Happy New Year! and a few notes...

So it has been a really interesting year. I started the year unemployed freelancing in Edmonton and end it as the staff photojournalist at the Cochrane Eagle weekly newspaper.

I also started a blog, joined Twitter and Facebook. Of those three my goal for 2011 is to spend more time on both.

The goal is to update this blog regularly, at least once a month, preferably once a week on my days off.

Over the next little while I will be posting my top 10 photos of 2010 and the honourable mentions.

I will also catch up on some of the stories and events that I meant to blog about when they happened but never did.

Enjoy...

One of my last shots of 2010

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Life in Afghanistan

In my last entry, I mentioned a story about a pair of soldiers that returned home to Cochrane from Afghanistan.

After the story I wrote on the flag, I knew that each soldier had a much bigger story that could be told. Unfortunately one of them didn't have clearance from his commanding officer to speak to the media. The other, Cpl. Sam Agustin, did have permission to talk.

After close to three hours spread over two interviews I realized several things, one of which was I was in a little over my head.

I was fortunate enough to not have to worry about my deadline. I had about three weeks to write it since we had decided to use it in the Remembrance Day Eagle.

I had a lot of fun talking with Agustin and although I struggled with writing it, that was fun too. What I learned from my struggles writing was that I need to take better, more detailed notes, especially when I have such a long recording.

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Homecoming Flag

Since starting at the Cochrane Eagle, I have started writing news and feature stories again. Luckily I generally only write either very short stories or ones that I want to write.

This gave me the freedom to take what was a simple grip & grin assignment of two soldiers returning from Afghanistan with a town flag, into an interesting candid shot and a story.

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Labour Day Rodeo

I always look forward to covering rodeos. There is usually only one, maybe two per year. The anticipation of the Labour Day Rodeo in Cochrane was heightened since I've never covered this rodeo.

Unfortunately, the rodeo couldn't live up to the anticipation. It's a very small rodeo with very few entries in the events I like to shoot the most. It was still fun to cover but given the other assignments I had over the summer, it just can't compare.

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Team Roping

Team roping is not one of my favourite rodeo events to cover. It is less exciting to watch and generally makes for less interesting photos that the more popular events such as bull riding or saddle bronc. It's also not an event that editors generally want you covered at a rodeo.

As a result, I wasn't really excited about covering a ranch rodeo which was solely team roping. What I was looking forward to was the freedom to move around and try new angles that isn't always available at bigger events.

As it turns out it was fun and I came away with some unique and interesting shots that told the story really well.

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New Camera

I haven't been updating this blog or my website as much as I would like lately. I am once again trying to do a better job of updating things on a regular basis. Since I'm no longer using my laptop as my primary computer at work it should be easier to remember to write/post updates at night.On to today's entry. I recently picked up the Canon 1D MK IV camera. I'm not going to do any kind of scientific review of the camera. I thought I would post my thoughts on it. So far I am really, really impressed with the high ISO performance. Although I still love the ergonomics of the canon 1 series cameras, they have made some changes to the button layout. I think I'll get used to it over time but for the moment the MK IV isn't as comfortable as my trusty MK IIN.

Finally, I'm still making adjustments to the custom functions but I'm finding the auto-focus of the camera to be at least as good as the MK IIN.

The first image taken with the Mark IV at ISO 10 000.

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Wet & Wild, a water fight at burn survivors camp

One of my favourite assignments of the summer happened because of my good relationship with the Redwood Meadows Emergency Services.

I was covering a training exercise with them when they announced that they were going to be participating in a water fight with youth burn victims on the last day of the Firefighters Burn Treatment Society's annual summer camp at the Easter Seals Camp Horizon in the Kananaskis.

I instantly realized this would make for a great photo spread and story.

After the exercise I spoke with the RMES Cpt. Evans and got the details on when the water fight would be.

When I spoke with the camp's director, Ian McKee he was happy to have me out to the camp but their was one restriction, I couldn't interview, name or do any close up shots of the campers.

I wasn't real happy about this since the kids are what make the story but I agreed to the restriction, I was just going to have to focus on the camp councillors and RMES personnel.

When the day came, it was raining in the morning and cold and overcast as the time for the water fight came.

The fight went ahead as planned, with one bonus for me, the kids all wore their ponchos during the fight.

This had the effect of obscuring faces in many of the photos and making it easier to show kids without having to worry about whether the kids faces were too prominent in the image.

The fight was a lot of fun to shoot. I wore a complete rain suit and made sure to stay out of the way of the fire hoses to protect my camera.

Only one kid tried to soak me and he asked first if my camera was water proof. I told him not enough for the bucket of water he was carrying and he moved on.

I didn't stay completely dry, on of the probationary firefighters poured a cup of water on my shoe, making sure I was included in the action.

Read the story in the Eagle here.

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