Bald eagle, Lexington, Kentucky

Bald Eagle, Lake Ellerslie, Lexington, Kentucky

Bald eagle making a dive on a fish

Bald eagle looking to make a dive on some prey

While this isn’t the first photo of an eagle I’ve taken, I’m most excited that this bird is in Lexington! I was born here and never did I think that I would ever see a bald eagle in Fayette County. One man I talked to at the lake said the bird has been there for a couple of weeks and that he doesn’t stay much longer than that.

Shot with a Canon Mark IV and a 600mm f/4 lens.

It’s been about three months since the University of Kentucky’s campus-wide smoking ban went into effect. As I walk across campus most days, I don’t see too many smokers. But recently, I have noticed that a few [stubborn?] students don’t seem to worry too much about the ban and they continue to smoke as they please. While I don’t normally make a point of photographing the smokers (yet), I loved the light and shadows on this guy, especially as he exhaled.

Photo by Angie Stephenson. Shot with her Canon Elph through the car window!!

The light and frozen water was so beautiful that I decided to go back the next day and shoot some more. The frost on the trees was missing as a result of the lack of fog, but the nearly full moon was still quite nice. It’s interesting to compare the two shots taken almost exactly one day apart.

This photo was taken at 7:45 a.m. on Sunday. The sun had not quite risen yet so there was no direct sun hitting the trees or the marina. The foggy morning had crystalized on the trees.

This photo was taken the next morning at 8:05 a.m. Notice how the position of the moon changed in one day. The 20 minute difference between the two photos meant that the sun was up enough to hit the trees and the marina.

The Kentucky News Photographers Association finished up its seminar and contest this past weekend. And like most years, I left feeling revived, optimistic, and humbled. This year I was especially pessimistic about the competition and had let myself be affected by the negativity in the industry. No doubt it has been a rough few years for journalists and Kentucky hasn’t been spared. Whenever I spoke with photographers around the state, the talk was almost always negative and filled with stories of what the news industry has done to hasten their own demise. There is no journalist in this state who felt secure this year and I’m confident it has had an impact on the way we do our jobs. I had assumed that the low moral coupled with the lack of picture-taking passion would translate into a poor showing come contest time. I’ve never been happier to be so wrong.

See for yourself the fantastic photos taken by the professionals and students of Kentucky during 2009 on the knpa.org website. The photos taken by Kentucky’s talented photographers were perhaps some of the best I’ve seen in many years. Congratulations to all the well-deserved winners selected by an equally talented set of judges including Gary Cosby, Jr., Rob Carr, and Jahi Chikwendiu. Charles Bertram is THE MAN and no one will ever convince me otherwise.

And now having had my yearly revival, complete with Brother Jahi’s passionate delivery and philosophical message, I’m going to do my best to stay positive while I work towards the yearly goals I set for myself.

Herald-Leader's Charles Bertram accepts one of his awards from Amy Wallot. Among his awards included the POY and runner-up Sports POY.

WKU student POY Scott McIntyre accepts an award from Amy Wallot.

I turned this photo over to the HL as my first photo as a freelancer and they used it lead on the front page. I got a few kind phone calls and emails from friends who said they were glad to see me back in the paper again. Frankly, I was too.

As a freelancer, I’m also trying to maximize the earnings potential of every assignment or photo, so I generally send a selection of photos to ZUMA press. They apparently liked the camel photo well enough to include it in their Pictures of the Day website.

On Saturday, the fam and I went back to Natural Bridge to shoot the formation in the snow. It was basically a repeat of a shot I did in the fall. I’m trying to shoot some stock not only for myself, but for a project that Tim Broekema is working on for the University of Kentucky hospital called Celebrate Kentucky. I re-shot a pano with my iPhone from under the bridge and stitched it with AutoStitch app. You can see the comparison of fall and winter here.

That AutoStitch iPhone app never ceases to amaze me. I took a trip to Natural Bridge State Resort Park Sunday afternoon hoping to catch some of the fall color before it was too late (me and a few hundred other folks apparently had the same idea – I’ve never had to wait in line to get up the Sky Lift before). While under the arch, I thought I’d give the ol’ cell phone/panorama thing a try.

Thirty-two iPhone photos stitched together in AutoStitch in a matter of minutes produced the image above. It’s like magic to me.

Last year was my first time covering the Santa Train, and the finished product was an audio slide show. I was so struck by the event that I vowed to go back and cover it again only this time with video. It’s an interesting comparison, really: Both had audio, but one had moving images and the other did not. I’m still not sure which one I like better, although I’m leaning toward the still version.

Anyway, enjoy the ride and Merry Christmas!

About a hundred UK students gathered for a few hours on campus to protest the campus-wide tobacco ban which took effect today. You can read more about it and see how the Kernel photogs shot it.