hunt & shoot

picking up roughly where i left off last, my week began with a very bad soccer game (which is why i have nothing worth really taking up any net space...barely got anything worth taking up the newspaper space!), but after the first half of that, i had to head out, cos it was a skate party for students and family of a local school who had vowed to give up technology for the week, opting for more interactive activities instead....hence roller skating night

and night is indeed an apropos term, as when i got there it was pretty much pitch black except for the spotlight casting a small sweet spot of light as it bounced off the disco ball center-rink, and a couple other color light spots at the perimeter...it's "cosmic skate" time, which might be cool for the kids, but for me, not so much.....asa 6400, f2.8, and i still couldn't get above a 30th of a second at my brightest point - egads i think to myself....are they going to do this the whole time? i ask the school woman in charge..."i don't know...they just turned off the lights right before you got here"

yes, well, of course they did....so, here's what i got....kind of had to wait for someone to get into the light and then basically not be whizzing by...would have worked better if there had been more motion swirling around this kid, but i tried and tried and that moment just never came together...i'm sure there was a cooler picture there, but i wasn't getting it, and after an hour, when they announced on the mic that now it was going to get even darker and more "cosmic" i had hit my tipping point...i.e. skate night done

on my way home, i drove past this house with their xmas manger scene in the front windows...just made me do a double-take

next day, nothing on the schedule, and after sitting at the office doing whatever officey kind of work i could for a few hours, i went looking for a feature....ended up at the mall just shooting kids visiting the Easter Bunny, which to 1-year-old kids is just this weird big fuzzy thing that's either a sheer curiosity or absolutely frightening...this kid fell in the former camp

saturday, easter egg hunt in a south county park...i always go into these with the highest of hopes and resolve, but rarely leave feeling satisfied with my efforts, and this year's event didn't manage to break that record, unfortunately

shot a feature of kids on the playground before the hunt started

and then this one was what i picked from the actual egg hunting...if anyone has cracked the code to getting a good egg hunt picture, i'd LOVE to hear it!

after that, went to a funeral for a vet where the story (well, not really a story, cos it's a stand-alone feature foto....which was kind of weird) was that local members of the Patriot Guard - biker vets who stand outside funerals with large flags, then lead the procession to the cemetery, would be attending...got a more standard pic, but i was trying for something more and shot this, which they also ran as a secondary, buut i'm not sure how well it accomplishes what i was trying for - kind of hard to read

anyway....

on to this half of the week posting, came in to a couple assignments yesterday - people shooting on the indoor range of a sport shooting club which will be rebuilt this summer since it is very old and in disrepair...just as i'm getting out of my car i get a text - man holed up in trailer park, shots fired - call the editor on desk - they're not sure what's going on, go ahead and shoot something here and call back....

so, i shoot as they shoot, then tell them i gotta go, cos someone else is apparently shooting, but not for sport...and i make my way to the trailer park, whereupon i am immediately stopped by state police saying, this is as far as you go...only i'm at the entrance, and the incident is in the back of the park....hmmm, no bueno....so i shoot the 2 troopers redirecting people, then i look at her map of the park and see that i may be able to get closer to where it is if i go to a side entry, so off i go, and although there is a police car parked there, no one's in it, so i go around, and bam, i'm right there....of course a few minutes after getting there i see the tv truck from detroit that had gotten stopped at the previous entrance pulling up from the other way...so clearly detroit tv can get access to the scene, but we, the local press, have to find back doors - lame!

anyway, despite all the high security, residents, including toddlers, were roaming freely among the area to watch as the swat team and detectives work the situation...and the guy (who apparently decided to give up instead of getting into a full-on fire fight with his very large cache of weapons - ak-47's included) was in custody, so there wasn't anything really insane going on to shoot, but i got what i could

found out later, he's a not-too stable dooms-dayer sort who believes the world is ending may 21st....

now, personally, if i really thought the world was coming to an end in a mere 3 weeks, i don't think i'd opt to spend them sitting in jail...

but that's just me

this morning, after getting some office stuff done, i headed out to the new location of a veteran's assistance office....shot the people working there interacting more with each other, since no vets were coming in or had appointments, and had just stopped home for a spot of lunch when i got a text....

fire at a multi-unit apartment building....

throw things in fridge, quickly text "on my way" and off i go

flames out, but there were tons of residents out, including a guy who just got home from work to discover his apartment was right next to the one in which the fire started...

and later came upon the woman who discovered the fire as she was coming to provide home-care to the man whose place had caught fire - dropped cigarette into sofa - she got there, saw smoke and kicked in the door and basically hauled this guy out...he likely would have died had she not responded, so her super joked that she was getting a promotion for being a hero

so, 2 spot news events back-to-back....who knows what tomorrow brings!