Kid portraits
Shot a few pictures of the kids for our Christmas cards… I didn’t just come out with some lighting practice and a couple cute photos, but a respect for photographers that specialize in children’s portraits. I have no idea how people do this all the time. I think I’ll stick with the editorial and sports [...]
Joe Paterno
I only covered one Illinois football game against Penn State University back in 2009… looks like I won’t be getting another chance to photograph Joe Paterno. Oh well.
Great advice (not just for graduates)
These two men might have polar opposite personalities, but they both have some great advice to give. [tubepress video="2LZPpBuxAAE" embeddedHeight="366" embeddedWidth="590"] “Go where no one else wants to be, stick it out and see what happens.” Tyler Hicks, staff photographer at the New York Times, during his speech to graduates of Boston University’s College of [...]
Burris photo in The Christian Science Monitor
I have a few Google News alerts programmed to let me know when my name appears on news websites around the world. It’s neat to see where images run and it’s a lot easier than looking through every single article on major sites every day. This picture of then Senator Roland Burris that I took [...]
Illinois Civil Unions
When I heard that Steve Bean, the Macon county clerk, was opening his doors at midnight for couples to get their civil union licenses I knew I wanted to photograph it… it’s not every day that history happens 30 minutes away from your house. Bean said that, as far as he knew, he was the [...]
Girls State Track
I covered the IHSA Girls Track and Field State Finals at Eastern Illinois University’s O’Brien Stadium last weekend for a freelance assignment. When I was working at the Herald & Review I had to photograph almost every event to cover all of our local athletes. This weekend was a little more relaxed for me. My [...]
Favorites of 2010
Everybody is posting their “best of” posts full of awesome photos, so I thought I’d share some of my own. I’m not sure if they are my best, but they’re my favorite from 2010. My shift was always loaded with sports but I snuck a few news/feature frames in too… here are my 20 selects [...]
Reindeer Ranch
I’ve always wanted to go to Hardy’s Reindeer Ranch in Rantoul, so I quickly put my name in the system when I saw an assignment for a story there. I wish I could have been there during the field trip that the story is about, but I made do with what I had to work [...]
Players of the Year
I photographed a few local high school athletes for some of the fall player of the year awards… Maroa-Forsyth’s Gary Scott was the Macon County football player of the year, LSA’s Morganne Criswell was the Macon County volleyball player of the year (for the third time) and Warrensburg-Latham’s Drew Dunn was the soccer player of [...]
State Football
Two of our local teams made it to the IHSA state football tournament this year, so I got to freeze my butt off shooting Tuscola in the 1A game and Maroa-Forsyth in the 2A. Both teams dominated all year long, but lost by big margins in the final games. It was the coldest game of the [...]
House Fire
Fire photos without fire are challenging… I’ve been to several fire scenes in my time as a photojournalist, but haven’t seen any flames since I started at the Herald & Review almost four years ago. I’m not sure if it’s the fact we don’t have a working scanner in the photo room or the local fire [...]
Wet Cement
Somebody drove their car into a 16-inch deep patch of fresh cement in a construction zone a block away from our office last week… sadly, this isn’t the first time I’ve shot something like this in the past few months. I don’t understand how someone can not pay attention to all the barricades, workers and [...]
Election Night
Election is always a challenge because it’s a lot of waiting around in poorly-lit rooms. I spent most of my night at Lock Stock & Barrel following Republican candidate Adam Brown around while waiting for the results in his race for the 101st House District. I got some OK shots of him checking the numbers and [...]
First volleyball match
I shot my first volleyball match of the season tonight at Argenta-Oreana High School. I always forget how loud high school volleyball girls are… the shrieking noise that their lungs pump out is louder than a dozen Sun Chips bags. You’d think I would learn. The lighting was weird tonight. Everything was nice and even at the [...]
Early Harvest
The weather around here has been hot and dry, so the farmers are getting ready for an early harvest. I had an assignment for the newspaper to take pictures of a local farmer making preparations to harvest his crops. I don’t know much about farming, so I’m thankful that David, the farmer I was sent [...]
Water Aerobics
Last week I had an assignment to shoot a water aerobics class at the Decatur Athletic Club for a health story. Usually these are indoors in crappy light, so I grumbled about it for a little bit. I changed my tune a little bit when I realized that it was in an outdoor pool… nothing [...]
Prep football — Week 1
Tonight was the season-opener for area high school football and I got to shoot a good game between Central A&M and Unity. The weather was fantastic. The light was nice. It was a good way to start the year off. I had some frustrating computer problems while transmitting from the sidelines, but hopefully I can [...]
Sneak Peek — Ryan and Maranda
I met Ryan and Maranda at Allerton Park for a nice morning of engagement photos… It turned out to be a great shoot. Great couple at an awesome park with moderately cooperative weather. The day was even better after Maranda gave me a plate of cookies. Here are a couple frames that I liked before [...]
Update from the zoo
I shot an assignment at Scovill Zoo in Decatur earlier this week that I’m really excited to share, but it hasn’t run yet… so instead I give you a picture of Galapagos Tortoises wrestling with each other. I’m not an animal expert, but that’s what I heard a mother tell her child they were doing.
Teen hangouts
I hate assignments that make me feel like an old man. Mother Nature reminds me about it every day, I don’t need any more reminders. Recently, I had an assignment to photograph teenagers hanging out at Sportsman’s Park in Decatur. Several years ago the cool thing to do in town was drive up and down [...]
Macon County Fair
I spent a few days at the Macon County Fair back in June… my apologies to the three people that check my blog repeatedly. I’m sure you were all anxiously waiting for pictures of miscellaneous livestock and rain-soaked carnival workers. Your wait is finally over. Fair overall (Herald & Review)
Female boxer
I got to photograph a local boxer at the SkyWalker International Sports Complex training for the 2010 USA Boxing National Championships earlier last month. I would have loved to spend more time with her and actually covered her fighting in a match, but it was a quick in-and-out assignment at the last minute right before [...]
New Monticello pool
The newly renovated Monticello Family Aquatic Center finally opened up at the beginning of July and I had the rough assignment to make some images for the newspaper. Yes, I got to kick my shoes off and walk through the children’s play pool for a few minutes while on the clock, but there were some [...]
Grass
One of my morning assignments had me walking through fields of 14-foot tall grass. University of Illinois researchers are studying the grass, known as Miscanthus, as a source of biofuel. Andrew Wycislo, a graduate research assistant with the U of I’s Energy Biosciences Institute, who led me around the different plots of grass said they [...]