Highland Games
More images of crazy tough Scots and athletes of Scottish heavy sports. From the 2009 Las Vegas Celtic Gathering & Highland Games.
Okay, and it’s a really loose edit. (sing along – It’s my blog and I’ll do what I want to, do what I want to.)
Catching up, Winning Awards
In the mix of moving across the country, I’ve fallen behind on some stuff…one of those items is that at the Illinois Press Photographers Association (IPPA) Best of Photography competition I took awards for 1st place in Portrait, HM in Portrait, and 2nd place in Enterprise Picture Story. Also at the Southern Short Course I took 2nd place in Daily Life and 3rd place in Daily Life Story. All and all not to bad. Not great, I’d like to have done better, but on the other hand that’s always true.
The winning entries are related to my story on Michele. Michele is a breast cancer fighter/survivor. I documented you her battle throughout 2008 and into 2009. I hope to continue to document her in the future, even with the flights involved. By the way, if you ever get a chance to meet her, she’s a great human being.
The image below is after her 2nd chemo round, during which she stopped breathing from anaphalatic shock, this is during the elevator right down to the car. This is the image that took first in Portrait.
Highland Games
From the 2009 Las Vegas Celtic Gathering & Highland Games, because even Las Vegas has crazy Scots throwing rocks and trees. (And I’m not calling the Scottish bad crazy, just a “I can’t throw a 22lbs stone over a 100 feet and would never do anything to annoy them good crazy.”)
Party for the Laid-Off
This was a party for the group of us that were laid-off. Some of the people here saw their last day and some just came to buy drinks and talk…and maybe do a little singing as well.
What’s Up?
So…some of you may be wondering, what’s up? It’s a somewhat short, but fairly intense story, it also goes better after a drink or two or forty-eight.
About 2 weeks was my last day at the company I had been at for the past 7 years. I was laid-off. Don’t feel bad, it’s a good thing. As several people have already noted to me, I had been sounding done with that place for over a year. I was. Time to move on.
The timing actually worked out fairly well. (If you haven’t started drinking here, and don’t know what I’m about to say, start drinking, it helps, trust me.) I’ve upped and moved to Vegas to live with my 4 month pregnant gal. Yep, I live in the Southwest now and have a kid on the way. Life is…interesting.
I’m still figuring out many things, like what my job is going to be as my industry is in the toliet. I don’t know a lot of things which are coming to me and my life. I do know I’m excited to for my future, far more excited than I have been in a long time. There are a lot of challenges ahead, no doubt, but I think they can all be solved, I just don’t know how yet.
As for my photography…I don’t know if I’ll be working in the photojournalism field anymore. I may be, I may not. Ultimately I want to be sure my bills are paid and my family is taken care of first. I couldn’t even take care of myself by the end of that old job. I will be taking photos, I don’t know of what, I don’t know when, I don’t know how, I just know I will. It’s my nature. I do know that by the end of my old job the images I was making weren’t the images I wanted to be making, the images that I wanted to be making were all being done on the side for me. With that in mind, I’m going to be able to keep making those images I want to make because I’ll make that happen.
So, a few photos, one of what I saw on December 27th, along with the confirmation tests.
A picture of where I live, I promise it’s in there and it’s taken from the mountain in the backyard.
And part of my new family, Esther (Erin’s mom’s dog), Motley and Stella. And the last photo is Roxy. They all like to sleep in my office while I work.
Photo Booth 2
If you were at the party and haven’t gotten a link to the photos yet let me know and I’ll send it to you. And most people haven’t seen it because I’ve been bad about sending it out.