I have to be honest. I didn’t expect too much from this photo request, covering an awards ceremony of an honorable mention award. And I really just showed up to take a few close-up pictures of bus passes with children’s posters printed on them. Our photo staff is too busy to attend most award ceremonies and the public probably doesn’t want us to use the space to run such a photograph anyhow. But as I waited for that chance to take a macro photo of the passes, the unexpected happened right in front of me and my camera. It was a natural, and visually exciting reaction that will make my week. I’m so glad I was blessed to be in the right spot, camera powered, and wide angle lens on, to capture the moment as Tiffany Snyder suspects she made a mistake on her poster that cost it from being selected as one of the posters to be used as a bus pass. I was able to get four frames off, the first out of focus, before she returned to her normal sitting position.

An even better reaction shot was published in Monday’s newspaper, a photograph made by staff photographer Kathryn Stevens. The reaction from the two students watching the primary subject really frames and makes her picture.

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Mike Bonnicksen used our new video gear testing the equipment and trying his hand at video editing and came up with a really great first project documenting Chris Ohta, the manager and a “ski tunah” at Tune-A-Sport working on skis.

Mike has some video experience, shooting video for a television news project the Wenatchee World had in the mid to late 1980s. In those days shooting video meant lugging around a large camera, a video deck and tripod. And if you wanted to shoot stills, you had to carry that gear too.

I had dug in my heels and refused to shoot both stills and video because of the extra load and because of the huge potential of missing a still photo moment while shooting video. So the paper hired Mike to shoot exclusively video until the television project was canceled after a few years.

What is different now? Why is the photo staff able to shoot both? “The gear has changed a lot,” says Mike. “The gear is a lot smaller, seems to be a lot better, and the ability to get frame grabs is revolutionary. I predict that in five years, most photos in the paper will be grabbed off of video rather than taken with still cameras.”

Check out his first “new” project.

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Swimming used to be one of my worst sporting events to cover. Dark, humid and colorless, I dreaded having to shoot pictures with my old film cameras. That has changed with well-lit pools, colorful lane dividers, and better competition.

I photographed the Wenatchee Eastmont meet today and came back with some interesting pictures. I like this one the most because it conveyed the emotion of the event against the rival schools:

And this one that shows the speed of the swimmers as they travel through the water.

If we hadn’t run a diving photograph in Monday’s newspaper

I would have been temped to use one of the diving pictures I made just before the divers hit the water.

Swim meets have sure become a better subject for me.

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I had a tough decision to make last night between two photographs. I had covered WVC’s game against Columbia Basin where the Knights were defeated by a large margin. It was a real ugly game for the Wenatchee team and I wanted the picture that ran in the paper to show that. On my first edit, I thought this was the best photo:

But when I was setting up the gallery, I found this picture that seems to say dominance better:

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I unpacked a box of equipment last Monday that ushers in an exciting change in my profession. Over $5,600 worth of video gear arrived and with it a new way of telling news stories other than still pictures and words.
It was with nervous excitement that myself, Kelly Gillin, Kathryn Stevens, Christine Pratt, Rachel Schleif and Steve Maher traveled to Yakima to attend a workshop on elementary video gathering and editing and we came away thrilled with a new way of getting information out to our readers and web users.
So it came that my first video assignment and training was last Tuesday at the Wenatchee Valley Senior Center during tap dance lessons. I spent over four hours editing the 53 minutes of raw material into three minutes of video. I hope you enjoy learning about subjects and events in our community in this new way for us.

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I’ve gotten more interest to “Bird Song” than any other audio slideshow I’ve produced - and it last only seven seconds!

The latest response is from Carl Smith whose son, Charlie …. a composer in Seattle, wrote his own version, one with a lot more expertise and interpretation: Click here to hear it.

Thank you Carl and thank you Charlie

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I was actually looking for people camping at local parks, thinking there might be a good story on people who camp in the winter. Finding the park in Monitor closed for the season, I took the loop through Monitor toward Sleepy Hollow Bridge looking for something interesting.

I found the possibility of a good pattern shot with pruners in an orchard but needed to get above them for the best angle. I talked to a homeowner and got permission to take pictures from their property then waited for the pruner to get to a spot in my frame where the composition of the picture would be best - putting them in one of the corners of the picture, definitely not in the center.

I made 77 pictures over 20 minutes, each photograph improving as Luis Trujillo moved up a row of trees.

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I’d seen this on my way to Entiat to make photographs for another story and I was glad that there was still a group of fishermen trying their luck at this spot above Rocky Reach Dam. I was most interested in the tent that Chuck Gallaher had set up as a shelter against the cold weather. But the only time you could see him in the sunlight was when he cast his line out and had to sit on the edge of his chair to clear the tent.

I had made a few attempts at this but looking at my images in the camera or what we call “chimping,” he looked very blue in color and the exposure seemed really strange. It took me a while to realize that I had my camera set to expose for tungsten lighting from my earlier shoot and that was throwing off what I was shooting of Gallaher. I stuck around for one more cast and got this picture with the correct lighting.

I have to admit this wasn’t the only time I’ve messed up in this way but I’ve always found out in time to reshoot and fix my blunders (knock on wood).

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We were planning a weather story for the day after Christmas, possibly with snow pack numbers so I had photographed an interesting scene of Burch Mountain and was heading home when I came upon Kelly Horner plowing snow.

Now it wasn’t the first person I saw doing this but what made it a photograph was the way the sun illuminated him and the snow. He was backlit by sunlight and the background was dark, with the sky and the house in the shade. If he hadn’t been plowing in the sun, out by the street, it would have been a dull and uninteresting photograph.

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Yesterday I headed for Leavenworth and to the downhill ski area where they were planning on opening up the runs. I got there too early for the opening - about five hours too early - but thankfully workers were there getting the place ready.

I was shooting photographs of a groomer working on the tubing run when I spotted Jerrid walking along carrying all of these tubes. With Steph’s reaction, I could have left then and there.

But I hung around some, getting pictures of the Bakke ski jump on the hillside, then Steph blowing up tubes. Her head was barely seen through the hole in one of the tubes on the first try, but after watching her blow up a half dozen more tubes, she happened to turn perfectly with the tube and I captured this image.

I conferred with fellow photographer Mike Bonnicksen and he thought the cleaner background of the Michelin Man look was the better read.   

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