WTF: Workin' the Facts: Month 1 : Mass Update

This is gonna be a long one, so settle in. I don't have the internet at home...still, so I'm doing this all in one shot.

I've been working, trying to do my best, I'm currently filled with snot and miserable because of a cold/flu hybrid that seems to have been engineered to kill an ordinary human. But I'm hanging on.

Workin'

I'm still trying to figure out why somethings run and others don't. This is nothing new at newspapers, but it still always baffles me.

This shot of a kid at a circus with a light saber was fun, the one I turned in actually had him and his aunt next to him laughing, so the moment was there, the light was pretty, neat colors. But it ran inside... black and white. Seriously? COME ON! I got frickin' light sabers over here!

I don't know. Most of the time they get it right and try to do cool packages with stylized headlines and color schemes that match the photos. Everything plays well together. The biggest complaint I have is that the layout for 1A is usually a column on each side of the main story.

Which only leaves, at most, 3 columns for the main photo. With the gutters that's like maybe 5 inches. It seems so pitiful. That's what she said.

One thing I like about The Facts is that they don't fall into the trap a lot of papers have been. With slowing numbers in readership and ads papers seem to panic and try to grab at every community that is within reach, often over extending themselves.

I'm sure some would take a offense to this, but tell me it isn't the truth; at the Sun we covered three counties, but none of them well. One reporter per county is ridiculous and when some don't do their jobs it makes it worse.

Yeah, the one county here is just as big as the three counties there...but that's what I'm saying. They don't cover it all because it would be over reaching. I like that.

The Facts actually cut some local high schools from their coverage. That way you focus and really work the beats you have, hopefully getting back some of the local people you lost, not doing some scattershot attempt in an area that's already covered by someone else.

Football is winding down, and as local teams got knocked out we did extend, but only back to a team they used to cover. But then they lost too. But, Pearland is still in it. So the sports guys (and myself as well) are hoping we can find an excuse to go to Dallas for the state championship. Fingers crossed.

Now some fun football art.

D-FENCE!

I like the little kid's face. :D

The Agony of Defeat

This is the top dog player for Columbia High getting a hug from a teacher that is rabid about the football program. Their best season in decades came to a quick and brutal end in the semifinals.

Sometimes you get crap about shooting people crying. "Don't you have a soul?" Well, I might...but that doesn't matter. These moments are the pinnacle of journalism. Images of raw emotion are as close as you can get to conveying the absolute truth. And if you can do it without getting threatened by a 300 pound gorilla then it's even better. Right, Proctor?

We shoot a lot of football, even practices, because people are that into their teams. But it is making me continually try to be more creative and make interesting shots. Sometimes it works.

Black Friday
I had a funny thought shooting the insanity that is Black Friday. As people were lined up beside the Best Buy trying to shield themselves from what can only be called a savagely brutal wind, I thought to myself; "This probably isn't what they meant when they wrote 'huddled masses' on the Statue of Liberty." This is what our country has become though.

But hey, I got a hell of a deal on a TV. By the time I actually pay it off on my credit card it'll be closer to sticker price, but mine was dying and TV/movies/video games are really the only form of entertainment I have. I could read...but I like to save that option for when the power goes out.

Never liked to do a lot of posed portraits for newspapers, but those are a part of the sports deal here too. Preview stories, all area teams, etc.

And the more I think about it, I think it is good. Because I do like portrait work in my off time. So getting paid to do it should be fun too. As long as I try to do something creative and interesting.

Didn't have a lot of prep time on this one, but I like it.

This one not as much, but still works.

Didn't get a lot of heads up on this one. I thought it was going to be an inside thing, but it wasn't. Luckily I had an extra light with me, so I was able to make it work. I felt bad because it was 50 degrees, so all of these girls were cold.

I feel like I'm even starting to lose my cold tolerance a little. Maybe it's just cause I'm sick.

This is from a play at the local college. It was pretty damned funny, some shots were blurry because I was laughing so hard. Didn't get to see all of it, might go back.

Sort of a pre-Seinfeld crazy neighbor character.

That's it. I'm going home for lunch