Clovis News-Journal Days 32 & 33

Wednesday I got a chance to try my hand and widelife photography. Which basically means putting my 2x extender on my 300mm lens and waiting for an hour for a prairie dog to pop it's head out of it's hole.
Thursday I relly hadn't done anything of concequence until the scanner starts going about a truck fire at the truck stop on the edge of town.

Clovis News-Journal Day 31

Today was short assignment and office work day. I spent about an hour tracking down the warrenty info for the D2Hs at work, since it's been hosed for 2 weeks now. That's all taken care of and I can send it back tomorrow.
I ended up shooting 3 quick assignments. Mostly pretty boring stuff, a press conference for the new president of the communiry college, an accident and a portrait of the new administrator to the hospital. I'll spare the accident, since I really don't like shooting those.

Clovis News-Journal Day 30: The Slideshow

I spent most of yesterday working on a slideshow from the motocycle rally. I'd love your comments.




Motorcycle Slideshow

Clovis News-Journal Day 30

Today was very nice. I only had 2 assignments. Wow, 2 assignmentts on a saturday, that's like less than half the number I usually have. My main assignment was the Badlands Motorcycle Rally. I got to spend most of the day there hanging out with bikers and getting sun burnt.

Clovis News-Journal Day 29

I feel like I'm starting to get my grove back. Had a really long day, but it ended with several assignments is good light. The evening was a lot of fun.

Clovis News-Journal Day 28

I've been in a photo rut as of late. I'm back to a mental state where I don't like much of what I'm shooting. The second photo was from my car, like all my other sky photos. I'm trying to get back to doing this more.
I'm starting on my first story since I've been here. I met this guy at the music store a couple weeks ago and I finially got up with him to hang. Still haven't looked at the photos, though.

Clovis News-Journal Days 21, 24 and 25

Something more from last Saturday. Wednesday was flag day so I tried to make an interesting photo while heading to another assignment. Saturday was the Juneteenth celebration. No, it's not like Decemberween. It's actually the unoffical celebation of the ending of slavery. These guys started grilling at 5 am and didn't stop until after dark.

Clovis News-Journal Day 21

Skaterboard park with cool light. This made my day.

Clovis News-Journal Day 19 & 20

Clovis News-Journal Day 19 & 20

Clovis News-Journal Day 18

It was rough getting up for an 8am assignment. I left work at 12:30 the previous night and had been on the go since 8am that morning.
Most of the day was spent feature hunting. So it was a nice change of pace from elecction day.

Clovis News-Journal Day 17: Rodeo Part 3: American Bullfighter

Today was a long day. I started it out by giving a prsentation to a bunch of high school kids at Eastern. I spent the next several hours talking photography with Tony, the guy that was filling in before I started. He's a really nice guy so I as happy to help him out and give him pointers.

I spent the next several hours putting together the slideshow from the rodeo.

American Bullfighter

In the process, I found several more photos from the rodeo that I reall like. I've got to get better at finding he best photo in a timely manner. I feel that the photos that ran were some of the worst stuff that I posted here. I need to get bus and post some of these photos the the CNJ website, so I can enter some them in the NPPA monthly clip contest.

The evening was spent covering the primary elections, from which I didn't get anythign I liked. So here's more rodeo.

Clovis News-Journal Day 16

There was supposed to be a rodeo part 3, but things got a little weird Saturday and the schedule was screwed up. So basically it meant that I missed Mutton Busting. I was actually pretty upset about this. I mean it's Mutton Busting... It's got kids and not only animals, but the kids riding animals. How can you pass on that?
So here's some summer basketball instead.

Clovis News-Journal Day 14 & 15: The Rodeo part 2

Clovis News-Journal Day 14 & 15: The Rodeo part 2

The first one is from last night. I was looking through things again and found this one.

I did get a couple shots with the awesome sky as the background.

On to the bucking animal riding!!

New Mexico sky, late to the rodeo

I was running late, so I ended up leaving the office 5 minutes before the rodeo started. Not a huge deal but I like to get to stuff like that early. It turned out to be good and bad. The good part was that I saw this light on the bridge over the train tracks. The bad part was that I couldn't use it as a background for the opening ceremonies of the rodeo.

Clovis News-Journal Day 14: The Rodeo part 1

Tonight was the first real day of the rodeo. I got to see first had things like steer roping, bronco riding, bull riding, goat ropin' and to top off the night (I mean the weirdest thing I saw) wild cow milking.

I probably should explain. Wild cow milking starts off like steer roping but with a dairy cow. One guy on a horse chases down the cow and tries to throw a rope around it's neck. Obviously, the cow isn't happy with this, so it tries to get away. Which is just like steer roping. Here's where the strange part happens. When the cow is roped, two other guys run out to try to hold the cow in place long enough for the horse rider to jump off and try to milk the cow. Now this is a 2000 lbs side of dairy beef and these are 3 200 lbs ish cowboys. I'll let you do the math. Odd and funny.

I'll start with another reason to be afraid of clowns.

Clovis News-Journal Day 12: Feature Hunt

So yes it's a rain feature. Given the fact that Clovis and all of New Mexico gets about a quarter of the annual rain that NC gets, this is news and feature worthy. I'm not entering it in an contests so you don't have to worry about that.
This was the most fun I've had feature hunting to date. I was hanging out with this family under a shelter a the park when the kids ran out to play in the rain. I took off after them. It was great, I was right there with them laughing and playing in the rain. I felt like I was channeling Chris. Cause that's something he would do.