A Little News

As most of you will have found out by now, Alittlenews has moved to Alittlenewsphoto.com.
For any of you who may be new visitors to this site, here are some recent posts at the new blog. You should also know that all the content on this blog has been transferred there too so you won’t miss a thing.

Today, I did a post on Geometric Lighting which is a fancy way of saying to move around and vary your camera and lighting angles. Other posts from last week include: A View From The Pool, a look at a portrait by contributor Paulo Rodrigues, A New View of Lynn which details a freelance photo session with new romance novelist Lynn Raye Harris, Working Hard On The Little Things, a post about working hard on the ‘everyday’ assignments, and Feeling Like A Jerk, a post that recounts a mess I got into while covering Governor Guy Hunt’s funeral visitation.

If you have not yet made the move, come and join us.  If you are new and like the site, come on over for the fresh content.  I look forward to seeing you.

For those slackers amongst us who have not yet updated their readers to make the move to ALittleNewsPhoto, I thought I would give you some links to this weeks’ posts. Here is the most recent post on shooting receptions. It is actually better than it sounds. This post is about working freelance as an assistant to my very talented friend David Higginbotham. Read it and check out his most excellent photos on his site. Next was a post on a new site friendly to citizen photojournalists at WeSay.com. They allow and encourage reader submitted PJ images. Then there is a post about my coverage of a spelling bee and some tips on how to cover events like this and what to look for. And the first post of this week was on pleasant surprises and the value of staying visually alert.

So, please stop by the new site. It still looks the same and all the content that is here is also over there. Come on over and join the crowd!

I am noticing that a great many of you have not made the transition to ALittleNewsPhoto.com yet so this is just a post to link you to the newest post. Click here to read about making something from nothing on a photo assignment.

If you have not yet made the leap, all the content on this site is also over there. All the archives, comments and photos have been transferred so come on over and jump in. The water is fine, even for the dead of winter!

Greetings my friends.  The move is now complete.  Please visit ALittleNews at this address: http://alittlenewsphoto.com/
Thanks for catching up. If you have me linked in your blogroll I would really appreciate it if you updated so folks can just zip right over. Thank you so much. Gary

Very soon A Little News will be having a moving day.  Probably it will happen Saturday.  I am packing all the furniture now and trying to clean the dust bunnies out of the corners.  I will give you an official announcement in a day or two.  I am really excited about the move and I am doing this little heads up to make sure you guys are looking for it.  In addition to making sure I don’t miss any dust bunnies I definitely want to make sure I don’t miss any of you.  So, keep your eyes open and be ready to update your browsers.   There will be a slight name change because someone else already owned the domain name I am using on the blog.  Bummer, but it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Today I went through the A Little News pool on Flickr and came up with some favorites from our readers.  Want to see what I liked from the pool?  Click on this photo by Kpricephotography and check it out.  I really want to use the Flickr pool more and get you guys more involved in the site.  Not too long ago I upped the limit on daily submissions to five per day.  So go check out the faves and add some photos and maybe even get bold and have a conversation about what you like, don’t like, have questions about or just about anything.  As I mentioned earlier, I want to start a photo contest and we will begin with the best from last year so this little selection of my faves is just to juice you guys up.  Go and check out the pool and you may find some really cool stuff in there.  As we grow you will find more and more stuff in there and it will get better and better.  Enjoy my pics and make a few of your own.

Photograph copyright K Price Photography.

I have some changes in the works for the site and I just wanted to give you a quick heads up.  In the near future I am going to move the blog to self hosted server.  The only change will be a slight change in the address line which I will give you when we make the change.  You may not have to do anything to your browser or RSS feed because it will be a minor change.  This will allow me to do a few things that WordPress does not permit.  One of the major reasons I want to make this change is to be able to use Soundslides on the site.  There is some issue with coding on WordPress and Soundslides won’t work.  One of the things I want to do during this year is show you projects done with sound and perhaps even a bit of video.  Another reason for moving to a self-hosted site is to enable me to put advertising on the site.  I had a recent inquiry about someone wishing to place a small ad and I would like to be able to accommodate this in the future.  Alittlenews is actually growing a bit and I want to be able to expand the sites capabilities along with the growth.  For now I just wanted to give you a little sneak peak and when the time is right I will make sure every one gets a heads up so you can make any changes necessary to keep up with the move.  I certainly don’t want to lose anyone.

This is also the season for photo contests and I can’t see any reason for us not to have a little photo contest ourselves.  It’s not like I can give you any prizes or anything but just think of the prestige of being an award winning photographer.  Oooh’s and aaaah’s are appropriate here.  I am working out the details but I believe we will use the Alittlenews Flickr pool for the contest.  There will be traditional news photography categories so be sorting out your images and lets see how it goes.  I will notify you next week how to proceed with contest entries so be looking forward to that too.

Hopefully we will have a lot of fun this year and learn something here and there too.  Blessings to all.  GC

Alittlenews has been included in a listing of the Top 100 photo blogs by Photography College, a site dedicated to helping people find a suitable institution for a photographic education.  I got an email this morning from Kelly Sonora notifying me of the inclusion.  While this may seem like a bit of patting myself on the back, and I am sure there is a little of that going on, the list is a tremendous resource for you to explore.  Alittlenews is included under the heading of Photo Genres, blogs catering to a specific area of photography.  In our case that is, of course, photojournalism.  There are several different categories to check out including business, equipment, general, news, resources, you get the idea.  Stop by and check out the list.  I think there must be something for every reader on the site.  Check it out here.

Captain Kevin Mannix is one of those special people you meet who you know could do almost anything.  Mannix is the boss of the Blue Angels and a carrier fighter pilot with combat experience.  I was really looking forward to this assignment.  If you ever meet a carrier pilot you will be meeting one of the most confident people on the planet.  Yes there is a lot of bravado in them but with reason.  Trying landing a jet fighter on the deck of a ship that is moving in three dimensions, add the movement of your own aircraft to that and maybe throw in an after dark landing and you begin to understand why these folks have the bravado they have.  Oh, yeah, they may be returning from a stressful combat mission on top of all that.  No matter how you slice it there is something to learn from these folks.

Captain Kevin Mannix is the leader of the Blue Angels squadron which will be performing at the air show at the Huntsville International Airport Saturday. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 6/27/08

We went to interview one of the Blue Angel pilots at Huntsville International Airport to promote an air show.  We had no control over who we got to interview.  It was jus the luck of the draw, so to speak, that led us to Captain Mannix.  If you read my post about this shot you know that if they say you have X amount of time you actually have exactly X amount of time.  And when they say time is up they really mean it.  For details of this shoot it would be a good idea to read the post The Wild Blue Yonder.

What I took away from this shot is it is always good to be prepared and ready and have an idea so you can shoot and move quickly. More than that is the privilege of being able to photograph a guy who is putting his life on the life for me and for my country and I am not referring to his Blue Angels tour.  I am talking about all he has done leading up to this assignment.  Meeting people like Captain Mannix is really and truly inspirational.  Actually, you will meet inspirational people in all walks of life and that is one of the truly great things about being a photojournalist.

Photo 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 hope you have been told already and by people you love but I want to add my wishes for a very merry Christmas to each one of you.  I am very glad you take the time to read this blog and I am very glad to be able to share my thoughts with you.  Tonight it is Christmas Eve in America and I am enjoying the reunion of most of my family.  I have my son back from New York and my daughter back from Auburn making our family almost complete.  Seven out of eight is wonderful.  My oldest daughter is working for a cruise line and could not be home for Christmas except, as the song says, in our dreams but we are enjoying those who are here with us.  I hope you have all the ones you love near you to celebrate this most wonderful and sacred time of year.

If I may offer this blessing to you which has been pronuounced for thousands of years, May the Lord bless you and keep you and may He cause His face to shine upon you.  I could ask for nothing more and will always be content knowing His face is upon me.  May His face be continually upon you and those you love as you celebrate Christmas and the entire holiday season.  Blessings from the Cosby family!