180 Weekend

Middle School students listen Christian rock band Mark & Clarissa perform during the 180 Weekend event at Bethlehem Church on Friday January 27, 2012.

High School students raise their hands in the air while listening to Christian rock band 'Hudson' perform at the 180 Weekend event at Parkwood Baptist Church on Saturday January 28, 2012.

Brad Hudson of the Christian rock band 'Hudson' performs at Parkwood Baptist on Saturday.

Middle School students listen Mark & Clarissa at Bethlehem Church on Friday.

My new TTV toy

Last week I acted on a tip that a local consignment store going out of business had some old cameras.

There was in fact a Polaroid model 150 roll film camera there. Unlike the other Polaroids I have, you can't get film for these older models anymore, but it was very clean and only $20 so I got it for a shelf piece.

Next to the 150 was a little Kodak Brownie camera for $15. Not in pristine condition by any means, but unlike the Brownie I've had for a while this one had a clear viewfinder with no lines.

That means TTV time baby!

That's "thought the viewfinder" for the uninitiated, wherein you use a modern digital camera to shoot through the waist level finder of a Brownie or some other such camera.

I know what you're thinking. It's sort of silly using the dirty viewfinder of a 50-year-old camera that wasn't even a good camera to start with in order to get low-fi pictures out of a $7,000 digital SLR set up.

If this boggles your mind, just think of the Brownie as a cheap but cumbersome filter that produces vintage looking pictures. It's sort of like the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone, but unlike the iPhone, I have all the motion-stopping shutter speeds and low light performance of that state of the art Canon Mark IV taking the pictures.

I took a little walk around downtown Gastonia the next day to play around with it. After adjusting to the reversed image in the viewfinder it was fun to use. I got these pictures a and a few odd looks from people on the street.

Drunk Pelican Orchid?

I had an assignment to photograph orchids for a Gaston Gazette 'In Focus' photo page last week at Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. They're getting ready for their upcoming 'Orchid Spectacular' and they let me go behind the scenes to their greenhouses to shoot some of the flowers that will be on display (below). I think this flower (above) looks sort of like a drunk pelican wearing a hat and a big smile. Do you see it?

Panthers vs Buccaneers

Tampa Bay wide receiver Arrelious Benn catches a pass pass in the end zone during the second quarter of the game against Carolina on Saturday December 24, 2011 at Bank of America Stadium. The pass was initially called incomplete, but on review was ruled a touchdown. 

Carolina quarterback Cam Newton evades Tampa Bay defenders Quincy Black, left and Frank Okam during the first quarter. 

Carolina running back DeAngelo Williams breaks the tackle of Tampa Bay defender Ahmad Black during the second half. 

Ashes

A family photo lies in the ashes of a mobile home on River Loop Road just outside Belmont that was destroyed by fire on Sunday December 11, 2011. Five people were seriously injured due to smoke inhalation. 

Solar is here!

Freshly installed solar panels sit on the roof of the Gaston County building that houses the Gaston County Police Department and other services on Thursday December 1, 2011. 

I recently had the privilege of photographing what the owners claim is the largest photovoltaic installation on a government building in the Southeast.

NARENCO, a company that already has an installation on the roof of a local commercial building, the National Gypsum facility in Mount Holly, is installing 3,122 photovoltaic panels on the roof of a Gaston County building in Gastonia whose main tenant is the Gaston County Police Dept.

This installation is rated to produce 740 KW of power that will be sold to the local utility provider Duke Energy. That's enough to power over 250 average American homes.

It's a little more than a token gesture, but not quite enough to save the world.

Sustainable energy is being put onto the grid, which means less coal is being burned. That's a good thing for everyone. But this is a perfect example of how sustainable energy can be green in more ways than one.

The county is making money by leasing the roof to NARENCO, it isn't a ton of money, but it's money they wouldn't have had otherwise.

And this shining example of how sustainable energy can be a win financially for local government and business is right here in my hometown. The same hometown that is installing electric car charging stations at several of it's parking areas and implementing new recycling initiatives (or at least trying to, but that's another story).

It is, I think, a piece of the future. As the cost of traditional energy goes up and the cost to manufacture PV panels decreases there will only be more projects like this popping up on roofs of buildings everywhere, or perhaps even serving a dual role shading parking lots.

It's inconspicuous, clean, green, and profitable, and the public response has been, from what I've seen, overwhelmingly positive.

Best of 2011: Prep Football

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Prep football season came to a rather anticlimactic close for me a few weeks ago. Unlike previous years when it seems like I covered one or two teams extensively throughout the year, this year I was all over the place.

I saw a few good games (or first halves, anyway), got a few good pictures, but never felt really inspired. Maybe it's just that I'm in my fourth year of being a newspaper photographer and it's starting to feel like I've done it all before.

In any event, enjoy this slideshow of some of my best pictures from this past season.

ACC Championship

Enjoy a few selects from Saturday's ACC Football Championship game between Clemson and Virginia Tech in Charlotte.

I devoted a great deal of time to trying to find and get shots of one specific Clemson assistant coach that may or may not have actually been on the sidelines at any point during the game, but I did manage to get a few decent shots of game action.

And on another note, I dropped my stainless steel water bottle as I was getting out of my car (I had to park about five blocks away, just FYI), splitting it open at the bottom. Normaly they have free bottled water in the field media workroom (I heard one guy refer to it as the 'media lounge'), but today? All out.

So I had to ride the elevator up and down and all around, then walk half way around the concorse amid screaming fans just to pay $4 for a bottle of water.

At the end of the evening, I would say my day was better than the Hokies' but worse than the Tigers'.