Been awhile, here's some stuff

Hey out there,
Wow, it's been over two weeks since I've posted on this blog (I have been posting to the Friday Night Sights blog though). The week of Thanksgiving I was out of town pretty much the whole week. That was an interesting couple of days.
On Saturday the 17th I went to Tacoma to cover the Naselle-Life Christian playoff game which started at 7 p.m. Naselle lost the game 22-0, ending their season. The game was fast, as there weren't a lot of stoppages in the game, so I stayed after for a long time. The team has given me great access throughout the year, including the locker room before, during and after the games. This is where I got a majority of my pix from that game, including this one below which I think pretty much summed up the feeling of the team. The team was great to be around all year and I really appreciated the opportunity to be there to document it.

This week on the cover of the Life section we ran a retrospective on the teams historic season, which you can read HERE.
We ran seven pix in the paper, but you can find a slideshow gallery of like 35-40 pix from throughout the season HERE. It features mostly pix of things away from the games, like this one from the Homecoming game.

After getting home from the game around midnight I stayed up at least another hour starting an edit of the 800-plus pix from the game (because I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I knew I had some decent stuff). I was up three hours later so we could leave town at around 4:30 a.m. to make the 9-hour trek down to California. Now normally we wouldn't be killing ourselves to make it down in any certain frame of time, but that day was the final performance of the play my dad was in, "Arsenic and Old Lace." My dad played Teddy the crazy brother who thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt, a comedic role that in my opinion made the play. He even looked the part. We got to hang out with family, play some Balderdash, and go to a "real beach" (our beaches don't have rocks or aggots). I handed the camera off to Vinessa for most of the time.





We had a good trip, had Turkey Day on that Tuesday cuz we had to get back by Wednesday night so Ness could prep for the big Thanksgiving service she was doing at the restaurant. All-in-all, all good.

One last thing, here's the link to the audio slideshow I did last week on a group of high school kids that are in the first ever cadet program with the Pacific County Fire District.
I worked on this piece for a little over a month. I liked how it worked online better than in the paper, as we only had enough room for like 5 pix, and I think it definitely needed more to help tell the story. Once again, many thanks to the kids and the fire department for the great access!

-DKM

Winds blow out the lights

Yesterday morning I spent about three hours chasing down PUD workers and storm-related damage during a hurricane-force wind storm that knocked out power to the Peninsula, and still has the north end in the dark as of this morning. Here's a few pix from around town, including David Bright and his son (above) as they assess the scene after a large pine tree was blown onto the top of their home in Long Beach. I think I finally got dry and warm again about 4 pm yesterday afternoon.... something tells me this is going to be a long winter.



Stay dry,
-DKM

Road Trippin', CPOYin' and end of the Season-in'

hey there, here's a couple things to check out:

• The College Photographer of the Year competition judging is being broadcast as a series of PODCASTS. Each installment features the semi-finals or finals of a category. It's pretty interesting to listen as the judges view the images and make comments on the entries. Best of all, there's some really great photos to see.

• The Season, a Photo Blog by the Chicago Tribune's Scott Strazzante has been a great inspiration for me as far as sports photography goes, just wrapped up. Scott is going to follow a single team from each season of high school sports throughout the ups and downs of their season. His fall sports muse was the Joilet Catholic volleyball team. He ran a single image each week in the paper, but updated the blog portion almost daily throughout the season — from their first practice to their loss in the playoffs. This is some really great images and storytelling — plus you get Scott's at times quirky narration too.

• Tomorrow I'm driving up to Bellevue to shoot the Naselle-Seattle Lutheran 2B state playoff football game. And while its really only about three hours, it still counts as a road trip! that of course means, road trip music time!

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
I can't say enough about this record, it's easily the best and most complete album I've heard this year. I picked it up last time I was in Portland at Everyday Music on Burnside. It was pretty sweet, as the vinyl copy I bought was not only a sweet double album gate fold, but also came with a CD copy of the album as well. Even better, the CD features a link to Wilco's Web site, which gives the ability to download some live shows and a B side. Of course, many out there probably don't know who these guys are, but you should, they're one of the best American rock bands out there today. Actually, you probably have already heard many of the songs from this record as they made an unprecidented deal with Volkswagon to use a number of the new tunes in V-Dubs fall advertising campaign. I read an interview with the band that said with the demise of radio or even MTV as a way of getting music out there, advertising is one of the few ways people are finding out about new music. An interesting concept ...
Here's a video of them performing "Side with the Seeds" in their loft in Chicago where they recorded the album:

Their best for last

Last night I shot Ilwaco's final game of the year, a district crossover match-up with Winlock, you can read about it here at the Friday Night Sights blog. This is a shot I got in the second half when ilwaco was up by like 40 points and a lot of their JV or non-starting players were getting some playing time. I've been experimenting with a slow shutter at football games usually in the second half of blow out games this year. This is easily one of my favorite football pix I've gotten so far this year. Here's a link to another I got earlier this season at a Naselle game.
Naselle finished in a three-way tie for the league football title and are seeded second for the playoffs starting next week. They await the winner of the Darrington-Seattle Lutheran game tonight and will be traveling to one of those schools either next Friday or Saturday. I'm hoping for Saturday, as that means they'll likely have a day game! Yes! Football in the daylight is a very good thing — even if you have to drive four hours to find it!

-DKM