Ahh.... the work week is over. I love short work weeks.... although I worked more in four days than I normally do in five.  Busy work weeks much better than slow weeks, there is nothing worse than having one assignment and eight hours to do it. Thank goodness for distractions such as the internet and telling funny stories with co-workers!

On Monday we needed a stand alone, you know a feature photo for the front page. Mondays tend to be our slow news day. I either really like looking for a feature or hate it and end up in a frustrated rage pounding the steering wheel. (That is something I am working on, I am trying to be more mellow....) Looking for events works better for me than driving around aimlessly, especially in bad weather. I ended up taking photos of our local juggling club.

Patrick Squires, president of the Marshfield Area Juggling Club, juggles and tosses pins with Nate Seefeldt of Wisconsin Dells, a former competitor in the International Juggling Association Championship, during a meeting on Monday, April 5. The club meets every Monday from 7-9 pm in the Ballroom of the Chestnut Avenue Center for the Arts in Marshfield.

I experimented using flash and slow shutter speed for these top two photos. I am pleased with the way the pins are blurred and actually show movement.

I ended up enjoying this feature. Normally I can't get as close to jugglers (if they were performing) but as it was just a practice/gathering, I was annoying and in their space. I hope I didn't cause them to drop too many pins!

And the most exceptional thing about juggling on Monday.... I walked back to work to get some batteries for my flash while I waited for people to show up and saw this cloud formation! It is a new classification called "asperatus". I was just thinking about this cloud type last week and how amazing it would be to see and then - boom! (although there was no lighting or thunder) I saw it on Monday!

I also photographed baseball on Monday for fun and to fill the time.  I have a love/hate relationship with photographing baseball. I love shooting outside (when the weather is warm and sunny) and I love photographing sports that aren't in dark and dingy small-town gyms. I hate it because I am afraid of getting hit by a baseball in the temple, I don't have a 300, and you can stay at a baseball game for ALL 9 innings and sometimes nothing happens and you end up using your "safe shot" of the pitcher. So you totally could have left after the second inning and joined your friends for beers.

I photographed a rainy and very cold soccer game on Tuesday. I left after my lens stopped focusing due to rain.

Tuesday was also a voting day for mayor, aldermen, school board, county official races, and other local government races. I suspect the voting turnout wasn't very huge.

That is all the photos from this week (that I like). I am off to Kansas City for the weekend where is is suppose to be 80 degrees!

Asperatus Cloud Links

Royal Meterological Societ

National Geographic

Flickr Discussion

Cloud Appreciation Society

Friday Photos

Yay, it's Friday! I am heading to Chicago this weekend equipped with my holga modified for 35mm film, ready to experiment. Hopefully there will be some wandering time and nice light. Here are a few photos from the week.

I'm done frog sitting.... sad.

A couple outtakes from the work week

 A farmer giving a tour of his farm for a work assignment about .... farm tours. There is never much light in the barn but in this barn the ceiling had an opening in the top to let in a shaft of light. It was hard to work around the bright light and the dark shadows. I liked this photo because of the shadow on the bottom, you can still see that he is talking to people, despite all of them being in the dark.

Photo for the opening of UWSP baseball season. They didn't run this in the paper, the ran a straight-on shot, which was pretty boring and standard. I am usually nervous to shoot baseball practice because I can't see balls coming when I am looking through the camera with my 70-200. I shot with a wide-angle lens behind the net so I could jump out of the way real fast. Not really, I just get bored shooting sports with long lenses.

I found a neat blog today Female Photographers of Etsy. There are a lot of great photos, inspiration, ideas and links to other women photographer's photo blogs and websites.