alittlenews

The photography for The Upside of Down was really the easiest part of the project because that is what I do.  Making the contacts, doing the interviews, arranging my schedule, writing, re-writing and knocking out all the little details that go into a big project were the hard part.  I shot the entire project with my Canon 5D except the photos of Dr. Mobley and I only used the company issue to do his photos because I didn’t carry my Canon gear to California.

I shot almost every photo with either the 17-40 f4L or the 24-70 f2.8L lenses.  I think there was only one photo shot with the 70-200 and that was the tight photo of Peter Watson at UAB.  I used the flash as judiciously as possible.  I wanted to shoot this documentary style so I kept the technical stuff as simple as possible.  But truthfully, there were several times when I simply had to use a strobe.  Shooting in homes was usually quite difficult to manage without adding a little light.

Most of the photos shot in Willie Chandler’s home used some strobe bounced off a wall or ceiling.  I used this as a fill light whenever possible.  Most of the photos in Lucas Compton’s story were shot using a single strobe.  Several of the photos shot in our home of Reece were shot with strobe.  Most of the time it was a Vivitar 285 HV bounced off the ceiling or wall or even through a lamp shade.  I really hope you can’t tell which photos were strobed and which were not.  Some are more obvious than others like the one’s in Lucas Compton’s story.  His room was very dark and it was simply the right way to do it.  I didn’t feel too bad about strobing things because W. Eugene Smith, one of the greatest photo essayists of all time used strobe on some of his most famous pictures.  The point was you saw the story and not the strobe in his images.  I hope I got close to that in mine.

I tried to do a couple of things photographically.  I tried to compose purposefully using layers.  Not all those images made the final edit but I was conscious of layers as I shot.  My second goal was gaining visual intimacy.  This one didn’t work out as well as I hoped.  As the project grew I realized I was getting overkill on some stories and others, try as I might, I never got back for a second photo session.  I think I was most successful with Willie Chandler’s family.  I feel like I am part of the family.  I could walk into their home today and they would hand me Willie and we would sit right down and play.  My wife Patty and our kids have also been over to their house a couple of times with me.

Had I been able to go back to each subject over and over again I would have developed more depth and been able to turn photos into photo essays.  But then, where would I have put them.  This was already bordering on too long to publish without major cuts.  Had I produced even more material I have no idea what we could  have done with it.  That said, I still feel like I missed something in the photos.  Maybe it was the depth I alluded to.  I can’t really put my finger on it.  Perhaps I am too close to the project to tell.  There is one thing that I do know, finishing the project is more of a beginning than an end.

One of the great things about being a photojournalist is the connections you make with people.  One of the worst problems is you can’t ever seem to find enough time to maintain all those connections.  That is the nature of life I guess.

I enjoyed being with each family and person in the story.  People have to extend some level of trust to allow a stranger with a camera into their lives and each family was very gracious.  I think having Reece really helped people trusted me knowing I understood what it was like from the inside.  That makes a big difference.  So much of photojournalism doesn’t have an awful lot to do with the camera, the lens or the flash.  Successful photojournalism, especially in long-term projects, involves developing relationships with the people you are photographing.  The hardest folks to deal with are the ones who understand what I am doing the least  because that group of people work real hard to keep me at arms length, or ten foot pole length whenever they can.  The best pictures usually happen when I have developed a relationship with the subject and they open their lives to me.

I have frequently thought over the years since college that I wasted a fair amount of my education studying photography.  What I should have studied was people.  One of my favorite courses in college was Social Geography.  It fascinated me and I have been fascinated by the great variety that people present ever since.  If you happen to be a photojournalism student, of course, get your photo courses but don’t neglect courses that teach you about people.  You can have mad technical skills but if you don’t have good people skills you will never live up to your potential.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

There is a saying, “the longest journey begins with a single step.”  There is another saying, “the first step is the hardest to take.”  Okay, I made that last one up but it is true all the same.  The Upside of Down began as a twinkle in my son Reece’s eyes.  I would look in those beautiful little eyes and wonder how he was perceiving the world, what was he thinking.  What was going on in there that made those eyes sparkle with wonder all the time.  I wanted to know more.

Since I had already been writing on this blog about Reece and his journey through life it was a natural step to try and tell stories about other people who have Down syndrome.  I was completely filled with wonder when I looked at the blessing Reece was to our family.  There must be others.  I began by giving my business card to Melissa Steele who was the therapy assistant who came into our home to work with Reece.  Melissa could not recruit families for me but she could pass along my idea and if anyone was interested they could call me.

 

I got one phone call.  It was from Christine Bolden who has a little boy named Willie.  I began there with nothing but an idea and one contact.  I shot my first picture of Christine and her son Willie Chandler III at the home in Decatur on July 2, 2009, one day before my son Reece turned two.  Willie was about eight months old.  I did a brief interview and shot about thirty minutes worth of photos and left wondering what in the world I was going to do a story on.  The in-home day care and the constant parade of people kind of disoriented me and I left with no clear direction.  It was about a week later when it dawned on me that they were the perfect example of the African proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.”  Then I had a hook to hang my story on and something to build my photo coverage around.

My next call was to the ARC of Morgan County.  Actually, I just stopped by unannounced one day and told them what I wanted to do.  I got a couple of names from them.  One was Lucas Compton who was working at one of the recreation centers in Decatur.  My ideas were still all loose and unfocused.  Lucas was the first adult I photographed.  I spent about thirty or forty five minutes with him at the Aquadome Recreation Center in Decatur where he worked part time.  While I was there I met Kellie Sims who is the therapeutic recreation coordinator for Decatur.

Kellie gave me more names and numbers and told me about her activities with the special needs population around the area.  I had another story.  I don’t think I ever met anyone as passionate about her job as Kellie is.  Her list of contacts led me to Neil Christopher who worked for another part of the parks and recreation department.  I wanted to do his story but it seemed I now had two very similar stories in Lucas and Neil.  It was not until some time later that it occurred to me Lucas had talked about his fascination with wrestling.  That gave me another angle.  Lucas could give me one aspect of life and Neil another.

The second name I got from ARC led me to Micayla Atkins and her family and what a delight that little girl is.  I spent about and hour with she and her mom and sister in their home in Hartselle.  I followed up later with about half a day in school with her.  I also interviewed the principal of a developmental school for special needs children in Decatur.  Later I found out about Tiger Buddies through Melissa Steele again.  We had one of those accidental conversations where she mentioned Tiger Buddies in passing.  It fascinated me and followed up and found Lee Anne Pettey and Chris Martin.

While shooting in Willie’s home one day they told me about Melissa Wiggins ushering in the church.  It took a little while to find her but I eventually located her and obtained permission from the pastor to photograph her in a church service.  I spent about a half hour in her home interviewing her along with her mom and dad and about two hours in church one Sunday morning.

I found the UAB Adult Down Syndrome Clinic through an article my wife found online somewhere.  She forwarded an email to me one day with a link to the story.  I contacted UAB and found we already had a connection with Dr. Edward Lose who had diagnosed Reece.  They graciously allowed me to spend the biggest part of a day with them where I met Peter Watson and Ingrid Kidd.  I had to do phone interviews after the fact with both families because of time constraints on the day I was in Birmingham.

Rounding out the medical stories, I did an online search on Down Syndrome and found the Stanford University facility where research into Down Syndrome was going on.  I sent emails to the co-directors and Dr. William Mobley responded.  If I were not a Christian I would now have to say that the biggest coincidence of the whole project happened here.  Being a Christian I will say that the steps of the righteous are ordered by the Lord.  I told Dr. Mobley if, by some miracle, I could get to California I would love to photograph some of the research.  The University of Alabama football team provided the miracle by playing the National Championship game in California.  When I got to Newport Beach it dawned on me that I was only an hour or so away from UC San Diego where Dr. Mobley had recently moved.  I sent a few emails and found a free afternoon the day after the game and was able to photograph one of the foremost Down Syndrome researchers in the world.

As I moved through the project my ideas began to gain some direction and then the direction got a point to it.  The organization of the project came midway through when I began to see it taking shape.  What had begun with a more or less loose idea of doing stories on people with Down formed into a project that covered a wide range of age groups and topics that ranged from a one year old to a 64 year old and covered topics from education, life, faith, education and medical care and research.  I would love to say I started with this elaborate plan, but honestly, this took shape as I moved along.  To say that I was pleased with the way the project came together would be a massive understatement.  The entire project is located at decaturdaily.com.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Last year I did something to wrap up the year that I really enjoyed and got some nice feedback from all of you on so I decided to do my 20 moments series again.  Basically, I am choosing 20 photos from 2009 that were some of my favorites.  It doesn’t mean they necessarily had the greatest news value or were even the greatest photos.  The 20 moments may have only significance to me.  But I want to present my selections again this year.  It is helpful to me to review my year and it might bring some value to you as the reader as well so I hope you enjoy the 2009 edition.

Let me deal with the elephant in the room first.  This is by far the most significant moment of my year, or of any year of my life to this point.  My son Reece died this year as most of you already know.  He passed from my arms into the arms of The Lord in the very early morning hours of September 27.  Reece was two years, two months, twenty four days and about three hours old when he died.  I have never known such pain.  As I look around at my family, I know that none of us have ever felt such pain.  Everyone I know who has lost a child, and the list seems to be growing all the time, tells me that the pain never goes away but it does ease over time.

I won’t dwell on this because it is beyond words but I do want to say just a bit more.  David wrote in the Psalms words to the effect that he soaked his couch in tears and that his eye was wasted away from weeping.  I used to think David was speaking in metaphors or was just being dramatic.  Let me assure you that David was writing reality.  I wish I had never learned this.  I wish I did not have to look at my wife and see the deep pain in her eyes.  I wish that I did not have to hold my children on my lap as they do their crying.  Most of all, I wish that I had Reece back in my arms.  Since none of my wishes about this seem to come true I will hold my children, love my wife, cry when I must and remember my precious little man.  God has done his best to comfort me.  I appreciate it but it is just not the same as having him here.

Okay, one small story to take the edge off of this.  I was really lamenting Reece’s death the other day and the Lord spoke to my heart.  He said that Reece was a great blessing in heaven.  As he was on earth so he is in heaven only more so.  The Lord said that every place Reece goes in heaven and every one he comes in contact with is blessed by the love that he has.  Reece’s gifts on earth have been magnified, or maybe perfected is the word, in his heavenly life.  I can’t wait to get there, to hold him, to experience his love in its purified state.  He must really be something!

Just to give this post a little photographic slant, photographing Reece was always a pleasure.  If you are a newcomer here you will not know that I had been a documentary project on his life.  This means we have a special treasury of photographs of Reece that are really very journalistic.  This photograph of Reece was almost the last frame I ever shot of him.  He was having his therapy session with Melissa Steele from the Center for the Developmentally Disabled.  This session was by far Reece’s best.  He had done everything he could do in this session and he had done most of them without crying which was a big deal when we are talking therapy.  Reece even climbed up onto our couch.  It was the first time he had ever been able to do that.  I was just about to burst with pride as I watched him.  In fact, I wrote a blog post about Reece making real progress.  That was only a few days before he died.  This photo was not by any means the best I shot of him this year but it does have something of a triumphant feeling to it.  I like to think that is the way he left us; triumphantly.

Photograph copyright Gary Cosby Jr.   The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

A few weeks ago we took Reece to Birmingham to have a neurodevelopmental analysis done by a lady named Kay Ness.  She gave us an extensive physical and speech therapy regimen to work and it is intense.  If you were to sit down and work with and do the whole program at one time it would take about two hours a day and both Reece and Patty and I would be insane by now.  As it is, you spread it out over the day and it is not too bad.  Of course, we haven’t done the entire daily program even once yet but it is not a perfect world.

Never the less, Reece is making tremendous progress.  Today was therapy day with Melissa Steele from the Centers for the Developmentally Disabled.  She is here twice a month for an hour each visit.  Today, Reece did a little showboating for her.  Since we came back from Birmingham, Reece has begun pulling up and cruising the furniture and he does it without any help from us.  He now climbs up onto the couch, again, all by himself.  He is starting to make more sounds and words and we are seeing real progress toward walking for the first time.

All this is exciting.  He is two now and way past the time when our other children began to walk and talk.  It is great to see him doing his thing.  And don’t tell me that he has Down Syndrome and he should be slower.  I don’t want to hear it.  I know it and I will not rush him to be like anyone else but neither will I use Down Syndrome as a crutch.  Reece may not ever approach what we deem a normal life but I want his normal to be the best it can be, Down Syndrome or not.

Watching him stand up and cruise around on the furniture, even in his halting movements, is such a huge accomplishment it almost makes me cry.  I am so very proud of him.  He also has a great sense of humor and of how to play a room already.  You can ask him, “Reece, show me your crawl,” and he will roll over onto his belly, look up at you with a big smile on his face and begin clapping for himself.  Yeah, he might already be ready for the stage.

But the major area of development that I find the most thrilling is in Reece’s reasoning and association.  Whenever our oldest son comes into the room, Reece starts to growl.  It is hilarious to watch them growling back and forth at each other.  It is almost like Reece is trying to challenge him for dominance.  Then there is the issue with shoes.  Reece will hold up his foot for you if he sees you bringing a shoe.  If he finds a shoe in the house he will put it on his own foot.  Just two days ago he scooted over to Patty and tugged on her leg and fussed until she picked him up.  As soon as he could see out the window he pointed and said, “side” to her.  He is learning and he is associating what he learns and that is thrilling for us to see.

When he sees a picture of a tiger come up on the screen saver on our computer he growls at it just like he does with big brother.  He makes a different sound for fish.  He is learning and growing and it just blows you away.  I am sure that our other children all did this same stuff and we celebrated them too.  I don’t mean to make more of Reece than them because none or any less precious than the others, Reece included.  I think with the “normal” kids in the family, all this happened so quickly and we were moving on to the next thing so quickly we just didn’t notice it as much.  With Reece, almost any new thing is a big accomplishment.  It doesn’t mean more it is just more apparent because everything has happened so much more slowly with him.

The therapy is paying off.  It only seems so very slow.  Week to week you don’t really notice much improvement; however, if we look back over the year then we see huge strides in both physical and speech.  It is a bit like growing a garden.  You plow, you plant, you weed and you watch it grow until one day it suddenly bears fruit.  In all those days of expectation as you plow, plant and weed the time seems to drag by, but one day the fruit appears and then it takes a little time for it to come to maturity.  That’s the way it is with Reece.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Growing up in the Christian culture of the rural South in the 60′s and 70′s meant a fair dose of gospel music.  This genre ranges from quartets to old time gospel hymns sung congregationally.  I always liked the hymns.  Well, most of them anyway, but the quartets, that was another story.  There was something about the style that just ran up my spine.  It is not like the music wasn’t done well.  It was.  I have heard some really great quartets.  My dad sang in several and quartets were a fixture in church in my youth.  That couldn’t make me like them though.

I remember services where we would just go and sing.  Many times the people in the congregation would nominate their favorites and we would all turn in the hymnals and sing hymn number 189, first, second and final stanzas.  I never knew why no one ever sung the third stanza but you just about always sang either two of the three or three of the four but seldom all four stanzas.  Weird.  The point being I was never far away from gospel music growing up.

Times have changed.  Gospel music is now nowhere near as prevalent as it was in my childhood and those who still sing gospel and go to gospel singings are aging.  This means that a musical form is also aging and in danger of passing away.  When I was assigned to cover the Morgan County Singing Convention last weekend I had a mix of emotions.  First of all I have to admit that I actually dreaded it.  I knew it meant quartets and I still have never really grown to like quartets.  Secondly I was kind of excited about the chance to document a part of the culture that was so much a part of my youth.

When I arrived I was not surprised to see mostly older people in the little country church.  In fact, I may have been the youngest person there with the exception of one little boy I saw wiggling around in the pews just like I used to do.  I took my Ipod Touch along with a microphone and recorded some of the show and you can hear it with the slide show below.  (Be warned, my splicing together of different songs to fit into a couple of minutes is a bit rough.)  Still, the music was much as I remembered it from years ago.  There is a very heavy piano feel to gospel music and the quartet brought along a bass guitarist but it is mostly vocal.  The quartet, yes there was one, was actually pretty good.  The only problem now is I will not get those songs and melodies out of my head for weeks.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily. All rights reserved. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Patty and I watched and helped seven children learn to walk and it always seemed that the process just happened.  It was not something you thought about beyond just making sure that the little toddlers didn’t fall on anything or bang into anything that would do them harm.  Then, along came Reece.  All those things that we never even thought about before, the mechanics of crawling and walking, all those things that we had just taken for granted, now have become a big deal.

We never thought about the basic act of putting one foot in front of the other because all our other children just did this naturally.  Down Syndrome children don’t really do any of these mechanics naturally.  Just the basic act of going from a lying position to a sitting position requires repetitive teaching.  Reece can finally do this after many months of “helping” him develop the muscle memory for the job.  Most mornings I now find him sitting up in bed and calling out, “Daaaaaad,” at the top of his little lungs.  He can make it to the sitting position on the floor too if he gets a little help rolling onto his side or his stomach.  These seeming trivial acts are major accomplishments for Reece and for so many others like him.

We had to finally give up on ever getting him to crawl like a normal kid.  He simply refuses to do it.  Put him on his knees and he starts to scream and cry and he will continue to scream and cry until he is no longer on his knees.  I don’t think it hurts him.  I think he is stubborn about it and has decided he is just not going to do it.  So we move on.  Reece is a scooter.  He scoots all over the house sitting on his bottom and he scoots about as fast as any kid I have ever seen crawl. Instead of demanding he learn to crawl and making his life and our lives miserable, we have moved on and we are now taking some baby steps, literally.

Reece can’t walk on his own but he can walk when he gets a little help from his friends.  You have to really support his little rear end because he has some weakness in the hips, a nasty side effect of DS.  Poor muscle tone is one of the things that all DS families have to deal with.  We lovingly call him our little marshmallow man.  But Reece is making progress.  He has gone from assisted kneeling and standing to standing on his own.  Well, he stands unsupported by us anyway.  He can stand as long as he has something to help him balance.  We have a toy now he stands at to play.  He can do that and he is getting better all the time.  The more he stands and gets used to standing the easier it will be for him to balance and begin walking.

All this may sound frustrating but I assure you it is not.  It is, in fact, one of the most fulfilling things Patty and I have ever been through.  I have begun to realize that watching Reece learn is like watching learning in slow motion.  You become more conscious of ever move, every improvement.  You celebrate the smallest accomplishment, many that we didn’t even take note of in our other children.  They just happened and we moved on.  We never expected them not to make progress so sometimes their progress was not properly noted.  Not so with Reece.  Any movement, any new word or sound, any new anything is cause for celebration.  We are really learning to rejoice over the smallest things because in Reece’s life they are not small at all.

The great thing that dealing with Reece has brought to our family is a greater appreciation for the accomplishments of all our children.  We can now see the work that our other children are doing, their artwork, their handwriting and even their creative play and we are more appreciative of what they are doing because it is now so remarkable.  The small stuff is no longer mundane stuff.  When David, our 8 year old, makes a new drawing we see the fine detail he has added and that is something we might have overlooked in our older children.  Watching Reece learn, even as slowly as he learns, is a remarkable thing.  I look into his eyes and I see a brightness and an intelligence that he can’t express with his words yet but I know the intelligence is there.  He sparkles with joy and we get to help him learn to express himself in both word and deed and that is among the greatest rewards of our parenting experience.

While I would not wish Down Syndrome on anyone, I do wish that every one of you could experience the joy of being around Reece or someone like him.  Love is returned to you in so many ways that the negatives of the process are overwhelmed and all you are left with is this amazing feeling that you are helping another person but you are also being helped in ways that you can’t even express.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

When I first saw this photo on my friend Jonathan Palmer’s blog, I was totally blown away.  JP and I worked together at The Decatur Daily before his move home to Louisville, KY and we are still friends and keep track of one another.  Jonathan shot this image while freelancing for the Lexington Herald Leader during the ice storms last month.  The little lady in the photo is going to have to move due to the heavy damage done to her home by the storm.

Two things arrested me immediately when I saw the image.  First, there was this absolutely forlorn look on the poor lady’s face.  You know she is in some kind of trouble before you know what the trouble is.  You also know that it is serious trouble.  The overwhelming sense of loss and depression are evident without any written explanation.  Second, the light just blew me away.  I have been musing over whether Jonathan lit the photo or he found this awesome light.  JP has some mad lighting skills so the question is valid.  I am going to leave you hanging on that one for a moment.

When you investigate the image a little closer you notice the mirror on the floor to the right.  The lady is reflected in the mirror and it is such an excellent detail.  This is the kind of thing that adds layers to your image.  It has an immediate, eye catching, quality and then it has a depth to it visually that keeps you looking.  Jonathan’s use of a wide angle down low actually accentuates the mood of the photo.  This is the key that really makes this image pop to me.  Jonathan is clearly not demeaning the woman.  In fact, the angle of view, the light and the depth to the image communicate the eternal theme of man’s struggle against nature and gives this woman a somewhat noble character.  Had he been standing and her head bowed relative to the camera, the effect of the image would have been the opposite.  She would have appeared trampled down and overwhelmed.  From this angle I get the feeling that she has been through a few things before and this one, while being tough to handle, will not overcome her.

There is a lot of psychology in imagery.  Don’t down play the power of  photographic communication.  This photograph really holds you in the frame and allows you to contemplate this lady and her plight.  The editors at the Herald Leader thought a lot of this image too.  It led that day’s coverage of the ice storms being the dominate element on Page 1.  I have nothing negative to say about this image.  I love it.  The only problem I see with it is that I didn’t shoot it.  I like it that much.

Oh, the lighting.  You didn’t think I would forget did you?  Jonathan was in Decatur over the weekend and we talked about the image.  I asked him about the light and he just smiled the smile of a man who just discovered an extra hundred dollar bill between his couch cushions.  He said that was all natural light.  The lady had those heavy pieces of translucent plastic sheeting tacked over her windows and the light was being diffused as it passed into the room.  If I am not mistaken, JP shot the image on an EOS 5D with a 16-35mm lens.

Don’t forget to check out Jonathan’s web site and blog.  The link is in the blogroll in the right hand column.  You will love it.  Now, after two posts in a row focused on JP, I will be expecting some kick back!

Photo copyright Jonathan Palmer.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or of Jonathan Palmer.

alittlenewsphoto.com video blog post. Covering the Inauguration from Jonathan Palmer on Vimeo.

I have a special treat for you guys today from my friend and former Decatur Daily co-worker Jonathan Palmer.  JP is now living in Louisville and doing freelance work.  He was working for the McClatchey newspaper group for this assignment covering the inauguration of Barak Obama.  Having a front seat to history is a very cool thing and I think you will enjoy Jonathan’s post.  He also brings a first to Alittlenews with this video presentation so sit back and make sure you click to view it full screen.

You can see more of Jonathan’s work on his blog and on his web site and it will be well worth your time.

Photos and video copyright Jonathan Palmer.  The opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Jonathan Palmer, his employers or The Decatur Daily.

Washington Parker came marching home from war in 1865 having lost the armed conflict with the North but not his spirit.  The young man married, built a log cabin and he and his wife, Miranda, filled it with 13 children.  The cabin was occupied until the 1940s and has since lain vacant on property in Lawrence County, Alabama.  A chance reading of a classified ad in The Decatur Daily led Don and Yolanda Smith to purchase the cabin, a dream of theirs for many years.  They literally brought home a collection of rocks and logs and began the long process of building a log cabin.  At the time of their purchase, neither of them knew they were buying a piece of family history.  As Don and Yolanda built the cabin they also researched its history.  They discovered that Washington Parker was related to Yolanda being her great, great, great uncle.  The story that began on a piece of property in Elam Creek, Lawrence County, now is beginning again in Trinity, Alabama in Morgan County.

I got involved in telling their story two years ago.  In March 2007, Paul Huggins and I went to visit them right after they started the project.  We did a story for the paper then and I asked them if I could follow the project through to completion and both agreed.  Turns out that my wife and Yolanda had worked together for a time in Decatur.  I guess you could say it is a small world even accounting for the passage of a hundred and forty four years.  I began following the project with admittedly infrequent visits to the Smiths’ property.  I missed an awful lot, but over the course of several visits, accumulated enough material to put together a nice story.  What you are seeing is a SoundSlides presentation with the photos and audio of the Smiths telling the story of the house.  I also wrote a story for the newspaper and we did a three page layout in our Living section.

This is a little bit of an unusual project for me because it is pretty uncommon for me to be able to follow anything over the course of a couple of years.  Photo stories I have done in the past have usually taken not more than a few days or, at most, a few weeks.  So this was a really cool project for me and the Smith family is an absolute delight to work with.  Yolanda would call me fairly often to update me on the progress and let me know when I could come and shoot.  We finished the project back in January one Sunday evening doing the nice photos at dusk, one of which led the package in the paper.

This SoundSlides show is a first for Alittlenews.  This is one of the reasons I wanted to move from wordpress.com.  I could not use this style of audio slide show over there and had to come to a self-hosted site.  Hopefully, this will be the first of many such shows with some video coming before too long as well.  SoundSlides was developed by a photojournalist and is one of the simplest slide show presentation formats available.  It allows you to set up a show with sound or without and you don’t have to know a lot of code to use it.  It is just a basic shell that allows you to plug in photo and sound and create a show of almost any length.  You can check out SoundSlides for you self by going to SoundSlides.com. They have versions available for both the PC and the Mac.  You do have to work up the audio in another program and then import it to SoundSlides.  I use Audacity to do my audio editing.

In fact, the most difficult part of any SoundSlides project for me has been compiling and editing the audio.  I have no natural skills in this area so it is real labor for me.  I do like the results though and it is worth the trouble.  In an upcoming, I will do a more detailed how-to for you guys.  I also want to do a couple of other posts related to the log cabin project so there is more coming on this project.  For now, just enjoy the show.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Today was the big day.  Reece had minor surgery and  tubes were placed in his ears by Dr. George Godwin in Decatur.  Reece did great and his mom and I did good too!  In fact, Reece never even cried until he was brought back to us post-operative and was coming out from under the anesthesia.  Then he cried for about a half hour.  Dr. Godwin told us going in that the procedure literally takes only about five minutes per ear and he was pretty accurate with that estimate.  Our main concern was Reece being put under the anesthesia but that went well too and the entire staff was very relaxed and professional as they took care of us.  Dr. Godwin said his hearing should improve right away.

Patty and I are very hopeful now that Reece’s ability to speak will also improve.  One cannot speak well if he does not hear well because speech is all about mimicking the sounds one hears.  Dr. Godwin said Reece’s right ear was really full of junk and his left ear also had some fluid in it.  I am really looking forward to hearing Reece use articulate speech; although, that might still take a while due to the Down Syndrome developmental problems.  Still, it could be a significant step.  One of the little kids in a nearby room was calling out, “No momma, no momma,” over and over again.  Patty just looked at me and said she wished that Reece could say that to her.  I know exactly what she means.

When we took Reece back to the prep room, he took one look around and whimpered a couple of times.  I think he is making the connection between medical facilities and doctors and people messing with him.  It is interesting how much cognitive skill he has, especially at place recognition.  He seems to be making some very normal mental associations and that is just a huge victory.  I have seen him do the same thing when we take him to physical therapy.  He will go in the building and start to pout because he really doesn’t like therapy.

Once he became accustomed to the environment, he settled down quickly and just played with us.  I am telling you, seeing that little man sitting there in his baby sized surgical gown just about got me.  I knew it was not a big deal and still, when the nurse came back to take him away, I had a hard time watching him go down that hallway.  It was pretty fortunate for me that the procedure was a quick one.  I was not really worried but I can tell you I was tremendously relieved when they came out and told us that he did well and was waking up normally.  It was even nice to hear him cry for the first half hour as he worked his way out of the anesthesia fog.  I am very glad it is over and I am even more glad that Reece has had so few medical complications.  My heart really goes out to all those families who have had to endure so many medical procedures that are of a much more complex and life threatening nature.

Hopefully the next Reece update will be about all the new words he is learning!

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own not necessarily those of my employer.