Cluck Cluck

By now I should realize that the angrier I am at assignments, the better I shoot. I was kind of angry at this assignment, a school-wide chicken dance. Yes, really. It had nothing to do with the people. They were all lovely and fun and welcoming, and I really did appreciate them letting me come by. I don't know, I guess I should just really make peace with having to constantly shoot the cute-kids-doing-cute-things assignments. But then again, I don't want to lose my edge.




As you can see, a good time was had by all. Except by me. And this kid.

15

Where were you when Selena died?
Me? Odds are I was doing something band or newspaper related. Yeah, I was kind of a nerd in high school. But who is Selena, you may ask?

A valid question if you aren't from around here, or you were never a fan of Tejano music. But in Corpus Christi, Selena is still the queen. There's a bayfront statue dedicated in her honor. Her clothing boutique was in business for years after her death, and fans still can't seem to get enough of her. She has such a strong following around here that if Selena could some how endorse the destruction of the Memorial Coliseum, that building would be torn down by hand in a matter of days by a mob of cumbia-dancing fans dressed in sparkly hats and bustiers. Biddy Biddy bye bye, Coliseum.

Anyway, fans have been marking the anniversary of her death each year since she was killed by her fan club president 15 years ago. They used to gather each year behind a convenience store with this old, weathered mural of the singer on the wall. As a visual person I loved it. As a person who cared for his safety, it was a bit of a nightmare packing so many people near a wall so close to the street. This year it was held just down the road in the backyard of a restaurant/snack shack (I'm not making fun, it's actually called the Snack Shack). There was much more room, but unfortunately it seemed much more tame than last year.

Bringing Sexy Back

I once had a boss that liked to used the word "sexy" a lot. Not in a creepy way. Well, OK, it was kind of creepy at first, but I got used to him referring to the good photos and assignments as "sexy." Unfortunately the word came up more often when I got bad assignments, like "I know its not going to be a sexy photo, but we've got to shoot it anyway."

*sigh*

So I had one of those "sexy" assignments last month. A police ride along. Nothing ground breaking, but it was a meatier assignment than the quick shoot-and-scoot daily assignments we normally do around here. Oddly enough, I really didn't want to do it. Spending five hours in a car alone with a police officer sounded awkward and boring, but I knew it would be good for me. It turned out much better than I expected. The time flew by, and I really enjoyed playing with shadows and trying to get the most out of the little light I had. Cruising down the interstate at nearly 100 miles an hour was pretty cool too. When it was all over I was super excited to sit down and edit my photos, and I couldn't wait to see them in print. Unfortunately waiting was exactly what I had to do. The story held for weeks, bumped from Sunday to Sunday because they wanted to give it good play, but a more timely story would inevitably bump the package another week.







Well, the story and photos finally ran last Sunday. It ran on the front page with a stack of photos inside.


A package like that will get your attention, right? Well, I was pretty intrigued by the answer. I hardly ever get any feedback on my photos from readers (or anyone, really). One of the ways I gauge the reader reaction to my work is through web hits. The top six photo galleries on Caller.com get ranked by popularity. More clicks must mean I've been able to hold their attention despite slow page loads and flashy ads. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the police ride along gallery quickly dropped in the rankings. Unfortunately, it had some sexy competition.

Saturday I shot the Miss Harley Davidson bikini contest. It was actually an assignment I was really looking forward to shooting. No, it really wasn't just about the scantily clad girls. I was more excited about the photo possibilities. It had such potential for intriguing, attention grabbing and even wonderfully awkward photos. I thought I could be Chip Litherland or something. I had grand images of edgy backstage goodness and debauchery on and off stage. This was going to be photographic gold.

So of course I totally blew it.



Perfectly average photos. I blame bad access and some wonky stage setup, but really at some point there was a lack of effort. That didn't seem to bother our Internet readers. The first online comment made that very clear:
Great Story!
Pretty girls and motorcycles!
It doesn't get much better than that!

And my favorite comment, which came as a text from a friend after I put up a link to the 17-photo gallery on my Twitter page:
I got through 2 of your ride along photos before I saw the video link to Miss Harley Davidson. I'm sure the other 15 photos were nice.

That pretty much sums it up. Who needs feedback anyway?

Livestock Show

The junior livestock show finally wrapped up today, and the $22,500 price tag for the grand champion steer has left me questioning some of my life decisions. Despite the paycheck shame and the lingering smell of farm animal odors, covering the week-long event wasn't nearly as arduous as I remember it being. It's definitely safe to say that there are other parties involved in this show that have it worse than me.

Part of the coverage of the show included this little audio slideshow/video I made. A group of editors decided it would be fun to combine pictures of animals with kids singing Old McDonald in the background. I'm not really a fan of kids or animals, so the whole thing sounded like a nightmare to me. It turned out better than I expected, though. I actually enjoyed putting it together.

Spectacular

Yes, Christmas is over, but in the Catholic Church there is still some Advent celebrating going on. The Corpus Christi Cathedral held its annual Holiday Spectacular today, complete with choirs, angels, Mary, Joseph, and ballet dancers. Lots of dancers. In fact, I almost got trampled several times by ballerinas bouncing around in the aisles. It was worth it though. I lucked into a good position and some great light as this winged dancer heralded in the holy family. Right after I shot it I realized I was in the path of more oncoming dancers. I scurried out of the way, but soon noticed I left my second camera behind. I reached back into the aisle and Indian-Jones style grabbed it and saved just before it was crushed under a heard of slippered feat. Hallelujah.

Happy Place

My first assignment of 2010 was a funeral. No fun. My last assignment of 2009, however, still makes me smile (above). It's from a day camp for kids with working parents. They made art. They ate their crafts. And I stalked the little girl with adorable cheeks as she licked the frosting off the back of her graham cracker building materials. Yeah, way better than a funeral.

Bah! Humbug!

I don't know when I turned into such a Grinch, but this year I've had very little Christmas spirit. The overdose of Santa appearances, toy giveaways and all the other holiday hoopla I'm been sent out to cover everyday doesn't seem to help.

I was talking with another photographer about Christmas and comparing notes on how many times we've shot Santa this year (I'm in second place with five published Santa pics). After a failed attempt to get out of shooting another holiday event, the other photographer asked me why I was so uninterested in the assignment.

"I guess I just don't like...Christmas," I said, kind of surprised myself at the words coming out of my mouth. He understood though. He said shooting Christmas this and Santa that over and over can make you numb to the whole mood of the season. No kidding. I'm usually in a foul mood at these events, trying to make images that convey the opposite emotion. I'm always nice. I smile. I return the obligatory holiday greetings, but in the end I'm trying to get in and out as soon as possible and escape the gathering of happy children and bad Christmas music.


My lack of holiday spirit really became obvious to me when I was shooting The Nutcracker rehearsals. We actually have two ballet companies in Corpus Christi, and they both put on their own version of the holiday show. By the time I shot my second one, with video and on a tight deadline, I was in no mood for fun. At one point I almost lost it as a little girl struggled to spell her own name to me. I shoved my notepad in front of her and said, "Here. Write it, and FAST!"





But there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I only have to try and make happy Christmas images for a couple of more days. Hopefully I can keep my inner Scrooge at bay. I'm pretty sure, though, no matter how well I fake it I'm going to get a lump of coal in my stocking this year.

Reboot

Recently, we all huddled into a staff meeting as "Scripps 3.0" was unveiled to the newsroom. Basically its our parent company's new initiatives to improve the quality and profitability of all the newspapers in the E.W. Scripps chain. The good news is the plan is journalism focused. Its about looking at improving our daily product and focusing on community journalism, not slashing and trimming the news to death. More good news it that much of the organizational initiatives were modeled after things we were doing at the Caller-Times, so there will be no massive shake up as far as jobs. Job descriptions, however, have changed. We are no longer "reporters" and "photographers." Now we are all "Multimedia Journalists."

Yeah, I know. Anyone who's worked in a newsroom the last five years has probably heard this before. I myself was a bit skeptical. I've been told several times (at more than one paper) that its time to be web focused. Usually I get all excited and try to immerse myself in multimedia. Unfortunately after a month or so everyone goes back to being reporters and photographers, and no one seems to want to invest the time or resources needed to do good multimedia. This time, it may be different. I'm told everyone in the newsroom is going to be held accountable for doing their share of videos, web updates, blogs, tweets, etc. And with the orders coming straight from corporate, we are suppose to see a real investment in new media. I'm really hoping it will be different.

So in my first week as a "Multimedia journalist," I put together two videos. One in a couple of hours on deadline, and the other in about a day and a half.

They both turned out well, I thought, but the second one I really enjoyed. I saw an ad in our paper about a piano sale at the university, and had visions of a room full of pianos just begging to be played. After a couple phone calls and some vaguely grounded reasoning, I had a willing subject.

With the new initiative, we were told we don't really need permission to do things (at least that what I took from it). If you have an idea, just do it. If a reporter wants to take their own photos, go for it (God help us). If I want to pull a student away from studying the week before finals and force him to play the same song over and over for my amusement, have at it.

He was actually a great sport, super cooperative and a pleasure to work with. I should take a lesson or two from him.

(P.S. Sorry, about the auto play. I manipulated the embed code a bit to get the bigger video size on my blog, but then couldn't stop it from playing as soon as it loaded.)

November Moments

Where did November go? It didn't exist on my blog, apparently, but I promise I was still shooting. I've struggled a bit staying focused for one reason or another, but I'm trying to get back on track. Today I was going through photos for the NPPA monthly clip contest, and these moments stood out to me. I thought I'd share them with you.

The Special Olympics held a bowling competition last month. I've never been a fan of shooting in bowling alleys, but I really liked how this photo came out. Like all three of these images, its kind of a quiet, subtle photo. I love quiet and subtle. I want to move their and open up my own photo studio.

Above is from an Opera dress rehearsal. I've been lucky to get backstage at a couple of local productions this past month. The back stage scene can make for great photos. I found this one particularly pleasant.

And finally a moment of prayer at a local Veterans Day ceremony. They prayed for the recent victims of the Fort Hood shooting, but its a clean, patriotic image that stands alone no matter what the situation.

In other news, I've been suddenly thrust back into the night shift this week. Hopefully leaving the cushy day shift slot I've had the last 5 months will be just the shakeup I need to refocus on making good photos. We shall see.

CAUTION! ZOMBIES!!!

Last weekend I got to go out and shoot the Thrill the World event, the world-wide, simultaneous performance of the dance from Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Actually, I really wanted to be in it, but since I couldn't convince anyone to do it with me I thought shooting it would be the next best thing. It happened later than I would have liked (about 7:30 local time), but I thought it was worth it. The dancers had to dance at exactly 7:30 to be in sync with the rest of the world. So it's possibly the first event I've covered in Corpus Christi that actually started on time.


They had a little Zombie parade around the parking lot before the performance when there was still a little bit of fading light outside. By the time 7:30 rolled around it was pitch black. Fortunately they set up some lights for the dance.

Most of the time I was there, though, there wasn't much going on. All the zombies were told to show up already dressed and ready to go, so there was little primping and prepping outfits or makeup. They did a run through inside the dance studio, but mostly it was just waiting.





So they didn't break the record for most zombies in one place (I think Los Angeles won it this year), but it was still good times.

I didn't shoot this, but if you are interested there's video here of the Corpus Christi performance. Maybe next year you'll see my zombied face somewhere in the crowd. I'll totally show those kids how its done.

Reader Feedback

It's rare I get feedback from...well, anybody on the day-to-day photos I shoot. Readers, however, are especially slow to tell me what they think of my work, good or bad.


So today I came to the office and was pleased to find an email note saying a reader had called to complement one of my photos. How nice! I immediately thought they must be talking about the pumpkin patch photos I shot yesterday. The ones that graced the front page of the paper. People love photos of children and gourd-like vegetables. But I was wrong. Here's the message:

Compliment michael zamora on his tor minerals photograph on the business section this morning. Keep up the good work he says.

Tor Minerals? That archive business mug I shot more than a year ago? I mean, I'll take a compliment where ever I can get it, but I don't remember that photo being all that engaging. I quickly flipped to the business page to see the photo that had so moved a reader that he had to call. That's where I found the huge four-column vertical. If only my pumpkin photos had run that big.

I think the important lesson is, size matters. That Tor Minerals photos was bigger than all three of my front page photos combined. If the business photo had only run, say, 1 column, would it have still been impressive to the reader?

My second reader interaction came about 10 minutes later when the phone rang. It was the mother of a drive-by shooting victim. Talk about quickly shifting gears. I had taken pictures of her, her family and her neighbors at a candlelight vigil a week or so ago. At the time there were still questions swirling about the shooting, if it was gang related and who was the intended target. It was all very sad, yet very surreal. It was a poor neighborhood where crime seemed to be something you just lived with. It's a whole different lifestyle than what I'm used to. A lifestyle that is probably far more common in this city than I realize.






Anyway, she wasn't calling to compliment me. She was calling to complain that we were selling the photos of her daughter's vigil on our Web site. She said she never gave us her authorization to sell the photos, and she was upset we were trying to profit from her daughter's death. That business photo compliment was looking better already.

I was kind of caught off guard, and started to babble about how we don't need permission to sell the photos we shoot. That didn't really help. I tried to explain how the "Buy this photo" option is a default setting on our site and that we weren't trying to make a profit specifically on this event. I could tell I wasn't coming off very compassionate, but really, I was just kind of frazzled. I told her I was sorry she was upset, took her number down and told her I would forward her complaint to the online editor. That's when her phone started cutting out and the line eventually disconnected. I tried calling her back so I could back up the conversation and tell her how I was sorry for her loss or that I understood why she was upset, but there was no answer. In the end, the online editor quickly turned off the sale option for those photos on the Web site.

But now I felt bad. So I went to our archivist's office and asked if we had actually sold any of those candlelight vigil photos. I was curious, but mostly I wanted to clear my own conscious. She said no, thankfully.

She did say, however, that my swimming with Olympians photos from a couple of weeks ago were doing pretty well. That brought back the smile to my face. The only other way I know readers like what I shoot is through photo sales. Every month we get a rundown of how photo sales on the Web site are doing. I always like seeing that list, especially when a reader buys a photo that I really like.

It was a pretty cool event. Three Olympic gold medalists (Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen and Rowdy Gaines) came to town to give a little clinic on open water swimming. It was a morning assignment, so I knew if I tried to shoot it from the beach I would get nothing but far away, backlit photos. So I brought my swimming trunks to work and carefully waded out into the bay as swimmers splashed around me. It's all fun and games until you get saltwater on your camera. "Is that thing water proof?" Peirsol asked. No, unfortunately...but OMG Aaron Peirsol just talked to me! I get star struck easily sometimes. I wanted to ask him to sign my trunks, but I didn't have a pen. And I was chest deep in water. And it probably wouldn't have been very appropriate.