An athlete, a politician, and a strike.

Aside from moving into a new house and having a new office built, I was busy with some editorial work over the last few weeks:

Mentor, Ohio is home to Katie Spotz, a 22-yr-old woman that will attempt to row across the Atlantic Ocean from South America to Africa. I shot a portrait of her for the New York Times.

The story is here with the photo they ran.

This was my favorite shot of her from the shoot.



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Scene ran a story about Cuyahoga County's new government scheme and the restructuring involved. The head of that restructuring is Martin Zanotti.

See the full story here.



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The Cleveland Orchestra was in the news and I was there for the New York Times. The orchestra threatened to strike, and they did on Monday, January 18, 2010. A writer and I covered their concert on the preceding Thursday and had a good piece. Story is here.

These are the two photos they used in the paper the day of the strike. The web had additional images from the concert night and strike day.




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Akron's Suicide Bridge.

Did a job for the New York Times a couple weeks ago about their proposed use of stimulus money to fence their Y-Bridge, also more commonly known as the Suicide Bridge. Was an interesting day learning about the city from the mayor and from both sides of the issue.

Akron's Suicide Bridge

Taking over ESPN.com

You have a quiet few months, and then BAM! - all of a sudden you get slammed with projects and assignments. I did a couple things for ESPN this month. I had the font images on the ESPN main page and the NFL page for a couple days. Here's some screen captures from the site:





The first assignment was an all day trip out on Lake Erie with Joe Thomas and Hank Fraley of the Cleveland Browns for a piece about Joe, his fishing show and how he is an "average Joe." I actually managed to last the whole 8 hours on the boat and not get sick! (Wish the same was true for my ESPN counterpart -- sorry James!) They managed to catch 7 walleye while we were out and proved to be really nice and down to Earth guys. It was a fun assignment.

The second piece was to document NFL rookies as they toured the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton. It is now a requirement that each team send its rookies to see the hall. It was another fun and interesting piece. Number one pick Jake Long was there from the Miami Dolphins as was Matt Ryan of the Atlanta Falcons. I haven't been to the Hall of Fame since I was a kid, so it was fun on that end as well.

You can see the full stories and photos at these links:

Joe Thomas Fishing Trip
Rookie Hall of Fame Tour

Identifying "Baby Grace"

AP called me to cover a press conference in Mentor announcing the identity of "Baby Grace" was discovered. The girl is Riley Ann Sawyers from Mentor. It was a hard press conference to shoot.

The first photo is of Riley's father, Robert, talking about her life and the things he remembered the most about her. The second photo is of Sheryl Sawyers, grandmother to Riley, and Ray, uncle to Riley. Sheryl is holding a picture of Riley and an Elmo doll she bought her for Christmas.

My son Luca is 7 months old now, and I can't imagine what this family is going through. My condolences go out to the Sawyers family. This press conference was very emotional, and I hope my photos helped tell this unfortunate story.

Photos © Associated Press.