News Tribune Photo has changed blogging systems and the URL. Please go here to check out the new site.

Make sure to update any bookmarks or RSS feeds you had pointing to our old system as they will no longer work.

New blog URL: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/photo
New RSS feed: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/photo/feed
New Atom feed: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/photo/feed/atom

A Harrier jump jet hovers above a sailboat during the Tacoma Air Show at Freedom Fair in Tacoma. This marks the 30th year for the annual Freedom Fair. The Wall Street Journal, CNN and USA Today have honored it as one of the nation's best summer events. For more photos. Check the news photo galleries.

I spent the day at the Puyallup Fair Grounds yesterday meeting people and watching the dog show. I put this together to try and convey a better feel for what it was like there. About 3,500 dogs and their owners packed the building for the two-day event to show off and catch up with the organizers and competition.

You can read Brian Everstine's story here.

Jeff Mayor and I had the chance to go fishing with Todd Reis from the Cascade Musky Association. It was a long cold day with lots of laughs, but not too many fish. That's fishing!

Joe Barrentine/The News Tribune

You can't blame Mike Carrell for blowing a little smoke. After enduring the last legislative session in Olympia and all the joys a 9 billion dollar deficit brings, State Sen. Mike Carrell, Rep. 28th. Dist. found release in volunteering his help in the renovation of a 1941 Plymouth narrow gauge locomotive at the DuPont Historical Museum Thursday. The engine was used to transport munitions and materials around the old DuPont Powderworks Plant and will be on display at the Museum protected by a new timber framed canopy.

Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo will open a new penguin exhibit in early May. In this video essay, AP Photographer Ted Warren introduces us to the penguins and their new habitat for the first time.

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.

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.