Discovering an overlooked image

"Johns Hopkins midfielder Garrett Stanwick screams in jubilation with teammates following an upset victory over the Duke Blue Devils in the Division I NCAA Men's Lacrosse National Championship tournament game at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore, Md., May 28, 2007. "

Nothing is more cliché than starting a paper, article, book, what have you, with a definition. So I am not going to rip and read post the meaning of the word labor.

Instead, I am going to tell you what Labor Day is in my third sentence of this blog and then probably bore you with what I did on my Labor Day.

Did you know that Labor Day is a United States federal holiday that takes place on the first Monday in September? You didn't? Well, then did you know the holiday began in 1882, originating from a desire by the Central Labor Union to create a day off for the "working man."

Neither did I, and to be frank, this day have never really had a direct effect on me, other than I never had to go to school on this day.

Anyways, I was scheduled to work this past Labor Day and had no problems with it. I knew it probably wouldn't be that exciting, so I got a chance to catch up on some archiving for the paper and myself.

Starting my shift at 2:30 p.m., I exited the elevator and made my way back to the photo department of the paper. The newsroom was a ghost town, everyone aside from myself and a handful of lingering editors and reporters occupied the office. Everyone else had the day off.

So with the lounge to myself, I caught up on reading some blogs, articles and checked out my fellow shooters work that may have not been published.

I questioned whether or not to go look for some feature art, as the morning shooter had shot the last day of the fair which would probably get the go ahead. I made a couple laps to my favorite spots, but didn't find anything too visual.

As time passed with no set assignments, I realized that if anything, I could begin my task of burning way too many DVDs for my normal liking. It would catch me up with where I needed to be with the paper, daily work, and also help clear some much needed hard drive space on my laptop.

After getting my work related backing-up finished, I moved over to my laptop which was littered with too many assignments screaming, "Burn me to a DVD, please."

Some of the assignments I had dated back to 2006, while others from last week. In relation to size, some were only a couple megabytes, while others exceeded the capacity of a DVD.

One that was too large to fit onto one DVD was the Division I NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship tournament at M&T Bank Stadium from May 2007.

I guess why the file was so large was because it was a championship game, and aside from the heavy shooting of the see-sawing one-goal game, I had also shot the jubilation and dejection at the end of the match.

What I wanted to do though, was fit the entire game onto one disc. This would save me from losing one or the other DVDs, or having trouble trying to find a certain image later down the road.
So what I did was something I typically wouldn't do. I went through my take deleting completely out of focus or back focused images. This also helped me find an image I had over looked and forgot to move following the game last year.

Often I'll do this. Whether it’s a week, a month or a year later. I'll simply pop in a DVD or plug in my external hard drive and take another look at certain assignments. Not only does this help me see how I was shooting previously, but it helps me find images I let get away when on a tight deadline.

This is one of those images and I am glad I found it.

As for now, I am inspired by a colleague’s video he is working on the destruction of a building downtown. From what he showed me, it's going to be a very nice piece of work, which he says is in the tune to "Baraka" which I haven't seen (yet just ordered).

Back to recently shot and published assignments later this week.