"Good grief"

As Charlie Brown says "good grief!" here it is the end of January and this is only the second real post I've done all month. So here's a group of some pix from the past few weeks that I liked.
The sun finally came out the other day, good thing too cuz shooting the annual beach clean-up can have its challenges. In this case, find some kids picking up trash in the dunes and the colors came alive. Printed great in the paper too.
This is an outtake from the Ilwaco boys game the other night against Seaside. I like it because of the high impact action but there was no way it was seeing print without the players faces.
This one I like cuz I think its well-lit and its cool cuz its a no-look pass. My new lighting scheme works so good at the NHS its amazing (IMO) I can't way to test it out on the road in a couple weeks at the district tourneys.
Last week Kenz played the part of Splash the River Runner in the Missoula Childrens Theater production of Princess and the Pea. She was pretty psyched as it was her first ever speaking role in a show and she rocked it. 
Wyse is such a funny boy sometimes. The other day as we were leaving he decided he wanted to wear a scarf, and because of this he also wanted his picture taken — done and done. Whats funny too is that unless you tell him to smile he gives a rather straight face, which is kinda cool.
This was above our street the other day. I was hoping they'd all leave at once, but no such luck. Such is my luck these days. Well, it is January, it's always slow in January it seems.

-DKM

New year, new pix

So here we are in 2010, the world keeps spinnin' and my camrea keeps clickin'.... hey, what else am I gonna do right? And while I have been spending a little more time around the house over the last couple weeks for various reasons, the news cycle keeps spinning too, so it was kinda like a back to work week for me lately in some ways.
It used to be — and honestly it wasn't that long ago — I hated shooting inanimate objects, especially for a lead feature. Now? Eh, not so much. I have found that when I do get the opportunity to shoot like an old house or something I'm looking forward to it, as was the case with the Colbert House, which we ran a feature on last week. This was especially interesting to me, as my house is not even a half a block away from it. Of course the lead pic, above, was a little out of the ordinary I guess, but I liked it quite a bit. Below are still life's found inside, including a turn of the century (the 20th, no the 21st) wheelchair and piano.


One thing that seemingly never stops this time of the year (or really 3/4ths of the year) is sports. Saturday night I was up at Naselle for the girls game with South Bend (I was up in South Bend the night before for the boys match-up). And while I usually shoot from the balcony at that school I decided to switch it up ... and subsequently got nothing I liked all that much. However after figuring out probably the best way to light the Naselle gym, I was pleased once again with the results.



Last Thursday I shot a new Tae Kwon Do class that is being taught at the Elks Lodge of all places. The atmosphere was just too unusual not to try and incorporate into the shot somehow.

This is a couple weeks old now, but still one that I liked. Essentially someone accidentally drove into the front window of the Long Beach Pharmacy. WHile getting the standard pix of cleanup I noticed how the man somewhat resembled the mural of clammers on the side of the building, Bingo, front page wildart.


-DKM

My faves/best of 2009

So 2009 is over, the "aughts" or 00s are over and the teens are here. Kinda weird to think I was a teen when I started this crazy career, and that was 15 years ago. The meat of my career took place over the last 10 years — a year at the now defunct Springfield News in Springfield, Ore. (I started there in 1999), two more at the News-Register in McMinnville, Ore., and seven-plus here at the CO (by far my longest tenure at any job).
So after going through the 68,105 images I shot last year, I whittled it down to these 22 as the ones I liked best, or thought were my best, from the last 12 months. You know its funny in a way, when I did the first couple of edits I really didn't think I had anything that great, but then I decided to not worry about that so much and look for stuff that I liked and was surprised at how many there were after all. And while some are definitely well-suited in color, the B&Ws were a larger ratio, so I decided to go with uniformity (plus I love B&W). And while some would say that going to B&W is a crutch, I counter with if you can take away the eye-pleasing color and still have a good picture, then it was a good picture all along...

My year (shooting-wise) started out with the flooding of the Naselle Valley. The first sports event I shot was NHS girls hoops at South Bend (I'm pretty sure I'll be shooting that same match-up again later this week). The assignment that received the most shots was my month-long coverage of the final days of the Tlohon-nipts Alternative School, over 2,500 frames, though I woulda sworn it was more. The one-time assignment that garnered the most clicks, 1,235, (and subsequent posting of garnered the most hits, 500-some, to this blog) was the town hall meeting held by Congressman Baird in September. The weirdest thing I shot this year? Probably the thick sea foam that washed up and looked like snow drifts. Favorite story I shot last year? Definitely the Tlohon-nipts story, though its not represented in the gallery above, as I think it should be seen as a whole. My favorite frame this year? Number one in the gallery — which was also, oddly enough, the most controversial pic I took last year too. But like I wrote before, the parents and grandparents loved it, and so do I, it's such a sweet, Americana, small town USA moment IMO. Heck, I even got to shoot a pic of Barack (see last pic in gallery).
I'll probably still end up posting one or two more things that were technically shot last year on here, but otherwise, onward and upward... Happy New Year 2010!
-DKM