I've driven 400ish miles in the past two days

Awwww I want a dog so bad! I have another picture of him slobbering up my face but I look really strange in it.


I couldn't figure out what these things were but there were about a dozen of them laying on a field near the senior center picnic I photographed today.


A gay couple in Glenoma. We wanted to talk to them in response to the very recent hoopla in the news concerning unions/marriages. Hanging out with them made me feel like I was back home in Castro. If you're keeping count, that's the second day out of my entire time being here that I got homesick. I mean, when a queen and a bear serve you carrot cake and talk about Harvey Milk and walking around Castro.. how can you not get homesick?


One of the guys in Glenoma. I'll probably submit this for an outtake.


This girl was so funny. Super June Cleaver and loving it. She was all about cooking for people and taking care of her home. She is a tea party host which I thought was so fitting. We are doing a story on her for our food section. She just got back the south of France after spending time at a fancy dancy restaurant with some famous chef. She made delicious stuff that Julia and I totally grubbed out on. Free breakfast and lunch! Makes up for not getting paid too much and spending so much on gas and only getting 30 cents/mile back.


Flowers stuffed with ricotta... What's better than that?


And the creme de la creme... lavender creme brulee! So good.

Busy bee

This is Joe Lutes. He was in a quading accident last year. His doctors told him and his mother that he had an 80% chance of being vegetative for the rest of his life. After months of intense physical therapy and a lot of support from his loved ones, Lutes can once again walk, speak a little and has also regained his cognitive skills. He still has a ways to go before he can take care of himself without any aide, but he is ready to go home.


He was sitting up so straight most of the time. I liked this because it just shows how he is so used to the routine with his physical therapist.


Tough to get his mom in a shot, but here she is learning about what kind of exercises she can help him do when he is living at home.


I milked a goat this morning!! So much fun. I could seriously live on a farm for the rest of my life. So, if anyone wants to move to Washington and start a farm with me, give me a call. But alas, no picture of me with a goat. I had too many assignments to get to and this was pre-caffine. The gal on the right is Lizzie Barnts. She owns Full Circle Farms. A business not too far from her property has been inching its way closer to the farm and has already pushed out a dairy farm. That farm had been there for 4 generations.


I didn't try the fresh goat milk. A guy there kept telling me I should have a big glass. A huge glass of goat milk sans breakfast? No thanks man.


This is Moonlight. Spunky little guy. He was following me around the barn and I was so ready to scoop him up and take him home. Adam said no dog but he never said no goats!


This is from yesterday. Robin had a story to do about BBQ'ing for the Your Home section. We cruised around the area until we found people at parks and campgrounds. This family was really strange. Overall it was a very uncomfortable experience. It was just strange. Weird kids and weird parents. And the light was so hard to work with. Super hot behind them and totally in the shade.


Went to Burnt Ridge MX track this morning. Hung out with Nick who is the son of the owner of the track. He's been a pro rider for 4 years. He's had so many surgeries and injuries that I would have to use my fingers and toes to count them all. Most recently he broke his leg. Right now he has two metal plates and several screws holding it all together.


And check him out, ain't he cute?


This kid was working at the track, cleaning up dirt around the starting gates. No racing happening there this week. What a great week to do a story on a race track, right?


This was my last assignment that I just came from and OH MY GOD was it frustrating. This doctor had NO idea what i was talking about when I was like, "Yeah just do whatever you would normally be doing." He kept being like, "Where should I stand? What do you want them to do? What do you want me to do? Well this might be something I might do." He was practically narrating his ignorance to me. First person I've ever run into that had no idea what my job meant. His patient, the nurse, and myself were getting so frustrated with him. And this poor girl was in so much pain.

We made a bunch of salad today for the food section. I can't even remember how many free lunches I've gotten due to company freebies and food stories. It's awesome.

Newsie news news

Here's some of yesterday's/last night's exciting news day. General and spot, all in one day. Aren't I a lucky gal?


Spent the afternoon in Olympia waiting around to see Tom Mason's preliminary hearing broadcast to the courtroom from the county jail. Super exciting three minutes of fame right there. Hard to make a picture off a TV screen. Mason is being charged with arson along with a few other felonies. He burned his house while his wife and cousin were inside. I wanted to get his hands in the photo because they are bandaged up from being burned. The reporter and I found a gal who happened to be at the hospital the night of his arrest (for an unrelated matter) and saw him walking out all bandaged up. She had some interesting quotes. Family at the courthouse said meth has been a major factor in his behavior the past few years. Meth meth meth... everywhere in this town. It's really sad. Spintralia at it's best.


Adam and I were sitting outside on the porch trying to cool off from the unbearable hot weather when I got a call from Sharyn about a house fire a few blocks away. I was stoked to finally get some spot news. Really tough to shoot a fire at night. When I arrived I couldn't see any flames from my angle and was sitting in a smoke cloud most of the time. Tried to stay as still as I could because my flash wouldn't reach nearly as far as I needed it to. And my TTL cord is MIA at the moment so I was stuck with slow shooting.


Some of the neighbors and friends of the home owner watching the commotion. I thought those kids were crazy for having blankets after how hot it'd been all day. I kept telling them they were nuts. Of course I froze later in the night while I waited around to get more info from authorities.


The man in the center is the owner of the home. He is currently renting the house out, apparently to some not very responsible or stable folks. He was really upset about having lost the home. It is completely destroyed and will probably have to be bulldozed. He's currently on leave from work and on disability. This was his only source of income. It was difficult talking to him but I really wanted to make a picture of him and his side of what he was going through. I spent time talking with his friends and family before taking the shot.



A view from a neighbor's backyard. The neighbor happened to be the cousin of the owner of the house and was really helpful. He introduced me to a ton of people and helped me cross the street back and forth when the cops wouldn't let me. Having a resident with me was like a free ticket back into the area. My helpful companion was really drunk and I think that's why he was really helpful and so cheery about the whole ordeal.


And our star of the night. This is Dorothy (center). She burned the house down. Smart huh? Really tough to get a picture of her. Initially, she was in the middle of the street and would have been super easy to get a shot of but I didn't yet know the details of the fire. The fireman on the right came out into the street to block my shot after they saw me crouched in the dark and I got pointed out by the chief. He didn't do a great job. Neighbors told me that she was pissed because her "old man" was over across the street drinking with friends and he wouldn't come home. Her idea was apparently to set the curtains on fire to get him home. I couldn't confirm any of this with the police (even though i waited around til almost 1 a.m. for them) so I'm waiting to read the paper tomorrow for more details. Everyone out there was telling me that she was crazy. These three little kids even ran up to me and they were like, "She's a maniac!"


And just to really round out the death an destruction post.. a gravestone! Nothing too exciting. This gentleman died in 1914. He was a Woodsman of the World. Interesting looking site marker (it's a tree). Think I could get a camera for mine?

I have more Idaho/Montana/Wyoming pics but they are stuck on my laptop and will stay there until I decide to charge the battery. But what's the point when it only lasts 20 mins?

Anyone seen Tabloid Wars? I just d/l'ed it off of iTunes. I love free iTunes! I live for that stuff. I'm too tired to watch it tonight and I have to wake up early to go milk goats. I'm stoked. Coming soon.. pictures of me with a goat (I hope).

Island Park, Idaho

I'm at the Boise airport on my very less than fabulous Dell laptop. Please excuse the color and/or overall tone of the photos. This monitor is pure crap.


Spent the past week at the cabin in Island Park. It's so beautiful up there and it was awesome to be there with so much family. We did plenty of sitting around in the sun, bumped around town playing tourists, and of course, I got a ton of bug bites. Didn't take too many photos. Spent most of the time visiting with my cousins and my brother, all of which I hadn't seen in a while. I wouldn't mind living up there come fall. Left the photo of James, Greg and I up at the Yellowstone Rodeo.


Unfortunately there weren't any storms while I was there. That's my favorite part about going up there. So, I have no lightning photos. But here's some double rainbows. My uncle Rick is standing on the back deck of our cabin. Beautiful mountains, don't you think?


Didn't catch my trophy brook trout this time around which was a bummer. Picture of my dad on the lake the night my brother and I flew in.


Another snap from that same afternoon/night of fishing.


A swirl made by a fish Greg caught. Of course it didn't come leaping out of the water with the sunset in the background. I was sort of hoping for a dolphin-like jump out of the water. And yes, I know.. wishful thinking to have a trout jump several feet out of the water.


My brother Greg and I goofing around on the boat while our dad took a few more casts before going in.

Snappie snap snap

Spent yesterday driving around town with Sharyn. We checked out homes that are on a "dirty dozen" list cited for all of the trash and junk vehicles in the yards. Talked to some really interesting people and saw some pretty run down homes. One place even had dead gold fish hanging in zip-locks above the front door. Really strange stuff. Some of the people we talked to were a little off. Can't say for sure if they are meth heads or not, but cops did make it seem like drug trafficking had some influence on making examples of those properties. The ladies in these two photos were one of the first places that we stopped at. They've already taken away 14 truck loads of trash and have probably that many more loads to go. From the yard we could see inside the front door of their double-wide and could see that it was filled with trash as well. And they had a half-dozen pit bull puppies in the back. Interesting place. But Molly and her daughter Amber Dawn were really open to talking with us about their situation and answered everything we asked. I was surprised at that.


More kids! Went to the rollerdome and had about 50 kids swarming my camera and hamming it up like nobody's business. Got the okay to come back for other skate sessions though.

PDX again and again

Went down to Portland for the weekend. Picked up Katie at the airport and went straight to Aaron and Annette's wedding. Danced danced danced. Hung out with the fam around West Linn and Lake Oswego. Saturday night went to the Crystal Ballroom for Social D. If they haven't already gone through your town, GO! It was an awesome show. Katie and I made quite the mother daughter duo as per usual. And btw, Jake's is deeeelicious. Now, back to work for a week and then it's off to Island Park. And what would work be without an assignment involving kids?

flickr

I've gotten a lot of feedback and an incredible amount of views on this picture over on flickr. And bust because I missed it being one of the Explore photos on the 5th. Pretty sweet though!! And here I am thinking people would find this shot creepy because it makes me think of aliens.

Gilman St.

Ran across some old photos from a Gilman show that I shot in February.








This is an ode to DK and a shout out to all the dudes at the mansion back home.

Fourth of July

Some more of today's epic day. Seven shoots is too much!! I was super in the center of the frame today and didn't even notice til editing.


I think I officially have enough pictures of kids. Unless I'm going to start a day in the life of the small town American kid, I need to quit shooting the wee ones.





I've never ever shot fireworks. And I've found out that it's really tough to edit fireworks photos! They all look so neat. I abandoned trying to look for something for my foreground or any sort of scene setter. Since I hadn't shot fireworks and also had no idea where to be in this town when they were going off, I was sticking with just average firework shots.


It rained for just a few minutes and I just tried to get some of the drops in there. No interesting plays during the rain.


Yeah, this looks just like my photo from last week. Way to go.

Here's some photos from this morning's new citizen ceremony and some of the activities at Summerfest. Fort Borst Park is definitely one of the best parks I've been too. It's up there with GG Park. More to come as the day goes on.







I just liked this because the lady kind of looks like her bird. No?