Blogger's Note

     A few weeks ago, in what I believe was the second week of my internship up here in Michigan, I shot a series of photos for an article surrounding an urban gardening movement in downtown Saginaw. I found out late yesterday that the Associated Press requested some of my photos from that story, and has published them on the Washington Examiner website! If you'd like to check out which ones were picked, you can see them with the A.P. article here.

Day 134/365

     Today's post is due to an experiment and also an accident. I was assigned to shoot a rehearsal of a local theatre troupe's interpretation of 'Cats,' and I had been taking some photos with my camera setup on a tripod since there was no flash allowed. I had been switching off between having the camera mounted and then using it with a high ISO, and when this picture was taken had forgotten to adjust the settings. I haven't purposely done long exposures to show movement in a while, but I think that'll change after tonight. 

Day 133/365

     Today I covered the farm animals starting to arrive for a local county fair about forty minutes away from Saginaw. Noise and smelliness aside, it was fun to see all the animals. It reminded me a lot of the Farm Park back home that we'd go to on field trips in elementary school. If you'd like to see more farm animal photos, you can check them out on MLive here.

Day 132/365

     Today's post is came about from my multiple trips to the laundry room in my apartment complex. There are all different kinds of flowers planted throughout the various beds in the complex, and there are a particularly funky kind by the laundry room closest to my building. They just started to get more vibrant this week it seems, so on my trip back to switch my clothes over to the dryer I took a quick picture. At the risk of being repetitive, anyone have any idea what kind of flower/plant this is?

***EDIT: My mom came through again and let me know that the pictured plant is a Blue Thistle!

Day 131/365

     I pretty much spent yesterday and today catching up on much-needed sleep and cleaning up around my apartment, and ended up not being on my computer all that much. As a result I'm posting both yesterday and today's entries one right after the other. This entry is a photo of my lamp that has a lampshade that I made out of color slides I took for one of my classes in college a few years ago. I made it about two summers ago, I think, but it got damaged a bit when I moved it up to Michigan and I finally got around to fixing it yesterday. I'm glad I did; I forgot how much I liked having it around. 

Day 130/365

     Today's entry is from my first assignment today, which I shot first thing this morning. I'm not a fan of golf, but I found it much more interesting to shoot this morning when it started to pour rain on the course. The tournament I shot this morning was for a junior league, so it was mostly younger kids who were barely taller than their clubs, and their reactions to trying to play with the rain coming down were absolutely priceless. 

Day 129/365

     Today my work shift started a few hours earlier than planned; we had severe thunderstorms in the area that caused a lot of damage that another photo. intern and I had to go out early this morning and cover before crews started cleaning everything up. Saginaw's also had shootings in the double digits just since this past Sunday, which has city officials considering an emergency citywide curfew since most shootings have been happening at night. With all of that going on, I was more than happy to cover a food feature this afternoon. It's much easier to take pictures of pretty and vibrantly presented fish than trying to take photos in a horrible neighborhood of yet another violent crime while it's pouring rain. Tomorrow's Friday, which means Saturday comes afterward, which is my first day off in the past week and-a-half of mostly twelve-hour work days. Bring it on.

Day 128/365

     Today was one of those days were I feel like I just kept moving from place to place. I usually like to keep busy, but I just didn't have the energy level today so it made for a long one. This is a photo I took in a Bay City resident's backyard; they won a city-wide beautification award, which was rightfully earned. I've never seen so many different plants in one place. I thought this plant was the strangest and most unique of the ones I saw today, so I took a quick picture. Any guesses as to what it is?

**EDIT** Thanks to my mother's infinite knowledge of all things botanical, this plant is called a Passion Flower.

Day 127/365

     Time to play some catchup. Things got a bit crazy yesterday and today, so I didn't get a chance to update until now. Yesterday afternoon was fantastic; I got to cover a story that a journalism intern was doing on a man who's started to offer kayak rentals at a park near Bay City. I literally got paid to go kayaking and taking pictures all of yesterday afternoon. It was the perfect day for it too: sunny but not too hot, with a great breeze on Saginaw Bay where we were kayaking. We saw tons of wildlife too: herons, egrets, turtles, loons, to name a few. It was definitely one of those days where I was reminded of just how much I absolutely love my job. 

Day 126/365

     Today I mainly covered the demolition of the old Plaza Hotel in downtown Saginaw. I've never actually seen a building being demolished before, so I thought it was interesting to see for the first time. It went slower than I thought it would; they started with the wrecking ball and bulldozer today and have only got maybe one fifth of it down. The paper will probably be going back to get pictures throughout the week as more of it comes down, but I'll be in Bay City for work tomorrow through Friday so by the time I go by there next it could very well be leveled, (most of the debris will probably be there though, the construction workers thought it would take about a week to tear the building down, and about a month to clear everything out). If you'd like to see any more of my photos from the demolition site, there's an MLive gallery set up here.

Day 125/365

     I've spent most of today covering the vintage and custom motor show that takes place on the street right outside one of the newsrooms I work out of. I put up a gallery here on MLive, and wrote my own blurb about the very beginning of the festival with a few other photos here as well. There were a lot of awesome cars, and a lot of fun people. Even with all of the cool cars I got to take pictures of today, I think this picture posted for today's entry was my favorite. This little boy stood looking at this Corvette for a solid fifteen minutes. I think I got such a kick out of it because his facial expression reminded me of how awestruck my brother and I would be when we'd go to the '50s diner down the street from our house with our dad on cruise-in nights as kids. We'd walk through the parking lot looking at all of the shiny cars with their hoods propped up in all of their chrome-covered glory, and our dad, (being the walking encyclopedia of almost any topic known to man that he was), would tell us about each car. He'd tell us about where they were made and why they weren't made like that anymore, but my favorite part that he'd tell us about would be how he reacted to seeing them as a kid in their heydays. Whether it was a car that his parents or another relative owned, a neighbor down the street, or a random stranger's driving down the road, my dad could tell you exactly where and when he first saw almost any of those cars, and why he thought they were so great. As I walked up and down through the street fair today, I thought of those nights with our dad every time I saw a '68 Mustang or a '66 Implala, or the dozens of other vintage cars lining the road. He would've loved today. 

Day 124/365

     Today was definitely a long and busy one. I had three different assignments to cover, which isn't a ton, but each of them took a lot of time and energy. Lots of driving, lots of waiting, lots of walking, and all in the hot sun. I'm definitely ready for some sleep at this point. My first assignment was a little league tournament, and I think my favorite photo from both the game and today in general was this one with one of the players stealing third base. I have an incredibly long day tomorrow, but the majority of it is a vintage car show so I'm pretty stoked!

Day 123/365

     I know today's, (yesterday's), post is late; I had a long day at work yesterday and then a long night out, and needed to catch up on some sleep this morning. I went out to a horse farm for one of my assignments yesterday; this farm uses horses for leadership workshops and team-building classes. I'm not sure how well they work, but it was fun to play with horses and take their pictures to start the day. If you'd like to see a few more horse pictures, they're in an MLive gallery here. I have a long list of assignments between the rest of today and tomorrow, so I can't promise that today's and tomorrow's posts will be posted on time, but they will be up eventually.

Day 122/365

     I ended up having today off since I'll be working at least seventy hours between tomorrow and next Friday. I decided to check out the Children's Zoo that's here in Saginaw. It's not bad; it has some interesting exhibits, like kangaroos that you can literally get within one foot of, and the whole place is small enough that even when the animals are laying low for the day you can still see them pretty well. They also have peacocks and peafowls that are free to walk wherever they want; I crossed paths with quite a few while I was there. Peacocks have always been my favorite animals so I got a kick out of walking right along side them today. I ended up taking this photo because I though it was cute. I'm not sure how cute a guy would find it to walk in on one of these in the bathroom though; that'd be quite the surprise! 

     I have the typical pretty peacock picture up on my Flickr page, and a picture of the Macaws also if you're interested. 

Day 121/365

     I know today's, (well... technically yesterday's now), is late, but things were a bit hectic. I got around to eventually though. It was a slow day at work today funnily enough, so my post for today is a pet post... because I know you've missed them!

Day 120/365

     Today I got to take photos of a guy's '58 English Ford Escort. It. was. awesome. There's a vintage car show this Sunday and we've been doing a few spotlight previews on certain owners and their cars. The guy that owned this car was a lot of fun; he had about four other vintage cars he's working on in his garage and a couple of motorcycles too. 

Day 119/365

     I'm trying to feel guilty about not taking my camera out of its bag at all today, but the fact that I had today off and spent the majority of this 100º+ day in or next to the pool is outweighing any potential guilt I may have felt. So instead today's entry is a photo taken with my phone. Tomorrow's supposed to be even hotter in this area of Michigan, there's even a heat warning from the National Weather Service out already. Take a wild guess as to where I plan on being after I get off of work tomorrow afternoon...

Day 118/365

     Today was not a great one. I had to cover a memorial service for a little boy who went missing from his home on an Indian reservation up here a few weeks ago, and was eventually "found" dead. That's all I'll put on here, because the rest of it is just a mess that gets sadder and more infuriating the more you hear. If you want to read about him, you can here. I don't know how much national coverage he's been getting, but he's big news in Michigan, and it seems like the criminal investigation surrounding his death that's developing is going to stay in the mainstream media here as well. 

    Anyways, sad story aside, this morning I first covered a pastor that spiked and dyed his hair for a fundraiser. In order to raise money for a youth group from his church to go on a trip, he grew out his hair and let people vote with donations on which hairstyle he'd don: corn rows, dreadlocks, or a rainbow mohawk. Obviously, the rainbow mohawk won.

Day 117/365

    Sorry that I'm posting yesterday's entry a day late. I was originally supposed to have yesterday, today, and tomorrow off, but ended up getting paid overtime to work yesterday and today. I worked the night shift all week to then have early starts yesterday and today, so when I got home yesterday I was out for the night. One of the events I shot yesterday was a golf tournament one of the newspapers I intern for was hosting. I know next-to-nothing about golf, but luckily a golf course regular offered to take me around in one of the carts and point all of the players out to me. I ended up taking this shot mainly for the symmetry between the two players, and the fact that I wasn't the only one who seemed to be tired of being in the hot sun all day. 

Day 116/365

     Tonight I covered a Friday night summer concert series in downtown Saginaw, "Friday Night Live." It had some fun parts, and some hokey ones too, but I think that comes with the festival-type-thing anyways. It was a little too hot for my liking, until the sun finally started to go down and behind the clouds. 

Day 115/365

     I can now say I've seen a cage fight in person... not sure how I feel about that exactly. The whole experience was a bit surreal. It was going on at a town festival I was covering too, which, to me, seems insane. Carnival rides, novelty food, games and prizes.... and cage fighting? I don't get it. Nevertheless, it was interesting, and the fact that I'm being paid to photograph things like this that I've never seen before makes me indescribably happy. 

Day 114/365

     I ended up having the day off today; there are about one million and one events going on in the Saginaw and Bay City areas up here in Michigan this weekend so my schedule got rearranged a bit so I could cover those. I'll be getting a bit of overtime out of it, so I'm definitely not complaining! 

     Anyways, I probably have the cutest little old lady for a neighbor. Her name's Betty and she lives on the floor below me across the hall. Whenever she hears me coming in the building she always comes out to say hi, and a few times she's baked me cookies "just because." Whenever she's watching TV you can always hear it in the main entryway downstairs, and nine times out of ten I can guarantee she's watching the movie The Help. I felt like making something for her in return, so I looked up the recipe for the character Minnie's chocolate pie out of the movie, ("terrible-awful" NOT included). It was super easy, plus there was no oven involved so I didn't have to heat up my apartment. Win-win!

Day 113/365

     Today was the first violent crime I've ever had to cover. There was a shooting in downtown Saginaw that another reporter at the News asked me to cover with him, where at least two individuals were shot in a residential area. Today's post is a photo of one of the houses that caught a few stray bullets through one of its side windows. This house also had blood splattered over various parts of the driveway; it was all a bit surreal to see in person for the first time in my life.

Day 112/365

     Today's photo is from a story I helped cover on an electrical plant in Bay City, Michigan. The company that runs the plant is spending a little over 3 million dollars on overhauls and updates and had commissioners and the public in for a tour today to show them exactly what would be changed. It was actually pretty interesting for the most part. If you'd like to read the article or see other photos from my gallery, you can go here.

Day 111/365

     Tonight's belated post is courtesy of the Bay City Fireworks Festival's grand finale. It was absolutely amazing. I just got home and I most definitely smell like firework shells. If you'd like to see a few more photos from tonight's show, you can see them on my MLive.com profile page here. 

Day 110/365

     One of my assignments today was a food feature on a local Greek diner in Bay City, Michigan named Vinny's Stock Pot Diner. The owner/cook was really nice and seems to have a lot of fun with what he does. This is a photo of their 'Greek spinach and feta chowder.' It smelled absolutely delicious, and tasted even better.

Day 109/365

     Tonight I covered the people starting to gather for the annual Bay City Fireworks Festival up here in  Bay City, Michigan. This photo is from Wenonah Park, a really nice park along the Saginaw River. I'm gross and dead-tired from the heat and humidity, so I'm getting ready to leave the newsroom and go straight home to shower, eat, and sleep. Good night!

Day 108/365

     I was on assignment to cover the fireworks show tonight, and got a prime spot off of a bridge right down the street from the main newsroom I usually work from in Saginaw. It was a great show, from what I got to see of it. Between the other photo intern that got assigned to tonight's Saginaw show and myself, I was designated the task of getting back to the office to submit fireworks photos for tomorrow's print edition by 10:45 tonight, (fifteen minutes after the show started). I got to see most of the rest of the show from the office, and it seemed pretty spectacular. Happy Fourth of July!

Day 107/365

     Today's entry is another texture post, from an abstract statue that was outside of a store I went into today. I thought it was interesting, so I took a macro shot of it. I got an unexpected day off today since this week will have more fireworks shows for the other photo interns and I to cover than the editors up here in Saginaw originally planned for. I'm sure you'll be seeing some of them on here before the week's through!

Day 106/365

     Today was easily my favorite assignment that I've gotten to shoot so far during my internship. Apparently Saginaw has a renowned fireworks show each year on the Fourth of July, and today one of the journalist interns and I went out to cover the group setting up the fireworks for Wednesday's show. I'd never seen actual official fireworks like that before, and I even held one! It was the same size and weight of a bowling ball, and was completely spherical - not at all what the cartoons I grew up with had me expecting. If you'd like to see the other photos I took, or would like to read the article they went with, you can find them here.

Day 105/365

     Another texture photo for today's post. This one is of a tree outside my building in my apartment complex. Today was a pretty uneventful day, filled by running errands and doing laundry. Back to work tomorrow!

Day 104/365

     Today I finally got my stuff moved into my apartment! I'm so excited to sleep in my actual bed tonight, (as opposed to the smelly motel room from my first night in Saginaw and an air mattress the rest of the past week), it's ridiculous. My mom and some of my family and friends were nice, (incredibly, incredibly nice), enough to load up a truck with my things in Ohio and drive eight hours roundtrip to bring it all up here to Michigan. I've got most of it where I want it; I just have a few little things to put away and a few things I still need to either buy or bring back from Ohio the next chance I get to visit. For today's entry I just did a macro shot of the texture of a little canvas I got one of my older photos printed on. These kinds of shots are nothing fancy, but they can be fun from time to time.