Question

Do these football players have to cut themselves out of their shoes at the end of the game?

Crying Boys

I am scheduled to shoot a football play-off game in San Antonio this weekend...again. My only thought is that I hope that they win for the selfish reason that I have run out of ways to shoot crying boys. Here is a sampling from the past week. Please include my past football post in this.

Quiet moment with body language:


Hugging:

Tight, again, body language:


Wider, more body language:



For some variety:

They didn't want to run this photo cause they said that it would upset the readers and there would be angry parent calls. Apparently it is ok to run boys crying and not girls. Oh well. This was from the first cross town high school volleyball showdown.

Symbolism

This is Dorothy. I'm working on a story on her. She has Alzheimer's. (insert puns about going to OZ here.) Sometimes when I try to take a picture of her she smiles at me. Sometimes she does not.



I don't think that I am using this photo but I think that you can draw lots of symbolism from it. Maybe that's just me though? I am currently procrastinating working on the photos for the story because I need help. And to shoot more...but I always need to shoot more. I have less than three weeks of work left here in Texas. (read: I'm feeling the pressure) I had better get on it.

So...Much...Football

Last weekend I had to go to San Antonio and shoot back to back football games. It just about killed me. This weekend I get to do it again. What doesn't kill us only makes us stronger right? The two teams playing were Victoria West High School and Victoria East High School. One lost, the other won. They ran these two in the sports section. I liked the polar opposite-ness of two photos that were taken of football games just hours apart. One side of town is victorious the other...they put up a good fight.



Victoria West’s Ebb Garrett, left, is comforted by his teammate, Xavier Ramos, after they lost their area round playoff game to Weslaco East 35-42 ending their season Saturday at Jerry Comalander Stadium in San Antonio. ANGELI WRIGHT/AWRIGHT@VICAD.COM



Victoria East’s Jaime Thomas celebrates with the trophy with his teammates after they beat Mission Veterans’ Memorial 54-40 in their regional playoff game Saturday at the Alamodome in San Antonio. ANGELI WRIGHT/AWRIGHT@VICAD.COM

Rocky Horror

I can make you a man.



I wish that I could have participated and drank wine instead of working.

...My life...

Meteor Shower

Wednesday night/Thursday morning I went with one of my co-workers to check out a meteor shower. It wasn't quite dark enough but I saw like 8 of them. We were silly and every time we saw one we jumped up and down. If only we would have had boys and a blanket it could have been very romantic.

I didn't get any on my camera but I still dig these two photos.






Miss Julie Zavala, looking at the stars...
<3

Oops...

Volleyball Play-offs

Crooked back-focused oops.

Football

These kids were so freaking cute. It was the Crossroads Youth Football League. Little kids in full football pads. And look at those faces.




Friday Night Lights can be difficult sometimes. I call this one "I see the light"

Wrong Photo

A story I shot a couple of weeks ago ran yesterday. It was a pretty lame assignment actually but I had a photo that I really liked from it for some reason. They, in true form to my life, ran a different photo. sigh. Tis the biz I suppose. I guess thats why I have a blog. Here is the one I liked:


Mitchel Wilson, 16, laughs with his mother, Tonya Dippel-Wilson and a family friend, Holly Alonzo, reflected, left and right respectively, in the sliding glass door on the family’s patio on the evening of Friday, October 22. Wilson, a junior at Victoria West High School, was chosen to attend the National Youth League Forum on National Security in Washington D.C. in February. Wilson said that he is most excited to see the national monuments in Washington D.C.

Roller Derby

In case you didn't know this I have always wanted to a story on Roller Derby. I would want to actually play but I am not athletic and very uncoordinated. A few weeks ago I got close to doing a story. The Austin Roller Derby Girls (who the movie whip-it is based on) played an exhibition match at the Cuero Turkeyfest (Turkeyfest itself is a whole other story!) Anyway, the paper did a story on the event so I got to shoot my first bit of Roller Derby. These are my favorites (ha, can you tell I liked it?) I don't have the ability to do a photo gallery on here so sorry for the huge post. I'm also too lazy for full captions so I'm adding partial captions and some of the stage names cause that's one of my favorite parts.

When we got there they were building the track in the pavilion. Imagine if football players had to paint the field if they wanted to play football. These girls got there at like 8 am to start building.


Purr-Anna, left, and Hispanic Panic

Team Meeting before the match. The teams were the Hallow-meenies and the Spanks-givings.


Yeti Machete and the Spanks-givings

Stretching before the match.


Greta Ground-N-Pound.


Penalty Pillow Fight. (I'm not kidding)

Penalty tug-o-war

Rozy B. Hind (she was my favorite)

Oh yeah...They skate too.


Although I think that this was actually a penalty cart-race where they had to push the girl in front of them like a cart.

Fans at the end of the match. They actually turned out to be friends with my roommate because she knows EVERYONE! I told her that her life is like Cheers.



I think that this will suffice until I can do an actual story.

Victoria, TX

Hey y'all (see...I'm Southern now)

A few weeks ago I went for an evening walk because I had the day off with nothing better to do. I decided that y'all should know a little of what it looks like here cause it's not what I expected.

This is my house. We have the bottom, right apartment. There are two apartments upstairs and an office shares the downstairs with us. The balcony is fair game. If I have talked to you on the phone at all since I've been down here chances are I was sitting on that balcony. I call it the Big 'ol Southern House aka The Intern House.



There are a lot of cool houses in the area.




This man was sitting in his yard and I really wanted to take a picture of his house but instead decided to hang out with him instead. (Sometimes I get a little desperate for company) He has a grandson my age who is in college. He owns a ranch about 60 miles away that he drives to everyday. That day he killed a rattlesnake that he said was as big around as his forearm. He later gave me a tour of his house. I didn't like any of the photos though.



He has palm trees in his yard. South Texas has lots of palm trees. It's still kinda weird.

Stereotypes

Stereotypes are bad. We should not judge people or places based upon stereotypes that we hear about those people or places. We should instead make our own judgments based upon experience and observation.

In other news this is the sheriff of a small Texas town...



Maybe I take back what I said...

Dog Love

This photo is brought to you by yesterday's assignment.
I spent 8 1/2 hours with this woman yesterday. Her story has noting to do with her dog.
My internship has turned me into the official pet photographer. I don't know why, it just keeps happening.
When the Advocate staff photographer saw this photo she said "Now that is true intimacy".

Enjoy!

Beach

At the beginning of the month (maybe the last day of September) I went to the beach. Being that I am from Michigan 87 degrees and sunny seemed like beach weather to me. Needless to say I had the place pretty much to myself (some teenagers did show up later). So now I can say that I have seen the gulf of Mexico (no oil thankfully) and that while all of my friends were finding their scarves, I was at the beach.

Holy Camera

So a few weeks ago I sat at work with nothing to do. (Which really annoyed my editor) Now I have WAY too much to do. I have untimely assignments to edit from last week still. I haven't even been able to make final plans with my source to start a longer term story. Therefore I have a list of things that I want to blog about and just haven't gotten around to yet. I promise though, its gonna be good.

Last week I attended a pet blessing at a local Catholic school. The student and their parents brought their pets on to the football field to be blessed by a prayer and holy water. Lots of dogs and cats, a goldfish and even a horse! (This is Texas after all).

Anyway in the process Monsignor Michael Herald felt it necessary to bless me...or my camera. I'm not sure which. Anyway hopefully I will take some super sweet divine-inspired pics soon.

The Haunted South

The South is totally haunted.
Earlier this week I had to go out to an old abandoned hospital where they have recently been doing paranormal investigations. The city shut the place down two weeks ago right before a ghost hunt (that I was supposed to attend and shoot) was to take place.
Anyway the caretaker of the place (who lives in a trailer out back with his donkey and pit bull) showed us around and told us all of the ghost stories and about how he has seen the ghosts. It was pretty cool and pretty scary. Like really scary. I didn’t see any ghosts though, just the videographer popping up unexpectedly making my life shorter each time.

This is the caretaker pushing the videographer down the hallway in a wheelchair. Its like a Hollywood dolly, he calls it the “handicam”. Get it? Anyway, I thought it was creepy.




This is a quick portrait of the caretaker I took while Bill interviewed him. I think that his story is more interesting than that of the building. The dude chooses to live and work on a haunted hospital. He is apparently part of “S.P.I.R.I.T.” which is the Scientific Paranormal Investigative Research Institute of Texas.




Here is the video. I helped a little. Mostly I just got in the way. I’m good at that.

Helicopters and Productivity

Today was my day off so I decided that I should spend some of it being productive and working on my portfolio.

So of course I came across photos that I meant to blog a long time ago. And now I am no longer being productive.

Some of this may stem from the fact that I have to figure out what I am going to do with my life...and fast. Stupid deadlines.

Anyway. When I was in Illinois I got to ride in a helicopter for the first time. I didn't take any good pictures while I was up there but it was still pretty awesome. Maybe I'll change career goals and be a person who gets to ride in one of the newscopters. Do they still have those?

The helicopter:



Myspace shot. Oh yeah...I'm professional.

Um... So this is where I work.

The investigator is my editor and the guy who plays Aprill's boss is the multimedia editor. The poster for this is hanging in the stairwell to the office. I think I love it here.

For Costello

Today I shot a 4-H fundraiser.
This photo is strange to me.
I blame Canon.
I'm not sure why, but i do.
I miss my bunny.

Texas

Two things I have learned about Texas in the past week.
1. It is hot.
2. It rains a lot. (I'm like 30 miles from the coast)
As an additional note to number 1. usually it is even hot when it is raining.

On a less negative note (Texas and I aren't the best of friends today, I am expecting us to reconcile in the next week or so) it is pretty interesting out here. Victoria is full of old southern houses and Mexican restaurants and there are palm trees just scattered about, completely normal. So strange. I will hopefully have photos up soon but I haven't yet due to the hot and the rain and the mosquitoes (they are huge and vicious!) which are multiplying like crazy due to the hot and the rain.

Last night I shot my first high school football game. I'm pretty sure that I have figured out the three things that Texans love the most, in order:

1. Jesus (I mean, can you blame them?)
2. Texas (You don't mess with Texas)
3. High School Football

Funny story:
I'm gonna let you guess what happened at the game on Friday night. (Here's a hint: it was hot and it rained) Anyway I went into the press box at half-time which was packed due to the rain and I was looking for a place to sit so I could submit my deadline photos and this woman stopped me to inform me that I had mascara running all down my face. She was so concerned that she suggested that I stop what I was doing and pointed me to the bathroom so that I could fix it. She quickly learned that I ain't no southern belle. However, on a trying to fit in note, I have successfully used the word "y'all" seamlessly in a sentence on more than one occasion.

Today I saw that in the mitten y'all were complaining about the rain so I leave you with a shot from my first shoot under the Friday Night Lights:

What you have isn't rain...this is rain:

Funny Bracelets

So there are these new things that are really popular amongst the kids here in Kankakee. Rubber bands shaped like various things that you can wear as bracelets (when you take them off they go back to their cool shape.) and trade them with your friends. Or, in my case, make them make noises after a few beers. Anyway, I now own several rubber band bracelets shaped like dinosaurs, a shoe, a train and an elephant. The irony here is that I had intended to post this picture before my acquisition of said rubber bands.





This is three-year-old Holly Melant. Her mother, Andrea Melant, left, suffered an aneurysm and brain hemorrhage following routine oral surgery. She was declared a vegetable and given little hope to live. After a year in a nursing home her mother insisted that she take her home. Now she talks, eats, moves her limbs and can almost walk again. The guy on the right is one of Andrea's best friends and one of Holly's new guardians. I have more photos (obviously) that ran as a story. Maybe I'll post them. Anyway, I thought it was important that you know about the bracelet trend.

Whitney's Wedding

Alright, I meant to do this post about a month ago. When everything was fresh in people's minds and it would have really been appreciated. I, however, do not work that way. I am much more of a better late than never type of gal. Therefore I am going to justify this as people being able to look back and appreciate what was, for me, the best part of the summer.

I pulled out a few (ok, more than a few) photos that I really liked. However, in my infinite nerdy-ness everything is in the slideshow that I did make in a much more timely manner.

CLICK HERE!!

The Reason for the Celebration:


Couples coupling... My date wouldn't even let me sleep in the same tent. Haha






Hannah keeping it classy.



Jason taking over...If only you knew what the rest of this scene was...




Sunsets and golf courses.



Heels and Camera Gear



Lovely ladies in the parking lot.


That's our girl.



Texan Breffast.




I'm going to a wedding in August. I don't expect to have even half as good of a time. <3