Another chapter in my personal and professional life is coming to a close. This is my last post as a photojournalist with The Daily Inter Lake. I started the job in March of 2009, which seems like ages ago now and in the past 26 months I have grown tremendously as a visual journalist. I am so grateful and thankful to the paper’s staff, the community, and the great friends I’ve made here for making my experience in Northwest Montana so incredible. But even though this chapter is coming to a close, another promising chapter is just around the corner.

My wife and I are moving down to northern California where I will joining the staff at the Appeal-Democrat and my wife will be attending graduate school.  We are both looking forward to the adventure that this new experience will be. So here are my last few favorite shots from time at the Inter Lake. Enjoy.

A few recent frames. Enjoy.

A sampling of some recent work. Enjoy.

I recently completed a project covering a local home school basketball team’s trek to their state tournament. The team (including coaches, parents, and players) were all very easy to get along with so it made the self-assignment pretty easy to shoot. With basketball being one of my favorite sports to shoot, the whole process of documenting the group fairly naturally. One critique I would have of myself though would of been to intertwine pictures of homeschooling. The trouble was that the few images I did have that were stripped of any connection to basketball felt very out of place. The same was true of images taken at various games during the regular season. In order to have those sort of images fit in, I felt that I would of had to focus in on a single player apart from the whole team. In the end, I decided to focus on the team and how basketball mirrored their personal beliefs, especially with regard to homeschooling. All in all, this isn’t achieved in the single photos as well as it is in the my multimedia production. But you be the judge – what works or fails in the progression of still shots compared with the multimedia and vice versa in your mind? Anyway, hope the photos are something you all enjoy checking out.

Another few weeks, another post. Here’s a sampling of recent work:

The new year is here and I’m already past due for post. Here are a few images from some assignments so far this year.

Another year has come and gone, faster than I would have expected it to. If you’re looking for my best photos from the past year, you’ll find them on my sportsshooter page. Otherwise, here’s some recollection on the past year (with a few photos from the last few weeks below all of the text) . Around this same time last year, I did a post titled “Goals”. Here’s how I think I did on accomplishing each of the goals I set out for:

1. Find a long term project and stick with it - From a project on Bhutanese Refuges on a “Journey of Faith” to the U.S. to a family that went from being homeless to finding “A Home of Their Own”, I think I did well achieving this goal. A third project that I started about a month ago on a homeschool basketball team is also currently the works, a project I am really hoping can show peak action and emotion that can exist even at that level of competition but also the quiet moments on and off the court.

2. Do more video

With each of the long term projects, I produced multimedia (see links above). In addition, I did football season preview videos and a few feature videos. There are plenty of improvements to be made to these presentations, mainly beginning with getting interviews with clean sound and backgrounds. In the net year I hope to try mixing stills with video and audio. The trick in the next is deciding when to shoot and edit each of those different mediums together to create a clear and cohesive presentation.

3. Push for storytelling in portraits rather than just head-shots

With an exception to a portrait of “A Huntress”, a high school rock climber,  and getting a bit creative on a Halloween story, this is a goal I failed to really excel at. With an excuse of looking for moments to tell stories rather than portraits, this brand of photograph often turned into people smiling with their face filling as much of the frame as the last smiling person each time around. I hope to push myself learn more about the story and the individual before even lifting my camera up to make an image.

4. Relax

Looking back at this final goal, I really don’t what I was thinking other than the idea to looking beyond the obvious picture and seeing the photo and the story within. Trying to look for lines to make an image more graphic. Covering more of event to wait for a more telling moment to transpire. Knowing that everyday of work is different is a true gift and wasting it by making photos that aren’t a commitment to excellence only disrespects myself. So here’s to 2011, I hope to continue to grow like I did in 2010 as a visual communicator.

A thousand pardons for much belated post. A lot has gone in the last month or so. Besides the addition of snow, an area High School football team won the State Championship, the first in over thirty years in the county (CLICK HERE for a collection of those images online). I would be uploading those images to my blog, but I have also recently completed a photos accompanying a series on homelessness in the area. The series culminated with a photo story on a family who went from living at a homeless shelter to moving into a new home just before Thanksgiving. It was wonderful to be permitted to document a major part of a family’s life. CLICK HERE to view the multimedia piece I created with more photos and video on the family’s story (It’s on youtube because of the better video quality). Also please check out a selection of photos of the family below.

It’s been about a month since my last post so I figured an update was an in order. Between fall sports quickly wrapping up and winter rolling in, times have been busy. I’ve recently started on a few intensive photo projects as well, increasing my workload quite a bit but I’m excited for the end reward in the finished work. Look for a post on those projects coming up soon but in the mean time, I hope you can enjoy these images.

*Photographer’s Note – The last image in this post is a multiple exposure image. It was shot of for a Halloween story as a photo illustration*