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

Clouds

I found a really neat website the other day while browsing of the web for photo inspiration, which I do pretty frequently. It is called the Cloud 365 Project (http://www.clouds365.com). The project is by multimedia artist Kelly DeLay and he describes it as his commitment to be creative every day, by shooting videos or images of clouds every day for a year. There is also a interactive aspect that you can add your own cloud photos too, http://www.clouds365.com/community/.

On the artist's about me section, I found this quote:

"Clouds 365 is not intended to be separate from my everyday life. I want this practice of observation to be tied into the fabric of my life—the habit of looking up and noticing the patterns and beauty of the clouds that envelop us every single day."

This idea and practice is really important for me as a photographer. I used to carry around my camera in college nearly everyday, but since I started a career in photography, I moved away from that. I considered carrying a camera around for personal photos too much like work. This took a lot of the fun and spontaneity out photography for me, since the only photos I were taking were photos someone else told me to take.

After I realized that I am lucky enough to have a job doing something I love and care about, I realized that I wanted photos to be part of my life, not just my job. Because of this, I started taking photos of life outside of my "job" with my digital and holga cameras. It makes it fun for me again and is a different creative outlet. This January I also started a 365 project on flickr. I always wanted to start one, but never had enough motivation, so I joined the group Shutter Sisters 365 and try to add a photo everyday. I have only missed a couple days (yay for having a goal!) and have started carrying my camera everywhere I go. I find myself looking beyond what I normally would take photos of to find a photo for the day.

Here are a couple of my 365 photos that have to do with clouds, since that seems to be the theme of the day.

 March 16, 2010

Driving back from Stevens Point near Milladore, I stopped on a gravel road to take pictures

March 3, 2010

After work, the clouds reminded me of spring

January 12, 2010

Outside my work parking lot, I liked how the light matched the clouds