WWI Gear

WWI Gear, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

I am a notorious hater of museums, unless they involve dinosaur bones, then I'm all in. We went to dozens of them in New York, and now with in-laws who live in Washington D.C., there never seems to be a shortage of them to visit. I've probably been to every famous American museum you could think of by default, and I don't mean to sound ungrateful, it's just the idea of walking around and looking at stuff isn't really in my top ten. And don't even get me started on art.

I'm a tactile person. I have to physically handle things to be able to experience them. If I can't turn something over in my hands, hold it closer to my face to examine it, smell it, look at it from different angles, it might as well be a picture on a TV screen to me. It's not real until I can touch it, experience it. And museums, with all their artifacts behind glass and guarded, don't seem real to me.

The new exhibit at the Pioneer Log Village in Reedsburg is not like that. I visited recently with my intern Brian to do a preview article on the hard work volunteers have put into the exhibit, which was about to premiere the next weekend at Reedsburg's Loyalty Day. Maybe it was the fact that the Barb, the Historical Society President, didn't mind opening the cases for us so I could get a better photo without reflecting off the glass. Maybe it was because it was just the three of us, with no other guests elbowing in on our experience. Or maybe it was because these were all items connected to my home town, to people I knew, histories for which I had some kind of reference, not just facts and dates on a page like in history class.

Sure, there are some items behind glass. But there are many items in the new exhibit (and the Village itself) that you can actually touch, like old military uniforms donated by local residents. Barb knew the story behind almost every item, could reference who donated it and where it came from. And I was blown away by how many items there were, different items the volunteers had been rescuing from dark and cobwebby boxes over the course of a few months.

Brian and I spent longer than we probably should have at the exhibit. We were supposed to be working on a story, taking photos, talking to Barb and gathering information. We shouldn't have stayed there longer than a half hour or so to avoid imposing on her time and ours. But I just couldn't help it. Every time I turned around, there was something more to look at, something I hadn't seen before, something my photographer brain wanted to capture from every conceivable angle. To say that the exhibit is well put together is an understatement; not only is it extremely professional but it encourages the kind of exploration (read: time-wasting) that kept pulling me back in that day. And who could ask for a better host than Barb, who volunteers so much of her free-time revitalizing the Log Village and gave us so much information and access that day that I just couldn't tear myself away.

The exhibit is only a small part of the larger Reedsburg Historical Society Log Village. The grounds are beautiful, and each cabin and building is full of artifacts from Reedsburg and the surrounding area. I spent a great afternoon there with my dad a few years ago, exploring each of the buildings. The site is one of Wisconsin's hidden gems and well-worth the trip if you ever have the chance.

Recall efforts in Reedsburg nearly done, city enacts building use policy

Another story Jeff and I collaborated on was posted on dane101.com today through our content-sharing partnership with the site.

Check it out: Recall efforts in Reedsburg nearly done, city enacts building use policy

The article is also available in this week's Reedsburg Independent.

City moving forward with building use policy draft

A story Jeff and I collaborated on was posted on dane101.com today through our content sharing partnership with the site.

Check it out: City moving forward with building use policy draft

Recall petitioners allowed to stay in Reedsburg Rec Center - for now

Another story I did for the Indy this week was posted to dane101.com through our content-sharing partnership.

Check it out: Recall petitioners allowed to stay in Reedsburg Rec Center - for now

City of Reedsburg allows Recall Walker petitioners to use Rec Center

This isn't specifically photog-related, but an article I wrote for this week's Reedsburg Independent has been shared with dane101.com through our new content sharing partnership.

Check it out: City of Reedsburg allows Recall Walker petitioners to use Rec Center.

Pretty cool.

Thoughts from a Plane Crash

Accident Scene, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

At the scene of an accident, it's not a good sign when the frenetic pace slows, firefighters begin lifting off their helmets, paramedics draw farther away. The plane, bent in wrong directions like a broken bone, was laying where it had crumpled and came to rest against the side of a storage shed.

I was standing in tall grass between Jeff and a rusted out washing machine when a fireman approached us. "It just dropped out of the sky," he said with a combination of astonishment and exhaustion.

His voice dropped off. "They've passed," he said.

We don't respond to accident calls often. I don't know how to succinctly explain it - other papers like to publish accident photos from time to time, and it always gives me a bad taste in my mouth. It's just not nice.

The plane crash was different. There was no debating whether or not we were going to respond, no looking up addresses while questioning if it was worth our time to drive out there. A plane crash. I sprang up, haphazardly predicting what I needed to bring to the scene like gathering possessions to rescue from my burning home. Jeff was already out the door. Nate the intern trailed behind.

We drove like maniacs across town, and it seemed like everyone with a police scanner was headed in the same direction. I called my dad. "They're trapped," he said, relaying what he heard on the scanner. "They've started CPR."

We parked behind the VFW Hall and a man in a station wagon was telling a guy with a baby stroller that he had seen the whole thing. "Go talk to him!" I yelled to Nate, struggling to keep up with Jeff.

I felt blindly pulled like a magnet toward the accident scene, ignoring fences and driveways. Jeff led us the long way along the road, scolding me for trespassing. "That's private property," he yelled behind him.

As we approached the scene, a sheriff with a white handlebar mustache and brown uniform was pulling police tape across our path. My stomach dropped.

The sheriff looked up and saw us. "Did you get a good picture yet, Jeff?" he asked, lifting the police tape so we could go under. "I know you won't get in the way."

As we approached the scene, the reporter part of my brain started to take over, filing away facts and details, making lists. The red barn and red fire truck standing stark against that clear blue summer sky, calm and still. The plane, looking fake like a movie prop, wrong in the scene before us. Firemen swarming everywhere. The jaws of life.

Jeff, with a surprising knowledge of airplanes, relayed technical details to me as we stood several yards away. "That's an ultralight," he said of the plane in front of us. "You're more secure in a Ferris Wheel." We stood back, trying to decipher what was going on in the scene before us, trying to make sense of all the people and objects that had converged in this ordinary trucking yard. The only thing that was obvious, the thing that later played through my head over and over, was the moment when all of the emergency people gave up, slowed down, and stepped back.

Back at the office, my adrenaline still pumping, I flew into reporter overdrive. I got on the phone and called every person I could think of who would have information, an ultimately useless task as the tragedy was still new. No one knew anything, least of all me, and I had no idea what to do next.

I didn't go to journalism school, but I don't think there's standard procedure for handling a tragedy. I put off writing the front page article until a few days later, forcing myself to talk to those involved, forcing myself to go over the events one more time. As a reporter, I have always felt that my responsibility has been to make things make sense, and more than my grief over the event itself, more than my disbelief, more than the images playing over and over in my head, I think what bothers me more than anything right now is an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy. I can't make this make sense. I can give you the facts. I can describe what happened at the scene. I can provide photos. I can find things out. But I can't make them make sense. I just can't.

Additional photos from the scene are linked from my Flickr earlier in this blog. A full write-up of the story will be available in this week's Reedsburg Independent, on newsstands Wednesday and in subscriber mailboxes on Thursday.

Caz

Cazenovia Parade, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Sunday was the start of an extreme heat wave here in Wisconsin, and John and I ventured from Madison to Cazenovia to catch the annual Caz Celebration parade. It was about an hour and a half drive north that took us through Reedsburg; as John commented, "There's no road that goes straight there." We followed 12 then 33 then 58 from LaValle to Caz, which has to be one of the prettiest roads around, through the bluffs of the driftless area in central Wisconsin.

Caz is a very small town with a very big spirit. Despite the heat, Sunday's parade was no different. With temperatures stretching into the 90s, I was afraid that the parade would be cancelled, but the people of Caz, and John and I, soldiered on. But I've never seen so much candy thrown in a parade and so few kids willing to run for it.

We parked in a field by the American Legion, trooped up to the main street running through town, past the gorgeous Lee Lake (picturesque doesn't even begin to cover it). We met some nice older ladies willing to share a shady bench with us ("As long as you understand that any M&Ms thrown this way are mine," one sternly told us) and the parade commenced.

Working for the paper, my role now is more documenting the parade than chasing after candy, and you never know what kind of images you're going to wind up with. It's impossible to set up something you know will look good. You can anticipate what you think might be in the parade, and there are a few default shots you know you can count on just in case something goes wrong. I generally have no game plan, and that's both exhilarating and terrifying. What if I don't get a good shot? What if I've spent all this time and I wind up with nothing? I guess you could have those anxieties about any photo you take, but I feel like with parades (and similar events) the stakes are higher - it takes nearly the whole day and there are no do-overs. And with my job, I know a photo from the day will go into the paper that week. Better make it a good one.

Pretty much the only variable you can control is where you stand, and I typically run up and down the street the whole time. I get anxious and have trouble staying in one place, but most of all I want to make sure that I'm not in anyone's way. On Sunday, I lost myself and forgot about everything except taking photos, which was nice to be immersed and focused, but not so nice if you are running back and forth in the middle of an intersection in 90+ degree heat with your back to the sun. The parade lasted about a half hour or 45 minutes, and at the end, I was beat.

At one point, I did snap out of it long enough to realize that someone had thrown a bag of M&Ms at my feet. I promptly delivered it to John's benchmate, who was tickled pink. "Life is good!" she exclaimed, and I agreed.

Wisconsin parades are pretty much the only parades I've ever known, except for the ones I've seen on TV, and I still get excited for them. How many parades feature all of the fire trucks and tractors in town? The Caz parade wasn't as long as the Butterfest parade, but they are still the same kind of deal - floats, people walking, tractors and vehicles, candy and Super Soakers. It's an amazing thing that from a city as big as Reedsburg to a village as small as Caz, the parade serves as a showcase to the many groups and businesses that call that town home and the community coming together to recognize them. It was a celebration in the true sense of the word.

In the photo above, I was trying to get a creative photo of the Caz firetrucks; we typically don't put the parade firetrucks in the paper because it's hard to get something other than an angle shot of the whole truck. And while I knew I took a close-up photo of the driver, I didn't realize how perfectly the shot was set up until later. The photo above captures that day exactly - you've got the fire truck at the right with the gold "Cazenovia Fire Department" lettering, driver with a handlebar mustache and pink fuzzy dice in the window. Behind him you can see an Old Style sign from one of the many bars that line the main street of Caz. As your eye travels to the left, I love the bright flags popping out against that hot blue sky, the tractors continuing the parade into the distance. Far off in the distance you can see one of the gorgeous bluffs I was talking about earlier. I would love to take credit for this image, but I think in this case, it was just pure luck.

Reflected

Reedsburg's Veterans Memorial, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Maybe I'm getting a little sentimental in my old age, but I'll admit to tearing up a bit last Monday at the dedication of the new Veterans Memorial in Reedsburg.

It really seems like not so long ago that Jeff and I went to the groundbreaking. It was one of only a handful of events we've ever covered together, and I was only an intern at the time. The speakers then focused on a grand vision for that tiny corner of Nishan Park, and I had a hard time picturing it. As they stood there with their ceremonial shovels, posing for photos, the completion seemed so far off in the future, still a someday, still a dream. Three years later on July 4, the Memorial was finished.

I've visited my future in-laws in Washington D.C. a few times now and have hit up most of the touristy monument stops in the area. But I have never been moved the way I was last Monday, viewing the Reedsburg Memorial in its finished state for the first time. The glossy black granite panels display scenes from the US's past and current conflicts and fittingly, they also reflect the viewer. I went back early on Tuesday morning to get some shots of just the Memorial, including the photo above that I put on the front page later that day. Sitting on the warm cement in the exact center of the site, the environment was calm, quiet, meditative, the Memorial and flagpoles looming above me, stretching into the sky.

I grew up in Reedsburg, and I constantly marvel at how working for the Indy gives me a totally different perspective on my humble hometown. In the last three years, we've covered every fundraising effort for this Memorial, every Vet Fest, every raffle, every donation, and the Packer Tailgate that came to town last year just to name a few (of many) off the top of my head. Had I been just a citizen, I might have been too wrapped up in my own life to notice what was going on in that corner of Nishan Park, and how the citizens of Reedsburg were tirelessly working to make that dream a reality.

I've had very few profound moments in life, where everything seems to move slowly, where time stops, as though the world is in a vacuum and centers on that one moment. The last time was the June 2008 flood, walking away from Pineview Elementary, clutching my flood clean-up kit. This time the experience was positive. On Monday, a few hundred people came together to welcome this Memorial into the community, listening to speakers, exploring the grounds, celebrating the hard work and dedication of so many people. On Tuesday, I was fortunate to be able to spend some time with the Memorial, taking it in, observing and photographing and experiencing the stillness of the place. It was a privilege to cover this story over the past three years and to see the Memorial come to fruition.

More photos on my Flickr.

Beneath a Hayfield

Intern Nate, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

I know I love my job but once in awhile, I have the opportunity to cover a story that reminds me exactly why. Last week was one of those opportunities. The photo above isn't me, by the way. It's a candid of the Reedsburg Independent's intern, Nate, who had the distinction of being the last person to stand in this hole before it and the equipment inside were sealed for two years. But more on that later.

Leon's enthusiasm was infectious the first time he called to tell me about the EarthScope project, an ambitious endeavor to bury seismometers every 60 kilometers across the United States in order to create a 3-D model of the Earth's mantle. They had just poured concrete beneath his hayfield outside Loganville, Wisconsin, and they were set to bury the equipment in four weeks or so. Leon called again last week and said, weather permitting, they were all set to finish the project.

I could go on and on about the project itself, but I did that at length in my article for the Indy this week. What I aim to document on this blog is the experience of takin' pictures, what I did, how it felt, what I learned and what I can do better. The behind-the-scenes kind of stuff, which is why I chose the photo above. In it, Nate looks how I felt that day - absorbed in a project, on the scene and in the moment.

Despite having done a few hours research, looking at charts and mission statements, I had no idea what to expect that day when we headed out there. I had little clue how to prepare myself or my intern for it; as we drove out to the farm on hilly and windy country roads, all I was able to tell him was, "This is going to be so cool. No, really, this is so cool."

The weather was gorgeous that afternoon on the Statz's farm, a bit overcast, the bluffs sprawling as far as the eye could see. Everything was green and growing, reaching toward a blue sky and early summer sunlight. The EarthScope equipment was alien in the middle of that hayfield, a deep hole with tools strewn within arms reach of the man standing inside. Adjacent to that was a solar panel, metal and glass but like the scenery around it, also stretching toward the sky.

We absorbed the scene, all of us - friends, family, and neighbors of the Statzs, my intern and I. Nate and I circled around, taking pictures, taking notes. We were there about two hours and on the way back, we agreed that there was no way it could have been that long. Four kids were running around, peering into the hole, asking dozens of questions. I envied them; I have always been intimidated talking to expert-y people, afraid I'm going to annoy them with my ordinary, non-genius person questions. But those kids held nothing back, making my job infinitely easier.

It is rare and exciting to meet people so engaged in their work. The two field engineers who showed up that day spend two months on the road, almost every day in a different place, two weeks at home or what counts for home, then back on the road. Bob told us that he had maintained that routine for most of his life. But you could tell that, standing in a hole in the middle of a hayfield in Wisconsin, there was nowhere else he'd rather be. I felt the same way.

It's been over a week since we were on site. I finished my article and edited photos that same day, accidently losing track of time and staying late to get it done. It was easy then to report back on the story, but I am still finding it difficult to put into words what I felt that day. Maybe no words suffice, but it was one of my favorite experiences I've had as a reporter, and I feel privileged to have been asked to cover it.

Head to my Flickr for more photos from this story.

Ladders

Ladders, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

I set out on Monday to get a photo of this construction site on Main Street in Reedsburg. Jeff suggested standing against the dry cleaners with my back to the sun, as it was mid-morning by that time. Good tip.

I am five feet tall exactly, and I've been considering more and more lately getting a small step stool and keeping it in my car, just in case. It would only need to give me another foot or so in height, but there's been at least three times in the last few months where I could have used one. On one of those occasions I actually pulled my car into the spot I wanted and stood on the hood to get the shot. I would have done the same in this situation had I not been on Main Street in a skirt and heels in the middle of a weekday. One more foot or so and I would have been able to shoot over this fence instead of through it.

I've shot through a fence before and it hasn't been a big deal. But in this situation, the straight fence shot gave me too much shadow from the building next to me, and the diagonally-placed fence piece gave me the shot I wanted - except I kept catching the fence through it. I climbed a small cement stoop and was able to shoot over the fence... but through a spindly little tree. I was so frustrated; it was a simple assignment, to take a photo of a construction site, and I was having more trouble than necessary in making it work.

I took the above photo as a joke. My assignment was to, "Get a picture of all the equipment in that big hole" (Jeff). As I looked over the construction site, considering my shot, I noticed the ladders perched against the cement walls of the underground parking garage. It reminded me of movies set in the Middle Ages when people stormed castles and got shot at by burning arrows. I imagined someone storming the construction site, giggled and took my shot.

I took a few other photos once I figured out what I was doing. This turned out to be the one Jeff liked the most but not for the same reasons - he pointed out that there was a nice color contrast between the two red pieces of equipment in the photo, and he pointed out that it wasn't something people can see just driving past. I agreed, and we printed it in this week's Indy as an inside color photo.

My new telephoto lens is scheduled to be delivered today, and I am ridiculously excited. I have a new case sitting on my dining room table just waiting for it. I bought it because there were three or four times in the last couple months or so that I needed one, and looking forward to this summer, I don't want to take Butterfest and Demo Derby photos without one. I also look forward to using it for my personal project. I always swore I would never buy new equipment (editing software included) until I felt like it was holding me back, and the telephoto started to be that way. Maybe a stepladder will be my next purchase.  :)

A Day With the Protesters in Madison

The following is my column this week from the Reedsburg Independent regarding my experiences at the protests in Madison on February 17:

On a normal day, I wake up at 6 a.m. to drive from Madison to the Reedsburg Independent. Last Thursday, the news from Reedsburg came to me. There had been rumblings all week of protests at the Capitol Square, and though I live less than a mile from it, I had avoided the area up until then.

Despite my minor obsession with 10 p.m. news broadcasts, I didn’t really have a grasp of what was going on up there; I had watched but not really paid attention to it, because it seemed farther off like TV news can’t help but seem. Last Thursday, I woke up, grabbed a cup of coffee and headed up the hill to see what I could see. 

It was a damp, cloudy spring day, the kind of wet cold that sticks to you. I was traveling light - small camera bag slung over my shoulder with only the necessities - notepad, pen, lens cleaner, one credit card and my camera on a hand strap.

I bounced up steep West Washington, fidgeting with the nervous, frenetic energy of not knowing what to expect. The Capitol building loomed ahead, and not many people had gathered outside yet. I was told specifically to look for Reedsburg teachers, having no idea how I would spot them in the reported crowd of 30,000. I wandered around outside for awhile, out of habit walking counter-clockwise around the Capitol, the same direction in which car traffic and Farmers’ Market foot traffic flows. There was litter everywhere, and I found out later that the police weren’t allowing sticks in the Capitol, so many people were breaking them off their signs and leaving them by the entrance.

The inside of the Capitol building always has an orange hue to it, relying on dim sconces and daylight coming through the skylights. I  had visited only a few weeks before on Super Bowl Sunday; my fiance and I seemed to be the only people in the entire massive and intimidating building. Last Thursday, the Capitol was surging with people, that orange hue bouncing off thousands of red T-shirts, voices and drums echoing off the marble and high ceilings. “It sounds like a gym in there,” I heard someone remark.

And it was hot. Hot in the way that relatives’ small houses get hot during the holidays with all the people talking and moving around. At my aunt’s house, someone always has to crack open the sliding patio door and let the freezing winter air in. But at the Capitol, there was nowhere for that stifling, stagnant air to go, and it made the whole building feel smaller, the walls closer together.

I have heard reports of tens of thousands of people filling the Capitol during these protests, and I don’t know how they come up with those numbers. But it was two hours before I saw someone  I recognized, when I finally and completely by dumb luck ran into Dave Moon and his family outside with their protest signs. I was so relieved that I nearly hyperventilated. Dave pointed me in the direction of more Reedsburg teachers and if it were not for his help, I don’t know how I would have found them. They were mainly stationed on the third floor above the Assembly room that morning, and I had been by there at least twice before that and not seen any of them.

The third floor (which is really the fourth level of the Capitol) was crowded by that time. But as someone who has lived in New York and experienced rush hour crush on the subway, and as someone who joined 215,000 of my closest friends at the Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington DC last year, I have to stress that even though it was hot and hard to get around, the people gathered in the Capitol last week were some of the nicest and most cordial people I have ever met. I never had a problem asking someone for their spot so I could briefly snap a photo, and there were people handing out more signs and bottles of water. Though people there are upset with Governor Walker and his proposed bill, they are polite and even kind to each other, and any news report that says differently is greatly exaggerating.

It was difficult to know what was happening with the people who were making the decisions that day. There was a TV with a live broadcast, but I couldn’t see it or hear it. Without my Twitter feed on my iPhone and people constantly tweeting updates about #wiunion, I would have had no idea what was going on. I never saw another Reedsburg teacher after I took a group shot that morning.

I left for lunch around 12:30, wandered down to a less crowded coffee shop a block from the Capitol square. When it came time to pay for my coffee and cookie, I had to peel my camera out of my right hand; my fingers had been clenched around it like a claw, and I had been pulling the hand strap so tightly that it had made red indents on the back of my hand.

After lunch, I headed back up to the square. More people had gathered outside - ironworkers, children, a drum circle, and Bucky Badger. I saw at least two different people dressed as Captain America and another one in a gorilla suit. I ducked into the Walgreens on the square for an energy drink and the store was crowded with people buying posterboard, cardboard boxes and markers.

I hiked around the inside until I got too warm and then did a few laps outside until I had cooled down, taking photos the whole time. People outside and inside were chanting, “Kill the bill,” and “This is what democracy looks like.” They were energized but uncertain, passionate but pessimistic. Somehow four more hours passed and looking back on it now, it feels like I had highway hypnosis, when your subconscious is focused on the task at hand while your conscious mind wanders and you arrive at your destination, wondering how you had gotten there.

As a reporter, I’ve grown comfortable observing and reporting, secure in not having an opinion and just relaying facts. And having spent a day with the protesters, taking their photos, watching them on the news, I still have no idea how I actually feel about the issues. So many thousands of people have converged on the Capitol to express their opinons for and against, and I am in awe of all of them.
==================================
The rest of my protest photos can be seen on my Flickr.

Little Brother

Published in the Reedsburg Independent, 2010, under the headline, "Spring cleaning at the skatepark." Taken at the skatepark on Granite Avenue, Reedsburg, Wisconsin.

My brother and his friends were cleaning the skatepark of all the leftover fall leaves one afternoon, maybe around March, and they called me to come take a photo. It was a slow day at the office, and besides that, I love making those punk skateboarders look good. Sure, there are always a few bad apples in any group, but that park has been maintained solely by local skateboarders since they campaigned to build it a few years back. They really put their minds to projects when it's something they care about.

Anyway, it was one of those crisp, early spring days that still have a slight chill of winter but the hope of spring, with sunshine and all that complimenting the crisp air. The guys had mostly finished by the time I got there but they still broke out the brooms so I could get a few shots. The one above is my little brother (not so little anymore) doing a trick off the box.

Fourth

Published in the Reedsburg Independent, July 8, 2010. Taken at Pineview Elementary School,

Fireworks are notoriously difficult to photograph. The challenge is in the timing. Fire too soon and it's just the tail. Fire too late and it's just smoke. You've got to get the camera settings right too, otherwise the lighting is all screwy.

Jeff's instructions for taking Fourth of July photos always include the phrase, "If you mess it up, we can always use a photo from last year," which is mildly comforting.

This year's fireworks  seemed good to go, despite the sky having been overcast most of the day. Then, right before dusk, a downpour started. Apparently the organizers decided that because they'd already spent the entire day setting up, they were just going to shoot em off anyway and all at once, so that's what they did in probably the shortest fireworks show in recent memory. I ran down to the park to get this shot of the few brave souls who were left. We put it on the front page.

Where in Reedsburg?

Part of the Where in Reedsburg? series in the Reedsburg Independent.

Hey Reedsburgers, can you guess what this is? This photo inspired a short-lived series in the Indy where Jeff and I would take photos and have readers call in and guess what the item was. There wasn't a prize, just the glory of knowing you got the right answer. We had fun with it, at least.

Give up? These are stacked egg crates at the egg factory down the street from Grede Foundaries. When I was a kid, I didn't even know we had an egg factory in town until a boiler at the factory across the street blew up. I remember reading in the paper that even though the egg factory is directly across the street, not one egg was broken when it happened.

Taking Off

Taken at Plenke's Pond, Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Published in the Reedsburg Independent.

I caught these cranes by chance, although they had been frequenting the Reedsburg area for awhile. I saw them by Plenke's as I was driving back to the office, and I immediately pulled over, switched to the telephoto lens, slid down an hill, and snapped a few nice shots before they took off. Although I think cranes are pretty ugly creatures, this shot of the whole wingspan turned out nice.

Hey, Down Here!

Taken at Viking Village Foods, Reedsburg, Wisconsin, during the annual Reedikulus Day celebration. Published in the Reedsburg Independent, August 2008.

There are so many things I love about this picture. These kids were waiting for a plane to "drop" buckets of bouncy balls (really they're thrown off the roof of the store as the plan flies by). After the kids scramble to catch them, the balls are traded in for toys. It's Reedsburg's infamous ball drop, and I was a part of it as a kid, as hundreds of kids before me and hundreds of kids since.

Needless to say, there is a frenetic energy at every ball drop, with kids frantic, looking for the plane and waiting for the balls and at the same time not exactly sure what to do. This picture captures them perfectly, almost in a slow motion freeze frame, right before the plane swoops over. And my favorite part is the little girl in pink in the lower right hand corner of the photo.

This photo was put on the front page of the Indy, the first time I ever put the paper together by myself while the editor was on vacation.

Boom & Bust

Taken at the corner of South Webb and Main Streets, Reedsburg, Wisconsin, June 2008. Published in the Reedsburg Independent.

So far I've been revisiting a number of pictures I took in the aftermath of the flood of 2008 - several Granite Avenue pictures, and then this one, which I have always felt was one of the best I've ever taken. In the background is a mural in downtown Reedsburg celebrating its history in the hops industry. In the foreground are beer kegs and brewing equipment pulled up from the basement of the Corner Pub, which had sustained significant flood damage and much had to be replaced.

I'd only been working at the Indy for a month when the flood hit, and the aftermath taught me a lot about what it means to be a journalist, and what kind of responsibility it carries with it, and what it means to stay disconnected from a tragedy, and how to be respectful. My first day on the job at the Indy is the first time I ever held a dSLR camera, and a month later, I snapped this picture. I think it was the first time I ever saw something, did a double take, and took a picture. I didn't know what it meant to have an "eye" before this, but I think this picture demonstrates that whatever that means, I have it.

I have pride in myself now in seeing things a certain way, noticing things that someone else might notice, and having my camera on hand to capture it.

Too Short

Taken at the Reedsburg Butterfest, June 2010. Published in the Reedsburg Independent, June 24, 2010.

The Butter Festival... sigh. Reedsburg's annual event, complete with a week's worth of activities including a Miss Reedsburg Pageant, parade, and obligatory overpriced carnival. It's almost always muddy as hell, and the rides are the same every year. But it does provide opportunities for cliched carnival shots and some good ones.

I love the above picture because I feel like the hand gestures and facial expressions tell the entire story. :)

Abandoned

Taken on Granite Avenue, Reedsburg, Wisconsin.

For nearly two years, Granite Avenue in Reedsburg was suspended in a strange time, everything left exactly as it had been when the water finally pulled back after the June 2008 flood. As a reporter and photographer, I knew it was my job to constantly and almost obsessively stay on top of what happened on the street, with so many people forced into condemnation after the damage to their homes was too much. But for two years, it was the lack of what was happening that was the story. It's a cruel reality how our government moves at a snail's pace when getting around to helping those in need, but when The Man says, "jump," we're expected to say, "how high?" Anyway.

I hated it and was strangely drawn it it, for everything it was and for everything those houses stood for. I always felt like I was walking in a graveyard; everything felt quiet and still but with a strange energy bubbling through the service, like something was happening or about to happen. Maybe it was a mental anxiety, something in me screaming that something should be done.

Eventually it was. Eighteen houses and two commercial properties in the city of Reedsburg were condemned and torn down after the June 2008 flooding, displacing dozens of people, some who never came back.

This photo was one of hundreds I took for the Reedsburg Independent but this one in particular was never published.