Eternally Conflicted

I’m fairly sure he had already eaten breakfast by this point in the morning, but I’m not sure he was ready for his close up.

Went up the Veterans Home of California in Yountville to cover the Boy Scouts putting flags in the cemetery for Memorial Day a couple of weeks ago. I’ve covered just about every event for all of the patriotic holidays at the cemetery since I came to Napa except this one. Always knew it would be rich visually, but it always seemed to fall off the radar and I would forget about taking a stab at it.

I guess we’ve seen many of the flag and gravestone shots over the years, so nothing new in that regard. Still, the beams of light coming through the trees were fun to play with. I had to get up early for it, but it was worth it.

Followed one of the local teams down to AT&T Park in S.F. where they played a benefit game for a kid who was hit in the head by a baseball and put into a coma earlier in the season. He’s doing much better now and even threw out the first pitch.

The game was very well played and both pitchers threw well. The local kid, however, proved better by lasting 10 innings for the complete game one-hitter.

Tons of emotion during the game as well. I can only think of a couple of other baseball games I’ve ever shot which had the players that keyed up.

Might be time to rename this blog “My Family Photos”.

Way late with these, but such is life.

Decided to leave the still camera behind during a Christmas trip to see the folks and bring along the Polaroid.

Urban Outfitters had some of the last production runs of the film for sale and I grabbed one. Turns out that a few people have worked their tails off to get the instant film back out there on a large-scale basis sometime this year. Including buying an old factory in the Netherlands after Polaroid went bankrupt.

Washed out color me excited.

Since most of my time now is shooting sports at the paper, and the last three months have been football, football, football week after week, I figure why not put up some football pics. More football pics, that is.

Most of the games are at night, and you get anywhere from the first quarter to the first half to produce something before deadline. Needless to say, hard to get anything interesting when you have so little time.

Nice thing this year was one of the local teams ended up playing in the post-season all the way to the championship game for their section. Sadly, they lost, but a couple of the playoff games were played in daylight, and it felt like that part in the Wizard of Oz where it changes from black and white to color.

UPDATE: How ’bout them Ducks!
The U of O fighting ducks are going to the Rose Bowl. Since the loss to Stanford, they won out and crowned themselves Pac-10 conference champs. In celebration, a video that went viral despite the protests of the school.

Well, for this game, ughhhh…not so good.

But I’m not going to let it get to me. Keep thinking positive. They win the last three games and they go to the Rose Bowl.

I know I’m supposed to stay neutral, but it was hard for this game. Got my undergrad degree at Oregon. Toiled for many crappy games at Autzen before it became what it is now. Bottom line; I’m a fan.

Plus, a kid named John Boyett who is from Napa plays for them now and plays well, I might add. So the sports department asked if I could go down to Palo Alto last weekend against Stanford and get some shots of him for future stories.

Umm…yeah, no problem with that.

Kinda cool to think that here I am, a photographer who got the bug through a love of sports photography, taking pics from the sideline of my favorite football team. Quite a change from the skinny kid who didn’t know what he was going to do with his life post graduation in 1992.

Would’ve been sooooooo nice had they won.

If it’s visual and cool, count me in. I’m not up on all the blogs and websites that are out there, but two of my favorites originate from an unlikely place; the New York Times.

First is Abstract City by Christoph Niemann

He’s an illustrator who’s done a bunch of stuff and every couple of months comes up with a little slice of life story told in words and images. Only the images are photos of illustrations made with different mediums. Napkins, legos, woven stuff; the dude has skills.

Second is The Animated Life by Jeff Scher

He’s a painter and experimental filmmaker who creates animated shorts set to music out of his paintings. I don’t know how long it would take to make one of these, but I’m betting it’s more than one day. (Sorry, the nytimes site will not let me inbed this. Totally worth the click though.)

A forum on national health care reform started quietly last week with two speakers making their points and only one interruption. Unfortunately, that changed as it became a shoutfest during the Q&A.

Funny how we admonish our kids for yelling and interrupting while others talk, but have no problems doing the same thing ourselves.

I’ve read that when you have kids, an hour can be an eternity, but the years turn into seconds. Sounds about right to me; three years and (finger snap), here we are.

Not to mention the huge physical change. The pumpkin patch shot was just after his first birthday. The beach shots are from this summer. Ugggghhhhh…..what happened?