Looking Back on 2009
Here is a quick slideshow of some of my pictures from 2009. For lack of a better term I’ve titled them my best but that may not be totally accurate nor would calling them my favorites. I suppose when I think of my experiences in 2009, at least as far as the paper goes, these pictures come to mind.
A vacation, downtime and a bit of family history
Note: this post has been sitting in the drafts for a long while – not sure why. -mike
With my wife very close to completing her capstone project for her master’s degree, I thought it would be a good time to get out of town and let her have some peace and quiet to finish up. Plus I had a ton of vacation time accrued and my brother was getting ready to move into his first house. I packed up the truck and headed south to Savannah to help him move and paint his new place. On the way I was obligated to get some tasty BBQ.
In between moving and painting I got hooked on a couple TV shows and a video game. He put me on to Squidbillies, an animated show about redneck squids in Georgia as well as the HBO show Eastbound & Down which was created by and stars Danny McBride, a native of FredVegas. It is about as crass as you can imagine and of course I find it hilarious. Plus I like McBride – I think he’s funny as hell. I wish I had shot a better picture of him when he came through town a while back. Oh well… I also spent an inordinate amount of time in Savannah playing a video game called Fallout 3. I have been a fan of Fallout since the original came out for PC something like 10 years ago. I am proud to say (in a geek way) Ned and I had Wasteland – the basis for Fallout – for our Apple IIGS in the late 80′s.
I drove on down to Venice to visit my grandparents for a couple days as I hadn’t seen them in a while. While there, I sat down with my grandfather and recorded an interview with him about growing up on Long Island in the 20′s and 30′s through the end of his service in the Navy in World War II. Next time I’m down I hope to record another interview detailing the post war years as well as my grandmother’s recollections of Long Island, meeting my grandfather and her time working at the Merchant Marine Academy. I’ve been meaning to do this for a couple years after hearing about the Story Corps project. Growing up my brother and I would always press Pop for ‘war stories’ and he would talk about being in the South Pacific on one island or another or on the USS Northampton. In addition to gathering some audio, I copied a bunch of old photos.
Here’s Pop (left) in San Francisco, 1942 with a buddy from the Navy. When I asked who the woman was, he kind of smiled and said, “Va-va-voom!” The inscription said it was taken at a bar called Benny the Bum’s. I found a reference to the bar here that said it was located at 181 O’Farrell St in SF. I guess its a condo now. Anyway, hopefully soon I’ll take some time to edit together some audio and put some pictures up. Here’s Pop outside his Florida home, putting away his flag for the day:
I returned to Savannah to finish helping Ned when he told me he had taken a job at Fort Rucker in Alabama working on helicopters. Sounds like an awesome gig, so congrats to him. I guess it is kind of crappy timing though. Oh well – maybe I can win the lottery, become independently wealthy and buy his house from him. Right. The upside is that I will have an opportunity to travel to Alabama and ideally make some time to head west and explore the Mississippi Delta. Upon my return kelly and I went canoeing on the mighty Rappahannock River with some friends from work. It was a lot of fun as it was a beautiful day and the river wasn’t too hairy nor too low. Seven hours on the water is a long time though. maybe next time we’ll go for a shorter trip…
On a technical note, most of those pics were taken with my iPhone aside from the copy shot of Pop. And I used the TiltShift app on this last pic. I’m having fun playing around with the camera function on that phone… a definite time sink!
I went back to the grind and as always, my first assignment back made me want to go back on vacation! I won’t subject you to the actual image but here’s the assignment: “Pontiac is going under. Localize!” So there you have it.
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.
Doing More With Less in Radford
I’m in Radford, VA for the annual VHSL spring sports championships. My allergies are kicking up (or I caught the swine flu), and the forecast is fairly ugly. I decided to skip trying out any remote cameras as I have had little to no success with them this season. Might as well keep it simple. Today is tennis. Tomorrow is 2 softball games and a soccer match. The best part – all 3 games start at 10 and I am on my own. A couple of years ago we would have had 2 shooters down here but not anymore. As newspaper managers across the country have said in the face of crushing layoffs, do more with less. I’ll let you know how that works out for me…
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.
Editor & Publisher pic of the week
E&P selected a picture I shot last week at the dignified transfer of Cpl. Ryan McGhee as their Photo of the Week. I appreciate the attention though I wish it wasn’t for such a sad photo.
http://tinyurl.com/qqzpre
shameless self-promotion
Contest season is over and not surprisingly I got shut out of the major ones – NPPA, World Press & Pictures of the Year. That’s OK there was a lot of big news this year and some really powerful work entered and my stuff didn’t come close.
On the upside, the judges of the Virginia News Photographers Association’s annual contest apparently saw fit to recognize a fair number of my pictures this year. Even more surprising was that I won a regional Edward R. Murrow award for News Documentary from the Radio Television News Directors Association for a radio piece I produced for the paper’s sister station WFLS about a local National Guard unit in Kuwait. Yes, you read that right – radio. I knew my telecommunications degree was not in vain and I was pleased to tell my long-suffering parents that their tuition money finally paid off, ten years down the line. Holy $#!* – ten years since I (barely) graduated?!?!! that’s a completely different story… Anyway, the piece is now in the running for a national Murrow award but I’m not holding my breath… Check out VNPA.org to see all the winners. Also, here are a couple of my photos that won in VNPA:
Sports Feature - First Place Colonial Forge's Joe Pantaleo jumps into the arms of coach Bill Swink following his victory over Fauquier's David Yost in the championship round of the 2008 Virginia Group AAA wrestling tournament at Oscar Smith High School in Chesapeake, VA on February 23, 2008. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
Portrait - First Place Buddy Hayes of Chesapeake, VA , Miss Wheelchair Virginia, waits to give a presenation to the Lions Club with her service dog Ellie at Falls Run Community Center on February 27, 2008. (Mike Morones/The Free Lance-Star)
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.
Foreclosures in Spotsylvania County
I spent part of yesterday following a Spotsylvania County sheriff’s deputy as he cleared houses that had been foreclosed upon and the new owner, usually a bank, was taking possession. Of the three places we visited, the bank representative never showed and the other two were empty. He said that often times the tenants are long gone. I’m no Anthony Suau – he produced a great essay on the financial crisis – but I think it is a good first step on one of my portions of the paper’s Stimulus package called Bringing it Home. I plan on going back out next week but in the meantime need to shoot this season’s All-Area sportraits first!
