Humbug

This won’t be my first go-round (or second… or third…) with the holiday season as a news photographer, and I admit with some regret that I’ve turned into a total Scrooge.

Cheap Shot

whattheduck.net

hahahaaaaa *sigh*

…

I’m back. Sort of. Maybe. I’ve been pretty sick lately for the past month and a half, and I haven’t had much energy for doing anything but sleeping in my spare time. Lo siento, amigos.

Distraction

It’s been a very long and… uh… interesting! week for me. I need a good distraction. And what’s a better distraction than some of your favorite things all together at the same time? So for the hell of it, here’s Johnny Cash playing ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’ on the Muppet Show.

If only I had a box of Fiddle Faddle my life would seem complete right now. Oh well.

Allrighty then. Happy Thursday.

Friday Night Lights: Model v. Adairsville

Second game I covered this past Friday was the Model-Adairsville game, at Model. Yay new lights. Like Armuchee, it’s the third week in a row I covered Model football.  Um… yeah. Widely debated amongst the media on the sidelines, many of whom saw their game against rivals Armuchee last week… I think they did better this game than last. Overall seemed less sloppy to me.  Some people would disagree.

Don’t really know what to say other than that. I sorta feel bad for the kids. They just keep getting their asses handed to them. It’s not that they’re really that bad, but they’ve played a lot of good teams early in the season and they just haven’t quite got it all together yet. Think sorta like the Little Giants before the heartwarming ending.

Friday Night Lights: Armuchee v. Chattooga

I covered the Armuchee Indians game for an unprecedented third week in a row. I don’t think I’ve ever covered any particular team three weeks in a row. Funny how schedules work out. I don’t really mind, because the Armuchee coaches and team are always very nice and helpful and overall Not Assholes, and the fans are great too. Fans are what really makes the experience. Some teams (not naming no names), kids make out in the bushes and parents stand around in their loafers talking on their fancy phones, enjoying the smell of their own farts and worrying everyone will think they’ll look stupid if they cheer. Other teams the group of painted kids wearing nipple tassels and spray painted traffic cones on their heads spot you from halfway across the field and go totally apeshit until you take their picture, and it continues throughout the night. And the apeshit doesn’t stop if their team is losing. They are in attendance every single game without fail, they have front row seats – even if they rarely stay in them – and they ARE fans.

Since it was homecoming, they left the traffic cones at home this week. Painted tuxedo vests and bowties all, you know, it says I want to be formal, but I’m here to party.

This week Indians were playing… the Indians. Both Armuchee and Chattooga were undefeated this season. For extra sad and sentimental, both schools also lost a student this week. Armuchee senior Cesalie Henson was killed outside the school in a car wreck. Chattooga student Nicky Osley (freshman, I think – he was 14) was killed when he was swept away by flood waters. Story is Osley and a friend saw a Jeep being overcome by a flash flood in the road and thought someone was trapped inside. They dove in the water to go help before anyone could stop them. His friend was rescued. They found Osley in a flooded cornfield the next day. Those sorts of situations are never easy, but I think they are particularly tough on small schools (such as these), because when there are only 500 or so of you, pretty much everybody knows everybody. Sad stuff.

Camo

It’s Thursday and I am still buried in paperwork and legal crap and have seems like a bazillion things to finish before I got into work in two hours and the dog is making me crazy and oh look!… a wee baby whitetail deer

Wee baby white tail deer, Berry College mountain campus, July 2009

Rome Beerfest 2009

For two years now, the Rome Area Council for the Arts has held a fundraiser that pretty much entails getting wasted and making a complete ass out of yourself in a public park downtown. I’m not entirely sure if that is what they had in mind when this thing started, but whatever. It’s a beer festival. You primarily get two kinds of people at beer festivals. You get your variety of hoity toity self-described beer connoisseurs (or whatever) who enjoy sipping weird beer and sniffing their own farts, and you’ve got your generic Joe Public who likes beer, likes small souvenir beer mugs and other free crap, and likes any semi-decent opportunity to get punk in drublic. And there are the happy medium people, but they’re generally less interesting (joking). When it’s been raining for days on end and it’s still raining, and the outdoor festival isn’t moved inside, you’re to weed through the lightweights and get the real troopers. Here’s to you, lovers of beer.

I feel like I’ve been a little off photo-wise all weekend. There is a disturbance in the force. Some crap like that. I did what I could. In addition to problems with my viewfinder fogging up and running out of dry cloth to clean with with (did I mention it was raining so hard after less than two hours even my bra was soaked through-and-through?) I found it exceedingly difficult to get an actual photo of someone actually drinking beer. Unfortunately, I had other things going on and didn’t arrive at said booze-o-rama until it was about half way finished, and everyone was already gone.  In a very crowded area surrounded by people who are extremely sensitive to cameras, it’s hard to be sneaky enough to get a candid shot without a WOOOOOHOOOOOO or YEEEEEEHAW some variety thereof.

Oh also, there was mud wrestling.

So I did what I could with the photos and the gallery, and just tried to capture the spirit of the beerfest, candid or not. Though I’m pretty sure even if it isn’t technically candid, when you’re as drunk as most of the people there were, it still counts as candid. Whatever. Hooray beer.

Caged

Softball was rained out. Again.

Night shift in September means you shoot quite a lot of sports, which is great, except its also rampant out-of-nowhere storm season, so you also spend a lot of time getting soaking wet shooting not-sports that would have been sports except said sporting event was rained out. But we need art and everything can’t come from the wire. So get photos of them not playing whatever sport because of the rain.

Happiness Is…

Happiness is a fuzzy bone from the Dollar Tree…

Governor’s Cup College Football

So Saturday I shot Shorter College Hawks’ home opener and my first college football game since the NAIA Championships last December. Feels good to shoot college ball again. For extra fun, this game was the Governor’s Cup. I have no idea what that means. Except if you win, you get a big shiny cup and a grip-and-grin photo op. And if you lose, you do not get a big shiny cup and a grip-and-grin photo op.

Yes, this game had all the awesome of your college generic not-division-one college football game.

There were touchdown runs…

which of course led to some very graceful touchdowns…