NCAA Football Recruiting
I shot a portrait of Tim Scott, a football player from Colonial Forge High School in Stafford, to illustrate a story about college football recruiting. In retrospect, there were a few technical details I should have addressed. In particular, I think I should have hit the front of the box with a little light as well as the background to minimize that shadow a bit.
Colonial Forge rising senior Tim Scott, holding a box of his recruitment letters, photographed at his home in Stafford, VA, on July 21, 2010 (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Caroline County Agricultural Fair
Cadence Ferguson, 6, gets a hand from her mother Tiffany Satterwhite, of Beaverdam, as she covers herself in a bin of corn at the Caroline County Agricultural Fair in Ruther Glen, VA on July 2, 2010. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
From left, Erica Glines, 11, Rose Sargent, 10, Millie Sargent, 12 and Melissa Trent watch ducklings at the Caroline County Agricultural Fair in Ruther Glen, VA on July 2, 2010. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Don’t Run with Giant Scissors
My weekend wishes were fulfilled with a ribbon-cutting assignment. I’m pretty sure when they cut the ribbon I did not look through the viewfinder. Such is the power of my protest of these sorts of assignments. Maybe I should shoot a personal project on the people that manufacture golden shovels and giant scissors. If nothing else, it would as compelling as most of the work I’ve done lately. I knew it was a picture we wouldn’t run and I was more interested in the renovated building and exhibit anyway…
Visitors to the renovated Montpelier train depot examine the segregated waiting rooms and the exhibit entitled In the Time of Segregation on February 21, 2010 in Montpelier, Va. The room on the left had a sign over the door labeled 'Colored' and the room on the right had one labeled 'White.' (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Visitors are reflected in and seen through a window looking into the segregated waiting room, labeled 'Colored,' at the newly-renovated Montpelier train depot at James Madison's Montpelier in Orange County, Va on February 21, 2010. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Journalist and author Juan Williams was the featured speaker at the opening of the newly-renovated Montpelier Train Depot on February 21, 2010. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
First Assignment of 2010: New Year’s Baby
Emily Alejandra Hernandez was born at 1:05am to Silvia Hernandez Berrera and Emilio Vega at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, Va on Jan. 1, 2010. Emily is the first baby born in the Fredericksburg area in the new year.
Walking in the Woods
Jason Applegate, a natural resources specialist at Fort A.P. Hill, stands amid a grove of bald cypress trees near a live-fire range on the installation on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009. Several of the trees are estimated to date from the early- to mid-nineteenth century. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
I started out the day at Fort A.P. Hill working on a story about environmental stewardship on the base. Jason Applegate, who I discovered is a fellow Penn Stater, took me to a few spots on post including a grove of bald cypress, apparently the farthest inland grove in Virginia, an eagle nest, a low impact parking lot as well a couple other spots. It was nice to start the day outdoors and try and light a tree with two strobes. It’s no National Geographic action, but it works. Here’s a few more:
A bald cypress stands in a grove near a live-fire range at Fort A.P. Hill. The installation was given the DoD's Eagle Award in recognition of environmental stewardship efforts at the installation. The tree is estimated to be over 150 years old. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
One of the environmental efforts underway at A.P. Hill is a Low Impact Development parking lot that reduces run-off by using permeable materials rather than a pad of asphalt. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Looking down a tube that protects seedlings from hungry deer.
Recent Daily Work
A week or two ago I was sent up to Colonial Beach, the so-called Playground of the Potomac, to get a picture to illustrate a story about some proposed beach ordinances that on face-value, appeared to eliminate fun and/or shenanigans at the beach. Locals the reporter and I spoke to suggested it was directed specifically Latino people. I suppose the bottom line is why would you do anything to drive tourists away, especially these days when a place like CB could benefit from those who would ordinarily be going to the Outer Banks or Delmarva. Anyway, here’s the photo I came up with:
Pedro Marquez, of Manassas, gathers up his fishing poles after fishing along the Potomac River in Colonial Beach, Va. on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2009. Several ordinances have been proposed that would restrict certain activities including fishing from the beach. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
I’ve said before that I like shooting sports and some days a bad game is still better than some of the dross that passes for journalism but I think I need to draw the line at high school volleyball. I think part of this stems from my lack of interest in this sport and part of it is the awful high school venues – bad light, cluttered backgrounds. All that aside, in an effort to clean up the ugly backgrounds, I went up into the bleachers to shoot down on the action and came up with this:
Colonial Forge's Erin Godshall (#12) and Morgan Hymes (#15) collide as they both attempt to return a shot against Mountain View on Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Despite my dislike of volleyball, here is a series called The Season by my friend Scott at the Chicago Tribune about a high school volleyball team. Proof that sports is about so much more than just game action. Good stuff!
TGFF*
*thank god for football
I tend to get down in the wintertime. I guess it is the cold and the gray skies. My wife on the other hand told me she can’t stand the summer, especially August. Come to think of it, I don’t like it either. And not just because I sweat like a pig at a sausage factory. I think it’s because there is no football. But that is all behind me. Football season is in full swing and I am beginning to get into midseason form. I must admit my first two weeks were pretty ugly – think of it as the photographic version of the Redskins!
Plus I decided to change up my approach. Last season I toted a 400mm lens to most of the games I covered and the ‘look’ began to get a little stale so this season, I decided to go a little looser with a 300mm. The longer lens gave me a little less reason to move around and find different angles. I would sit in a general area, pop on a teleconverter and wait for the action to come to me. Now I’m staying much closer to the line of scrimmage and moving more. So thank you to SI’s Robert Beck and his article at sportsshooter.com for motivating me to change up my game!
So here are a few pictures from some recent prep games. The puddle one was from the first game of the season. I think its an ‘almost’ -too quiet a picture for the paper. Probably too quiet a picture to ever see the light of day, really. I think I need to make an effort this season to take some time at each Friday night game to make more ‘flavor’ pictures. Mostly because the action is usually fairly lackluster. That is my mission tomorrow night!
Massaponax players, reflected in a puddle following heavy rain, watch their teammates warm up prior to the start of Friday's game against Spotsylvania. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Christian Barham, center, and his Eagle teammates listen to the pregame prayer before the start of Fredericksburg Christian School's first football game. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Chancellor's Tony Russell tries to avoid Massaponax's Andre Wyche on a punt return during Friday's game at Massaponax. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Massaponax football players lay their hands on a stone with a plaque honoring Ryan McGhee, a Massaponax graduate who died in Iraq, before the start of Friday's game against Chancellor. His jersey, number 33, was also retired. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Covering Local Government
Last night I was sent to cover a meeting of the Spotsylvania County Board of Supervisors as they held a public hearing and vote on whether or not to join the Virginia Railway Express. It started at 6:30 and my deadline was 10pm. I figured that was plenty of time. I wasn’t expecting to make a particularly great picture but the decision to join has been argued back and forth for nearly two decades. A fair number of people turned out to support and oppose the county joining. Arguments included everything from opposition to a new 2% gas tax, to the morality of joining or not joining, that supporting VRE is just another example of socialism, that it would improve the quality of life, that it would bring revenue to the county and somebody even floated the idea that VRE is unconstitutional. The public comment portion wrapped right around 9pm and I was excited – plenty of time to get the vote in and beat my deadline. I’d be home in no time.
I should have started out by saying that I do not regularly cover local government meetings and I now have a new respect for my colleagues on those beats. After the public comment had ended, the supervisors started talking. And talking. And then another one would talk – no wonder this process has been going on for years.
9:30 rolled around, still talking.
9:45, more talk.
9:50, now I’m getting nervous.
9:55, and I am trying my best to employ a jedi mind trick on the chairman, “This is the time to vote. Vote now. Do it!” Alas, it didn’t work.
9:58, I’m sending text messages to the office saying the vote will happen any minute if only these guys will stop listening to themselves talk. The crowd was kind of keyed up and I wanted a reaction picture so I held off on sending anything.
A couple of minutes after 10, they vote to join VRE but with the provision that the date be moved to February 2010, after any new supervisors take their seats, essentially opening the door to another vote and the possibility of NOT joining. Read reporter Dan Telvock’s story here. The reaction picture I was hoping for didn’t happen and the pictures I moved could have been sent a hour earlier. So, 4 hours and 3 mediocre pictures later I stood in the parking lot, transmitted pictures and contemplated punching myself in the face.
Some recent work
I haven’t had many positive things to say and I’m trying to minimize my griping about the newspaper business. I guess I should address that soon though as it has a bearing on my work. In the meantime, here are a few pictures from recent assignments including the Redskins/Ravens preseason game, a balloon festival, the start of high school football practice, the area’s sole remaining cannery and a portrait of a young man heading to college.
Samantha Schuldt, 10, of Fredericksburg, holds onto line attached to a 1/4-scale balloon while pilots waiting for fog to dissipate at the Annual Balloon Festival at The Flying Circus Aerodrome in Bealeton, Va. on Saturday, August 15, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Children stand inside of Richmond resident Bubba Winslow's balloon at the Annual Balloon Festival at The Flying Circus Aerodrome in Bealeton, Va. on Saturday, August 15, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Washington Redskins punter Hunter Smith punts the ball from deep in Redskins territory. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Washington Redskins tight end Fred Davis fumbles the ball in the second quarter of the first preseason game in Baltimore, Md. on August 13, 2009. Davis recovered the ball on the play. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Caroline County High School graduate Marcel Anderson is heading to Norfolk State to start college on Saturday. photographed at his Doswell home on August 12, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Andrew Lucas, a football player at Fredericksburg Christian School, take a water break during the first day of practice on August 10, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
John Brown pulls a basket of tomatoes from a steamer at the Caroline County Cannery near Bowling Green on August 6, 2009. The Cannery nearly closed but will remain opne for at least another year. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Deep In The Weeds
A few days after I returned from Key West, my boss Dave went on vacation for just about two weeks, leaving me in charge. I was kind of looking forward to it as I figured the dead of summer would be a nice time to ease into the management chair. It turned out that juggling my assignment load along with the duties of managing a department led not only to a few long days but also a much better appreciation for what a department manager does. The short explanation is that it pretty much sucks.
There is enormous pressure to keep everybody within their allotted hours and still put together the jigsaw puzzle that is our photogs’ schedules and the assignment load. Toss in the assignment requests that didn’t make it back to photo and are now last minute ‘emergencies’, strange requests from various people, reprint orders, along with the two daily budget meetings and it can make for long days. Especially since I still need to perform my staff photographer duties along with playing photo editor.
In some ways it was good to see that part of the newsroom process. In others it was bad because when I did shoot assignments, I often only had 30 minutes instead of the hour or two I normally would have preferred. I had more than a few discussions about why reporters just can’t go out and take a picture, that its more than pushing a button, why ‘good enough’ is precisely the reason the industry is in trouble and I got a little better at saying ‘no.’ That is probably my biggest weakness – I didn’t say no enough. I wanted the paper to look good, I wanted there to be lots of good, storytelling pictures in it and so I tried to be accommodating. That ideal butts up against the very real barriers of time and money, both of which management is now primarily preoccupied. It is sad that journalism takes a backseat but that’s the way it is, I guess.
The upside is that I gained a better appreciation for my job as a photographer and what I like and dislike about newspaper photojournalism. Either way, as of Monday I get to be a photographer again and do what I do best. Here are a few pictures from the last couple weeks that didn’t suck too bad:
Jad Abielmona, 4, (left) and Mazen Abielmona ride the smaller of the two Ferris wheels at the Fredericksburg Agricultural Fair during a preview on Thursday, July 23, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Brianna Kline, 6, of Spotsylvania rides the merry-go-round at the Fredericksburg Agricultural Fair on Thursday, July 23, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Michael Covington rehearses his Michael Jackson routine at the Fredericksburg Agricultural Fair on Friday, July 24, 2009. Covington was slated to perform during an intermission of the Miss Fredericksburg Pageant. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Colleen Johnson, owner of Fantasy Face Painting at her Ruther Glen home on July 27, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Fredericksburg native Keller Williams performs at Celebrate Virginia Live on Friday, July 31, 2009 in Fredericksburg, Va. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Mini Michael Jackson
Saw young Michael Covington as I wandered around the Fredericksburg Agricultural Fair looking for a feature. I’ve been incredibly deep in the weeds lately and haven’t had much motivation to write about it. Maybe this weekend…
A few snaps from up high
As I mentioned, Dellis and I climbed up St George’s for fireworks pix. Here are a few extras:
Fxbg fireworks time-lapse
Fireworks explode over Fredericksburg, Va on Saturday, July 4, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Director of Photography Dave Ellis and I climbed up the scaffolding around St. George’s Episcopal church in Fredericksburg the other night to photograph the fireworks with the city in the foreground. The plan was to take several cameras up, each with a different lens, and trigger the cameras at intervals and then put all the pictures together into a time-lapse video. We got up there insanely early and began setting up the cameras. In the end, we had two mounted and firing intervals and each of us had a camera that we would trigger on our own. As it happened, Dave’s camera was in a less than ideal position as we miscalculated the position of the show in relation to the foreground. My frames were OK but with only one perspective, it is kind of a boring video. I wouldn’t say the thing is a total failure but it didn ‘t rise to the levels I had hoped. On the upside, from our vantage point we spotted a few locations around downtown that might serve as better positions to photograph from next year. Click on the image above to see the show.
AA state tennis championship
James Monroe sophomore Caleb Rapkins competes in the VHSL AA singles tennis championship at Radford University in Radford Va. on Thursday, June 4, 2009. Rapkins defeated William Byrd's Brennan Escobar 6-1, 6-1 in the semifinal but fell to Salem's Patrick O'Keefe 6-1, 6-0 in the final. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
AA Track
I spent last Saturday in Harrisonburg shooting the AA state track meet. Aside from surly meet officials and quite possibly the worst case of allergies i’ve ever encountered, it was a fairly uneventful meet. It was originally projected that the Louisa County boys team would win if their winter track results were any indicator. They blew away the compeition in the winter but it looked like they struggled on Saturday. It came down to the final event, the 1600-meter relay. They were in the fast heat and finsihed third there but placed 8th overall as a couple teams in the early heat posted better than expected times. I didn’t really have much of a reaction picture aside from some tired kids sitting around on the ground but the frame never really came together. That’s the trouble with trying to layer a complex picture; either everything comes together perfectly and you have a deep picture or something is out of place and the whole thing doesn’t work. Should kept it simple, I guess! Anyway, here are two frames, one of the girls 400-meter run state champion and the first handoff in the boys’ 1600-meter relay.
Orange County's Ashontae Jackson launches from the starting blocks in the 400-meter run at the AA state track meet at Harrisonburg High School in Harrisonburg, Va, on Saturday, May 30, 2009. Jackson won the state title with a time of 56.68 seconds. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Louisa's Brandon Payne, left, hands the baton to Brandon Parker in the 1600-meter relay at the AA state track meet at Harrisonburg High School in Harrisonburg, Va, on Saturday, May 30, 2009. Louisa placed eighth in the event, giving them only enough points to place third overall. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Tomorrow the AA state sports jubilee begins at Radford University. So far there is a local tennis player and a softball team. There likely will be a girls soccer match as well. So, this afternoon I’ll make the trek down to Radford. In years past, the area has had a lot more representation and consequently it took more staffers to cover the weekend’s events. Now, not so much. Plus it looks like the softball and soccer will be going on at the same time, so I’ll have to make some decisions as to how I go about getting to both and still get some storytelling images.
Daily Grind – Business Portrait
Mary Petro at Mt. Olympus Berry Farm in Ruther Glen, VA. Petro runs Farm 2 Family Direct, a delivery service for locally-produced food. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
I shot this last week for the paper’s business section. Every week we have a profile on a local business owner. For a while we got an endless stream of cube dwellers which resulted in an endless stream of man-and-his-computer pictures. Lately there has been an opportunity to meet some interesting people doing interesting things. In my conversation with Mary, she reminded me that there is TON of locally-produced food. Everything from fruits and veggies to meat and dairy products. I think i should make an effort to check that out a little more often…
The tech information: Nikon D300, ISO200, 17mm, f4.5, 1/2000 sec. I used the pop-up flash to trigger a small softbox i was holding off to the left. Gotta love Nikon’s flash systems!
I’ll make an effort to post the tech stuff for the three people out there that care…
Ferry Test
I got up obscenely early this morning to ride aboard a ferry as part of a test run to see how ferry service would work. I and transportation reporter Kelly Hannon got on board the Providence III in Occoquan and went up to several locations in and around DC. Since it was just a test the only people aboard were local politicians and planners and a few reporters, meaning that pictures were few and far between. I did take a moment near the Wilson Bridge to play with the iPhone and the TiltShift app. Right now we’re between ft belvoir and Indian head. Hopefully we will get back soon…
South Carolina Confederate Memorial
- Members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans from Virginia and South Carolina erected a memorial to honor Confederate soldiers from South Carolina at the Bloody Angle in the Spotsylvania Courthouse Battlefield on April 10, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
*I corrected this to read Spotsy Courthouse. I originally identified it as the Wilderness*
A few weeks ago I was assigned to cover the installation of a new monument at the Spotsylvania Courthouse battlefield. The pictures were OK – guys with a crane, big slabs of marble – but they weren’t very interesting. Unless, I suppose, you are really into the Civil War War of Northern Aggression (full disclosure- I am a Yankee who had a relative from New York fight with the Irish Brigade and I have returned to lay claim to my portion of the plantation!).
All joking aside, I find the history of the war interesting and in fact photographed a great-great-grandson of U.S. Grant the other day. When you move here, it is tough not to be even marginally interested as the places you read about in history books – Wilderness, Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor, Fredericksburg, Petersburg, Manassas – are all here or at least very close by. I admit to not fully ‘getting’ the whole reenactor thing but far be it from me to judge another man’s hobby. Granted it includes camping out and firing cannon so it can’t be all bad! But I digress…
The installation pictures were lackluster so I decided to return as the sun began to set so I could shoot a nice still life of the monument. Turns out the Park Service has nothing to do with the purchasing and installing of monuments; it is done by private groups. The Park provides guidelines towards what is appropriate and ensures the information on the monument is correct.
Anyway, the sun was getting a bit orange but I wanted a little more dramatic picture so I set a flash off to the left to illuminate the flag as well as add a bit of dimension to the monument. I set another to the right with a warming gel on it to add to the sun’s effect. Finally I set the white balance on my camera to ‘shade’ as that has a warmer tone to it as well. In the end, the flash to the right added very little to the image aside from a little fill on the bottom right corner. As soon as I get to the office, I’ll add another photo showing the set-up and what it looked like from another angle. I must say that after spending an hour puttering around shooting a relatively easy picture was the most fun I had in a while. I guess it had to do with the problem-solving nature of the image and I didn’t have to deal with anybody who was self-concious in front of the camera. Plus it was one of the first really nice days and I was on a serene battlefield that at one time was the site of some of the most horrific fighting of the war. It even gave this Yankee reason to pause and reflect on why people continue to remember the war.
Tax Day Tea Party in Fredericksburg
Don Giles of Fredericksburg carries a sign during a Tax Day Tea Party at which people protested what they see as excessive taxation and government spending outside the Fredericksburg Post Office on April 15, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
I was assigned to cover a tax day tea party in the Burg yesterday. At first I wanted to do portraits of some of the people and record some audio of them explaining why they showed up. When I arrived, I found a lot more people than originally expected. They were packed into a fairly small area so I bagged my original idea and just tried to get the flavor of the scene. Sadly there were no counter-protesters so it was difficult to find much more than sign pictures. Anyway, here’s a little slideshow I put together in Final Cut Pro, which I am quickly warming up to. Now I just need to improve my video skills…
Anyway, I’ve been quiet lately and need to post a backlog of pictures and news so look for that soon.
Daily Grind: Spring-time, pigs and Kung-Fu
Players from SASA Stafford Strikers and the Loudon 96 Black congratulate each other following a game at Dixon Street Park in Fredericksburg on March 22, 2009. Soccer players from Virginia and Maryland converged on fields around Stafford and Fredericksburg on the first weekend of spring. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Craig Willits runs Spotsylvania Black Belt Academy. Pictured with his daughter-in-law Samantha, and sons Steven (center) and David (right). (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Betsey Lukens, a P-1 teacher at Hartwood Elementary school, leans in to kiss Daisy the pig. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Kaicelia Goodwin, a P1 student at Hartwood, screams as one of Hartwood's teachers kisses Daisy the pig during an assembly on March 19, 2009. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
The last couple weeks have been kind of busy with the VNPA annual conference last weekend, the All-Area sportrait series and a handful of regular, grind assignments in there, including first days of spring, a business portrait of a matial arts school owner and a perennial favorite among organs of community journalism, a pig-kissing event at a school to promote reading. I sat through 40 minutes of pig-kissing. The funny thing is that for the students, especially the girl pictured above, it never got old.
Daily Grind – Week of Basketball
I’ve been on night shift this week shooting various regional basketball games. I made the decision to light most of the venues using SB-800 strobes at 45-degree angles to the top of the key. If you can get your lights high enough, you can produce some nice-looking images. However if you’re not careful, you can get some pretty ugly shadows. Sports Illustrated it ain’t but it will do on a budget. For the first part of the season I wasshooting Nikon D3′s with no lights, just the ISO cranked up. It was nice to be able to bang off a bunch of pictures though the downside was that the images looked kind of flat. So, I brought in the lights which give you a little punch but unfortunately kind of limit your movement as you can get some serious lens flare if you are not careful. With the state tournament coming up, I think I might go back to the no-light set-up if only because the pictures all look the same. Well lit maybe but definitely redundant. Anyway, here’s a slideshow of a week’s worth of high school hoops:
The Daily Grind
A few weeks back after seeing another photographer do this, I thought it would be a good idea to just put up a picture from every assignment, not just the very best. The idea essentially is to push myself to do better daily work through an exercise in public humiliation. In my case only a handful of people see this thing, so there really isn’t much pressure! Anyway, I did indeed find myself thinking about it more often while on assignment so I guess it was working in some ways. Clearly by looking at the work I may disagree with myself on that statement too! Anyway, here is a slideshow of the Daily Grind posts:
