Out with the old, in with the new

Last night I wandered over to the News-Post's old downtown building to watch the very last (nock on wood) paper to roll off the press.

Tonight, I will be heading back to our new building to document the first daily paper to come off our brand spankin' new press.

It was amazing to see our old press, which is maybe a tenth the size of our new one, crank out its last edition before we put the old thing out to pasture.

I shot video and took a few stills, as did my boss, who, like me will also be on hand tonight as we complete our move to 351 Ballenger Center Drive.

The News-Post will be hosting our first public tour next Thursday, so people will get to see our new facilities, including a press that when you're on the top looking down... Well, lets just say it's not for those afraid of heights.

What? No Saint Patrick's Day assignment?

A year ago today I was being paid to stand around inside an Irish bar being chatted up by semi-drunk (understatement) patrons wanting to have me take pictures of them wearing green glasses.

For this year's incarnation of St. Patty's, I spent the day photographing the News-Post's giant new sign being installed, a portrait at the courthouse, a German bakery contestant and the proprietor of a store which sells items, most of which I could not show in the photograph.

That last assignment, scheduled to print Tuesday, was certainly a difficult one, because all the items in the store could be found offensive to some of our readers and thus could not be visible. To get around this obstacle, I had to shoot this guy's portrait from across the store with a long lens and a wide open aperture, which allowed me to put everything but my subject out of focus.

While none of my assignments today took me anywhere near pints of the green brew, I was however, challenged to make eye catching images that will hopefully help draw a few more people through an interesting read.

New toy arrived today

As was expected, my new Nikon D300 arrived today, giving me a gorgeous new camera to play with. I started my day at a dimly lit five in the morning, needing to be in Brunswick by six for an early morning book signing.

After returning to the office around nine, I had to wait patiently until the UPS guy showed up mid-day to get my hands on my new camera.

This photo, the second consecutive I've posted of Kit was shot with my new D300 at 1/25th of a second and 3200 ISO, which looks amazing considering the afore mentioned settings.

I replaced the standard batteries with eight AA's which let me crank up the burst rate to somewhere in the neighborhood of seven frames per second, which, simply put is awesome.

It took me just a few minutes to fall in love with this camera, which I'll discuss in more detail once I've had more time to play with all the features.

P.S. Keep a lookout for my blog on the News-Post's website, which will go live soon and will go by the same name as the blog you are currently reading. So henceforth, I'll refer to this blog as the home edition.