Flocks of Snowbirds

The year is coming to a close and the snowbirds have begun to migrate back to Vero to participate in the boat parades, Dr. Seuss Gardens, Tennis Tourney's and whatever else arises with the return of the SoFla busy season. In addition to the aforementioned events, this past month I've shot the regular bevy of artists, restaurant dishes, fitness groups, real estate layouts, and what looks like a painkiller advertisement (actually a full-page photo for the cover of our health section). Vero also held the 5th annual Mardy's Tennis and Jake's Music Fest which features homegrown celebs Mardy Fish and Jake Owen as they put on a fundraising tennis exhibition and country music show. It's one of the biggest events of the year around here, so it was kind of neat to shoot it for the second year in a row. A bit of good news: I've been named Director of Photography at Vero Beach Media. I'll still be doing the shooting for the Vero Beach 32963 paper, but I will now also be overseeing the visual side of our new northern Palm Beaches paper the Palm2Jupiter. So, 2011 should be a busy one. Happy New Year all.

Wedding News

I recently had the opportunity to shoot a wedding as part of a story for the paper. The couple, David Helseth and Maria Colontrelle, met through their jobs at Publix. After dating for two-and-a-half years, the two were married at St. Helen Catholic Church in front of their families, their Publix co-workers, and their friends from the Sun Up Center, where David, Maria and others in town with developmental delays go to meet their challenges head on. I even scored a little photo page to run alongside writer Michelle Genz's piece, which you can read here: Everything you dream of for your kids.

I spent a little bit of time with David and Maria in the days leading up to the wedding, but when I went to make the final photo selection I found that the images from the ceremony and reception, with Maria and David joined hand-in-hand throughout, told the story.

Mr. Mycelium and the Mushrooms

A couple of weeks ago, local mushroom cultivator Michael Johnson allowed into his backyard grow shed to take some photos as he prepared and harvested his crop of Shiitake and Oyster mushrooms. It was a great way to kick off the work week cycle, hanging out amongst the shelves of Shiitakes on a sunny, comfortable Wednesday morning. Johnson hopes to make regular customers for his mushrooms of some of the local chefs in and around Vero Beach. I have to admit, I like the idea of eating fresh mushrooms from right up the road rather than re-hydrated Shiitakes trucked in from who knows where (though I'm probably not enough of a mushroom connoisseur to actually discern a difference in quality). Interesting note: the mushroom grow shed doesn't smell moldy or rotten like one might expect. Rather, the scent was reminiscent of wood shavings on a foggy morning mingled with what, to me, smelled like the insides of a freshly carved jack-o'-lantern.

Morning on the Ranch

The other day I woke up early to go spend the morning on a ranch west of town with local artist/poet/rancher Sean Sexton. It was a nice change of pace.

Too many dogs in my portraits?

Looking through the last year's worth of blog posts, I see that I did really poor job of updating (considering that I shot thousands of photos last year and only made 16 sporadic blog posts). Here's another random sampling from the last couple of months. I notice that people's dogs tend to make it into the shot when I'm doing portraits. I don't force it, I swear. The dogs just place themselves in the scene and I can't resist it. I've also got some baseball, scientists scanning the beach for dead birds, Raku pottery, a water lily, children watching Toy Story III, three shots from the 4th of July, a chef portrait, gastric bypass surgery, a librarian putting away books in the new library ahead of the start of school, and a scene from an opera.

One Year in Vero Beach

I started my staff photo job in Vero Beach on Sept. 1, 2009. On that day I was sent out to find a few feature shots and cover a fire that didn't amount to much. My main responsibility here is shooting for the Vero Beach 32963 weekly newspaper. However, I also shoot a lot for the online sister site Veronews.com. The Website has a little slideshow on the front page that is sized to a 360-pixel square. I don't usually shoot square photos so shooting for the site front was (and sometimes still is) a bit of a hurdle for me. I thought it might be fun to post a slideshow gallery of every photo that went on the 360px front from the last year. After weeding out a few super uninteresting sign photos and building mugs (not all of them) I've got 295 photos. You might notice some of the recurring news was: Vero Beach Electric Debate, Ira Hatch Trial, features of fishing, Friday night high school football and the beach sand replenishment project. I spent way too much time on this slideshow but there are a few keepers in there. So, if you've got the time, try cycling through the whole gallery. I even threw in some short captions to explain most of the shots. Here's to one year in Vero.



I thought the Soundslides looked kind of cool with all of these photos.

Football, Horses, Crabs, CT Scans, Bike Rides and an Artist

Things are slow in Vero this time of year but I'm still keeping busy. This medley of images starts with a couple of shots from St. Edward's School's summer football practice. Up next is a little photo package of equestrian Chandler MacWilliam and her horse, Chip. There was only room for one shot in the paper so the random out-of-focus, oddly composed horse, detail shots didn't have a place to run. I went feature hunting in Sebastian a little while back and came across Jeff Skok and his chocolate lab, Bosco, checking their crab traps in the Indian River Lagoon. Last issue's health story dealt with radiation and CT scans so I managed to get access to doctors actually scanning patients and reviewing scans. For a different, profile-style story, I tagged along with Dr. Stephen Tate as he and his family went for their regular evening outting. And lastly, for the Arts section front (think of it like a magazine cover...maybe I'll do a post soon with some pdfs to better illustrate what I mean) I photographed artist Patty Vaughn working on watercolor paintings in her home.