more sports

my 20d lost it a week ago. it totally flipped out on me while shooting a yoga class. error 99! error 99! i sent it to get repaired today, until then, i'm stuckity stuck stuck using the paper's nikon d1h, circa 2001. its a fast camera with little to offer other than its 5 fps for up to 40 frames. these were greyscaled because i'm too embarassed to show you what kind of color and grain i'm actually getting. ideally, if i was a good photographer, it shouldn't hinder me from producing strong images until my baby comes back, but we'll see.

hunting

A few months ago, I saw a series in National Geographic that kinda blew my mind at the time -- Conserving Hunters by Willliam Albert Allard. A couple days after I saw it, I got assigned a poorly planned reshoot for a localized feature we did on hunting.

I went out and met the Schroeders --- Mike and his five sons, ages 9 to 17 --- to go hunting. A previous attempt by another photographer yielded photos that did not make editors happy so they sent me out on a soggy morning to tag along. I never had the chance to talk to them before that morning when we met up. A reporter set the date up for us and this was a mistake. Because of a deadline, this was the last possible day for us to do this before the story was set to run, so the Schroeders were told to show me around where they hunt. Basically, I shot a hunting demo.

[I know, this one has a ridiculous resemblance to one of W.A.A's photos. While I of course kept his essay in mind the whole time I was with the Schroeders, I never made any intentional attempts to emulate him.]

Drawing up a wish list was inevitable. I wished I had more time. I wished this was an authentic endeavor. I wished the goulashes that Mike lent me weren't 5 sizes too big so I wouldn't be stomping around like a goober. I bet William Albert Allard wasn't sploshing around apologetically giggling while he was shooting his assignment.

be[e] cool.

katie came in to the contest on a total fluke. she won third at her middle school and had accepted the fact that she would not advance to the county level. the week before the county meet, first place girl got the flu and second place girl had made some other commitment for that weekend. i don't remember what word was the one that won her that goofy-looking diamond-shaped glass statue embossed with a bumble bee, but i do remember that the whole time she was up there, she was cool as a cucumber.

i do remember a lot of the words that knocked the other kids off. number four lost because of the word colloquial. he bit his bottom lip a lot. eleven broke my heart. clearly anxious, she would shake her foot nonstop when she was sitting down. her skinny ankles and big loafers reminded me of my little sister. when she lost because of rhythm -- a word i CONSTANTLY mispell -- she would not stop crying. number ten tried consoling her to no avail. eleven [her name is halee] was downright downtrodden even up until the moment when they gave everyone their participant trophies, complementary ohio state squirt bottles and made them pose like this for parents to get a group photo. on the other end of the spectrum was isaac, number two, who won my heart because of his braces, would not stop flashing his grill with pride even though he was knocked out way before i even got there.

when i was learning english, i struggled with spelling. my inclination was always phonetic. words like wednesday fucking perplexed me. my dad would make me copy vocabulary words from his english class in my notebook over and over again. i made maybe one or two semi-final rounds in elementary school and was always a drama queen when i lost. i couldn't help but relate to halee, but wished i could be more like isaac -- just happy to be there.

i was disappointed when i got to this assignment and found such a lame venue [fluorescent lights and folding chairs], but looking at this photo makes me appreciate having been at the event.