Swim city

Shot a city swim meet and a men's health expo today. Shooting a Rascal Flatts concert tonight. Enjoy.

Run for beer

Some photos I shot this evening of the Gainesville Beer Run 5K. I have a busy day tomorrow. Must. Get. Sleep.

surprise surprise

When I woke up yesterday, I didn't expect to be riding in a helicopter. In fact I didn't even think I'd be shooting since I wasn't assigned anything and was occupied with studying for an upcoming test. However, Rob texted me and told me one of the staffers had called out sick, and so I was assigned two things: 1) to photograph an open house at the local hospital because it is getting a new helicopter, and 2) to photograph Jennifer Derby, a cancer survivor, unwinding with her two-year-old daughter, Sophie, after a day's work. While at the helicopter assignment, I jokingly asked why the photographers weren't allowed to ride in the helicopter. I didn't expect they'd actually let us! But sure enough they were really nice and took us for a ride. It was the first time I have been on a helicopter and it was a fun and unexpected surprise. When we were landing I noticed a mirror by a parking lot across the street, and so when I left the helicopter hangar to head back to The Sun, I walked over to the mirror and waited for the helicopter to land again (it had, since our landing, taken up another group of important people for a ride) and snapped a couple neat frames in the reflection of the mirror. After that exhilarating experience I got to photograph a super cute and energetic two-year-old running around the yard, drawing on the fence with chalk and climbing up the slide instead of sliding down. It was also a fun assignment, and I got to meet a really nice family. Today was full of fun surprises, and it was really nice to unexpectedly get a couple fun assignments to fill my time (even though now I have to really cram for my test). But it was still totally worth it.

Passenger seat

Herman Cain speaks at UF

JonJon

So I went to the skate park again today since I didn't really have anything else to do. I have been thinking about doing a photo essay for the paper about skate park culture and the people who frequent the local park. Today I met Jonathan Vaught (better known as JonJon), a local kid who was fun to photograph. Enjoy.

More Friday night lights

As you may already know, shooting friday night football is not anywhere close to my favorite assignment. However, it is a necessary part of working for a daily and I have found myself getting significantly better at anticipating the action and capturing the highlights. Here are a few shots from last night's game with the Buchholz High School Bobcats (a local Gainesville school) and the Columbia High School Tigers. Columbia beat Buchholz 55 to 14.

Reggie

Today I shot another dog for the "merchant mascot" features story being published either this Sunday or next. This time the mascot was Reggie, a two-year-old chihuahua-mix who hangs out at B&B Office Systems in Gainesville when his owner, Kattia Olsen, 11, shown below, is away at school. Olsen received Reggie as a birthday present after her previous and much larger dog, a great dane, died. Initially I got some shots of Reggie inside the office hanging out in the halls and standing on the tops of chairs and desks, as he usually does. But fortunately Kattia brought him outside to go to the bathroom because I was able to get some much more playful and fun photos (not of him actually going to the bathroom, of course) in my opinion. We'll see which ones actually make it into the paper though.

Lesson learned

So this morning I was assigned to shoot the annual Gainesville job fair for The Sun. I got some good stuff, or at least as far as job fairs go. But as usual, I found myself looking more for artistic and interesting photos as opposed to the necessary literal, but sometimes boring, photos. Somehow I forgot to get an overall shot showing the hundreds of people who turned out to the event, which was a photo the paper wanted. Which was too bad. But I learned my lesson, and in the future I will remember to not only look for interesting shots, but also to capture those more literal shots that may not be super exciting but are necessary in showing the overall experience of the event.

Sassy skating

Today I only had one assignment for The Sun - to shoot Sassy, a 13-year-old Maltese who acts as a "merchant mascot" at a stained glass gallery in Micanopy, Fla. She sits atop the counter and greets customers as they walk through the door. But while the assignment went well and I got to photograph a really cute dog, shooting dogs sitting atop counters isn't exactly the most exciting thing in the world. So afterward I headed to the skatepark where the real action was. I've been busy and haven't been able to go feature hunting on my own in a couple weeks now, so it was definitely refreshing. I ended up meeting three cool kids who visit the skatepark pretty much every day. They reminded me of me when I was 15 years old and when my life was also dominated by skateboarding. Also, I've really been in a black and white mood lately, so enjoy.

Play rehearsal

Paint a picture

Abby Wambach!

Labor Daze

Today I went downtown to shoot the second annual Labor Daze festival. Somebody from the Sun was already covering it, but I just wanted to go anyways to see what I could find. I only got a couple interesting shots, but then I met a man named Joel Pearson who sells crabs around town for a different man who actually does the catching. I just saw a crab scurrying down University and thought it pretty funny, so I walked over and took some shots. He was only there for a few minutes while he unloaded a couple bushels for another man, but I introduced myself and gave him my phone number. So hopefully I will be able to go out on the water with them in the near future and photograph that!

Welcome, football

Fall is here, and with that comes football. The last couple nights I have been shooting Friday night, and Thursday night, high school football. A very difficult assignment as high school games are played at night and the lighting is usually terrible. Which means cranking up the ISO to keep my shutter speed high enough to capture the action. But aside from the technical difficulties, and aside from the fact that sports photography is not my forte, I had a pretty okay time. It's exciting to get better at something I'm not so great at, and it's hard not to get pumped up seeing hard hits and big plays. So here are a few photos from the past couple nights, and hopefully they will improve as the season continues! Enjoy.