it's a small world

Random story time: So, I'm flying back to the east coast for Thanksgiving. And I'm on a very early flight with a connection in Ohio. This is Monday morning and the Seahawks were suppose to play the Sunday night football game the night before, but the NFL changed it to a day game a few weeks earlier. I was bummed because I had already booked my very early Monday flight and would've taken a red eye on the night before.

So, I'm tired. We are having weird plane issues so we are running behind schedule too. But I'm so tired, I am planning on sleeping and praying I make my connection so I can get home and chill out. Luckily, I sleep most of the trip (or close enough to that) and as we are making our descent i hear the flight attendant on the speaker system. "blah blah blah, and if anyone has a Seattle Times Sports section could you please pass it forward, the pictures in it features one of our passenger's son." Okay, so that wakes me up completely. After all, I picked all those pictures out! I wait until the flight attendant is finished and I go forward to talk with her. I give her my card and tell her to have the person contact me, and I'll help them out with a few papers, etc. She insists on bringing me back to meet the mom of the Seahawk's player, Patrick Kerney. A very nice lady, indeed. And we have since exchanged some emails.

Anyways, one of the more bizarre stories that has happen to me flying. And trust me, I have some good flying stories. But the best part is that I made my connection with only minutes to spare.

college special section

I've been horrible about posting on my blog. I've been doing a lot of soul searching lately, and I've let my blog suffer some. So, there will be some quick posts so I can get back up to being current. For that, I apologize. At one point, I'm sure I had a lot to say about these.

This is from our much cut College Special Section. Not a lot of space inside, but at least we had good picture display.

more hawks...

Here was an unusual day for us. Most of the story of the game was in non-action pictures for us. Personally, I like non-action pictures and I think you really need them to break up the action sometimes. This really worked for us because we had so many different moments that really told the story of the day.

solutions

I used to think it was so easy. You take the best picture and run it big on the page. That's it? Well, there are a lot more pieces to the puzzle than just choosing the best image and getting it to run big. This was a good example. It was pretty obvious that the best, story-telling picture also was very unusual. The QB from the other team being pulled in different directions for the ultimate sack.

For the most part, I think our designers do a great job of getting our pictures to run big. And this day was no exception. The problem was, getting it to run big all the other elements on the page don't fit correctly. So, each of us threw out different options. Another picture out there? A different headline? a graphic element?

I felt, and I still do, that another picture would steal some of the impact away from the main shot. I was hoping for another solution. Unfortunately, the best solution for me, isn't always the best solution for others. There didn't seem to be any other way around it. So, trusting my co-workers back in sports, we did what we had to do to see that the best picture ran big and got the most attention.

kevin durant

Kevin Durant, our #2 pick in the NBA draft, is by far the most exciting thing to happen to the Supersonics since I have been here. While the team is gearing up to leave the town, Durant has added a nice spark to get fans into the season.

We were not doing a NBA special section this year, so our plan was to run a series of NBA special stories in the regular sports section over the course of a few days. Kevin Durant was going to kick off this series on a Sunday.

Well, unfortunately, the stupid Boston Red Sox (yes, I can say that as I am a whole-hearted Yankee fan) decided to win the World Series on the same day. This meant that the cool, different look we had planned for the cover of sports to kick off the 4 day series went out the window. We needed to add a world series picture and story.

So, just imagine the Durant picture 5 columns, ---it would've looked spectacular. But alas, our newspaper is ever-changing and always adjusting to breaking news.

UW loss

So, from the same UW game I left at half-time at to do my real job of editing from the office, the huskies blew a huge first half lead to lose the game. This was their many loss in a row to the utter disappointment of husky fans everywhere. I thought our photographers did a good job capturing the heaviness of the moment. Here is how the cover looked. It was nice to run a non-action, non-player picture on the cover for a change.

Ironically, both photographers at the game shot this guy from different angles and at a slightly different time. But this is the picture than won me over.

I think given the weight of the husky season up to this point, winning over the assistant sports editors was a fairly easy task.

seeing

Frequently, I get asked if I miss shooting. And my answer is always the same - Yes, of course I do. I miss almost everything about it.I really believe that I see differently when I have a camera in my hand. Sounds corny but it is true.

Anyways, I went to a University of Washington game at the end of October. I've never been to Husky Stadium and felt I should check it out and to see what the photographers have to deal with as far as transmitting, shadows on the field, etc. It's always a bit uncomfortable for me when I go to sporting events nowadays. Honestly, I really want to shoot-- to be on the field, with my long lens, shooting the story of the game. But I don't do that anymore. While I had a camera on me, I stayed out of the way and just shot a few things for myself. The last thing I want is for our photographers to be uncomfortable or to question my goal in being there.

It was a good experience all the same. Here are some snaps from the day.