The Regular Season

Hamilton County's regular season ended on Tuesday night with a win at Fort White.

More HC Hoops

The hoops team at Hamilton County High has to share the school gym with several other teams. Some days, they head into downtown Jasper and practice in the gym at the school board building. Such was the case yesterday.

Somehow, a fire extinguisher had been discharged in the gym the night before - leaving a powder on the surface of the court. The team ended up practicing outside.

Coach Murphy had to act quickly and improvise a practice. "Just kinda makin' stuff up as we go," he said.

Josh Jones

Josh Jones is one of Hamilton County's best players, and I photographed him for The Sun's A to Z feature before a game last Thursday.

It was misting that night. I thought it would be neat to work the weather and the outside lights into the shot. I shot with a very slow shutter speed and jiggled the camera to provide the halo look.

Overtime Thriller

Nick Calathes scored 24 points and Marreese Speights added 20 more in Florida's 81-70 overtime win against Kentucky. Since the game started so late, I had a 10 p.m.-ish deadline. I shot the first half, edited and transmitted pictures, and then shot the remainder of the second half and overtime for file art. It was a good win for the Gators. Their streak over the Wildcats now stands at seven.

Hamilton Co. Hoops

I should have posted a few of these last Friday, after my visit to Coach Murphy's home on Thursday night. He's had a few players at a time come spend the night at his house this season. They eat dinner, play Wii, hang out, and ultimately bond as a team. It was pretty cool.

High School Weightlifter

I tried to shoot this differently, but I think it turned out well this way.

SFCC Construction Success

This has been a busy week. I only have school on Tuesday and Thursday, but I'm either working or studying the other days of the week.

Last night I ran up to Hamilton County to work on my basketball story. I got to bed a little past 2 a.m., and was up at 7:25 to photograph two stories at Santa Fe Community College. This picture is for a story on the success SFCC's building construction program is having at placing graduates in jobs, even though the housing market is in a slump.

Baby With(out) a Bottle

This morning I photographed the worship service at Fountain of Life Church of God in Christ for the Gainesville Guardian. While I was there, I saw this 8-month-old boy sitting off to the side. At first he was just staring at me, so I made a few frames and went on to something else. I walked by him again a few minutes later, and he was holding his bottle. Once it fell to the ground I waited for him to turn back towards me. I knew he would stare at the camera and make the frame.

It's been a while since I shot a religion piece for the newspaper, so I was excited to see what images would come out of it. As I drove to the location I realized that two of the pictures on my Web site came from Guardian assignments. One shot is of a woman crying, the other is of a mother touching her son on the shoulder.

It took several tries to find the church once I arrived at the address. Apparently, there are four small churches in the strip mall. The first church I walked into was holding a Haitian service. They seemed surprised that I showed up, and I thought it was odd the newspaper would send us to a service we couldn't understand. But if they had done that, it wouldn't surprise me.

I realized I was at the wrong church, so I went to a second church. After a few minutes, someone from the church I was supposed to be at found me and took me to the right location.

Saturday Hoops

Today I shot a few games of the inaugural Dante Anderson Memorial Invitational. Dante played hoops at Eastside High School and was killed in a car accident last spring. This shot, from my remote floor camera, was one of my favorites. Ironically, it came near the very end of the game (within the last minute of regulation). Eastside won in overtime, 50-47.