Spring! At last!

Train of thought: We need a picture for the paper about how it's warm outside. Oh look, people napping on the Pentacrest! A boulder! With a person at its base! Hop on rock, shoot shoot shoot, thanks, enjoy your nap!

Friday at Gabe's

I pushed the limits of our 5dMkII this weekend covering Jake Dilley and the Color Pharmacy at the Gabe's opening. I think all of these were shot without flash, 6400 ISO. Yeah, I could've used flash, but.. I wanted to see what the camera could do with the meager available light, and, I wanted to capture what it really looks like in there. "Controversy" be damned, it was a good show. Photos from Saturday to come..


Megan McCormick opening. I should have gotten a CD, she's AMAZING. She was on tour supporting Daphne Willis -- but have several more shows coming up, catch them if you can.

It's DARK in the crowd. Jake was standing under one of the few lights.

first day of school, 2009

In honor of spring break, an outtake from the first day of school, 2009.

Airport duty

Pres. Obama was in town today to speak on health care reform. Brian Ray covered the event itself, and I covered arrival and departure at CID.


We get to the airport hours before landing. Shoot whatever's happening to pass the time. Below, measuring the stairs.


Media stands on a flatbed trailer at least 100 yards from the president and Air Force One. There are a few shots you know you'll get: the wave, walking down the stairs, and greeting any local officials. Unfortunately, I made a few mistakes: I wanted a wider shot that incorporated part of the plane, so I was using my 70-200... which happens to need a trip to CPS for problems focusing at a distance. So I missed the wave while my camera stubbornly held at a soft enough focus that it could never be salvaged by unsharp mask. So I sent this instead.


I should have switched to the 400mm lens for greeting the governor, buuuut I didn't, until after the hug and handshake. Live and learn. The thing about airport duty, too, is that it's pretty unlikely that any of the photos will be used in the next day's paper, since the best photos are going to come from the event. And the national media that travel with the president have a much better angle -- we're directly in front of the stairs, while the traveling media are sort of under the wing, from the side. The comparison, from photo editor pal Jon Woods as MSNBC, has my photo on the left, and a photo from AP's Charles Dharapak.

Motorcade leaves for Iowa City, and we all hunker down to file. And wait. And eat a Clif bar to tide me over a couple more hours. And wait some more. President returns, let's do it all again, but backwards! This time I was going to get that wave.




Stay on the tarmac til you can't see the plane anymore, just in case, and then call it a day.

Wellington Heights 2009

In cleaning out my "photos to blog" folder, I found a handful that were inadvertently skipped last year... next few posts are all catching up. I wandered my neighborhood, Wellington Heights, for a few days last August looking to illustrate a story on the impact of Section 8 housing on a neighborhood. It was a surprisingly difficult story to work on, and I ended up pretty frustrated. I would find great sources, only to have them deny giving me their name or let me photograph them. A cluster of National Night Out parties gave me a chance to at least capture some slices of life.

Bob and Donna Snyder (from left) and Angie Shultz gather on the 1500 block of 4th Avenue SE for one of several National Night Out parties in Wellington Heights in Southeast Cedar Rapids on Tuesday, Aug. 4 2009. Shultz and the Snyders have both recently made improvements to their homes, which are in a part of the neighborhood with a high concentration of Section 8 properties. Any more than four vouchers within a radius of 1,000 feet starts to have a negative effect on property values, and there are 40 Section 8 vouchers within a 1,000 foot radius of the corner of Bever Avenue and 15th Street SE.

Sabian Owens, 8, left, and Abbigail Laughridge, 9, wait for Sabian's older sister to go back to one of several National Night Out parties in Wellington Heights

Picador 2006

Just a few days after starting my internship at the Gazette in 2006, I covered the opening of the Picador in the old Gabe's location in Iowa City. All I really knew about Gabe's at the time was what was on the photo request: been around for decades, gross bathrooms, reopening under a new name. This weekend, I'll be covering the re-opening of Gabe's, so I thought it an appropriate time for a flashback post. So here you go, Murder By Death and the opening of the short-lived Picador.

TCR returns

As promised, here's Diana Nollen's story and my slideshow of the rebuilding of Theatre Cedar Rapids. I'd been hopping over to the theatre whenever there was something going on for the past few weeks, and it's been really cool seeing it all come together. Fellow Gazetter Cliff Jette photographed the theatre before renovations began, so you can also see those photos in the slideshow. There's also a slideshow of photos from the theatre's 80-year history.

Hoarders

I photographed Jill, a local woman who was recently on the A&E show 'Hoarders,' last week during a session with Susan, a professional organizer. The show came through and helped Jill (on the left in the photo below) get rid of a lot of the stuff that had accumulated over 20 years of living in the house, but now she needs to learn and fine-tune her organizational skills so the clutter doesn't return.



See the video that I shot/produced, and read the story over here. Below, a before-and-after of the bedroom.

TCR teaser

This accidental frame (from a portrait shoot today) is all you get to see for now of the newly rebuilt Theatre Cedar Rapids home in the historic Iowa Theatre, until the story runs on Sunday. So come back then for more.

The old courthouse

The old federal courthouse in Cedar Rapids has been fully rebuilt after the flood, but sits empty. Yesterday some city officials took a quick (really quick for me, in terms of walking and shooting) tour of the building to discuss relocating city offices there.

Cedar Rapids city engineer David Elgin (left) points out part of a mural that has been exposed on the wall of a courtroom to councilman Kris Gulick.

Cedar Rapids city manager Jim Prosser (left) talks with new mayor Ron Corbett in an office area in the old Federal Courthouse on Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010, in Cedar Rapids. The council is looking into the possibility of moving city government offices into the old courthouse.

City offices were located in Veterans Memorial Building (you may or may not recall a collection of images I shot there a year ago... ) before the flood. Read Rick Smith's story and see more photos here.

chlorinated pt 2

All too often I shoot for what space I know is available for prep sports -- usually inside, black and white. Swimming is no exception. It's pretty easy to just plant myself in front of lane 3 or 4 for the final heat. Unfortunately, high school pools are dark dark dark, and those center lanes have the worst light, with very little light on the swimmers' faces and ugly color in the water (as opposed to the vibrant blue in lane 1 or 2). I have no idea who the swimmer in the above photo is -- this was shot during warm-ups, and half the swimmers had shaved their heads (thus no distinguishing swim cap). I shot from the leaky underwater observation area, which had only one or two areas clean enough to shoot through. I did shoot some racing from beneath, but none of it really worked. I'll try again.

Standard racing stuff...

And some end of race features (these are the two we ended up running):

chlorinated

Whoops, forgot to adjust my exposure after shooting the scoreboard for part of the 100 yard backstroke at today's boys' district swim meet. Happy accidents + seeing what Photoshop would do with autolevels. I'll post the 'real' stuff later today or tomorrow -- it was a fun day, complete with a leaky underwater observation area.

The designer's house

I photographed local interior designer Mark Roberts for a Hoopla cover a couple of weeks ago in his home. Portraits (and lighting) are not my strong suit, made slightly more difficult on this shoot by needing to incorporate the decor of his house into the portrait. We started in the living room, but it just wasn't quite working photographically, so we moved on to the dining room. (Much thanks to our new intern, Julie, who came along and stood in a tiny corner holding the light, when a lightstand was much too obtrusive.) I love the rounded doorway, the starburst mirror (but wish the light fixture was a little higher), and showing just enough of the room that you get a sense of his style. I also knew it would never run that way in Hoopla, since it's a square cover (but I guess I hoped it might run full-frame inside). Oh, well.

Synchro skate, or, learning the hard way

There's always one night a winter where I forget to take ALL the gear I'll need in the morning inside for the night. That night was last night. My wide angle was fine, with minimal fogging. But my longer glass fogged on the inside -- not just the front of the lens, where I can wipe it off. Usually I can just wait for it to clear, but the 20 minutes I arrived early for the ONE local team weren't enough to let the lens clear up. Lesson learned.

Here's the untoned version:


The toned version is further proof that if you don't start with a good file, you can't just magically fix it in photoshop:


I cringe, but maybe this public shaming will prevent me from being forgetful for the rest of the winter.

Five months in the making

(..or, the story that just wouldn't happen.)

Environmental Management Services technicians Waylon Setser and Jarrod Conger, both of Davenport, remove a hose after Conger cleaned out the inside of the diesel storage tank at the old Linn-Mar schools bus lot in Marion on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009. A special wash and rinse with emulsifying soap is used to break down the hydrocarbons in the fuel and make the tank safe for use as scrap metal.

The budget line for the story was simply, "LUST: Did leaking underground storage tank program succeed?" That was in July. The DNR told us about a tank (not a leaky one, however, but still a gas tank) that was set to come out at the Linn-Mar bus yard -- we just had to wait for it to actually happen. I'd hoped to photograph the new tanks going into the ground, at the new site, but couldn't get access. So the story was pushed back, and pushed back, and pushed back.. I made weekly calls to my contacts, who referred me to other contacts, and I was passed down the line until, in early November, I heard, "after Thanksgiving we'll know something. I'll call you."

A diesel storage tank is removed from the ground at the old Linn-Mar schools bus lot in Marion on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009. The old diesel and gasoline tanks were removed after new tanks were installed at the new bus lot. After the tanks are removed, the ground is tested for contaminants, and the tanks are drained of any remaining liquids and cleaned before being used for scrap metal.

"I'll believe it when I see it," said one editor, who had also (jokingly, I think..) suggested that we just go dig it up ourselves, to speed up the process. But, sure enough, the tanks came out, I had a great on-site contact and as much access as I could possibly have hoped for. Wearing a hard hat into the job site without being asked, being genuinely interested in what they're doing and why, and heeding their warnings of where to stand to avoid potential explosions and/or passing out from the fumes, all go a long way on a shoot like this. When one of the technicians suited up and got INSIDE the tank to clean it out, I might have hopped just a little bit out of sheer joy (or maybe it was to keep myself warm on the frigid day).

Environmental Management Services technician Jarrod Conger of Davenport cleans out the inside of an old diesel storage tank after it was removed from the ground at the old Linn-Mar schools bus lot in Marion on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2009.

...And then the story comes out, and I think, "Now, why was this so hard?"

Finally, the game

I reached the upper deck just in time for "Back in Black" to start blaring through the speakers, and adrenaline overtook my bowl week fatigue. A HUGE gallery is over here, with action from the game and tons of celebration.






Our Gazette photo team, exhausted at about 1 a.m.