by Kristina Barker

Too many mornings I’m rushing out the door only to realize at the last minute that I’m stepping over the morning paper on my front step and running to work. But this morning was a little different. As I grabbed my keys, patted my dog on the head, and shut the front door behind me, the headline at the top of the fold in this morning’s paper stopped me dead in my tracks. It was a blur of words but a face that I recognized. It was little Cooper Urbaniak. A situation like Cooper’s makes you wonder why certain people in this world are given such difficult challenges to deal with. It breaks my heart. In the short time that I’ve been here at the Journal, I’ve met two people who have passed away only months after I photographed them. I met Cooper back in December, not too long after returning from the Mayo Clinic with Ali Nowotny. And now, only a few short months later, Cooper has passed. My thoughts go out to him and his family during this time.

by Kristina Barker

There has been some serious Spring cleaning going on here at the Journal. As things are getting tossed out, some things are also getting salvaged. And in this case, finding a good home. Seth and I stumbled upon an instant camera that was in the take-it-home-or-toss-it pile, as well as an awesome handful of Polaroid 669 film. If you have even just the smidgen of photo geek in you that Seth and I have, you can imagine our glee. Like kids on Christmas morning. Like Ralphie. Eager to get it up and running for some test shots, Seth set up his new treasure out on the roof and we fired off a few test shots. I see a very fun project in the near future with this thing.

I shot a photo of these deer crossing a snow covered field near Red Rocks. I thought I’d try to produce a photo using high-key. Basically, you over expose the photograph and leave only a small amount of details from the mid tones and shadows. It can make for a cool shot. I think this worked.

- Ryan

We in Rapid City think the potholes are bad, image how much we’d complain if the gravel roads leading from our homes to town were impassible.
-Ryan

By Seth A. McConnell

I can safely say for the first time that I actually had fun shooting something at the Pennington Co. Events center. Normally shooting in the events center is an assignment akin to having teeth pulled, its just not a good time. The light is horrible and the ventilation is worse. The building, despite it being brand new, feels like it was constructed in the early 70’s. Needless to say when I saw the motocross championship on the schedule tonight I was not to ecstatic about the thought of spending anytime there much less attempting to make a photo. I struggled at first, I let the dark cave like atmosphere get into my head but after a rider put me in contact with one of announcers I made my way onto the track, found a spot I liked and just let it flow. I started experimenting with shutter speeds, pans, blurs and raking the focal length. I don’t know why I always experiment with panning, it ALWAYS makes me sick to my stomach to look at the images later. I wish I would have had a little more time to make a few more features to round out a package but I feel pretty pleased with several of the images.

I can’t figure out this new version of wordpress and how to embed a slideshow (Or I inhaled to many exhaust fumes at the races… again that poor ventilation…) so here is a link

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/pages/slideshows/158/

-S

By Seth A. McConnell

Being it is that time most holy time of year on the calendar of the dominant American religion I’ve spent the last few days in church making images for this Sundays lead story on… you guessed it, Religion. The church tonight was incredibly dark making it rather difficult to make images but I’m pretty pleased with the outcome of the above image. Silhouettes are almost to easy and to cliche at times but there are other times when its literally the only image you can make. I think it worked rather nicely to illustrate the story as well, which is about how people identify themselves religiously.

I don’t spend a lot of time darkening the door of the church, even to save face during the holy holidays, so a lot of these services and ceremonies are very foreign to me, fascinating but foreign. I don’t know how I feel about the feet washing thing. A little strange, maybe its because I’m not a big fan of feet.

-S

What sort of wrinkle in time caused me to catch all three of these teenagers blinking at the exact same time? Seth looked at the photo with me and we chalked it up to the sun reflecting off the snow, but still… that’s quite a feat (and unfortunate accident) to catch all three of them blinking at the same time. But I liked how the layers that I was working in this sitatution all came together.

Rapid City Stevens High School baseball team members Ryan Jensen, Chris Maks, P.J. Cavanaugh, and Alex Schnell shovel snow in front of the center field wall at McKeague Field on Wednesday afternoon April 8, 2009. (Photo by Kristina Barker/ Journal staff)

By Seth A. McConnell

Today was supposed to be Jacob Byington’s 6th birthday party but the snow storm mother nature unleashed cancelled the festivities. I made this image of Jacob at the Naja Shriners Easter egg hunt this morning. It has a really sad quality to it and one that just didn’t fit with the mood of the hunt. The only thing that would make this image better would be a pair of bunny ears.

-S