Some weeks here in the newsroom are pretty well planned out as I go from one event or subject to another, making photographs for the newspaper.
Other weeks, like this past one, I’m doing a lot of searching for what I’ll take pictures of. And sometimes what I find I think is pretty great. Maybe subject-wise it’s not monumentally newsworthy but I get a kick out of recording simple slices of life of the Wenatchee Valley.
On Monday, I found Tim Herdt with the city parks department taking railing off of the Rotary Play Village at Lincoln Park. I photographed him and then went to the parks department office where I had been told they had stockpiled the pickets from the play area that had donors’ names on them. It made for an interesting photograph and story beyond the playground destruction.
Tim Herdt with the Wenatchee Parks and Recreation Department takes down fencing surrounding the Rotary Play Village at Lincoln Park on Monday. He said the department expected to have the entire playground area taken out by Tuesday. A sign in the area says that 1,600 volunteers installed the play area in five days in 1996. A new playground will be built as part of a $2.1 million park renovation the city hopes to complete by the fall of 2021. It includes a soccer field, splash pad, pump track, new second picnic shelter, new stage, new restrooms and safety fencing along Crawford Avenue.
Over 300 pickets that were used as fencing at the Rotary Play Village in Lincoln Park are stacked and organized in the Wenatchee Parks and Recreation Department office. The department wants people who have their names on the pickets from a Rotary Club fundraising in 1996 to come by the office to collect them if they want them. Money from the named fencing helped construct the play area that is now being taken down.
Also on Monday, as I was driving out of The World’s parking lot, I saw a spray of water in the bright sunshine and there was Pablo Sandoval washing a building to get it ready for painting. The way the light illuminated the water was pretty cool, I thought.
With sunlight streaming through the water spray, Pablo Sandoval with Pesani Genuine Coatings pressure washes a commercial building along North Chelan Street Monday, Oct. 7, 2019, preparing it to be painted the next day.
On Tuesday, I had a bit of time before a volleyball game in Leavenworth so I looked around the back side of town near the ski area and noticed a goose in a small pond with reflections of some yellow leaves on the mountain behind it. I just got my truck stopped, window down, camera up when it flew off. The camera was on a slow shutter speed so I thought I had nothing. But back at my computer that night, I found one frame with my camera movement matching that of the goose so it was tack sharp with the background a bit blurry.
A Canada goose takes flight from a small pond along Leavenworth’s Ski Hill Drive at dusk Tuesday. The surrounding mountains with bits of fall foliage among the evergreens can be seen in the reflection on the water.
On Wednesday, reporter Bridget Mire and I were headed to report on a WestSide High School program when I saw some workers building a treehouse up Chumstick Canyon outside of Leavenworth. I stopped to take some photographs and when I later called the owner I found out his dad had made him a treehouse where he had caught the tree house bug and he was building this one for his daughter’s birthday in a few weeks. Those photographs will publish next week.
Then on Thursday, I was back in Leavenworth where I was going on a horse ride with my daughter. While waiting for her to saddle a couple of horses, I saw a cat sunning itself in an old barn. I grabbed a camera from my truck and made this photograph just before the cat bolted inside.
A barn cat enjoys the sun at Eagle Creek Ranch outside Leavenworth on a chilly morning Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019. With temperatures hovering around freezing, the cat found a warm spot in the barn that was built in 1911 and is still used to shelter hay and tack for the ranch's draft horses they use for sleigh rides.
In last week’s column I talked about stories that take a long time to develop. This week the stories seemed to be instantaneous.