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.