Every year 12 photos taken by any of the photojournalists (or even reporters if they contribute photos) on staff, are selected by the editors as Photos of the Year. Three of mine were selected in 2007. These photos will appear a bit smaller than others in my blog, as I am using them full size as they are on the page of The Weekend Pinnacle.

The first photo was taken when I received the assignment to go to the hills as far up as I could drive and take photos of the first snow on them.  Ironically it was one of the photos that I took near the beginning of my journey (showing the differences between the lush greenery and the snow capped mountains) that was featured.

The second photo was from a half-day shoot with Nathan and his mother Victoria. Though Nathan has autism, his daily life is quite similar to other children of his age. Here he is playing with bubbles with his mother, one of his favorite activities.

The last photo was taken during an interesting week for the paper. Our sports editor was on vacation and during his absence we were encouraged to photograph sports that were not featured often in the paper. I went to San Benito High School, and photographed members of the track team including this one of Jason.

As things online are not saved indefinitely, I was not able to find a lot more on these stories. The paper does not save actual pages, yet I did find the full story, along with some other photos of Nathan that I took here:

http://www.pinnaclenews.com/news/contentview.asp?c=206399

I decided to do a search on my name to see what would pop up. While usually I use Google for this, I used Yahoo as my search engine instead. I found some images from two papers I have worked at that I was pleased to still see online. I will share images from that search today, and tomorrow.

These images were from an assignment for The Santa Cruz Sentinel to capture Nocturnal Sunshine, a group who would be going to Burning Man in 2006.

The dancers shown are Kelly Picker (above) and Keith Barefoot (below). Working as a photojournalist really helped me adapt to different light situations with different restrictions.

For obvious reasons, flash and movement could prove too distractful to these dancers. I was permitted to move somewhat, but for the most part had to stand very still.

This shot of Keith was my favorite for the series, and the one I thought would be chosen for the cover.

Instead, they chose this one, which also worked very well.

The finished product is below.