alittlenews

Remember this photo? The photo won a first place, a second place and a third place in three different photo contests. Are the judges crazy? Read below to find out.

The contest judges have been very good to me in the past couple of years.  Without a doubt, I have won more awards over the past two or three years than during any stretch in my career.  I always say when my pictures win the judges were brilliant.  When my pictures don’t win, well, clearly they weren’t quite so bright that time around.  In all sincerity, contest judging is very arbitrary and what one person likes another may hate.  I tell you this so you will not pin too much of your photographic self-esteem on contest results.

For instance, remember the photo I showed y’all a couple of posts back of the family coming out of their storm safe room following the April 27 tornadoes?  That photo won second place in spot news for April’s monthly clip contest in NPPA’s Region 6 which comprises states in the southeast.  When the photo was rejudged for the national contest for April, it won first place out of all eleven NPPA regions.  Then, in our state AP contest, the same photo finished in third place.  Go figure!

Another example from our recent state AP contest involves the portrait I shot of Jennifer Adair that was just featured in a post on the blog, The Image Deconstructed.  That is really high cotton.  (For those of you not from the south, “high cotton” is a very, very good thing.)  That photo, which I consider the best portrait I have ever done, won a second place.  Hmmm.  Judges need a little work on that one!

I won the portfolio category this year and I am very, very pleased with that.  The rest of my awards were seconds or thirds.  My friend, Matt McKean, at our sister newspaper in Florence, won four first place awards but didn’t win the portfolio.  Last year I won four first place awards and didn’t win the portfolio.  There have been several years when I felt like I had a really, really strong portfolio and not only didn’t win, but I didn’t place either.

I have been a judge in the Kentucky News Photographer’s Association contest twice and it was a great experience.  The judging was done by a three judge panel and we cast in/out votes to cull things down in each category.  Then you move into more debate.  Three people can easily agree or vehemently disagree.  Three competent photojournalists looking at the same picture can have diametrically opposing points of view.  It doesn’t mean a photo is bad just because a judge has something negative to say or tosses the photo.  I have a set of preferences just like you do but my prefs and your prefs are probably not the same.  We view photographs through the prism of our own life experiences so we like certain photos and dislike others.  That is normal and it is life and sometimes it causes you a contest win.

Contests are great when you win.  They can be a real kick, an ego boost; although, I don’t know too many of us who really need an ego boost!  The trap is when you begin shooting to win a contest.  That is wrong and it will get you in trouble.  The contests are not the goal.  Reporting the news effectively is the goal.  If you have something at the end of the month that may be contest worthy, that is gravy.  (If you are not from the south, and why are you not, gravy is that lovely material that gets spread over biscuits, or mashed potatoes.  White gravy, preferably with little pieces of sausage in it, goes on the biscuits while brown gravy goes on the mashed potatoes.  The only proper way to put your gravy on potatoes is to use a rounded serving dipper thingy and push down on the center of the pile of mashed potatoes making a cavity that you pour the gravy in.  Ummmm, umm!)  Where was I?  Oh yes, contest stuff.  I rather fancy the gravy right at the moment.  Anyway, shoot for the newspaper and the contest wins will come.

If y’all are familiar with playing baseball you may have heard how difficult it is to hit a homerun.  The harder you try the less likely you are to hit one.  Most homeruns come when a batter relaxes and simply goes about the business of hitting the baseball solidly.  Homeruns will come when you are making consistent contact.  Great photos will come when you are working consistently.  However, the harder you try to win contests the less likely you are to do so because winning contests is never the goal of a photojournalist.  In fact, as nice as winning a contest can be, I have never had an editor come to me and say, “Wow Gary, we have to find more money for you.  All those contest wins are so impressive I just have to pay you more money.”  No, no, no.  You will get a nice ‘attaboy’ (If you are not from the south, and by now you must be asking yourself why you don’t live here, an ‘attaboy’ is a short affirmation given when you do something really good but they have no intention of giving you a raise!) and then send you out to shoot the elementary school field day.  Ummm, I really would like those biscuits and gravy now.

To wrap things up so I can go and get that gravy, work hard reporting your community and don’t give a thought to contests until January when hope springs eternal in the photojournalistic breast and you begin putting together your entries for all those contest you just know you are going to win.  By the way, a nice bottle of wine sent in with your submissions can’t hurt!  Or, if I am the judge, some biscuits and gravy will work just fine; although, a nice merlot would be appropriate as well.

Tornado survivors gather for a memorial at Bethel Cemetery near Athens April 27, 2012 to commemorate the first anniversary of last year's devastating tornado. Maudie Turner wipes tears from her eyes during the memorial. Her daughter, Jan McElyea, was killed in Tanner when her car was thrown from Highway 31.

This past weekend, many communities, families and individuals marked the first anniversary of the day that changed their lives with church services, community assemblies and family gatherings.  There was laughter.  Tears were shed too.  Some people are still trying to mend their physical wounds, some their emotional wounds.  People are still fighting insurance companies for their settlements.  Yes, one year later and the nightmare continues for some.  For others, recovery has begun.

That first anniversary after a tragedy is a day everyone seems to mark.  When my son died, that first anniversary of his passing seemed like a huge iceberg on my horizon.  For months I dreaded that day.  It came.  It went.  I survived.  It seemed to me the one year mark held some horror but after that I could begin to change, to adapt to whatever I had to face next.  To begin, maybe with just baby steps, to move forward again.  I hope it is the same for the storm survivors.

I covered the groundbreaking ceremony for a new tornado victims memorial in Limestone County Friday morning.  It is located on Highway 72 near where the Bethel Church of Christ was destroyed.  Many, many tears were shed.  The memorial will honor lives lost in every tornado that has killed someone in the county.  Most recently, four were killed on April 27, 2011.

After that, I covered a visit by Governor Bentley to the Independence Tube factory in Decatur.  It was completely destroyed by the tornado.  Fortunately, the work force was in a safe area in the plant and no one was injured.  The company rebuilt their huge facility in under one year and is beginning operations again.  It was a triumphant day for the company and the several other companies in the industrial park who lent a hand to them in their time of need.  Chief among their supporters was Nucor Steel, a company located nearby and just outside the tornado track.  Their sent emergency personnel and support crews over as soon as the storm passed and helped them at every step of the way.

Later in the day my wife and children joined me in a remembrance for Aurelia Guzman at the family’s home in Langtown.  I have a special feeling for this family.  They lost their daughter in the storm and my heart has been knit to them because I certainly know the pain they feel.  This is a club no one wants to be a member of, the club of bereaved parents, but once you become a bereaved parent you don’t want anyone else to go through their loss alone.  I also went back to a special church service honoring her memory on Sunday.  It was very emotional with tears flowing freely.  The church honored the family in their message and then with a balloon release comprised of nearly 300 balloons.

This was probably the end of our organized coverage of the tornado and its aftermath and recovery.  A news story lasting a full year is very uncommon in a small area like ours.  I mean, as a nation, we gather to mourn each September 11 but that was a national tragedy.  Few local events have that magnitude.  We may come back on the anniversary for a few years or do an odd story here or there but our organized efforts are probably done.  We too will be moving on.

I went to work today with that odd feeling of having finished a job and not knowing what to do with myself.  I haven’t moved on from the story yet.  I may not ever be too far from this story.  The people I have met and come to love over the last year will always be part of my life.  It is one of the great ironies of this tragedy that I have built so many unexpected relationships that would not have happened any other way.  I wish I had known all these folks before the tragedy but, however it happened, I am glad beyond words to have met and become friends with so many of them.

Now my work days will be refocused.  I don’t know where yet.  I need another big project.  I am at my happiest working on big projects, things that challenge me to tell a story that goes beyond the surface level, beyond the headlines.  I don’t know what that will be.  I pray it will not be another tornado.  We have had enough of that down here.  Time will tell.  Ideas have been on the back burner for a long time now.  They will move up to the cooking burners.  Let’s see what gets whipped up into the next story.

Click on the photo to begin a slideshow of images.

April 27, 2011 was one of the most devastating severe weather outbreaks in history sweeping across Alabama spawning an unprecedented 62 tornadoes and killing over 250, injuring thousands.  Cities, towns and rural communities are still trying to cope with both the physical and emotional after effects of this terrible day.

Photo Illustration copyright Gary Cosby Jr.

Noe Guzman prayed hard as the tornado approached his property in the rural Langtown community in Lawrence County, Alabama.  It was very evident something bad was happening.  He prayed for his family’s safety.  He prayed for the storm to pass.  This day, the storm did not turn.  His home was struck full force by an EF5 tornado with winds topping 200 mph.  The house was destroyed and the family blown in several directions.  Only Noe, Jr. did not lose consciousness.  Noe’s precious little girl lay trapped beneath a van in the yard, her life slipping away.  No one could rescue her in time.  Aurelia became one of 71 people killed by this tornado, the single deadliest tornado in nearly six decades.

Today, Noe and Carolyn are welcoming friends and family into their home as they cope with their loss.  They have a new house sitting on the same land they always lived on.  There was no thought of moving.  The day is sorrowful and joyful in that peculiar way that one can only experience when remembering a loved one who has passed before us.  April 27 will always be a day of remembrance, a day when tears are shed over the one who is gone but also a day when a secret memory brings a smile.  April 27 will never go away.

All across the state that scenario will play out in one form after another.  Families will gather.  They will grieve and they will be thankful.  Many, many things were lost but there were some unexpected treasure found along the way.  New friends, unexpected gifts, help from strangers and the items that were found and returned with no expectation of reward.

Jennifer Adair had one of those moments.  When she was born 30 years ago, her mother brought her home from the hospital dressed in a little shirt from Athens-Limestone Hospital.  That shirt was lost when the tornado destroyed her home.  Quite literally, the only thing that was left above floor level in her home was Jennifer.  She was laying in a closet covered in blankets and pillows.  When she looked up, everything was gone.  Not a stick was left above the floor.  Only her.  The little shirt, the furthest thing from her mind, was gone too.  It showed back up several days after the storm.  Someone found the shirt and brought it back laying it on the foundation.  Jennifer was amazed when she found it lying there.  When her new baby, Lily Shiloh Adair, was born at the end of March, she dressed her in that same shirt and made some photos.  A small miracle in the midst of many woes.  I guess you could say Jennifer is a bit of a miracle herself.

Kim Stewart ran to the storm shelter at her husband’s grandfather’s house in the Chalybeate community in Lawrence County.  She left her boots at home and went to the shelter in sandals.  Her boots were blown away and coming out of the storm shelter was like walking through a minefield in flip flops.  Everything was gone.  Four houses belonging to family members, all built along Lawrence County Rd. 296, were gone.  One relative lay dead having refused to get into the shelter.  Amazingly, Kim found her boots during the clean up.  One boot went one direction and the other boot another but both found their way home and she still wears them calling them her tornado boots.  She and husband Robbie have a new house where the old one stood.  Their farm animals are back in place and they are rebuilding their lives.

It isn’t normal.  Nothing is normal.  Kim left her job after experiencing mini-blackouts, blank spots in her life that doctors have concluded may be a tornado related form of epilepsy.  The blackouts have tapered off now, nearly a year after the storm, but Kim rides out storms now on the couch with her two dogs.  They sit together shaking until the storms pass.

Teachers and students at Phil Campbell Elementary School remember every day the ones lost to the tornado.  A new playground, built behind the school and right on the edge of the tornado’s devastating track, has a memorial to a teacher and two students killed.  Everyone in this small town knows someone, or many someones, who passed away.  Twenty six lives were lost.  A black pyramid sits in the middle of a small memorial garden adjacent to the new playground.  Students pass it coming and going, a memorial to their friends and their teacher.  Fellow teachers remember, many lost homes themselves.

The town of Hackleburg was never large.  There is almost nothing left now.  The massive tornado dropped down just outside of town and swept right down the main highway.  Almost everything that a town hangs its hat on was destroyed.  The schools are gone, replaced by mobile classrooms.  Entire neighborhoods are now nothing but concrete slabs with wildflowers growing where houses once stood.  The Wrangler Jeans factory was wiped out.  Some things are coming back like the Wrangler Jeans factory which is being rebuilt.  The old downtown may as well be a ghost town.  Life is returning slowly.  The small town lost 16 people to the devastating storm.  No one can bring them back except by keeping their memories alive.

Katie Yarbrough was home with her mother-in-law.  The tornado was rolling toward their house in the Langtown community.  They had no time to spare.  Clara Mae Yarbrough was recovering from a broken hip and couldn’t move well at all.  By some miracle, Katie got her down the steps and into a small basement as the world came apart around them.  She remembers seeing the house lift from the foundation three times, light appearing under the walls as they separated.  The third time, the walls didn’t come back.  The next few moments were a blur of flying debris.  Katie remembers shoving her mother-in-law to the floor next to a bed.  Concrete blocks had already caved in and were lying there.  They began to lift and fly away.  During the chaos a 2×4 slammed into her body imbedding itself in her side.  In the rush to escape the collapsed house and get her mother-in-law out she just yanked the offending debris out of her side.  They both made it to an ambulance and to the hospital.  Katie got nearly seventy stitches to close her wounds.

On Rosie Road in the Tanner community across the Tennessee River in Limestone County, the tornado was again in full fury.  Every house on the road was destroyed or damaged beyond repair.  Two people were killed there.  They were grandparents who died clutching their grandchildren, giving themselves up to cover the kids.  Another person died on Highway 31 when the tornado threw her car into a field behind where a church used to be.  The church was leveled too.  Three lives lost in 1/4 mile.  The houses fronting Rosie Rd. are all gone, all the owners either killed or moved on.  Only Diondra Tate decided to rebuild.  Two of her dogs were killed by the tornado.  Two other were trapped in the rubble with a friend who was at her house.  She was on her way home from work when the friend called, screamed her name, then the phone went dead.

George Long rode out the storm in a shelter built after the 1974 tornadoes swept his community in Beulah Land in southern Limestone County.  Long said he worried the old storm shelter would collapse.  The ground was quite literally shaking as the monster storm rolled over the shelter.  Houses were destroyed but they survived, unlike ’74 when several neighbors died.  Long was having a frustrating day working on a tractor that also made it through the storm.  His house, and the houses of his neighbors, are in the final stages of reconstruction but life is not normal.  Long said there are days when he feels like he is still in the storm.

People are scarred, the land is scarred.  The scars are literal and they are emotional.  Landmarks that guided generation after generation are no longer there.  The things people held onto have disappeared.  There is a disquieting feeling of unreality about the new reality.  Even though people rebuild on the same spot there is no longer the normal they have known all their lives.  Slowly, very slowly, a new normal is emerging but it is a normal that is missing so many pieces, so many people.  Seventy one souls are gone now.  They will be remembered but memory is a poor substitute for the person.

People will tell you that time heals all wounds.  Those people are wrong.  The wounds don’t go away.  What the passing of time does is it allows you to form a way of dealing with the wounds.  Time allows you to find a way to live, what one might call a new normal but it is a normal that will always bear scars, sometimes even open wounds, of the soul.  April 27 will always be a day when that wound, that scar, will be remembered and grieved over.  It cannot be otherwise.

There are literally thousands of stories to be told.  There are not enough outlets to tell them.  Stories will be passed down in families for generations.  Maybe the lessons learned will save the life of someone who is not yet born.  That is why Jennifer Adair is still here.  Her family lost loved ones on April 3, 1974.  The stories they passed along about that horrible day helped save her life.  Maybe there will be stories passed along that save lives from this storm too.  Storm shelters were built by the hundreds after that 1974 outbreak.  This time it has been storm safe rooms.  There has been an explosion of storm safe rooms in the aftermath of this storm.

Good will come of this.  Good always wins in the end.  It is that belief that will allow families to move forward.  It is that belief that will allow communities to rebuild.  It is that belief that will allow mourners to continue to live in the absence of loved ones.  Yes, good will win.

(Click on the photo for a slideshow of tornado anniversary images.)

There is kind of an art form to finding quiet moments as life blasts past you at super highway speeds.  That art form has a name; looking!  Quiet moments are going on all over the place from crowded rooms to busy streets to, yep, even quiet places.  Finding them comes down to looking for them.  Many times I like the quiet moments I find better than the photo I was assigned to shoot.

I am doing something with the photos in this post I never do, that is, converting the pictures to black and white.  There is a method to my madness.  I want you to see the moments, not the color.  I want you to see just the basics of what the subjects are doing without anything to interfere with your perceptions.  I am a big advocate of shooting in color.  You may have noticed, life happens in color.  I am adamant about not converting images to black and white for contests because we live in color, work in color and shoot in color with the only black and white images existing because the printing press doesn’t have the capacity to print color on every page. Don’t freak out.  Color will return!

Finding quiet moments comes with practice.  Make yourself slow down and look.  Literally, wander around the edges of an assignment and look around.  If there is a pack of journalists hounding a subject, back away and look for what they are missing.  You know why journalists do that?  Simply put, fear.  They are afraid they will miss the one thing an editor sees on TV or in another newspaper and sometimes that is exactly what editors will do.  Don’t ignore you primary subject but after you get the shots you need back off and let the mob do the mob thing.  You do the different thing.

As you roam around shooting the fringes you may also find new stories opening up to you.  Talk to the people around the edges.  Listen to what they have to say.  You may find that one thing that can make your report completely unique from the competition.  They will be sitting around their photo office cursing you for beating them and only you will know how you did it.  (Clearly, your competitors don’t read this blog!)

Besides all that, shooting things other people don’t see is fun.  It is not that I am competitive or anything – what would ever give you such an idea – but I do like to win and many times in the news business you can define winning as getting the shot the other guy doesn’t get even when he is at the same assignment as you.  Like I said, I am not competitive at all.  But how did we go there?  This is about quiet moments, not about ripping out your competitions heart then dancing on it.  Oops, there I go again.  I am really a mild mannered photojournalist who loves to see my competitors do well…really.

Truthfully, the reason some folks don’t shoot like this is because they have lost the joy of simply shooting.  I have done this.   I have gone to work and shot and shot and shot and not done anything I really liked or was proud of.  This stretched from months into years.  At one point, I had gone three years without much to show before I woke up to the joy of why I do this to begin with.  Internet photo galleries have given a place for these wonderful little moments to get published so there is a reward beyond the pure satisfaction of finding a nice moment.

Hopefully you are now inspired, unless, of course, you are a competitor in which case I hope you can’t read or you find this post ridiculous and never do any of this stuff.  But I love you, really I do.  Oh, and if you are working for the Tuscaloosa News, by all means, disregard everything I just wrote and rest upon the laurels of your newly minted Pulitzer because I want you to become complacent SO I CAN WIN A PULITZER!

I know I have written this before in some form so if you are an old hand you can pull the rip cord on this one.  Hopefully there are enough new readers coming in this post will be something cool.  I want to remind us all how important photographing family is.

Ultimately, as a photojournalist, we are historians for our community and in some cases for our nation.  That is an awesome privilege if you stop and think about it.  Photos you take become part of the fabric of your community being woven into the story of your place in this world.  Your photos may end up in the county archive someday and, long after you are gone, someone will want a photo of the community back in the “good old days” and they will be pulling one you shot back in 2012, you know, before the cars flew.

I know you have all heard the tale of the cobbler whose children had the worst shoes in town.  There are times when I simply don’t want to pick up the camera and the easiest place to lay it down is when I am home.  That is usually my detox time.  I don’t always want to shoot photos, especially at family events.  I would like to be part of the event every now and then and not the documentarian.  Stop here and think for a moment, what pictures will you take that will ever be more important  than the ones you take of your family?

Where our communities tend to change at glacial pace, our families change at near the speed of light.  You have a baby and wake up a few mornings later and that lovely little one wants you to teach them to ride a bike.  Fifteen minutes later it is driving lessons then the next morning they are moving out to college.  Before you know it you are all gray and there will be grandchildren bouncing on your knee.  Time flies nowhere faster than in your family.  If you didn’t stop to make pictures along the way so many memories will fall by the wayside and be lost.

On the other hand, if you make photos those pictures, or even videos for that matter, will stimulate memories of favorite times and places and events and even the look in your children’s eyes.  If you have done your job well you will have DVDs full of wonderful memories and your scrapbooks will be the envy of all who see them.  Every now and again you will capture magic while photographing your family.

That happened recently when we had an awesome sunset after a rainstorm.  My three youngest were out riding their bikes through puddles on our street.  The sun was setting beneath the storm clouds and the light was amazing.  I almost ran back to my car and pulled out the camera.  I simply stood there blasting away with an 80-200 making pictures that will fill the pages of our minds for years to come.  I posted them to my Facebook page and people loved them so I decided to offer some to the newspaper.  Our editor declined because we take a dim view of publishing photos of family members so I emailed a few to Dave Martin at the Associated Press.  He decided to move one of them of my little girl riding her bike and the photo actually won the Member Showcase Feather Photo of the Month for Alabama.  A double bonus!

Sometimes I catch myself not shooting pictures of my family.  When that happens I remind myself that neither life nor God gives us a guarantee for tomorrow.  I have hard evidence of that one as many of you know, my son Reece died just over two years ago leaving a tremendous hole in our hearts and lives.  He was only two years and three months old and I have never been happier to have nice photos of someone than I was to have pictures of him.  In fact, the most valuable picture in our house is a simple family portrait with me and my wife with all eight of our children in it.  As far as I can tell it is the only photo we have of everyone together in one picture.  It is now priceless and it was a photo that would never have happened were it not for our daughter Katie who, out of the blue, suggested we do a family photo.  No more prescient suggestion has ever been made.  In fact, Katie went out of her way to arrange it.  I have no idea what put it into her mind but I will be grateful for the rest of my days for that one moment that now hangs on canvas in our living room.  If we ever need evidence of God working in her life we can certainly point to that suggestion.

Don’t stop making excellent pictures just because you punch the time clock.  The most important pictures you will ever shoot are the ones you will shoot at home and at family picnics and on vacations.

I tried something today that worked and I am very excited about it. I shot a time lapse covering four or five minutes of actual time that is compressed to about 30 seconds of video time. I was out in the Tanner community trying to get a nice scenic shot over a field of yellow stuff, no idea what it actually is so I am going with yellow stuff. A thunderstorm was brewing up and I was loving the contrast between the yellow field and the dark blue-gray clouds.

Then I saw a kind of a wall cloud developing and I thought, “Hey, a time lapse might be cool here.” I grabbed the tripod and found a decent spot and hoped I didn’t get hit by lightning. I shot a single frame just about every second for the four or five minutes. I had the camera set on aperture priority so you will notice a bounce in the exposure at least once. Live and learn. This is my first try and I am no Ben Canales!

I had no idea how to put together a time lapse so I opened the user manual on Final Cut Express and took about five minutes to get totally confused. I read an online tutorial and that didn’t help either. Finally, I just added all the photos to iMovie on our new Macbook Pro at work and set the interval as short as I could get it, about .2 seconds per frame. I clicked play and, it worked! I was giddy. Seriously, I was like a little kid at Christmas.

Other than not getting struck by lightning, there is really nothing to this. Find a storm, a decent spot to shoot from. Set the camera on MANUAL exposure! Use a tripod. Bang away. If you have a fancy camera you can even set it to shoot one frame every second, or whatever interval you want, and stand back and let ‘er rip. I have no sound track on this because it was done in a real hurry. Tomorrow I may go back in and add a soundtrack from some video I recorded of the same storm. Fun times. Give it a try sometime!

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. Calhoun catcher Cole Veazey leaps in the air while celebrating a game winning, walk-off single by teammate Chase Handy Sunday, March 25, 2012 at Calhoun as the Warhawks defeated Shelton State.

Since I moved to mostly day shifts a few years ago, baseball games have been few and far between.  I have been blessed to work some weekends lately where baseball games were on the photo budget.  Couldn’t be happier.  There is not much better than baseball.  I loved playing baseball and I love shooting baseball.  I may be a little better at shooting football and I do love covering football but my first love will always be baseball.

I once dreamed of playing major league baseball.  I mean, who didn’t?  Growing up in the 7o’s and 80′s, I loved the Big Red Machine and Johnny Bench and Pete Rose were my favorite players.  I was never as big a fan of the Braves as I was the Reds.  My brother and I spent so many summer days in the backyard playing baseball you couldn’t count them.  Then there is the infamous hit by a pitch game, I really didn’t mean to slam him with the ball, and he retaliated by throwing his bat at me helicopter style.  A bench clearing brawl would have ensued except there were no benches and mom heard the bat clang off the side of the house and she rushed outside and, well, lets say she hit a couple of home runs of her own!

I actually tried out for the Cincinnati Reds during an open tryout right after I graduated high school.  I was a good high school player but that turned out to be a far cry from making the Reds.  Ergo, the camera.  I transferred my love for baseball from the field to the photo box and have pursued the game ever since.  Some people say baseball is boring.  I love shooting baseball.  It gives you some of the best opportunities to make pictures in the whole sports world.  You can actually frame shots in baseball.  You can pretty much forget that in basketball and football.

I also love the freedom of movement you can have covering baseball games.  This is especially true in smaller venues like high school or, gasp, even Little League.  I like to move around the entire complex when I shoot a game.  I will usually even take an inning long trip around the outfield fences and shoot back toward the infield.  Interesting perspective and, one day, I am going to get a shot of someone leaping high over the fence to rob a hitter of a home run.  Hasn’t happened yet but I am always looking!

Weather is sometimes the best part of covering baseball.  It is also sometimes the worst thing about covering baseball.   We have had a very warm and beautiful spring this year but north Alabama has a tendency to get real cold in the early spring when high school baseball is being played.  The wind blowing across the diamond can be especially nasty.  I remember being a freshman in high school playing against Mars Hill Bible School at their place.  I was not a starter yet and I was sitting on the bench with a cold, cold wind in my face the whole game.  I was frozen.  Coach called on me to pinch hit and I could barely even feel the bat.  I went to the plate facing the best pitcher in the area at that time and praying for a walk!  Had I hit the ball my hands may have shattered like glass.

The point is to always be prepared.  Carry a hat, jacket and gloves with you all the time.  They may keep you shooting when all you really want to do is get under the blanket with some fan who has one of those portable heater things in the bleachers.  It can also be hot, really hot, with a blistering sun.  Keep a floppy hat with you and some sunscreen too.  Then there are those perfect days when there is not a better place in the world than the ball park.  Grab a hot dog and a coke between games and enjoy some atmosphere.

I shoot with either a 300 or 400mm lens.  Our 400mm is an ancient f3.5 manual lens that only works wide open so you have to be dead spot on with your focusing.  Oh, and it is a manual focus lens, of course.  Most frequently now, I use a 3oo f2.8 “s” version with a 1.4 teleconverter.  It is a nice combo and I am enjoying it for both baseball and football.  It would work great for soccer too.  Other than that, run that motor drive up as fast as you can go and have some fun.  Don’t forget the sunflower seeds!

By the way, lots of people ask questions about equipment.  I can tell you owning pro level camera bodies pays off more in sports and spot news photography than in any other type assignment.  Spot news because things happen in all kinds of weather and the conditions can be very nasty, very messy and often enough, very, very wet.  The quality moisture and dust resistance as well as the strength of construction make a pro body beyond value.  A pro level body in sports photography means a much faster motor drive, 8 frames per second and faster, which translates into having the ball visible in a much higher percentage of your frames than with a slower recording body.

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. Patty Goar sits in a recliner and watches debris, which used to be her home, burn on Nick Davis Road Saturday, March 10, 2012 in East Limestone. There are no plans to remove debris by either the federal, state or local governments leaving residents to fend for themselves.

Not every moment in your photographic life will be mountain top experiences where you are shooting breathtaking images in dramatic situations.  In fact, quite the opposite is true.  Most of your photo assignments either are, or will be, rather normal, one might even say, mundane.  One of the most important things I have learned in my life is this; working well when you are in those not so dramatic situations, call it working in the valleys if you will, is critical to your success as a photojournalist and as a human being.

Some of you may remember I went on a cruise last year to Alaska.  I knew this cruise was coming during an important spiritual time in my life.  I knew that God was speaking to me about the next season of my life during the time frame when my cruise was scheduled.  The Lord spoke very directly to me to pay attention to the high places during my cruise.  Man, Alaska has some high places!  I remember being particularly impressed in the Tracy Arm Fjord.  The high places were amazing.  It was raining and water falls were  falling in every variety from pencil thin lines to torrents cascading down from the peaks into the valleys.  It was a truly amazing sight.

I remembered I was supposed to be watching the high places and later, as I was praying about it, I felt the Lord ask me a question.  He wanted to know what I observed about the high places.  I remember gushing about the beauty of those many peaks.  Then I began to really consider what I had seen.  Most of the mountain peaks were bare rock in that Fjord.  They were lofty and amazingly beautiful but they were also above the tree line and were largely barren.  There was no plant life that I could see and only birds soaring above the peaks.  I suddenly realized that, as beautiful as the peaks were, nothing lived there.  Nothing could unless it ate rock.  I realized the mountain tops are great places to visit and look and be awed by but they were not where I lived.

We all tend to live in valleys because all that water falling on the heights washes stuff down into the valleys and that is where the fertile soil is.  Hopefully the bells of cognition are ringing for you right now.  No one can live on a continual spiritual, or photographic, mountaintop.  We earn our living down in the valleys, working hard and plowing the soil.  We visit the mountains from time to time but the vast majority of who we are is formed in the valleys.  Man, that would preach as we say down South!

All those mundane photo assignments are the fertile soil for your best work.  Yeah right, I know, easy for me to say.  I don’t have to shoot your junky jobs.  Nor you mine!  What prevents you from taking that junky assignment and doing something good with it?  You don’t plant a garden without fertilizer.  So if you think you assignment is “fertilizer” then treat it like that.  Treat it as if it is the assignment that will cause you to grow.  Use it to fertilize you imagination.  How can you take this rather poor assignment and make it better.  Can you add light?  Can you shoot with a different lens?  How about a different attitude which is the most important tool you possess?  How about asking if you can come back later when the subject is actually doing what they are pretending to do for the camera now?  How about not making excuses and make a picture!

The greenest grass always grows over the septic tank.  It has the best fertilizer.  I can almost guarantee you if you will use your “poor” jobs as fertilizer you will grow some seriously green photographic grass.  Then when your boss asks you how you do it you can tell him with a straight face that you turned his “fertilizer” into fertility.  Okay, maybe you should be careful about sharing that thought cause I know some of you might practice some word replacement in that sentence!

I know from experience the news business can either make you crazy or it can make you better than you thought you could ever be.  I have literally been both.  That I am still doing this is a testimony to some good friends who helped me stick when it was making me crazy.  It is also a testimony to the grace of God and maybe a touch of stubbornness which, when used in the right way, is a true gift from God.

The photos with this post come from the range of every day stuff we get assigned at the Decatur Daily.  The top photo was actually used with a story about how the tornadoes have affected real estate values.  Try illustrating that concept!  I found this family burning the remains of their home.  Not a perfect fit but a nice photo anyway.  Another is from a raptor show at the wildlife refuge, held indoors in near darkness.  There is one of the every day, and I do mean every day, stand alones we shoot.  Another is an interview photo with an 18 year old candidate for the board of education and the last image is of a lady who had been hit by lightning while shooting video of the storm with her cell phone.  Normal, every day stuff.  Is it fertilizer or is it green grass?

Eyewitness page in the Virginian Pilot.

Tornadoes have come to be a dominant theme in my photographic life.  I guess the three pictures I am most known for have all been from tornado coverage.  In a way, I kind of hate that.  Don’t get me wrong, there is a huge thrill in seeing something I shot on the front page of the Washington Post or the New York Times or USA Today.  I mean, as a photojournalist, how could you not want to see your work there.  But, and this is a big BUT, if a guy working in a small market in north Alabama has a picture in one of those spots you can about guarantee that it is because something bad happened.  Seeing one of your pictures there isn’t free and it is not without mixed feelings.

With all that said, there are some great after stories associated with a couple of those photos both for the people in the pictures and for me as well.  The photo of the Harrison family coming out of their storm safe room has brought them a bit of celebrity status.  They were interviewed by CNN, given the opportunity to be special honorees at a national safe home builders convention and ultimately were given a new storm safe room for their new house.  All that happened because people saw the picture I shot of them and it struck a chord.  I couldn’t be happier for Kevin and Sarabeth and their kids.  The best thing is they came out alive and in one piece.  For me, I just found out the photo won a national first place in the NPPA’s monthly clip contest.  That’s a first.  I had a second place in the national competition once but never a first.  It is difficult to top that.  I am very excited.

The recent tornado that scarred Limestone County gave me another great opportunity when I arrived at Greg Cook’s house just a few minutes before he found his dog Coco.  That photo has generated more response than any image I have ever shot.  Literally!  I even got an email from PETA yesterday seeking contact info for Greg so they can send money and help his way.  Amazing.  There have been dozens of people who have taken the time to contact me directly about it and several photographers from around the country have also commented on it.  That is all very cool.

And here we come to the crux of this post.  I got a surprise in the mail the other day.  My boss handed me a package from Bill Tiernan at the Virginian Pilot in Norfolk, VA.  Probably doesn’t sound like much to most of you but you don’t know my story.  I went to grad school in Virginia Beach, a near neighbor town to Norfolk and the Virginian Pilot was about the best visual newspaper in the country.  Bill Tiernan was one of my favorite photographers there.  I would look for his name in photo credits.  I loved his pictures.  Once in a while I had occasion to go to the Pilot photo office, something I would have done all the time if I had any sense back in those days, and I remember meeting Bill and hearing his stories about assignments he had done.  I wish now that I had pressed the photo chief harder to let me do some work for him, maybe some high school sports, anything, to get something of a foot in the door at that great paper but I was young and stupid.  Alas!

Screen grab from the NPPA web site.

But the package, yes, the package.  I opened and found a tear sheet of the Eyewitness page and there, at the top of the page, was my photo of Greg and Coco.  I couldn’t believe my eyes.  I actually had a picture in the Virginian Pilot and, most astonishingly, one of my photo heroes had taken the time to look up my address, write me a letter and send me a package.  I was stunned and very grateful.  I must add that my colleague and fellow Decatur Daily staffer, Jeronimo Nisa, also was published on the page.  His excellent photo is just beneath mine.

I have gotten links to pages all over the place that ran the photo.  Even People magazine put it on their website.  One giddy viewer suggested Greg and Coco should be guests on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.  Who knows what will happen for them.  Whatever it is I hope it is all good.  For me, y’all remember that song lyric that went, “We keep getting richer but we can’t get out picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone.?”  Well, the Pilot was my Rolling Stone so I am pretty happy right about now.  The Washington Post ain’t bad either!

Okay.  I am all done patting myself on the back.  I don’t talk much about awards and places pictures publish.  They don’t matter all that much in the long run but these two were so special I couldn’t help but share them.  Hope you don’t mind the self-adjulation.  We will be back down to earth for the next post.  By the way, Mr. Tiernan, if you are reading this post, I do not have an altar set up to you or anything but I do seriously appreciate the tear sheet and the influence you and the Pilot photographers have in my career.

Daily Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. Brewer defeated Valley 65-43 to claim the 5A state championship Saturday, March 03, 2012 at the BJCC in Birmingham. Riley Northway, left, and Hannah Landers, right, help teammates lift the Championship Trophy at mid-court.

Brewer High School girls won the first state championship in school history last week.  They beat Valley High School 65-43 in a very one sided game they dominated from the outset.  It was, in fact, rather anti-climatic.  How can I say that you ask?  You didn’t see the state semi-final game where they trailed Faith Academy 22-8 at the end of the first quarter.  I was literally sitting on the baseline wondering just how bad it was going to be.  But these girls are tenacious and that is where the story is really told.

I don’t know how to judge the importance of talent versus tenacity so this is just opinion.  As far as I can remember in covering 22 years of basketball, I have never seen a greater comeback by a team with less talent than their opponent to actually win the game in a win or go home situation like I saw in that game.  Faith Academy was so very impressive athletically it was hard for me to even imagine a comeback.  I was only hoping the game would end quickly and it wouldn’t be too embarrassing.  Goes to show what I know.

Brewer just never quit.  I think they held Faith to no points in the second quarter for several minutes while they began chipping away.  The game still seemed out of reach at half-time but the margin had closed.  I did not think they could win but I did think they would not lose.  I mean, you can always get beat by a better team but I define losing as giving up and there was none of that in this team.  Brewer just kept fighting and kept fighting.  You will have to refer to the work of my colleagues on the word side, Justin Graves and Sports Editor Mark Edwards to know the exact moment when Brewer took the lead.

For me, the game changed late in the fourth quarter.  Faith had committed only one foul and the clock was ticking down and they held only a one point lead.  They began fouling on purpose, just reaching out and touching a Brewer player in front of the ref on purpose so he would call a foul.  The refs knew what they were doing and why.  Then one of the Faith players pushing Riley Northway from behind while she was in the air.  He called an intentional foul and Riley went to the line and put Brewer ahead.  They did not look back.  Maybe she won a state championship right there on that free throw line with two minutes on the clock.

Riley won the MVP award and she certainly deserved it but, when you look at this team, you see all the kids playing integral parts.  I would rate both Faith and Valley as having more athletic teams than Brewer but there is one thing you will see if you watch any team coached by Ricky Allen and that is the ability to shoot.  Brewer especially rained three pointers down on Valley.  But what really stood out to me was the flat out hustle they showed and I will single out Rheagan Harvel for my personal hustle award.  She is the point guard and does a great job but what I was most impressed with was her hustle on defense to stop break aways.  Time and time again Faith or Valley would get a rebound or a steal and have a long outlet pass to someone wide open down court.  Rheagan would literally fly down the court and somehow undercut the person before they could get to the basket and knock the ball away.  She rarely fouled while doing this and it caused the teams to play a half-court style offense that neither was very good in.

I would bore you with all the names of people I noticed who did amazing things in this final four.  I was very happy to see these kids win and I was very happy for Ricky Allen and his wife Charlotte who is a walking picture factory.  If you ever need a reaction photo all you have to do is find where she is sitting and shoot.  She is so into the games and so animated she is a photographer’s dream.  I know this has been a patting on the back thing and many of y’all don’t even know where Brewer High School is so I will wrap that up with a big congrats to these young ladies.  Well done.  Enjoy being on top of the world!

The photos in the gallery below are from both the semi-final and final.