New Pictures and Holiday Madness!!

Here are a collection of photos I’ve worked on the first couple weeks at the news & messenger. Mostly portraits, something I haven’t been too comfortable as I’ve developed over the past couple years. However, I’ve become much more comfortable with them lately, and it mostly has to do with strobist.com and understanding off-camera lighting. I tried to take these opportunities to really come up with better portraits. I can’t necessarily consider these to be incredibly unique in any way, but the quality of the lighting has gotten better. The only unfortunate consequence of all these portraits is that they’ve mostly been squeezed into the schedule and I haven’t been able to use my 4x5. Since the schedule has started to even out a bit, hopefully I can find some time and work in some film…

Principal bets students they can't raise $12000 over 3 weeks in September. Students raise $12k. Principal gets slimed...

Part of an "Unsung Heroes" piece on local volunteers for high school sports...

Sportraits of a few local athletes...

Driving to the hoop. Let me just say this: learning to shoot off-camera strobe is a Godsend for shooting high school sports in their horribly lit gyms...

Ballet rehearsal for The Nutcracker Suite.

GMU v. Ohio Univ. GO MASON!

On another note, let me just say a few words about xmas shopping. Why is everyone crazy? Really, what possesses someone to camp out 24hrs before a store opening? On my way back from a community meal served at a church in Woodbridge, VA, I spotted people in line for Best Buy. The first people in line camped out at 6am on Thanksgiving Day, although Best Buy didn’t open until 5am on Friday. So I asked what was coming out the next day. A new Xbox? A new Playstation? Nope. They just wanted a flat screen TV. The people behind them in line were getting laptops, TVs, a refrigerator (a refrigerator??)…etc. I guess for these people the sales are worth the wait. I think it’s just plain crazy.

This sort of mentality simply isn’t healthy. It’s not healthy to believe that the best thing to do with your Thanksgiving Day is to wait in front of a store to get a good deal on a TV. I repeat: on the day that we should all think about what we should be thankful for, a day to think about what is really important in our lives; you take that day to camp out in line in front of a Best Buy.

There is something wrong with that mentality. But at least, to the best of my knowledge, no one was injured at 5am on Friday. The same can’t be said for the Wal-Mart in Long Island.

How sad. How sad that people are so maniacal in their thirst for shopping deals at xmas that they’d be willing to trample another human being. I will assume that the overwhelming majority of the 2000+ people that stampeded into the Wal-Mart had no idea that someone was laying prone beneath the mass of trampling shoppers. But there were people that actually stepped onto and over the person lying on the ground. What the hell is wrong with you? Are you really that concerned about your shopping that you’d be willing to step on a person to get to your xbox or TV?

Maybe it’s time we figure out how to fix this problem. I can’t imagine that the economy is so bad that we need to promote this sort of nonsense. Stop with the crazy sales where doors open at 5am. Get a security guard or two. Hand out vouchers. Make a line. I don’t know. I’m no expert in crowd control, but if we can force old women to take off their shoes in airports to thwart terrorism, I think we can manage a solution to prevent the stampeding of humans at Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving.