I’m back in the saddle. Maybe it’s more accurate to say I’m in a new saddle. Today was my first official day of work at the Wyoming Tribune-Eagle. After a whirlwind of a week including a two-day move from Peoria to Cheyenne, it is finally time to get back to picture making. My first assignment was a portrait of Carleen Williams, a 97-year-old artist who has painted some 5,000 pictures. I shot a few looks of her in front of her paintings before she asked that I come down to her basement to see more of her paintings. I immediately liked a corner where several of her paintings were sitting on the floor.
Portraits
Adios Peoria
Today is my last day as an intern. Next week, I start my first full-time job as a staff photographer at the Wyoming Tribune Eagle in Cheyenne, Wyoming. This internship has been a great learning opportunity, but now I’m excited to be heading west soon for my next adventure. Before I leave, I thought I’d take a look back at a few of my favorite images from my internship in Peoria.
[Read more…] about Adios PeoriaDarth Winkler football player of the year portrait
Canton fire chief Ernie Russell
I ended up spending most of my day in Canton, Ill. working on two assignments. A basketball tournament in the evening (posted below) and a portrait of the local fire chief earlier in the afternoon. Ernie Russell is the interim fire chief in Canton, but he was previously a fire chief in Peoria and the Illinois state fire marshal. I was trying to say “firefighter” with these photos even though Russell wasn’t dressed in a fire suit. To do this, I gelled a Nikon SB-800 red and placed it a couple feet behind him pointed downwards to create a sea of red under his feet. I lit him with a second SB-800 fired through an umbrella at 1/4th power. It was a fun shoot, and afterward Russell insisted that I stick around the firehouse to watch the end of the Auburn-Alabama football game. Russell is a really nice guy, and his personality is reflected pretty well in the second photo below.
Girl’s golf player of the year portrait
My main assignment today was a portrait of the paper’s girl’s golf player of the year. The golfer goes to school in Oneida, a town about a two hour drive from Peoria on the edge of the paper’s coverage area. Unfortunately, there isn’t a golf course nearby so the background was the main challenge. On our way into the town, the reporter spotted a sign near the town’s grain terminal that looked interesting. I wanted to show that she came from a rural community so I decided to use the area near the train tracks as the background to help illustrate this.