all over

So, my blog was having technical issues or I would have posted sooner. Here is how we ran the playoff game against Chicago. A1 took a lead picture and sports had the cover plus 5 inside pages.

I think it is a fine balance when juggling the pictures for the leads of different pages. It is so important to have story-telling images that don't repeat information for each page. I think running the locker room picture on A1 and the reactions of the Bears kicker and Hasselbeck work well to complement each other. The locker room picture was not an easy sell to A1 editors. They didn't feel there was enough emotion in the picture and felt that the locker room scene was too cluttered. I think the picture really works though. And while it doesn't scream "I lost a playoff game in the final minute by a field goal" I think it is immediately clear that it is a sad time with heads hanging low. Also, the locker room scene is not something we have really shown to our readers this year. I feel this was an important time to do so, adding another perspective.

One of the most important things I am learning is that being articulate with other newsroom editors when describing photos and how they work is so very important. Not all of them are visual-so it is very important to be clear, concise and complete when communicating. Sometimes aspects of the photo I think are obvious, are not to other people.

wild wild card playoff

So, this is how our coverage looked for the crazy game against the Dallas Cowboys. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was editing from the game. Which is fun and crazy all at the same time. But I think it really helps to get out of the office, helps put things in perspective sometimes.

We had 3 shooters on the field and one roaming the stands for features. The game was at 5pm Saturday. So with our first edition for our big Sunday paper, our deadlines were going to be very tight. We were shooting for 5 inside sports pages, including one photo page, the sports cover and the a1 cover. It was challenging, but the photographers all did their jobs to perfection and we had amazing coverage from a game that came down to the last play.

the playoff stat page

This is the new stat page that we decided to unleash for the playoffs this year. The goal of the page is to give the readers a quick look at a game summary that is broken up into halfs, but requiring pictures that sum up each quarter. I wasn't crazy about this from the moment I saw it. And I think part of that was I learned about the page two days before the playoff game. But there were other reasons I didn't like. First, I find it awkward to read. I follow pictures left to right on this page and the quarters go up and down. (if you look closely it is because there is two columns, one for each half.) Second, I didn't like the idea of being locked into certain shapes for each quarter. I also thought this would be very tough to do on a very tight deadline, which we had on Saturday night. All of which were valid concerns and which I thought required different options in case we got into a bind.

In the end, I guess it worked out alright. I was editing from the game, but the editor in the office thought that it was a little tricky, especially when a picture she wanted to place there didn't fit the right shape, but overall it was okay. We didn't launch it for the first edition---it only ran in our final edition of the night, which helped with the tight deadline with the first edition.

duel

I'm like a week behind with my posts, so I hoping to catch up over the holiday. This was last Saturday's sports cover. We were doing a main story about the two coaches, Holmgren and Parcells. I thought this was a neat way to illustrate it--and something a little different for us.

thank you

We have been looking through our summer internship portfolio's for the past couple weeks. I am not going to make this about what I think students should do or not do when applying for internships. Many people have done that in the past. My grand advice is just be yourself and show the kind of work you want to do.

More importantly, I just wanted to say thanks to all those people that hired me in this business. Because looking through all the portfolios, I can't believe I ever got my first job.

Harry DiOrio, Arnold Miller, Deb Cram, Audrey Post, Nick Lisi and Barry Fitzsimmons. - Thank You.

Happy New Year!

New Year's is a wierd holiday. But any excuse to have fun is always good for me. However, after scoring the night off work, I think I caught the little stomach bug going around the office, so I decided to lay low for the night. I did make it upstairs to the cool roof deck on my building though---and had a perfect view of the Seattle Space Needle fireworks. So, this is my lame attempt at shooting fireworks, something I could never quite master.

Best wishes for 2007.