Second day on "the bike"....a little more steady

Day two of getting back into the swing of photographing the world felt a little more comfortable, but the "ride" is still a little shaky. Erin compared beginning shooting daily again to riding a bike, it will naturally come back to you. And it has. I'm just not as confident "bike rider" as I was back in August. I'm still very insecure about my technical skills and ability to shoot different scenarios. I know my lack of confidence has to do with not knowing my new coverage area that well. Besides it being a much larger coverage area than Sidney, the traffic is a lot worse here because there are a lot of highways, thus taking up more time when trying to feature hunt. Which in turn puts more pressure on me to find a feature during my shift. Which leads to my lack of confidence with my technical skills. I know it will come back to me, especially after I get used to shooting with this different Nikon body.

Okay, so today started out with a nice big dose of feature hunting. First place I stopped was a family farm who was still selling produce at their stand. It was really weird because their farm is in the city, probably because so much has built up around it since it was built. Well, the woman who was selling told me that someone from the paper had come out last week to get some pictures. Well, I wasn't going to let that stop me, so I was going to look for a different angle. I look behind their produce stand and see a cute little kid eating his lunch on a picnic table with pumpkins and gords on the tabletop. It was such a nice, warm fall day and this kids was so cute, so I resorted to my magically feature equation I learned in Sidney: Cute kids + animals = great feature opportunities! He really wanted to the heel of a loaf of bread to one of the cats named Nemo. He ended up chasing it under a truck. It was so cute, but the cat was too fast for me to get a picture of the two in the frame. Mom came outside and got the cat out from underneath the truck. Thus after some waiting and removing the camera from my face so the boy would look at the cat and not the camera, I got my shot.


I still had about two hours before I had to be in Oberlin to meet up with the interim sports editor to head out to Norwalk High School, so I drove into Elyria to look for features. I found the entrance to Cascade Park and decided to check it out! Wow, its right on the river, and with the leaves changing it was so gorgeous! I wish I had gym shoes on and more time so I could have hiked the trails and gotten some really pretty fall landscape photos (I think if its sunny this weekend, I'm gonna go back there and get some pictures and hike the trails to the waterfall). There was this tree in which all the leaves were yellow--so gorgeous! The sun was creating this nice light, making the tree almost glow, so I took a picture of it with my wide angle that I have. I didn't have any intentions of turning it in, but rather took it for myself.

After I left the park, I headed toward Oberlin so I could find a place to park and maybe come across another feature. The route I took into the city brought me straight into the center of Oberlin College campus. Its a quaint, liberal private college. The arburetum, center square, or whatever they call it, was really cool. Pretty trees, leaves on the ground and late afternoon sun. After I parked my car, I walked across the street to check it out. The first thing I saw in the grass was this albino squirrel.I've never seen one, so I just had to take a picture of it!

I took some photos around the arburetum, but nothing I was too in love with.


Then I walked south about a block, looked to my left and bam!, another feature. "
Seeing this kid sleeping in the window with the sunlight hitting him just right screamed, "take a picture of this. While I was clicking away, I was afraid he would wake up and see some weirdo taking his picture. Of course, as I was taking the lst couple of frames, his eyes start to open. I quickly put my camera on my shoulder and try to find a way into the library. He was laid back and didn't mind me taking his picture. I know I would have been creeped out if I woke up and saw someone with a big camera taking my picture.

My only assignment today was to take a picture of a high school basketball player for the winter sports preview. I met up with the interim sports editor, Matt, in Oberlin and road out to Norwalk with him since its all the way out in Huron County. I was nervous about my assignment because I don't have much experience with portraits and I wanted it the photos to look good. Kyle, a 6'11'' senior, was really nice and laid back, which made taking his picture a little easier. Doing tests with my flash and angles was a bit nerve racking. I hate doing that because with my previous experience of taking people's portraits, especially adults, they aren't really that comfortable in front of the camera. Kyle was a little more relaxed, but I could still tell he didn't like having all the attention on him (by this time, the rest of his teammates had come out to warm-up before the scrimmage).
I think I got some good material and what the editor had in mind, so hopefully he'll be pleased when he looks at them tomorrow.