Today, the excitement started when I took a photo of the construction next door to the Press. They are making a lot of headway, however when the day went on I tried to add the photos that I shot to the usual CDA construction folder on the server and it was gone… nowhere to be found. Not in any other folders, not hidden, nothing… and so for hours Shawn and I looked for it. So about 300 photos and 5 videos disappeared from the server. Shawn wasn’t happy.
Today was a pretty slow day. I went out and took some stand alone photos that we didn’t really need but I had to do something. And then at 4pm there was an appointment at the senior center in Post Falls where a little girl wanted to give back to the community. She got her whole class to color pictures of flowers and spring things to bring spring inside for the seniors and they were giving them out at that time. That was pretty much it for today.
The first assignment of the day was actually pretty fun! Not that they aren’t usually, but I didn’t think I’d ever photograph a welding competition. This made for some fun photos, the shooting of those photos was pretty tricky though, I had to wear a welding hood so I couldn’t really see my camera and that meant I had to spray and pray. After sorting through the mass of photos I got a couple good shots. Next it was time for an update on the construction of Winton Elementary which is scheduled for completion at the end of this year. I feel like I’ve shot more construction photos lately than anything else… but that’s ok, the environment and the lines, dynamic lighting and unusual subject matter can be really fun some times. And then, there was basketball.
Oh, and I shot our vending machine.
Today was AWESOME! Prayers answered. It started out with Jeff, one of the reporters, telling me that the construction next door was a few months ahead of schedule. Shawn and I went promptly out to the site and took some photos and got some video. When we got back inside, he let me know that I could use Tess’ camera and her key and her parking spot, and lenses… wow. I was a tad overwhelmed but stoked! A 1Dx and a 24-70mm f/4 make for way sharper photos and better low light performance, and I’m all for that! So, like I said, today was off to a really good start, then I was off to a health awareness activity at Lakes Middle School. I then went to Cricket’s Restaurant to try and find someone with a dog, they were having a viewing party for the best in show dog show. That was on my way to basketball. It was Lakeland vs. Lake City tonight. The best part about the day though was that I felt like I had improved.
Woah, today was a really busy day for a change! Crazy busy in fact, but it was a good change, that morning meeting business is working out. Shawn said that he would rather have too much and not need it all than have too little and have to run file photos. I agree. My day started out with a feature portrait for the NIBJ of the KTEC (Kootenai Technical Education Campus) student of the month, this was about an hour earlier than I usually start, which was fine, and Emma got to come with me because we had to go straight to the location; she’s such a champ for putting up with me!
After the portrait, I was walking from the parking lot to the front doors of the Press and I heard a jackhammer next door at the construction site so I went over for a second and got a photo of him. When I got in, I was given another assignment to go follow up on a story that was written for the business section and take a few photos of the location putting up their sign, this is for a super uppity car wash going in off of US-95, that was pretty cool to see, it gave me a mild heart attack though when I got there because I thought I had missed it. I saw their electronic display was already up and I thought that was the sign Shawn was talking about; thank goodness I was wrong.
Next I was off to look for a few things, either a city cop pulling someone over, parking on the side of the road to radar, or a busy street. I first had lunch with Emma like I do every day but this time she came with me on a “ride along,” it was really nice having her with me! During lunch though, Shawn called and let me know of another assignment to check up on before 3pm, it was 1pm. There is some possibly changing legislature regarding the concealed carry laws in Idaho and he told me to see if I could schedule something with the sheriff’s office to get a photo… I called, they forwarded me to the lieutenant and he wasn’t there so I left a message (so did Shawn) and he never got back to us. I guess that happens sometimes though. So back to the traffic or the cop, I figured that the chances of me finding a cop pulling someone over were going to be pretty lean, so I got the busy street first and then figured we could look around for police.
Time got away from me and it ended up being time for a “sportrait” that I had scheduled for a feature regarding brothers on the same basketball team. That was tricky without lighting, we are awaiting the go-ahead to get some lighting for the press and it, i guess, has been a long time coming, regardless, it will be nice when it gets here.
I resolved that we’d just head back to the Press but in driving back I still wanted to keep my eyes out for police, amongst silent prayers that I would be able to find something, I spotted some police lights… a lot of police lights. Emma and I drove over to see what was going on and there were probably eight squad cars, police and sheriff, police boats (it was over at the marina), a fire truck and a crowd of people. I pulled up right behind Shawn’s car and I was glad that the situation was already being covered however I couldn’t resist taking a few photos of my own. Apparently some guy decided he didn’t want to live anymore and so he was trying to freeze himself to death in the lake, he had been there for over an hour; he had to have had some mental disorder or maybe he was on some crazy drug because he was raging and twitching, just freaking out. It was crazy to witness, but not long after I got there the police got him out. I hope he recovers.
Also, kind of big news, AP wanted a couple of the photos that I took for the LGBT weddings story that we did back on the 30th. Cool! They will be using them in a weekend story that they will be doing on the chapel. this hasn’t ever happened before so I’m not sure what to expect but I still think that it is pretty cool.
I saw a real-life hashtag today!! Oh and there was some interesting construction too…
At the end of the day yesterday Shawn asked me if I could cover basketball today and of course I said yes, I want to improve everyday so any chance I get to do so I’m going to take. Basketball games happen late and so since I was covering the game I also came in late which was nice; sleeping in doesn’t happen much but when it does it’s wonderful!
When I got to the Press however there was a lot noise next door from the construction guys so I went over to check it out. They had a huge gravel truck and the whole thing was on a remote control! I’m sure it’s not that new of a thing, but I’d never seen anything like that before, I felt myself having little kid envy wanting to drive the giant RC car! Sadly that didn’t happen. So I went about my business snapping photos. The worker in the blue hard hat came up to me afterwords and he asked me if I had to “develop” all those. I then told him that it was all digital so it was pretty easy. He then told me that his wife worked in circulation at the Press and that I should print one of him and give it to her so she could have it at her cubicle. I thought that was a pretty funny idea so I made her a draft print and delivered it.
Next, some hours later came the basketball game. This was the first round of the 5A district 1 Tournament and it was between Lake City and Post Falls High Schools. To be completely honest, basketball after the Fight for the Fish game just isn’t the same… no one dresses up, there is hardly any noise, there’s way less people. But it wasn’t so bad I guess. There were a lot of pretty good falls and I almost got hit by the ball and players a few times and that was pretty fun! Now, it time for another nice weekend.
Today got me started at a nice pace! I got a call from Tess around 9 am, she had an appointment at 10 in Rathdrum that she wasn’t going to be able to make because she was off to Bayview to get some photos of police investigating some found human remains. So this was one more photo assignment than yesterday! Emma came along too because I had to go straight there, it was nice to give her a little taste of what I get to do most days.
The assignment was for a story going in the North Idaho Business Journal on a company called Heater Craft. The company was commissioned by the USA Center of Military History Museum Division to build a bunch of aluminum storage cases to aid in the preservation of Revolutionary War era memorabilia, but they do a crazy amount of stuff there, it was really fun to go see.
I got back to the press around 11 and after Shawn got out of a meeting he came in and let me know that the construction guys next door were pouring concrete with a huge pump truck and he wanted me to grab some photos and a little video of that. Shooting the construction is fun especially since I am pretty much the only one who has done it so far; I feel like I get to have more of a connection to this assignment than the normal day to day. It’s nice.
Lastly I finished out my day with another check passer. Today was an answer to a prayer. I love staying busy because it gives me more of an opportunity to improve.
I was mistaken in thinking that yesterday was a trial by fire… when I got to the Press today I got an email from my mentor saying that he was having flu-like symptoms and that he wouldn’t be coming in today! I slightly panicked. But looking at the schedule I relaxed a little because there was no photo requests yet. The other photographer that works at the Press came in not too long after me which was good because I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask her. First was, what do we do on a day where there aren’t any photo requests; she then reminded me about what they call at the paper “stand-alone” photos. She then told me about a great place to look for stand alone-shots, on the CDA Press website there is a calendar of events going on in the city and the surrounding areas. So we started looking there.
I found a few events that I wanted to go to and see if I could get some shots there, one was an event at the city library called Tales for Two’s and Three’s where there would be stories read to children and activities for them to do. Once I was done there I went next door to the news room where there is construction being done on a new building for everyone. The boss wanted us photographers to get some photos and video to document the construction because when it is all done and they move in he wants to run a special about it.
Next I went to another event that I found on the calendar of events, a senior hula dancing class. Yes, I admit, there are a lot of assignments that aren’t very glamorous but I’ve got to tell you, these ladies were a riot! When I finished at the luau, I discovered that I had missed a text from the other photographer on staff asking me to go to an interview for a feature story with one of the reporters at 2pm, it was 1:59pm…Oi. So I rushed back to the news room to figure out where all of this was happening and thankfully it was just down the street. I didn’t get there too late so I didn’t need to worry, unlike most photo ops, feature stories usually just have a single portrait of the interviewee (at least in this paper). So that concluded my busy day. A great learning experience and also like yesterday and everyday full of prayers.
PS: Today was the day that the North Idaho Business Journal was published! This is another one of the many publications that the Coeur d’Alene Press operates and about two weeks ago I second shot with my mentor on a story about the Litehouse Foods company. That was my first big publish.