Top 10 - #10

Don't read too much into the title. I'm posting my top 10 of 2010 and some honourable mentions along the way but I'm not ranking the 10 in any way. They'll just be posted in what ever order I happen to find them in.

On to the picture.

#10 - The RCMP finish the Musical ride with the charge.

Taken on Aug. 3 in Cochrane, Alta.

Walking into the musical ride this was the picture I wanted. I had covered the Lord Strathcona's Horse Musical Ride in St. Albert and gotten great shots of everything but the charge. I made sure to be at the end of the arena my long lens as the ride came to an end. I was set up and ready, there was no reason not to get a technically excellent shot of the charge.

What I couldn't prepare in advance was the expressions on the members charging towards me.

This image was cropped from a horizontal image with a male officer on the left. He had a pretty blank expression which led to him being cropped out. The two female officers were really into the charge, their expressions made the picture.

This assignment was the first real pressure I had working for the Eagle. Being a weekly paper published every Wednesday, I usually have all my stuff in days before deadline. This was different the Musical Ride was in town on Tuesday at 2 p.m. Our paper goes to press at 5 p.m. The decision was made to get the ride into that paper. We ended up getting the paper out about an hour late that day.

The ride ran on front with the above pic as well as two full pages of photos. We were late because of those. With the ride being around an hour or so long, having to drive back to the office, edit the pics, lay out the pages (a slow process), and get them proofed takes time.

Everything worked out in the end, the paper was published and I came away with one of my best images of the year.

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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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