I took advantage of a bargain-basement non-stop airfare to make a quick trip out to NYC and DC last week to visit some friends, family and review an exhibit of my boss, Daniel Beltrá’s, photos.

Ostensibly, the central purpose of the trip was to see the exhibit. Daniel has been too busy with workshops, making presentations, and final editing of his photo book (to be published next month by the Prince’s Rainforest Project) to find time to see the exhibit himself, so the task fell to my hands.

The morning of the first full day I had in New York I went down to the show at the Mercy Corps Action Center (MCAC) in Battery Park City, just a couple of blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. While waiting for a friend to join me, I took in the view from the Irish Hunger Memorial on the Vesey Green:

Jimmy eventually showed up and we went in. The show had 20 large, 30”x40” prints on display, plus four prints on which another 24 photos were printed. There were some issues with glare on the prints from the glass covering in the frames, but I think it was for the best given the large number of school children that go thru the site:

My mind was kind of blown when Jimmy noticed that the MCAC had a couple of photos by a friend, (and former Seattle Times photographer) Thomas James Hurst, hanging opposite from Daniel’s prints. Thomas had introduced me to Daniel a couple of years ago, from which my work with Daniel was spawned. Jimmy documented the event of my physical connection between the two:

In case you’re interested in finding more about the show, which is up until Nov. 15th, follow this link to the MCAC, or read my full recap of it on Daniel’s blog.

After the business side of the trip was taken care of, I tried to see as many family and friends in the next five days. I saw Jimmy the first night I was there. We met up in Times Square, hopeful of a fan riot after a Yankee World Series victory. Alas, the Phillies’ Cliff Lee shut them down to prolong the series for one more game, resulting in no fan riot photos for myself.

My cousin Bobby, who I stayed with in her apartment, and I walked the length of the new Highline park in the Chelsea neighborhood and then continued along the Hudson River up to 83rd street. The Highline is a park that is essentially a path carved out of an abandoned and overgrown elevated freight line that runs from 12th to 33rd streets (currently only open to 20th). Supposedly it was a zoo to walk thru during the summer, but it was very pleasant on a sunny November weekday afternoon:

The old L-tracks give a unique view of some of the city streets. Here looking down 14th street:

Looking up Tenth Avenue, at around 17th street, from a little amphitheatre put into the rail line:

Looking down on Washington Street, in the old meatpacking district:

On the way up the Hudson, we passed the new U.S.S. New York destroyer, with 7.5 tons of steel from the World Trade Center recycled into the ship’s bow:

Eventually we made it back up to Riverside Park and were able to take in the fall colors with a little greater appreciation:

The next day I took a bus down to suburban D.C. to visit my sister. While waiting on the Metro platform for a train into the city to meet up with my friend Stryker for lunch, I noticed this couple on their way to an anti-health care bill/”tea bagger” rally on the steps of the Capitol. I always find misspelled signs hilarious and had to get a picture of the sign imploring Congress to “stop over-spening.”

It seemed like an easy enough mistake to make, if you’re in a hurry and/or really angry, as it seems many of the “tea baggers” are. However, later while I was sitting across from them in the Metro train going into the city, I overheard the woman exclaim, “Oh, no! I forgot the ‘t’ in ‘spenting.’” She then showed the man the companion sign to it that read with what she thought was the correct spelling “Stop over spenting.” I couldn’t get a shot of the sign without being really obnoxious/disrespectful, so this will have to do. Needless to say, these people aren’t the vanguard of conservative intellectuals, but their votes count as much as much as yours or mine. Sigh.

After lunch I decided to poke around the rally as it was ending to see if there were any other low-hanging fruit of funny ignorance proclamations. Alas, there didn’t seem to be anything quite as perfect/sad, but here’s what I saw:

I didn’t know that our president has Nancy Reagan-style séances to communicate with the long-departed communist dictator, but if that’s what Glenn Beck told you, I’ll take your word for it.

Finally, I returned to NYC for another day and a half, during which time I met up with my ex-roommate, Bjorn, up from his new job at Princeton for the weekend, and we wandered around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Manhattan for an afternoon.

The rooftop sculpture garden had a pretty sweet view of south and east Central Park. We looked at a cool samurai sword exhibit and then some modern art, where we saw a shark in a giant tub of formaldehyde and a giant mirror.

Soon to come: recaps of weddings from the summer.

Greetings friend. Would you like to be as happy as me? If so, become “a fan” of Joe Nicholson Photography on facebook.*

I finally created a page for the business. I’ll gradually be adding galleries of new, and old, weddings and such that I’ve shot.

* I’m not a friend of JNP yet; not quite enough of a narcissist yet to be a fan of myself.

Hey, stranger, nice of you to stop by the old photo blog. Why don’t you stick around for a bit and have a look. I know, I know, it’s been too long since I invited you over with a new post of anything substantial, but I’ve been getting caught up with the weddings that I shot over the summer.

Last Saturday, I shot my first football game of the year, Idaho visiting Washington. The high noon-thirty kickoff, heavy shadows and heat waves rising up off the field made for less than ideal shooting conditions, but that’s not quite the end of the world, now is it?

If you hadn’t heard, the Huskies have had a rough patch for the last, um, while, going 0-12 last season. Entering the game against Idaho, they carried 15 consecutive losses on their shoulders, last wining a game in the early days of the photo blog. Yikes. aDespite the famine of recent victories, most people figured the Huskies to beat the Vandals. And beat the Vandals they did.

Photos:

New head coach Steve Sarkisian leads the Huskies out the tunnel before the kickoff. Jim Lambright had the team use a smoke machine when he was the coach of the team in the mid-late 90’s, and I think it’s just as ridiculous now as it was then.

Jake Locker was injured for much of last year, but he didn’t seem to have much trouble with he Vandals defense. Here he scores a touchdown:

Johri Fogerson scores in the second and fourth quarters:

The defense made some plays:

The last frame I got by laying down on the field to try to play with the heat waves that rise off the synthetic turf and maybe get something Impressionistic out of them, but it doesn’t really work. Maybe if I shot with longer glass than 200mm it might be cooler, but I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. I’ll probably still try it again if the opportunity arises, though.

Finally, the Huskies won for Coach Sarkisian’s first victory. Here he sings the school fight song with his players in front of the student section:

Bow down to Washington.

More to come soon. I promise.

Ugh.

I threw up my hands for now and surrendered. It’s a little bare-bones for now, just editorial and wedding photos. I’ll be adding travel, architectural and, most importantly, dog photos as time allows over the summer. I’ll probably do an overhaul of it in WordPress once the rest of the photos have been prepped.

Because it’s run thru Photoshelter it can be a little bit slow, but I hope you’ll be patient. Thanks.

* alternate post title: Intrepid Nautical Advernturer/I’m on a Boat

While re-editing a wedding for my new website, which, yes, is coming sooner than later, I came across this frame I shot while I was on my way to its location on Orcas Island in the San Juans.

I have an irrational (according to my girlfriend) enthusiasm for ferries. It’s hard to explain, but I just enjoy the feeling of travel, without the responsibility of being in control all the time. Also, being on the “high seas” takes me back to the fascination I had with the pirate Blackbeard after a family trip to the Outer Banks of Carolina when I was six.

Another reason I like ferry rides is that those hours are possibly the closest I’ll ever come to owning a boat.

(All photos copyright Associated Press)

I was assigned to cover the Husky men’s game against the Arizona Wildcats yesterday. Originally, I’d been given the Arizona State game on Thursday night, but because of a scheduling change, I was switched over to the Saturday game. Even thought it was a “bigger” game, with ASU ranked 11th, I can’t say I was disappointed for not getting to shoot it; because of television, tip-off was a little past 8pm (an hour later in Arizona b/c they don’t observe daylight savings time). This essentially forces the photographer (me) to shoot for the first four minutes of the game and then leave the court to transmit the best 3-4 pictures out of that (which likely isn’t going to be a very good selection) for the outlets in Arizona on deadline.

You’re probably less interested in the annoyances faced by us wire shooters on the baseline as in the game, the result of which gave the Huskies a share of their first Pac-10 title in 23 years.

Despite the high noon start, it was a very well played, intense game.

Arizona’s Jordan Hill, top left, had a monster game, scoring 27 points, but UW’s pressing defense largely limited the rest of the Wildcats to being minimally effective. Jon Brockman, top right, had another double-double, 19 points, 11 rebounds. And Isaiah Thomas, bottom left, scored 13 second half points. I’m not sure why I decided to send this picture of Justin Dentmon, bottom right. It is of a pretty huge basket in the final minute of the game, but it isn’t really that good of a picture.

I shot from an elevated position for about eight minutes in the first half, but didn’t really get anything more than the picture above, a non-called foul on Arizona’s Chase Budinger against Venoy Overton. I didn’t move the picture, but probably would have if the Huskies had lost. As is typical, unfortunately, for a Pac-10 game, there were several poor calls by officials.

Budinger didn’t get away with this foul on Brockman late in the second half, his fifth:

There was a shooter using strobes, which ruined probably a half dozen frames of mine, but I did catch just the right amount of extra light from one of his strobe pops on this frame:

Before, no strobe/After, strobe.

Strobes for basketball would be oh so nice, but I don’t know how I’d handle only being able to shoot one frame every two seconds. I’ll just be content to take the extra light when I can. Usually, though, it can be pretty ugly, about 4-5 stops of extra light.

Isaiah Thomas Shows the best way to stop a fast break by Arizona’s Nic Wise is to tackle the guy bringing up the ball. Mysteriously, an intentional foul wasn’t called on the play:

I was happy to have the shot above since I would have been a strong image if the Wildcats had won, which given they were up by about 10 with under 9 minutes to play, was very plausible. I ended up not transmitting it.

Here Washington head coach Lorenzo Romar reacts to a foul called in the first half:

I wonder if Romar found this at the same clothier that Craig Seger frequents. Also, I’m disappointed that Romar didn’t wear a pair of matching slacks with the jacket and tie. That would be truly memorable.

Romar was a little happier after the Huskies had clinched a tie for their first conference championship since 1985:

More jubes:

The above picture of Dentmon was the very last frame that I shot. My camera image buffer was smoked by a lot of other jube frames and I lucked into getting just one frame off of this.

As so occasionally happens when I’m trying to quickly edit and transmit immediately following a shoot, I botched my edit of the lede shot of this post. Instead of it, I sent this one, which after I thought about it for a while this morning, isn’t as good:

You can’t see Matthew Bryan-Amaning’s face quite so well, and the arms of the player at right look a little funky.

This frame, you can see MBA’s face better, though there’s an extra arm popping out from Brockman’s shoulder (which is why I choose against it in the first place):

Overall, it isn’t nearly as good as the frame of the same scene that Josh Trujillo (seen peeking in off the right edge, camera and hand in front of his face) of the Post-Intelligencer made. To see all the choices I had, here’s the best eight frames from about a twelve frame sequence:

In conclusion, bow down to Washington!

Ok, my apologies for neglecting the blog and leaving that sad post about old Molly is the top post for so long. My new year’s resolution of posting more frequently has obviously failed.

Anyway, how about something a little happier, like dogs in snow?

We had an epic winter storm that lasted about a week and a half around Christmas. More snow (about 1.25 feet) than I’ve ever seen outside of the mountains. Navigation up and down our hill was pretty challenging at times. To add to the enjoyment, we were hosting Kona, our former neighbors’ dog, while they were away for the hollidays. During a previous stay, we’d nicknamed him “Big Red” on account of the color of his coat, but we switched that to “The Red Menace” sometime during this stay. He’s still welcome to stay with us anytime, Wayne and Karen! We just kid…

The second dog in my life, Molly, was euthanized this morning. Old age can be rough on big dogs, and she had lost most of her hearing, sight and all of her appetite over the last months. In the past few days, she apparently couldn’t get herself to stand up and Dad made the decision to put her down. This is a terrible choice to have to make, but her quality of life had drastically receded past a point of no return. We can at least take comfort in the fact that she isn’t suffering any more.

My parents and I adopted her during the spring of 1997, when she was a little north of two years old. Like the dog she succeeded, Rollo, she was a golden retriever, but that breed title was in name only, since she had no interest or ability in retrieving. We tried many, many hours to get Molly to bring the ball back to us after we’d throw it, ready to give her ample cookie rewards for a successful fetch, but she would never bring it back to us.

Though Molly didn’t have any real fetching ability, she had a great capacity for love and affection. Countless times I’d be typing an email or a letter at the computer desk, or reading at the kitchen table, and she’d mosey up, sit down and start pushing her muzzle against my elbow or forearm until I’d acknowledge her presence and start petting her. I’d scratch her on the chest or behind the ears, which was her favorite, for a couple minutes, and then go back to whatever I was trying to do. Unsatisfied, Molly would immediately re-assert herself, nosing me in the elbow until I quit whatever I was doing and give her at least one hand (preferably two), of attention. This sequence of events would go on for an hour at least, or until I’d just give up, get on the floor and scratch her on the tummy with all four of her paws up, reaching for the sky.

(photo by Jenny Buchanan)

After I left for college my parents, alone in their empty nest but for Molly, embarked on a steady campaign to spoil the dog. Among other things, they purchased a minivan with tinted windows, so they could to take her on their frequent doctoring trips to hospitals in Olympia and leaver her in the car while they got their chemo treatments. My Mom also decided that dry dog food, or, dry dog food with wet dog food on top, wasn’t good enough for Molly anymore and began feeding her cooked ground beef on top of the dry food. Molly’s ample build subsequently expanded, unsurprisingly. Molly also got to enjoy the sublime human food pleasures of popcorn, crackers and potato chips under Mom and Dad’s new and relaxed rules. I thought this would surely lead to some sort of early health problems and I’d get a little frustrated whenever I witnessed my parents giver her these bits of salty stomach shrapnel. Molly hung on for 14 mostly agile years, so I guess my fears might have been misplaced, or possibly also jealous.

I shouldn’t complain too much, overall, though. We loved her, and she loved us back with all her heart. That’s about all you can really ask for in any relationship.

Goodbye, old dog. You were a good friend, and you will be missed.

I’m sure that many more words have been, and, will be, more eloquently written in regards to this past week’s election than what I’m about to attempt, but I figured I’d share my thoughts with my friends at this small corner of the Internet. I’ll try to be as brief as I can.

I guess this speaks to my sheltered naiveté about race relations, but I’m surprised that so many people claimed to have thought that the election of a black man to the presidency would never happen in their lifetimes. The Voting Rights Act was nearly two generations ago, in 1965, and the 43 years since has been more than enough time for people to get their heads around the concept of an African-American who just happens to be President. I’ve always understood America to be a meritocracy, and I can’t see how anyone is shocked that the smarter, younger and more charismatic candidate won on Tuesday.

I’m relieved it’s over. It’s been a long year since the primaries began and if you follow politics at all, it’s been overwhelming for most of that time. Electing a chief executive in this country is a massively expensive undertaking – more than $1.5 billion was spent in this effort between the campaigns, affiliated groups, party national committees and such. Sure, the presidency is the most powerful office in the world, but I can’t help but think that there has to be a better way of choosing who it goes to.

While that sense of relief came over me as I sat at a downtown bar with some friends and watched early returns come in, another feeling of wariness intruded on my disposition. “What’s next, what now?” I said to myself. President-elect Obama has more potential than any politician the country has seen since at least JFK, if not FDR, and I’m afraid he might be deemed a failure if he doesn’t quickly live up to this ability.

Also, I felt wary for him personally. The job he’s been promoted to will be hugely difficult: a lonely, sobering burden for him to carry, largely by himself. He’ll be isolated from the rest of the world by many layers of security personnel for the rest of his life. Barack Obama obviously knew this when he stood up and declared his candidacy, but he and his family have crossed that threshold for the rest of their lives.

After what has been an epic disaster by the current White House resident, I eagerly look forward to the next chapter of our little American experiment. As Obama said in his acceptance speech, “It is our time.” The Baby Boomer presidents had their chance to change America for the better and largely failed (Clinton: health care; Bush II: everything). It’s time for that generation and their petty culture wars to get out of the way. Now.

(Click here to see a compendium of hundreds of front pages from Nov. 5th. I always find it fun to see all the different solutions people come up with to answer a simple newspaper question: how do you display the news?)

Thanks to the 4pm kickoff and clear weather, there was more pretty light at Husky Stadium this afternoon. And thanks to UW continuing to be an inferior football team, it was a predictably bad game. Not a terrible mis-match, a ‘la USC 69, WSU 0, but it was obvious from the very first play of the game in which UW was given a delay-of-game penalty that the Huskies were doomed to failure, again:

UW’s regular starting quarterback, Jake Locker, broke his hand in the previous home game three weeks ago. He was unhappy that a call by the officials was not overturned after being reviewed:

As the game wound down, I shifted my attention to the Rodgers brothers, the elder James, wide receiver (8), and the younger Jacquizz, tail back (1), who invigorated the Oregon State team with four touchdowns against Washington. Frankly, I was surprised that not a single other shooter was trailing them in the final minutes of a game that was long decided. Not that I made an especially great picture, but I did think it was the only relevant storyline remaining to pursue for a non UW-centric media outlet: