Staff photographer Drew Perine made this audio slideshow to go along with Jeff Mayor's piece on model builders.

Sometimes when catching quick shots of subjects who aren't holding still, we news photogs lay on the shutter if we merely think we could've-maybe-kinda-almost saw a good moment. We place the focusing spot on the subject, fire several rapid frames, maybe rethink whether or not the exposure settings are good, and the viewfinder flickers as we see only fleeting glimpses of what might be good shots.

In other words, when things are happening fast, we instinctively jump, doing several things at once, many images flying by in the viewfinder, and don't really get a chance to scrutinize any one of them as they are recorded.

Sometimes we know we got a good shot, sometimes we're sure we didn't, and often we're not sure, so we might stop and "chimp", which is a goofy term-of-art for checking the shot on the camera's screen.

But when at a live event, there's also an incentive to not take the time to stop and look at the frames, either. For example, when we're shooting a parade we often guess that we didn't see a good enough image in the viewfinder, and rather than check the shot, we abandon it and move on.

That's what I did when shooting the junior daffodil parade last weekend, and I didn't realize that I had gotten such a cute shot of the girl above. In the viewfinder I saw that she quickly moved from head-buried-in-hood, to face fully out of the hood. But this one frame with just one eye peering out didn't register in my brain and I didn't bother to stop and scrutinize the frames I had just shot, so I likewise didn't stop to get her name for a caption.

So the picture never appeared in the paper. It was the one that got away.

But we're a little looser about captions in photo galleries, so her image lives on in the gallery I posted that afternoon.

Sgt. Darnell Cooper entertains the kids swarming around him during a "knock and talk" in Mosul, May 21, 2005.

Our recently improved system for posting slideshows (also called photo albums or photo galleries) allowed me to put up a collection of photos-- including this shot-- from my three embeds in Iraq.

Until this re-posting, some of the shots were on our old photo gallery page, and others from 2003 and 2004 haven't been available online for years. In theory, everything on our website should be remain "findable" for years, but sometimes the website is modified and old links get broken.

I hope this one survives.

Bonney Lake tennis player Jessica Roller appears to be performing a magic trick with the tennis ball on her fingertip during a match against Yelm Thursday, March 26, 2009. Click here to see a gallery of the tennis match photos with Yelm.

Jeff Mayor ad I visited with Nita Bariekman for a while last week. She was great! You would never guess her age after visiting with her. She still get's to her shop at 7:30 a.m. every weekday to make soups ad pies for the lunch crowd. I tried the lemon meringue pie and it was fantastic.
You can read Jeff's story here and I have added the video to this post.
Enjoy,
Joe

It can be the bane of our visual existence. Mindless and mind-numbing. Some newspaper photography staffs call it "cruising for wild art". Some refer to it as looking for feature art. At The News Tribune, we call it looking for a "CLO" (cut-lines only) photo. On slow news days, when the editors and reporters are fresh out of story ideas that have a visual component, you may see bleary-eyed photographers driving your streets and neighborhoods craning their necks back and forth, searching for SOMETHING, ANYTHING of interest that moves. Don't be alarmed, we're just making a living turning nothing into something. When I saw Chip Sturmer cleaning a sign, juxtaposed with the man in the pickle barrel, I knew my quest was over. Whether or not you find value in my B1 CLO or any humor, at least I don't call it art.

It's always interesting to combine indoors and outdoors in one shot, and such shots usually look best at dusk or dawn.

This photo of the art gallery Mineral during Artwalk is an example, and it never got published before.

During winter, light starved photographers in the Pacific Northwest know that you have to take advantage of any and all sun-breaks. On assignment early Tuesday morning the clouds parted long enough to allow me to take this image of divers, working to repair the Anderson Island electrical cable, commuting to work (via a tugboat) to a barge on the south end of the island.

A late-season winter storm over the weekend dumped nearly two feet of fresh powder on the Summit at Snoqualmie ski area.

So this never saw the light of day yesterday...the fire was out and traffic was moving so no real news value. But any time I can make a photo of a firefighter at work, I do it. You never know when something visually cool or newsworthy will happen.

A firefighter tries to put out a fire near the top of an electricity poll along east-bound Highway 16 this afternoon, March 11, 2009.
Officials suspect a transformer leaked oil onto the pole, causing it to catch fire. Traffic patterns returned to normal a little while later.
Joe Barrentine/The News Tribune

I thought of Andy Warhol's muse about everyone having 15 minutes of fame when I saw Joe's handy work in the snow of Stadium Bowl Monday morning. Besides the whimsy in this photograph , I enjoyed the shadow of Stadium High School cast on the football field.

What makes a good newspaper feature photograph? Sometimes it's capturing a peak moment or emotion. Other successful feature photos depend on the use of light and composition. On my way into work Friday morning, I noticed a pattern out of the corner of my eye as I was driving past Allenmore Golf course. Early morning shadows cast on the first fairway from a row of poplar trees turned an ordinary scene into a green canvas. The only thing lacking was a human presence. A little patience and 30 minutes later I had my photo as the golfer hit his second shot of the day.

My assignment today was to provide a CLO (photo with caption only, no story) for the next day's South Sound cover. Its always a tough assignment midday when the weather's bad. I found a farm scenic in Gig Harbor and got lucky visiting a Lakewood Senior Center where some spirited girls were playing canasta.

Here's the caption info: Feisty Colleen Smith, left, cracks up Dawn Carl with her one complaint about the Tuesday canasta game at the Lakewood Senior Activity Center: All the players are women. "Where are the guys?" Smith said. "We're looking for some old men to play cards. Every time we ask them they run away," Thursday, March 5, 2009. (Drew Perine/The News Tribune)

And here's the other caption:
Its still blanket weather for this horse grazing along Ray Nash Drive In Gig Harbor, but the greening pasture suggests spring can't be too far off, Thursday, March 5, 2009.

Which photo would you choose to publish? Typically, photojournalists favor people-oriented photos while the public fancies scenics.

Not much happened next. The dog relented a moment later and crossed the rest of the tracks. And the train wasn't moving anyway.

I shot the photo for a story about safety at railroad crossings, but it hasn't been seen until now because other shots beat it to claim some of the limited space in the paper.

One of the other shots that did run was the shot below which suggests how massive the trains are:

The guy (whom at this moment is at a great distance from me, as I am using a long lens) turned out to be a railroad policeman, A.R. Nelson, coming to ask me to get further off the tracks.

And my jaw dropped when he remembered me from a having thrown me off some tracks in Seattle about four or six years ago. Whew! I guess he's really good at his job.

As a newspaper photographer for nearly 30 years I find inspiration in many things. I met 9-year-old Gilbert John during a recent assignment at Ashley House, a home for medically fragile kids in Enumclaw. He's lived at the facility most of his life after breaking his neck at 18 months old. Now, a quadriplegic, Gilbert is tethered to a ventilator and confined to a wheelchair.

You might think I felt pity or some other emotion for Gilbert but his spirit and happy-go-lucky personality overwhelmed that impulse. He doesn't seem to view himself as limited or disadvantaged. He's focused and engaged in the here and now whether he's playing Hot Wheels, video games or making jokes at the staff's expense.

And watching Gilbert play video games was fascinating and inspriring in its own right. Without feeling or movement below his neck, Gilbert relies on a headset and a straw-like plastic mouthpiece to play the game. By moving his head from side to side and puffing or sucking on the mouthpiece Gilbert animates the digital hotrods through their breakneck course.

Gilbert is blessed to call Ashley House his home and the staff his family.

Foss High School cheerleader Bianca Gonzaga kept an close eye on the scoreboard during a recent tournament game with Federal Way. Gonzaga can also keep an close eye this Wednesday, March, 4, 2009, as photographer Lui Kit Wong will have galleries on all 16 games of the WIAA 4A State Championship games at the Tacoma Dome.

On Monday morning, I went to shoot the demolition work on the Nalley Valley Viaduct. The early morning light was nice and directional. Shadows sharply defined the concrete piers and steel rebar that was exposed. Huge excavators with hammers and cutting claws demolished the roadbed of the east-bound Sprague on-ramp.

Play editor with me for a moment. Photo Editor Jeremy Harrison and photographer Janet Jensen both liked the top image that emphasizes the monumental nature of the pier and shows more detail of the shredded rebar. At the same time, it minimizes the human scale impact of the construction worker.

I like the way the bottom image uses the diagonal of one of the tetra-pod piers and the road deck at the top as a frame for the demolition in the background. I like the graphics and composition of the second photo, but when compared to the overall impact
of the first image, it comes up a little short for A1.

Photography and photojournalism are subjective. Some photographers emphasize composition over content, but the best photographs have both. Let me know what you think.

Victoria Bjorkland, right, and Jessica Spring carry a letterpress print made using a steamroller Sunday at Wayzgoose, an annual gathering of letterpress and book artists at King’s Books in Tacoma. Fellow letterpress artist Ric Matthies admires Spring’s print as it goes by. The artwork will be on display at King’s Books for a few days.

At least they were this weekend. My wife and I headed down to The Nisqually Wildlife Refuge for a walk and to shoot some birds. For the $3 per car fee it was a great value. The boardwalk-style paths made for a fun walk and there were a ton of families who took advantage of the dry weather.
Here are a couple of images from our trip.