Cheap Shots

Every year during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, we publish our favorite photographs of the year. We submit three images with the story behind how the photo was made. While out on assignment, I often hear comments on how much people like our year-end photo page. Because it has become so popular, this year we have put together a gallery of our 10 favorites. You can see them here. While looking through my take for the year, I found 35 photos that are worth a second look here in the Cheaps Shots blog.

Here are the three I submitted for our print edition:

A Chinook helicopter carries a log over the Rock Creek Watershed last September as Alex Barth, left, and George Lerczak, both 7, look for a better vantage point on an overlook in Starker Forest. The helicopter was placing logs along Rock Creek as part of a habitat restoration project.

Former Gazette-Times reporter Theresa Hogue’s car was in the shop, so we had to drive several miles up a logging road to the observation area in my tiny Honda. We met a group of people who had worked on the project waiting in the observation area just across from the Rock Creek Water Treatment Plant. Soon we could hear the sound of the helicopter rotors echoing down the drainage. We were all looking up toward Marys Peak when the helicopter was spotted in the distance. With a log swinging underneath, the helicopter worked its way down the drainage and was soon hovering just in front of us, where the log was then lowered into a predetermined position on the creek. We saw this process repeated about 10 times before we had to leave. The first couple times I tried to make images of the helicopter with the water treatment plant in the background. Then I tried to make some images with the group in the observation area and the helicopter together. At that point I thought I had the photo and was walking back up to the observation area when I spotted the two boys running down the hill for a better view. The last couple trips I made some photos of Theresa, one of which appeared in her going-away column in the Entertainer.

A fully loaded dump truck overturned, spilling its load of gravel at 12:16 p.m. on Highway 223 near Alexander Road last April. At 5:15 p.m. the highway was still closed, as tow trucks attempted to right the heavy vehicle.

We had no photos planned for the next day’s front page when I heard the news of a large truck overturned on the Kings Valley Highway. When I arrived, traffic was backed up a bit, and cars were attempting to turn around. After finding a safe place to park, I walked up to wreck scene. Everyone was standing around waiting for a wrecker. On the far side from where I parked, the dividing line between the lanes captured my attention. It was dry, so I got down on my belly and shot from road level. I could hear a large vehicle driving up the road behind me and scrambled out of the way after just a couple pictures. The sound was a truck with a winch driving up to the scene to attempt to clear the road. I was lucky that day. If I had been any slower, I would have missed this photo. My luck continued when I arrived back at the office after the meeting where we plan our front page. I convinced the page designer that this image should be considered for the front page. It ran as the main photo on the page.

Dozens of neighbors from surrounding farms came out to help fight a grass fire sparked by a downed power line in a field at the intersection of Payne Road and Highway 99W south of Corvallis last July.

Reporter Nancy Raskauskas and I were finishing up a Sunday shift when we heard the call on the scanner. While driving to the fire, I had one off-duty reporter and a former reporter call me about the column of smoke they could see to the south. We arrived just as the last of the flames were extinguished. I thought the chance for good photos had passed. Was I ever wrong. For the next 20 minutes I catured photos as volunteers with makeshift fire trucks doused the remaining hot spots in the warm evening light. Of the four strong images made in that magical 20 minutes, this one is my favorite.

Here are some of my other favorites from the year in no particular order:

Bill Blackwell, a deputy district ranger with the Siuslaw National Forest, picks up trash left behind by off-roaders at Joshua Lane, a 250-acre dune field near Florence. The area is proposed for closure under the new Travel Management Rule.

Bennett Hall and I spent a long day at the dunes working on this story. After hauling us around for half a day, Bill Blackwell took us to a small section of dunes that the locals use. He said they did not patrol this area very often, and he needed to take a look. We had to weave through some trees and over some dunes to reach this location. I was surprised at how well Blackwell negotiated the dunes in a stock SUV. When we arrived, Blackwell hopped out and began to clean up the trash left behind. Most of the trash was pretty ordinary. Then I saw the employee of the month sign and I knew I had a unique photo.

Philomath Elementary School music teacher Colleen Schulze lives a life surrounded by music, and wants her classroom to be a place where her students begin to understand the joy that music can bring to their lives.

This was one of the first Story Next Door features I photographed. The Story Next Door is a profile of interesting people in the community that we publish each Tuesday. When we arrived, I spotted the decoration on this wall of the classroom and decided it made the perfect background. One flash off camera to the left and a great smile and we quickly had my favorite Story Next Door portrait.

Video crews recorded football practice at Oregon State University last August. The football team opened the season on the road against Stanford on Aug 28.

At a hot August football practice, my brain was melting. “Oh that looks pretty,” I thought, as I saw the videographer silhouetted against the roof of the Merrit Truax Indoor Practice Facility. “Click, click, this is fun, somehow it seems a little cooler.”

R. Ward Scott, director of music at The Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, plays “Happy Birthday” on the 1963 Casavant Frères Organ at the church while concert-goers sing along below at an event in honor of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Wow, everyone should hear one of these huge organs at least once in their life. This concert is a great opportunity. Access was limited, and I did not want to disrupt the concert, so I snuck out into the center aisle and snapped a couple quick frames.

New York Giants fan Gabriel Choi,14, watches as the Giants fumble in the first half of the Super Bowl. Choi was viewing the game on the big screen at Grant Avenue Baptist Church in Corvallis.

What a great way to watch the big game, lots of friends, food and a big, I mean big, screen. All I had to do was camp out and wait for a big play with lots of reactions.

Items for sale at the 42nd annual antique auto swap meet and sale.

Nancy Raskauskas and I spent part of a Sunday at the Benton County Fairgrounds covering the swap meet. We met some interesting people, including the former shop teacher from my high school in Eugene. On most stories I try to get some sort of detail shot. At the swap meet the light was fantastic and the junk, I mean treasures for sale, were quite photogenic.

Joel Hottman of Klamath Falls speeds down a zip line at the Oregon State University Challenge Course on Sunday. About 30 incoming cadets from the Air Force ROTC tackled the course as part of orientation activities for the organization.

Kyle Odegard and I had to go to the Challenge Course three times to make this photo. On our first two visits, the cadets were working on exercises on the ground. Every time we have covered an event at the Challenge Course, the photographer has made an extraordinary image. The pressure was on. After shooting a couple safe shots, I gambled and tried a technique called “panning.” What you do is use a slow shutter speed and move the camera at same speed as the subject. If you are lucky the subject is sharp and the background is blurred. If you get one good frame out of 30 using this technique you are lucky, and I think luck was in my corner that day.

Marys Peak Search and Rescue members, from left, Tony Rumpca, Jerry Smith, Don Reid and Steven Loop, take a bearing on a Sunday morning last February during a training exercise at E.E. Wilson Wildlife Refuge near Adair Village. Two teams worked together to triangulate the position of a beacon simulating the signal from a crash-landed airplane.

These guys are an interesting group of characters. Before the event when the reporter was asking these guys their names, Steven replied “Nunya.” The reporter said “Nunya?,” and Steven’s response was “Nunya damn business.” Despite the fun and games in the office, these guys were all business in the field. Often it is difficult to get interesting photos of groups of people. I just got lucky with the body language in this one.

Oregon State University pitcher Kelly Dyer flips a bunt by Arizona’s Sam Banister to catcher Audrey Roderfeld so she could tag out Stacie Chambers at the plate in the third inning.

Photographing sports you see the same type of plays over and over, so you better be paying attention when something different happens. In this case I managed to capture the moment and the elements fell into place: There were two base runners, the two defensive players involved in the play and the opposing team in the dugout watching to see the outcome, making a nice image.

Cathryn Ballweber, 20, sells tickets at the Motor Vu Drive-In theater last June in Dallas.

While working at the Democrat-Herald I covered the last season at the drive-in in Lebanon. I remember thinking that it was my last-ever drive-in story. You can imagine my excitement when I learned there was a drive-in still operating in Dallas and I was chosen to cover it. While waiting out front for the first customers to arrive, I noticed this sliver of light falling on the ticket window. “Please, please, please, just one customer before the light fades away,” I thought. Moments later the light was gone, and I moved inside to shoot more photos.

OrBlogs Founder Paul Bausch gave a presentation titled “How not to Kill a Side Project” last November during the Ignite Corvallis portion of the High Tech After Hours event. The rapid-fire format for Ignite Corvallis gave presenters only five minutes using 20 slides that advanced every 15 seconds.

This assignment was a slide show with several different presenters. It was held in a crowded room where it would be difficult to move around with out causing a disruption. Lots of frames, a little tilt and exposing to make a silhouette made for an interesting image.

Corvallis High School basketball players McKenzie Redberg and Gabe Johnson.

I noticed the rock at Corvallis High School had a new paint job as I arrived to make a feature photo of two members of the girls’ basketball team. When I suggested the rock, they liked the idea. While climbing up the rock, the girls discovered the paint had not dried yet. They climbed the far side of the rock, which had not been painted recently, and placed their feet carefully on the tacky paint. Several frames later we had a nice feature photo.

Lorraine Dauw helps fellow art student Steve Kowalski lift molten bronze from a furnace last January. They poured the 2,100-degree liquid into molds that Kowalski will create art from. “Sculpture is all about helping each other out. We want these to come out as much as he does,” Dauw said.

This is another of those WOW! assignments. A photograph cannot capture the color of the molten metal. This is one of those things you have to see in person. Now I know where the term “red hot” comes from.

Despite being only 4 years old, K’Leyone Iosua of Corvallis has attended the annual library sleepover three times. He played with his car-shaped slippers while waiting for a magic show by magician Jay Fraiser on a Saturday night last June at the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library.

Those are some cool slippers. They didn’t anything like that when I was that age. This was one of those times when a nice photo appears in front of you. K’Leyone might have some skills predicting the future, because once the show started, we were startled by the volume of the children during the magic show.

This photo was made as a secondary photo to go with a food story on hard cider. The plan was to shoot an apple for a “cut-out,” where the background is removed from the photo. When we saw how nice it looked on the table, we made a small change in the light to improve the reflection on the table and called it good. This one was a happy accident.

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