A Little News

To say I am a little juiced would be an understatement and it is not what you think by reading the headline.  By juiced, I mean excited, pumped up, psyched!  The only bummer on the whole thing is I can’t really show you the whole project yet.  I am working on a multi-media package on a family who bought an old log cabin and reconstructed it on their property.  It is going to be a very nice project and last night I put the cap on it.

I wanted to do a multi-light shot right at dusk with the owners in the photo to pull the whole project together and put a nice bow on it.  I had planned to use all my personal gear and all the company gear to set up several strobes to light the house and the people without it being over strobed.  In other words, I wanted it to look as natural as possible even though it would be lit to high heaven.  (Sorry about tossing yet another drinking reference into the post and I am not even a drinker!  I really must be psyched.)

Click on the image to see a larger version.

What I ended up with was a six light configuration and the only reason it was six lights instead of seven was I ran out of Pocket Wizards.  I could have really used one, or even two more strobes.  Still, I was so very happy with the outcome I will not get too critical of the final shot.  I arrived at 4:30 to begin my setup and the property owners had already lit the oil lamps hanging under the eaves of the porch and built a fire in the fire place.  I began by assembling my buddy David Higginbotham’s Octobank, which I have on semi-permanent loan, and then placed it on a Lumedyne head.  This would be the key light for the people.

I then began attaching Vivitar 285 HV strobes and Nikon SB800 strobes under the porch and in the dog trot so I would have my background lighting.  I then took another Lumedyne strobe and set it upstairs so I could get some light coming out the top windows.  As it turned out I would have been better served by using this strobe in one of the downstairs rooms but I didn’t realize it until it was too late.  At any rate, I used a variety of power settings on the small strobes.  The one clamped to a rafter in the dog trot was bounced off the wooden underside of the roof so I set it to 1/2 power.  The ones under the porch were set to 1/16 power.  I spaced these roughly at even intervals to cover most of the porch.

The dog trot strobe had no gel on it since it would be bounced off of wood that was roughly the color I wanted the light to be anyway.  The three strobes under the eaves of the porch all had warming gels to more closely resemble light coming from the lamps.  Here again is a small error I would fix if I could but the gels made the flash a bit more yellow than I wanted.  If I were doing it over I would go with more amber and less yellow.  Oh well, live and learn.  The Octobank was unfiltered but that did not matter because most of what it was illuminating was either wood, ground or dark green roof tin.  I also did not want too much yellow/orange lighting spilling onto the people.

So, there we have it.  I shot with my EOS 5D knowing the colors would just sing and if I needed some higher ISO numbers I could get them without grain and too much contrast buildup ruining shadow detail if I decided I needed it.  Obviously, that handsome fellow in the photo is me.  When I finished shooting, the family asked if I would like to have my photo taken and I said sure.  That is not my usual MO but in this case I thought it would make a nice photo of me.  My mom and dad still think I am handsome and want an occasional photo of me.  Go figure!  Hey, they are my parents.  When I publish the whole story in a week or two I will get back to you with the entire show and then you can see the whole deal.  I am absolutely thrilled with the way this project is turning out and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

The members of Flower Hill Primitive Baptist Church honored Oquilla Clay with a 100th birthday celebration Sunday, December 28 at the church in Hillsboro. Family members from all across the country along with many former pastors of the church returned to honor the Hillsboro resident. Clay sits and prays during the service Sunday. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 12/28/08

I plan to do one of these posts from time to time and it is especially for you who are in journalism or for those hoping to get into journalism.  Not that it won’t help the rest of your guys, it is just that our business is in a bit of a tight spot right now and becoming more valuable to your company is a good way to remain employed.  There are many ways to do this and today’s post is only one of those many ways.

I was given an assignment on a recent Sunday afternoon to shoot a birthday portrait of a lady turning 100.  Our newspaper publishes the photo of anyone under five or over ninety on their birthday and we shoot many of these.  Obviously, there are a bunch more five and unders than there are in the over ninety crowd.  These assignments are traditionally a thumb nail size photo with a bio for the babies and a bit larger one column by three inch photo with bio for the elders.  My job order said the church where this lady attended was having a special celebration honoring her so they might run a little bit larger photo if the situation merited it.

Knowing I was going to an all African American church, I wasn’t too worried about being exactly on time.  I have been in several serivces in black churches and the clock tends to be irrelevant.  I arrived just about 2:15 with an assigned time of anywhere from 2:00 to 2:3o thinking I might have to wait a few minutes to make the photo.  Upon arrival I found a church full of people and the honoree sitting in a special chair right up front.  One of the lady’s relatives escorted me down front and I realized quickly that it was going to be more than a few minutes before this service ended.  The man speaking was in the middle of a full tribute to the birthday girl and there were several others waiting to speak.

The atmosphere was relaxed so I could move about a little bit without disturbing anyone so I found a place next to the church organ and knelt down and began shooting.  As the tribute continued I realized that this needed to be way more than a birthday portrait.  The little lady in the chair had influenced several generations of family, friends and church leaders and they were singing her praises, one guy literally singing to her.  The longer I stayed the more happy I was to have the photo assignment.  Sometimes you are around great people who are famous like actors or politicians or pro athletes.  This day I realized I was around a great person whom no one knew about outside of her small community.

I shot for almost an hour before the service ended and the tributes stopped.  When I got back to the office I went immediately to the assigning editor and told them about the experience and how I felt the lady’s story needed to be told.  A week later we ran a Living centerpiece on her and it would never have happened had I only gone there and shot my portrait and left.  I was able to add value to our photo assignment and hopefully contribute to this wonderful woman’s legacy by being a little more patient than normal and by shooting a lot more than my actual assignment required.

Yeah, that is a little thing but let me tell you about little things.  Even a big building is made up of little pieces and each piece contributes to the strength and stability and even the beauty of the whole.  When you are known for contributing a lot of little things that add value to your publication you are actually making your job more and more secure and your career more and more successful.  Everyone is always looking for the big thing.  Be the guy who nails the big things but don’t ever ignore doing that little bit extra every day.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Halloween is one of those times when we have elevated darkness, scary stuff and just plain gross stuff and celebrate it.  So my contribution to your happy Halloween is a spider who is having her evening meal.  This particular beasty scared the daylights out of me one evening while I walked out my backdoor slam into her web.  The next night I was a bit more careful and observant and saw her again and she is a big one.  So, the third night I set up a Lumedyne beneath her web and staked out my back door.  When this monstrous bug managed to get himself stuck in her web the spider had her meal, probably for more than one evening judging by the size of it.  I used my Canon EOS 5D with a 24-70 and triggered the Lumedyne with a Pocket Wizard.   The image was lit from below but got a little fill on reflection from the white paint under the eaves.  Have fun and don’t eat too much candy, or any poisioned apples given to you by stooped old ladies in dark forests.

A spider hanging around outside my back door struck it rich nabbing a very large bug in its web. The spider spent more than an hour securing the bug then preparing its prized meal in the way only a spider can. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 8/21/08

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr.

Halloween is just around the corner and rather than show you what I shot after the fact I thought I would let you see it ahead of time and maybe help get your juices flowing.  Shhhh! If you are a reader of the Decatur Daily you haven’t seen this in print yet so keep it quiet!  The assignment was to follow a paranormal investigation team to a spooky, old house in Lawrence County near the town of Moulton.  I had done one of these “ghost busting” expeditions before so I had a certain level of expectation regarding the equipment they would bring.  Unfortunately, this group was a bit more low tech than the one I had done before.

Amanda Kelsoe, Keith Duncan and Denise Duncan pose in front of an old house near Moulton that they are investigating for paranormal activity. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 10/18/08 Copyright The Decatur Daily, All rights reserved.

This translated into shooting in pitch black darkness with absolutely no artificial light except for the flashlights we were carrying.  The night was clear and a bit nippy with a beautiful star lit sky.  The house was not too remarkable from the outside but I knew my best, and perhaps only chance, to get a picture of the team was to do it outside before we went in.  I had a couple of strobes with me but did not want to use them because I had a ghostly image in mind.  I carry a small, pocket LED flashlight and wanted to use it to do the light painting.  I was able to do two exposures on the team before we had to go in.

Technically speaking, the portrait was done at 30 seconds, f4 at ISO 1600.  Oh, and I didn’t have a tripod.  Figures!  Instead of the tripod, I just opened my camera bag and nestled my camera on top of some other gear.  I anticipated having very little light so I brought my EOS 5D to the shoot.  The portrait was done with the 20mm lens.  I light painted for about 15 seconds moving the light continuously.  The first frame came out a bit overexposed on the people for the effect I wanted.  On the second frame I had just begun painting with light when the owner of the house pulled up in his pickup truck bathing the scene in his headlights.  I figured the shot was blown so I asked them to just get up and walk out of the frame.  I chimped the shot and realized it had worked exactly as I wanted so I didn’t even do another frame.

Now for the really hard part.  We went inside and all gathered in a room and then everyone killed their flashlights.  Now I am really in trouble.  Even a 30 second exposure is not going to produce and image in this ink.  I am a bit mystified as to why a ghost would not manifest itself with some light on but, ehhh, what do I know.  All my ghosts are Holy ones and He works in the light!  So there I am with nothing, NOTHING I SAY, to work with but dungeon darkness.  Then there is the owners girl friend who keeps feeling something tug at her jeans and then her sweat shirt.  And our ghost busters keep talking to the darkness asking any ghostly presences to manifest themselves in some way.  My skepticism is now palpable and I still have pretty much nothing.

Desperation.  I was ready to start making ghost noises just to get someone to turn on a flashlight!  Eventually, after about an hour of waiting and working, the flashlights came on enough to make a few pictures.  Barely!  These photos have too much motion blur in them for my taste but at least it is the type assignment where motion blur actually adds something to the ghostly effect I was hoping for.  I have one photo I like a lot and another couple of images that are okay but the rest are just, oh well, why mince words, the rest are just crap.

As I look back on the whole thing I realize that I am the one at fault for not planning better.  I based my equipment selections on a past experience where the paranormal group used some fairly decent video equipment including monitors which produce light.  They also “wired” the building which meant they used light to set up.  These factors biased me to expect some things that this team did not do so I was a bit under prepared.  I would have taken multiple flashlights and just worked them in as I could if I had been thinking right.  No strobes.  No, no.  Strobes would have just flooded the scene with light and that would have been the wrong feel.  It had to have some blur but it certainly needed some more light.  I was happy to leave there with at least a couple of usable frames and that is the bottom line.  Next time, should there be a next time, I will take multiple small flashlight I can set up around the room or have people hold and turn on and off for me.  Live and learn my friends, live and learn.

The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.  All photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.

Cruising for features is about the most time honored method of finding those stand alone gems that our editors believe fall from trees like ripe fruit. Yeah, there is a bit of hyperbole in that statement but from the outside point of view you should be able to find a feature pretty much at will, right…..right? Not so easy if you are the poor guy laboring under those expectations now is it? So when the editor comes back with the dreaded, “we need a feature for our local front,” you need some kind of plan of action to find the photo and save the section front.

Cruising is the most common thing I do for finding features but I try not to just roam randomly around in circles. That is counterproductive most of the time and it wastes fuel all the time. With fuel costs what they are now, having a cruising plan is very helpful. First of all, have some idea where you want to go. I have places in most of the towns we cover that I depend on to give me features in those crisis moments, you know, when you have to have a feature and have it now. Those are my go to locations and they center around parks and water and both parks and water when possible. To find a for sure feature the first ingredient you need is people to photograph so parks and water are two places where you will most reliably find features. Another good place to keep an eye on is you local landmarks. They are landmarks for a reason so hang with them from time to time and you will get pictures.

After you have a game plan as far as place, figure out the best times to cruise. For me, it is almost always a waste of time to cruise between about 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.in the summer. People are at work or in school or just indoors. The cool parts of the day are best but the lunch hour is good too. You can usually nail someone having a picnic in the park during a work lunch break. The light is also better later in the day so that makes cruising more productive visually in the late afternoon too.

I remember back in the old days before video games, (I know, I know, try not to run screaming from the room with your ears plugged) people used to actually go outside. They sent their kids out to play too. Finding features was almost easy. I could find one every day. It is a bit more difficult today than it used to be but you can still increase your chances by knowing the neighborhoods where there are a lot of children. Kids do still ride bikes and play sports in empty lots so having some idea where you might find a pick up game can help narrow your search and increase your odds. Since video games are so popular, you might even talk to some folks and find out where the kids get together to play video games. Usually there is a popular gaming house just like there used to be popular yards where all the kids hung out.

The final suggestion I have for cruising is to know where new home construction is going on. This is an all season go to feature that will bail you out of a deadline jam year ’round. You can pop on a wide lens and frame some carpenter in the rafters in a geometrically pleasing configuration that will put a smile on the face of the most demanding editor. The only time this doesn’t work is when it is raining or snowing. I have found that carpenters are pretty easy folks to work with and don’t mind allowing you to shoot their picture just as long as they are not in any legal trouble, and that does come up from time to time. That should at least get you started on the feature trail and there is more coming. In the mean time, you might get a copy of the book The Great Feature Hunt or The Great Feature Hunt 2 by Dave LaBelle, the true world champion of the feature. His stuff will help you more than anything I can think of.

About the photos: I found the top photo one evening in a city park. I had gone there to take my meal break and I was sitting facing the river reading my Bible if memory serves and when I got up to go to my car, bang!, there they were having an anniversary candlelight picnic. I shot with an D2H and 80-200mm lens all available. The second photo I found while cruising a beautiful private lake in Decatur. The family was having a great time and let me shoot their photo while they just had a great time. I go to this lake several times a year and usually come out with a couple of really solid features each year.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

For many of you who are photojournalists in smaller markets, you know the agony of the daily feature hunt. I say agony but really it can also be at Wide World of Sports moment with the thrill of victory too. Feature hunting, especially when you have worked in one place for a while can become a bit taxing, or vexing, or vexing and taxing or just down right frustrating. In fact, I go through periods of time when I find it so difficult to find features that I say I have gone feature blind.

This comes from looking at the same stuff over and over again and not being able to see anything fresh. That is tough to overcome. I think this is one of the biggest reasons people move on from jobs is that they just get tired of seeing the same stuff over and over again. It is much easier to stay fresh when the environment you are looking at is different. If I come to your town, I would see features in places where you would just walk on past and you would do the same in my town. So, how do you find a feature and what constitutes a good feature anyway.

This sounds like more than I meant to do so we will just begin here with some tips for feature hunting and maybe do a little series on finding features. Sound good? Good! Since I can’t hear you I will assume silence is consent. Snicker!

To begin with, a good feature is like any good photo. It combines a couple of the elements that make a great photo. Okay class, anyone remember what the three things that make up a great photo are? Anyone? Anyone? Good. Someone was listening. Light, composition and moment are three things that combine to make a great photo. Actually, you can have a bang up good photo with just two of those things coming together and usually I am pretty happy with any two of those, especially in a feature photo.

Take this jet boat photo as a for instance. The best thing about this photo is the way cool light. There is a little bit of a moment here with the rooster tail. Take the rooster tail out of the photo and you are left with just another sunset picture so the rooster tail is actually your visual hook. Admittedly, there is not much in the composition department so this photo is a little thin but it still makes a nice daily feature. How do you find such things you ask? Nice question from the intelligent person if the back of the room.

Chase the light. Whenever I find a nice sky, I run to find something to put in front of it. I love clouds and the various moods the sky creates throughout the day. Sunset is merely the most colorful. I try to avoid a silhouette because our paper has a real issue with those. But finding great light in a feature is one of the things I will always gun for. That means that feature hunting in the middle of the day is my least favorite thing to do even though it is sometimes necessary.

I also keep a little file of good spots to shoot from in my head. The Riverwalk Marina in Decatur is one of those places. I go there time and time again because I like the moods the river presents especially when combined with the sky. Water is always a good place to go for features because people are drawn to the water. I have several locations around our coverage area I keep a frequent check on that feature water prominently. Water is good in all seasons but it is especially good in warm weather. So, whenever I chase light, I frequently chase it to the water.

Water also creates a nice edge. I love edges. Edges are where any two things come together. Water and sky make a great edge and the interplay of light is especially appealing. When I can get good light, an interesting subject and edges coming together in one photo I am very pleased.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Maybe I should say that the Alabama Jubilee used to be one of my favorite things. I have just spent 24 hours in the last two days covering the Jubilee which is anchored around hot air balloons. These things are absolutely great to shoot pictures of. It is one of those situations where a blind monkey could get a photo and a person with any kind of game can really nail some beautiful photographs.

And I got to fly. Local pilot Tom Lane who lives in Somerville, Alabama, took me and reporter Catherine Godbey up in his balloon, The Griffin II. I think that riding in a hot air balloon is about as close as a human being will get to walking on air. It is incredible! Just don’t drop the camera. It can be a long drop with a sudden stop which is usually pretty bad for the camera. Otherwise, hot air ballooning is just about as cool and experience as you can have.

This was actually my third flight. The first time I went up the weather was very overcast and we almost didn’t fly. I got some decent stuff but it didn’t sing like I wanted it to. Then, a couple of years ago, I got my second flight and the day was spectacular. Yesterday, the weather was decent but hazy which made for a few problems. Our pilot was one the last to take off so we were a bit behind the rest of the balloons. It made for great pictures of the balloons massed together in the air but the haze caused some frames to simply be unusable. All the problems melted away as we closed in on the other balloonists. The haze factor was eliminated leaving me with just smooth light to work with.

Then, Saturday night, I went back to Point Mallard Park for the balloon glow event which features the balloonists inflating but staying on the ground. At dusk, they fire their propane burners and light up their bags so that the balloons glow. It is really beautiful and the photo opportunities are just fantastic. I shot with my person camera, the EOS 5D for both the flight and the glow because I wanted the beautiful saturation and clean images I get with this camera. I was thrilled with the results. Except for the length of the day which began at 5:30 a.m and ended at 11 p.m. this was a wonderful day to be a photojournalist.

You can view a slide show of all the images I posted at decaturdaily.com and click on the link to the show. I hope you enjoy it.

About the photos: Everything in this gallery was done with my EOS 5D and either the 24-70 f2.8 or the 70-200 f2.8 all shot available light. For the balloon glow pictures, I used the incandescent color balance setting and shot real slow but still hand held. I don’t think any of the images were shot above ISO 400. I used the human monopod technique I detailed in an earlier post to steady the camera.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

I didn’t intend to do a series on my favorite things, but why not. It’s my blog after all and that makes me the boss, after a fashion. I don’t seem to be making any money at it so I can’t pay myself, but I guess the fact that you folks are out there reading reading is pay enough and that is pretty good wages. Anyway, on with the show. Since we are now talking about my favorite things, let me introduce you to Boss Hill. I guess he has a real name, but I have never heard anyone call him anything but Boss so we will go with that.

Boss has a big stew every spring at his home near Elkmont, Alabama. If you have never heard of Elkmont, don’t let it bother you. It is a little town about a stone’s throw from the Tennessee-Alabama state line just off of Interstate 65. It is a little southern town with all the fancies and foibles that go along with being a little southern town. Boss Hill is one of the celebrities of the community. I am sure that it doesn’t hurt Boss’ status that he doesn’t charge for his stew. You come, you wait in line, you hear some music and you eat free until your belly is content or until the stew is gone.

The real hook is that Boss makes goat stew. It is the only place I know of where you can have a bowl of goat stew. I have never seen it on a restaurant menu anywhere and there are some weird dishes on restaurant menus in the south. For those with a gastric uncertainty toward the goat stew, Boss also makes a more traditional chicken stew and beef stew but if you ever get there, at least try the goat stew. It is better than you think.

The real payoff for me is not the stew even though I really like to eat. The payoff is all the excellent people who show up that I get to photograph. There was one fellow who was a volunteer cook who kept up a non stop stream of conversation with anyone passing by whether he knew them or not. He parsed his conversations with stories of his wife, God bless the poor woman, who he claims is a bit of a hefty cook. I am pretty sure he was telling these stories because his wife was not actually present. The man himself seemed to have enjoyed a bit of her cooking over the years. If there were ever a tall tale to be told or heard, this is the guy to look for.

This is a political year in Alabama so there were any number of politicians who came to get a bowl of stew and to spread their message which always ended in a flier being passed and the statement, “I sure would appreciate your vote!” That is not one of my favorite things but it is impossible to talk about Boss Hill’s stew without the politicians. They are as much a part of the mix as the salt and pepper are in the stew.

Speaking of the cooking. The food prep starts at 4a.m. I was not there for the beginning. I arrived at the lazy hour of 7a.m. to begin my work and was chided by the cooks for being so late. There were five large cauldrons of stew boiling and bubbling by the time I arrived with a lively banter around the pots. If the stew could be flavored with words then these pots would be the best tasting stews in the world because the cooks, all long time volunteers with Boss, kept up a salt and pepper barrage between one another all morning. One poor man had the misfortune to have been born in the North which made him the target of more than a few barbs. He has lived in the South most of his adult life so he took it all in stride. When Boss Hill finally deems the stews ready to serve everyone present pauses for a moment to bow in thankful prayer and then the eating begins and my work is done. Except to sit down to a steaming bowl of stew myself.

About the photos: Well, what do you say. They were shot with Nikon D2H and D2Hs bodies and either a 17-35mm or 80-200mm lens all available light. It just comes down to finding light that is not too contrasty to produce an image. Oh, and I had to make sure not to spill stew on the cameras. That makes a mess.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Faces at an Auction II- He wan’ts how much?, originally uploaded by Chris Frear.

A Little News reader Chris Frear lives in Scotland and freelances for the local farming press. What follows is Chris’s description of his shoot on a sheepdog sale where he captured this captivating image of farmer’s watching the sale. Last year, I did a post on shooting the edges of an event, not just the event itself. This photo is a perfect example of a photographer keeping his eyes open for photos outside the main event. Nice work!

The “faces” photo was taken at a sheepdog sale over in Moffat last September. The basic gist is that farmers turn up in a muddy field and watch a series of young sheepdogs being put through their paces with a small flock of perhaps five or six sheep. After each dog is run, it is auctioned to the highest bidder. The better it runs, the higher the price. The whole thing lasts about 4 hours on a good day. I was there covering the event on a freelance basis, selling some action shots to the farming newspapers.

The farming press usually only require a single photo of the highest priced dog. But four hours doing the same shot of the higher priced dogs over and over is mind numbing. To keep alert I would often photograph candids of the people in the audience during the bidding. Once I get home from an event, I download the cards into the PC, emailing off the pictures for the papers. I had forgotten taking this image until that point. I found it and several other candids, which from my point of view I liked much better than one of a dog.

The event is held every six months, and the Farmers were grumbling at the recent sale in April as it was being held during lambing season. It was also bitterly cold. The reporter standing next to me disappeared to warm up in the nearby cafe, coming back about an hour later asking if she’d missed anything. She had, the highest priced dog had fetched over 2,000 Guineas! All livestock auctions across the UK are still done in guineas, a guinea is worth £1 and 5 pence, or about $2.10

Being a country/rural photographer is different from being a photographer for a London newspaper. You still have to earn a living wage. But you’re considered part of the community first and a photographer second. You have blend in but be remembered. And most importantly you have to be prepared to get mucky and to help out. If you can manage these requirements you’re going to be OK.

I get invites out of the blue to events or requests to photograph a family gathering from people I may have met once weeks or months ago. The “joke” in the family is that if I come home mucky and/or wet through then I’ll have got a super image. I broke my foot last year in a local river trying to get a shot and ended up, up to my arm pits in freezing water. There was no point in getting out as I had no icepack, so I stayed there in the water for 20 minutes, got the image I was after. By the time I got out, the cold water had minimised any swelling in my foot! I was lucky not to get hypothermia, but hey I was having fun! I had to help wrangle a flock of sheep last autumn. The shepherd and his wife I was photographing just couldn’t do it on their own, they needed a third person (me) to help move the flock up the pen so the shepherd could man handle the sheep one at a time through a footbath. A week ago I had a call late on a Friday night asking me if I was busy on Sunday, I said no (I really should learn), so there I was last Sunday in waterproofs covered in mud, in the rain getting action shots of dogs at an agility day. Did I enjoy it? You bet. It was also great for marketing/networking. This is dog, rather than cat country.

Please check out Chris Frear’s web site and his Flickr photostream.
On his main web site you will see some of the most magnificent panoramic landscapes you could hope to see. It is beautiful work and I highly recommend you check it out. Chris’s entire site is very nice but don’t miss those panoramas.

Feature photos are a staple of the small newspaper world. If you work in this world then you know that editors are constantly looking for local faces in local places to put in the paper. The challenge is not making feature pictures. It is making GOOD feature pictures. What I mean is, you can usually find a little kid out doing something somewhere but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have a GOOD feature. It just means you made a picture. Admittedly, little kids do make for some excellent feature photos but I try and avoid them like the plague. Its not that I don’t love kids its just that I use them only as a last resort because you could shoot a feature of a child almost every day of the year. So what makes a feature you ask? Almost anything and that is the good news. Color, light, shadow, wildlife, children, somethings borrowed and some things blue all make for feature possibilities. What you see in this show comprises everything from stand alone cruise art, photos we find just out driving around and looking for them, to photos made on assignment. Some assigned photos went with stories while others didn’t. Sometimes a stand alone even generates a story. The feature is a pretty broad category and covers a wide range of photos. I hope you enjoy the pictures and I hope you are having an excellent holiday.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.