Post Mortems

Whoops, forgot to share some photos from the second night of the Gabe's reopening.. Al and Devin, of the Post Mortems, always put on a good show. Not sure why it took a year of knowing them to finally photograph a show, but, here we go! See more here.

Cheesy

Acoustic farms is one of only four in the state that produces cheese entirely from milk produced on their farm -- in their case, from their eight Jersey cows. Reporter Cindy Hadish and I spent an afternoon last week with Mark Armstrong while he made a batch of mozzarella cheese for a story in today's paper. (Follow the link for a video of Hank the dog singing along with Mark..)

When it was all done, he gave us some fresh curds to try... and ohhh man, there's really nothing like it! Those of you in the Iowa City area can find Mark at the downtown market this summer. (Below, his own Parma Blue hybrid... mmm...)

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.