Jake Yount of University of San Diego heads into a blustery sprinkle on the 16th hole during the third round of the West Coast Conference college golf tournament at Chambers Bay. He ended up in a tie for first place with a 2-over score of 218.

Crews from the Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain learn how to make sails for tall ships.

Governor Chris Gregoire steps up onto the stage at Landmark Convention Center in Tacoma for the second rally of her campaign for reelection.

"So what's with the fist?" was my reaction, too, when I saw this photo.

The answer is that it really isn't a fist-- it's just what many people unconsciously do with their OTHER hand when reaching out to pull. Congressman Norm Dicks is reaching out with his right hand to help Governor Gregoire mount the stage and I'm sure nobody who saw this would've noticed the unremarkable fact that his left hand was balled and not near her at the time.

Nobody, that is, except my camera. I was shooting rapidly, backing down the aisle and up the stairs ahead of the governor, holding my camera out "hail Mary" style. When one can't look through the viewfinder one can't be very sure of what ends up in the photos, especially when everything is moving fast.

So the prominent "fist" has nothing to do with what actually happened with the people in the picture and everything to do with where the camera was at that instant. It was close to Dick's left hand in a spot that coincidentally juxtaposed hand and face. I certainly never saw the "fist" until I looked through my take hours later.

"So why publish such a misleading picture," you ask? Because it's an otherwise good photo, and it's quirky, something that I like to add to my photos. We'd rarely put such a photo in a position of prominence-- the one in the paper was good, albeit more conventional. We might have included this photo in the paper if it were one of, say, four photos from the campaign. And I did so in the photo gallery ( http://www.thenewstribune.com/942/story/329260.html ).

But its most perfect home is here in our photo blog.

Kevin Ma of Mead High School in Spokane recites during the final round of Poetry Out Loud held at UPS.

In the drumming post below I mentioned that I like to shoot from the side to show both performer and audience. A month ago I arrived at the beginning of a poetry recitation competition at UPS and saw that the only way to show performers with anything but a blank background would be to shoot from behind.

So I bolted for my car and retrieved a pair of radio remote transceivers and in the moments between recitations placed a camera on the stage floor facing toward the audience.

With a 14mm super-wide angle lens deciding exactly where to point the camera wasn't an issue. But how to get the exposure? I wouldn't have time to shoot a frame, look at the little screen, then improve the settings.

So I turned on the "auto bracketing" function and set the auto exposure to "A", or "aperture preferred". The camera would shoot three different exposures by varying the shutter speed. It was the first time I've ever used auto bracketing.

Then I shot the performers with a telephoto from the audience while simultaneously shooting from behind with the remote camera.

As you can see, shooting from behind worked. But with the extreme lighting and lens flare, the photo required lots of work in PhotoShop.

And what about seeing the performer? Seeing a person from the back isn't quite satisfying, so we ran a second shot of the winner of the competition.