300,000 Gallons in 3 Minutes

Nathan Morgan and I just finished up this little project I thought I'd share.




CLICK HERE

Feature Hunt

Out on a feature hunt today. Stopped by a house with a new Tarot Card Reading sign in the window and had a little chat, but never got the call for her reading at 2:00. Drove to a beach on a lake nearby, but wasn't in the mood for a day at the beach feature. Drove to a kick butt garden I found a while back and waited for someone to come back to the radio that was blaring music, but no one was home. Passed a sign for free kittens and pulled in where I met Valerie Nichols and her cat Taz.

NPPA Article

If you haven't read the article by Bruce Young in the July issue of NPPA's magazine called, "The Awards Pool," I highly suggest spending the time to read it. It's found on page 48.

A preview of things to come...

Nathan Morgan and I have been working this week on putting together a multimedia piece on the installation of a water tower in Lee Township. I'll post the link as soon as it goes live tomorrow evening. Pretty happy about it and glad we were able to try something different.

Doggie Will Bite

Don't really like the background, but thought it was funny nonetheless.

Tennis at Two..in the morning?

Tonight I headed out at about 1:30 AM to the Midland Tennis Center as they were hosting a 24/7 week long marathon in the hopes of attracting more votes to be labeled, Best Tennis Town. Midland is one of 10 towns/cities competing for the title. As far as a director at the center knew, Midland was the only place having a 24/7 marathon with someone playing on the "designated" court at all time. I'm off to bed.

Shout Out! Bird Call....coooo

My dear friend Mr. Brandon Kruse has created a new blog to showcase his daily work and I think it's swell. Check it...1, 2...1, 2.

http://brandonkruse.com/

Powerlifting at 50...almost 51

Tim and Val Strong will be competing in this weekend's powerlifting competition. Tim turns 51 this Thursday and his wife of 32 years turns 51 next Thursday.

Fair & Square

Came up with an idea to shoot the fair in squares, but wasn't sure about an end result until Ryan came in and worked his magic on a layout. Most photos were shot Friday night, we laid out the page Saturday and it ran Sunday on A1 and a full color page inside.

CLICK HERE to see the little video multimedia piece. I need to tweak it a little because it got messed up during the export, but the project file has decided not to reopen. :(

Super Hero for Life

Heading to the local Relay For Life event at 2PM was an obvious choice after hearing that is when the Super Hero Lap would commence. After waiting for a little, I saw Ian Schoenmeyer,6, and his mother Melissa begin their lap from Ian's father's booth. His mom stopped Ian so she could take a photo next to the "Hope" sign.

Baseball

Feature

Saw the yellow shoes and the yellow parking blocks on my way back to the office this morning and decided to pull over just in time to snap a fewsies of her last exercise.

Erin Moeggenberg, soon to be a senior at Bay City Western High School, works on physical therapy exercises under the guidance of Al Senkowski, physical therapist assistant at Auburn Physical Therapy, Thursday afternoon. Moeggenberg pulled her hamstring and tore her meniscus last year playing softball and attends physical therapy three time each week in hopes of healing to play basketball and softball this coming school year.

Shuck you...you as in corn...shuck corn

Shucking corn in preparation for the start of the Auburn Cornfest tonight.

Corn Fest setup

This morning I had a little time before an afternoon assignment so went out to feature hunt/stop by the Auburn Corn Fest to check on the progress of the setup. I hung out with a group of workers while they pieced together the carousel.

Midland Summer Night's Dream

Teenagers being bored on a Sunday night in Midland. Wish I caught them sooner when they were going through a drive-in. Thanks Drew Angerer for spotting these characters and Nathan Morgan for the ride.

Midland Summer Night's Dream

Tonight I hung out with Greg Dubay and his daughter Brittany, 6, as they were out on their front porch enjoying the cool summer night. He, his wife and daughter lived in Bay City and Midland for a while, then moved to North Carolina to be closer to her family and recently moved back to Midland to be close to his mom who he wants to be around to help and care for after she went through congestive heart failure. His in-laws want them to eventually move back to North Carolina and he thinks they will in about a year, to be close again and jobs are better.

Folk Music, Summer Evening

Friday I got to spend some time with a group of local folk musicians as they had their monthly jam session. Great people. Good tunes. It finally feels like summer in Michigan.

Barn

Patios in Bay City

Midland is thinking about installing patios on the streets in front of some businesses, similar to the patios in Bay City, so I was sent to photograph the patios in Bay City to show what Midland could see in the near future. Got it?

Pages

These are two pages from our coverage of events surrounding the funeral of Staff Sgt. Timothy A. David over the last couple of days. Nathan Morgan is working the photo desk this week and I thought he did a pretty nice job on the layouts, especially today dropping the 6 column-bomb on A1 of a photo I shot yesterday. I think I may start posting some pages just to share how and what our paper looks like.

Funeral

With no access to the ceremony, the parking lots, the cemetery or pretty much anything, it was more than difficult to cover really anything of Staff Sgt. Timothy A. David's return to Beaverton. So, along with shooting horizontal, I decided to throw the D3 into DX crop mode and shoot some squares to see in anything could work to better get a feeling of the day.

Dow Chemical Hazmat Training

Today Dow had some training exercises for local emergency service workers and some of their employees. I was hoping there would be some people walking around in chemical suits, but not this time.

Coming Home

Nearly a month ago, I was at the airport with a welcoming party of area POWs and motorcycle organizations as the local 1460th National Guard Transportation Company arrived home from being deployed in Iraq for one year. Today, many of the same motorcyclists were at the airport, but this time it was for Staff Sgt. Timothy A. David who was killed on June 28 while serving in Iraq. The Michigan Army National Guard Honor Guard carried the casket of Staff Sgt. Timothy A. David, 28, of Beaverton, from the MBS International Airport Monday morning to be transported by procession to Beaverton. He was in the U.S. Army with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, based in Fort Hood, Texas.

Fireworks Festival

Chris Van Assche, from Hazel Park, unloads his cart of glowing toys to check inventory towards the end of the night on Thursday at Veteran's Park in Bay City. Thursday kicked off the Bay City Fireworks Festival that will last until Saturday night. Each night concludes with a fireworks display starting a little after 10 PM, with the largest display on Saturday night.

Pretend I never left

Ok, I thought I liked the other blog format, but now I'm not sure. Half the time the photos wouldn't load and what can I say, I like big pictures and on the other blog that wasn't a possibility. I think I'm back here for now. Sorry for the hassle (once again) :) Plus I like any comments or feedback I get and there wasn't a comment section on the other blog.

This is from an essay I started the other night and will go through the summer because I got tired of sitting around at night after work. I call it Midland Summer Night's Dream.