Clovis News-Journal: Day 73: Men's soccer

It's always nice to get out an shoot a competitive college soccer game. The play isn't much worse than what I'm used to from State and it seems like all the games happen after 4 and before dark. As much as I love football and love shooting it. I seem to keep coming back to soccer as my favorite sport to shoot. I guess it's the lazy part of me that likes it. I can pretty much sit in on corner, not move very much and get most every action shot I could want.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 71-72, the volleyball tournament

Friday started two days of volleyball at the high school. They were hosting a tournament and ended up winning it Saturday night. I think I was pretty much volleyballed out after saturday. I feel like I got some good stuff from a lot of different angles. I just need to work on getting more sports features. Since I've been shooting sports alot recently, I've been focused on the action. In my head, I tell myself I need to get my timing down. From what I've been getting there is no problem with my timing. I actually feel like my action photos are better than when I stopped shooting sports for the summer.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 71, friday night lights (the beginning)

Football season started a week later out here. Friday was the first game. It started at 7 and I was at the stadium at 5. I spent most of the time in the locker room before the game started. Unfortunately I didn't get much I liked, but I was amazed at the complete and total access I was given.

Being the only High School in town, Clovis High football is one thing everyone in town can agree on. Players parents have yard signs advertising their kids. The Booster club raises a ton of money for the team. It looked like the team had brand new uniforms, with their names on them, this year. I don't doubt that it's like that every year.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 70

The first part of my day was spent hanging out at a day care center. For me this was weird. I mean all the babies kept looking at me. I think they were planning to charge. Afterwards, I headed down to Portales to cover the first ENMU women's soccer game. I sure got spoiled by women's soccer in NC. There was some good action, but for the most part, I thought it was a bad high school game.

It does feel good getting back shooting real sports again. I was getting pretty sick of shooting little league and rec softball.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 68, feet day

College sports are about to swing into action, so I was out at ENMU for the football press day. Later that day was the first high school volleyball game of the season.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 67, Arenacross, the fair part fin redux

For real, this is the last day of the fair. Today was pretty slow. I had a fair feature and a late soccer game. So I went to the fair with a writer, down from another paper that we own, to go to the fair and find a feature. The big thing about today was arenacross. She decided to do a feature on it. So I started hanging out with all the guys who were waiting around to compete. I also went in the arena and shot some action.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 66, Live Stock Auction, the fair part fin

So the fair is winding down and the hightlight of the fair, for the Ag community, is the livestock auction. This is where people pay 2-4 times market value on the winning livestock from the week's competitions. I didn't know what to expect when I got there, but I soon found out it was one of those, hum-diddy-hum-500-can-I-get-500-600-we-got-6 going once, going twice, SOLD! kind of auctions. There were three ringmen seeing who was bidding and egging on the crowd.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 65, the fair part 3

My plan for tonight was to shoot the crap out of the midway. One of the problems with this plan was that after I was there for about 30 minutes, the sky opened up and did not stop for the rest of the night. So my plan changed to shooting stupid white people riding rides in the rain.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 64, the fair part 2

Today was pretty much "hang out at the fair all day" day. The different thing about this fair is that the rides don't start operating until 5. So during the day the only things that were going on were livestock related. One thing I found was that the kids who show animals or have fmaily that show have a lot of down time. I ended up hanging out with 2 groups over the course of the day. The first group was playing wall ball against one of the barns. The second group was getting advertising magnets from the commercial building and trying to get them to stick as high as they could on the barns. They were also chasing each other with plastic flyswaters.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 63: Back on the horse, the fair part 1

Today was my first day back from a couple days off. I felt very recharged after my trip to Lubbock and another day to veg. It was also the start of the Curry County Fair. Think NC State Fair, but about 1/8th the size. Also add like 6 days straight of rain before hand. For some reason the county always decided to have the fair during the middle of monsoon season.

Arielle and I go to the big city

The experiences from the week drained me. I spent the rest of the week just coasting. There were a few good points but overall I was tired. Saturday afternoon, I was given the opportunity to cover the funeral, which was Monday. (my day off) I turned it down, because I knew I needed the rest. Mainly the mental rest. So Sunday Arielle and I went to the "Big City" Lubbock. It was nice to get out of town and just have fun taking photos for no reason other than to have fun.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 63

Here are a couple from the last day of 2-a-day football practice. I love high school football, especially in a small town. I'm starting to get to know the kids. The coach pretty much give unlimited access. He just won't talk to the paper because of soemthing we quoted him on several years back. He doesn't take it out on the photogrpaher. I've already found a kid I'm going to follow around for the semester. I also did a short slideshow about the first week of practice. enjoy..

Football Slideshow

Clovis News-Journal: Day 61: One time at band camp

I was looking for a feature and heard that the marching band was doing something at the high school. It turned out to be the last day of band camp, so the band and color guard were all performing. Plus I got there at about 6, which made things much nicer. Given the previous day, this was a much needed shoot.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 58, Wild Art

I'm taking a break before I post the fallen soldier's family photo. With the whirlwind of editing I've been doing over the past couple days, I missed a day. This was last saturday. For the most part it was slow. More tax free shopping/back to school photos in the morning, though nothing very interesting. In the afternoon I needed to find a feature.

So I'm driving around downtown Clovis. I first wanted to check out the old barber shop there, but turns out it was closed. I drive another block and see two burly guys hanging outside a tattoo shop. I park and go up to them. Turns out they're pretty nice and the owner lets me come inside and shoot. This was definitely a fun time, I spent about 3 hours there shooting and just hanging out. I wanted to do a story from there, but my editor nixed it. He claimed we've covered tattoos to death. It sounds like another project I'll work on in my own time.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 60, part 2

On one hand I was not looking forward to shooting this. On the other I wanted to try to make the best photos I could to tell their story. This time very different than the last one of these I covered. The family found out about their son on Friday, it was now Tuesday. They had more time to grieve before I came over. Also there was a lot more family at the parent's house. The family ranged from little kids running around playing with water guns to cousins and older uncles. While I was there several more family members came over. Each time someone new arrived they embraced the parents with a tear filled hug. I spent about 2 hours with the family. When I left, I thanked the parents for letting me into thier lives at this sensitive time. While talking to the parents, I almost broke down myself.

Clovis News-Journal: Days 59 and 60

Today was the start of 2 a day practices for the high school football team. This meant getting up at dawn and going over to the high school. The worst part was the getting up at dawn part. After I was up, I was out shooting practice in nice light.
The next day was one of my most difficult days in a while. An army soldier from Clovis was killed in Iraq the previous Friday. After I was over at the family's house for a couple hours I just wanted to go home. I was emotionally drained. Unfortunately, the paper still needed a feature and I had to shoot soccer practice. I wandered in the big gawdy antique store in Texico and talked with one of the owners for a while. Afterwards I headed to girls soccer practice. At this point I really wanted to go home. I realized I didn't bring a lens longer than 85mm. I think I was at practice for 5 minutes total. I was very done and just wanted to go home.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 57: Part 2, Bohemian Night

Soon after Arielle got here, she started checking out the town. One place she found was the Arterie. A local art gallery/do it yourself pottery place. Every month or so they have a Bohemian night. Basically it's a bunch of middle aged ex-hippies sitting around performing some type of creative thing. I think it was the highest concentration of art in Clovis that night.
So the art shop was just around the corner from the paper, so I walked over. On the way I passed the oldest bakery in town during magic light overtime.

Clovis News-Journal: Day 57: Part 1, back to school shooping

This morning I got to be a stalker at the mall. I went with Tonya (one of the cool writers, there are only 2) to the mall to get kids shopping for clothes, since it was the start of the tax free weekend.





I also put together a short slideshow from the assignment.

Again to clear my backlog, here is the slideshow I did for the Junior Rodeo. Arielle did the audio, she and Ray helped me edit it.

Clovis News-Journal: Days 54-56

Things have been pretty busy so I'm just trying to get caught up on photos. Right now I'm only about 2 weeks behind. I should get caught up over the next couple of days.

The first 2 are from Border Town Days. The next town over is Texico, NM. It's right on the Texas, New Mexico state line. Directly across the state line is Farwell Texas. I mean the only reason they're not the same town it because they're in different states. Border Town Days is a festival they have every year. I've never been to Lazy Days in Cary, but I can imagine it's much the same.

This week was also registration at the high school. So I got the chance to follow around clueless students. It can be quite fun.

Clovis News-Journal: Days 50-53

I felt like I lost my mojo this week. I had almost no time to spend on any assignment so I felt constantly rushed and stressed and wasn't having much fun.