More coal

It's the funniest thing-- I spent a long, full day working on this tiny piece of this huge story, and still the best pictures were in the first three minutes of the day. Go figure. But as one editor reminded me today, it doesn't matter how much time or how little time it takes-- just leaving open the opportunity for a great picture is part of the work.

Simple

Sometimes, things are just pretty. Here's an outtake from the carrier shoot a few weeks ago.

Hats off

Bit by bit

Yes, the black and white versus color debate is on-- whether some stories are better suited for one or the other. This literacy story may be a black and white one, though I'm not sure yet. I'm waiting to see how everything comes together.

Literacy, revisited.

A day spent revisiting the literacy story I started working on earlier this year. It's hard to show the lack of things-- of libraries, of parental involvement with homework, of academic role models. And yet, the longer you spend, the deeper you get.

Ordering the world

Sometimes it takes a little patience to create order out of the chaos of municipal elections.

Landscape

I'm doing something different these days-- instead of trying to get closer, I'm trying to get further away to tell stories.

Today was a good day

A ham sandwich, a cup of coffee, summer weather, the promise of a baseball game tonight, and a couple of Blackhawk helicopters, which turn out to be elegant machines. The perfect Friday at work.

Thinking about triangles

Like this & Like That

Tonight, dinner was tastier, and sleep will be sweeter, because I worked hard all day, had some honest conversations about what journalism is and what it can do, and got some good life advice from a barber. Who could ask for anything more?

Hockey First Timer

It is amazing to me that there are so many photographic challenges ahead of me. I've never shot hockey before, and I got a chance to do it tonight, and even got an edit from Martin Smith-Rodden, a favorite on the Pilot editing staff. Ahead-- sleep, and then an early morning for my new story. A little sleep, a lot of coffee.

Like this, or like this?

You know how editor Mike Davis is asking people to send in two images to choose between? I've started on a new project, but it's just at the very beginning. I spend a lot of time looking at other people's work, and it's easy to be decisive about work when you have some distance from it (and Matt, I'm straight-up talking about you!)-- not so much when you're in the middle. I'm at that point where looking at my pictures and toning them and lining the up in neat rows and shifting them around is mostly about deciding what to look for next. Editing isn't always about finding a final sequence-- right now it feels a little like being a hunter-gatherer. You spread out what you found on the table, and head back out to find whatever fits, or advances the story, or surprises you. That being said, which one do you prefer?

Details from Home

Little details are what make my home in Seattle my favorite place. I get back there only one and a while, to see the boy, the pup, to buy flowers for the kitchen and walk through the garden. While it's hard to be away, I have a good reason, though certain on certain days I wonder exactly why.