my supervisor/awesome guy Paul Colletti, who said “you’re doing well, but you need to put the fisheye down and work on your portraits.” So that’s what I did (except for one fisheye photo made before the meeting) and I’ve enjoyed shooting at 24mm on a full-frame and 17mm on APS-C bodies. I’ve got to work my feet more, and moving back is a good way of doing that. As for portraits, “how much time do you have?” has been my answer. If my subject isn’t in a hurry, neither am I. I had a great time shooting the motocross portrait, despite the terror of rushing into the photo lab only to find the portable light kit missing and having to cobble together an SB-800 and Alien Bee 400 kit in a matter of minutes. It’s all part of the fun.
Due to some technical issues like my 1D Mark III’s ISO button falling out, I had to take both of my Canon 1-series bodies to the doctor (United Camera Repair, which happens to be a 2-minute walk from my house- where was that service when I lived in Boston?!) and use a D300s and D2Hs. I screwed up more than one photo with the inverted button/zoom setups, but that is neither here nor there.
Notable things I have done in the past month or so: attended a lively church service conducted in Swahili, cleaned dirt and bull turd off of my gear shooting rodeo, pet multiple piglets, chickens and cows, refused to take any more photos of kids playing in bouncy castles unless I get to play in it too, explored the creaky, dusty steeple of a church built in 1875 and sweat more than I’d like while covering running events. It’s been a whirlwind and each week is busier than the last.
I’ve got only nine shooting days left at the Dispatch before I return to Boston. I’m going to make the most of them. Thanks for looking.
My dad made a good point when he said “horsepower” is inaccurate to describe true power. I got to spend a few hours with Roger and Charlie Beeman and Bud Lowe from around Nashville, Michigan at the Mercer County Fair in Aledo, IL. They had traveled over 700 miles to compete against over a dozen other teams of massive horses to see whose could pull more weight over heavy, sandy dirt. I’d never seen the sport before, but I’m happy to share these photos. It’s a labor of love, and these guys love what they do.
Somehow, the guys I latched onto ended up winning- one of their two teams of two horses pulled 13,500 pounds of cinder blocks when all other teams had given up. These horses are enormous and even standing still, you can tell how much power they have. Bill, Bud, Rex and Duke are amazing animals.
I was able to hook up a remote onto the sledge for one run, and I’m decently happy with how it turned out. I would have put my fisheye on my full-frame camera but its tripod thread is completely stripped. It’s hard to express how jolting of a start these horses produce, but I wasn’t about to risk my gear for one shot. Still, it made me glad to have carried my ballhead/magic clamp and Pocketwizards in my trunk.
The much-anticipated John Deere Classic golf tournament has come and gone. It was almost a full week of lugging a 400mm around a large course in excruciating heat, navigating the mental gymnastics that is figuring out who, in the first days of a lengthy tournament, you need pictures of, and finally locating them and then covering them in a way that does not end in embarrassment on national television from an eager shutter finger. I loved it.
I had a great time working with our entire crew of photographers- we had up to 4 (out of 6) at the course at one time, and only our numbers allowed us to fully cover the nail-biting, last-shot “threepeat” by PGA pro Steve Stricker. It was a crash course in PGA shooting, and I’m happy with how I did. Thanks for looking!
It’s been an absolutely crazy few weeks. I almost died in a freak car accident, covered some very tragic spot news, and shot so much golf that I dreamt about it.
I was driving in the left lane down I-74 in Iowa when I spotted something large and black coming at me very rapidly across the median from the opposite lane. I quickly realized it was a set of semi-truck tires, the doublewide huge wheels that support the trailer. “Not good,” I thought. It is amazing how clearly I recall the shape, orientation and speed of the tires as they came at me, as I could only have seen it for a fraction of a second. I swung the wheel around to the right, hoping to either avoid the speeding tires entirely or at least get hit not-so-hard.
Impact. I’ve never before felt such violence as when the tires hit the rear end of my car and spun it 360* around at 65 miles per hour. Somehow I didn’t flip, and I ended up, partially deaf from the side airbag, facing in the correct direction. I took account of myself- fingers, toes and most things seemed to work okay, so I put my blinkers on and got out. The rear end of the car was absolutely shredded and my equipment was spread over a large area as it flew out when the trunk exploded. Luckily, I had my 1Ds Mark II, 1D Mark III, 24-70L, 70-200 ƒ/2.8L and my 1.4x extender (pretty much ALL of my valuable gear) in the passenger seat next to me- they suffered no damage. I lost a few batteries, two flashes and a lens, but got away with my life.
My boss, Todd Mizener, was quickly on scene to help out. Just then, my girlfriend Laura (whom I had just picked up from the airport the night before) arrived and we shared probably the most grateful hug in history. Todd got some telling photographs, and my near-catastrophe was the second most-read story on qconline.com. Laura and I saved a few copies of the print edition as a reminder.
You never know what’s coming your way, so enjoy it all while you can. I’m slowly coming to realize how true many cliches are. I realize how lucky I am in many senses, and I don’t take it for granted.
Just a few days after my accident I got a call to book it to Sunset Marina for a likely drowning. Thus commenced another stark reminder of mortality in which an 11-year-old refugee from Burundi got sucked under the Mississippi while swimming unsupervised with friends. We couldn’t run the photographs I made, but I’ll never forget the experience. It’s something you hope never to cover.
It’s not all bad, however. Recycled boat races and parades made up the rest of my week before the John Deere Classic golf tournament took over my life. That’s for another entry…
It’s hard to believe my first month in the Quad Cities has passed, but time does fly when you love what you do. Here’s a selection of my favorite work from June. July so far has been an eventful month, but that’s for another post…
