A Little News

Sometime next week, I am going on vacation for a couple of weeks. Now most normal people take the opportunity to head south for some warmth on the gulf coast. But not us. Nope, we are heading north to the great state of New York to visit some family. So if any of you guys are up that way, try and warm things up a bit for us.

During the time that I will be away, I have lined up a few guest bloggers to keep things fresh. My friend Corey Wilson from the Green Bay Press Gazette you already know from his post about shooting in the deep freeze at Lambeau Field during the NFC Championship game. He has a great post about covering the legendary Packers quarterback Brett Favre. My friend and coworker Jonathan Palmer is crafting a post on what should be required reading for a photojournalist. He will be sharing some of his favorite photo books with you and setting up a kind of suggested reading list which we will turn into a page on the site and add to from time to time. Another friend, David Higginbotham, whom I worked with at The Decatur Daily for a number of years is going to write a post too. He is no longer in photojournalism but works for a government contractor shooting a lot of space related stuff for the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. David is also an excellent wedding and portrait photographer, an accomplished musician and all around great guy. He is kind of enough to drag me along to help him shoot a wedding every now and then. The final guy, for now anyway, is AP photographer Rob Carr. Rob has become a good friend in a fairly short period of time. He worked in the Alabama bureau before transferring to Baltimore, MD. I have no idea what either he or David will be blogging about but we shall see.

I have a couple of other folks that I hope to con into doing posts for me while I am away. I know that these excellent photographers will bring something to you that will be very inspiring and enlightening. For some of you younger shooters out there, one of the great things about the photojournalism community is the other photojournalists you meet and form friendships with. One of the very best things about shooting college sports for me is renewing acquaintances in the photo workroom before and after the games. Those relationships are priceless. Just to give you an example, every year after the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn, the photographers from the Mobile Press Register host a shrimp boil in the media parking lot. It is a great time of just hanging out and building friendships. Hopefully you guys will all get the chance to have a group of friends like that during your career.