Been a long coupl'a'days

Monday felt kind of like election-prep day, interspersed with normal assignments and spot news. I had a morning assignment that was kind of blah, so I'll just skip over it. I also ran by and got a couple portraits of the staff of Mental Floss, which may be my new favorite magazine. It's all trivia and just little weird/interesting things ... flip through it if you get the chance. Then I took a photographer from NPR, David Gilkey, around to the polling places I found around Legion Field. Nice guy, won an Emmy for a piece he did while at the Detroit Free Press; hope to run into him again. Anyway, dropped him at his hotel, and dashed off for an apartment fire. Which, of my four assignments on Monday, did run, so how about some pictures?This is the one that ran. Not an incredibly great photo, but I thought the light was nice.
It was a little on the hazy side.
The guy climbing up had just dropped an axe. Hey, I don't blame him -- I imagine all that equipment is bleedin' heavy.
And this was just sort of there.

After I shot this stuff, I jumped back to the office to put 'em into the system, then bounced out to Vestavia Hills to shoot another set of portraits for the religion writer. A nice, older Sikh couple this time, who insisted we stay for tea and some homemade Indian snacks. Usually, I try to avoid taking anything from people I have to photograph, but I made an exception because, a) one of my good friends, a Sikh, always reiterates how important it is to treat a guest well whenever I visit her (she says they have a saying: "When you invite a guest into your house, you invite God in with them") so I figured these folks felt the same; b) more of a chance for the religion writer to interview and talk; c) I hadn't eaten in six or seven hours; and d) dear God in Heaven, it was free homemade Indian food. I do some really silly things and say some tremendously stupid stuff sometimes, but I ain't no fool about Indian food.

That portrait series will run on the 16th, apparently, so I'll be able to post some photos from it in about two weeks or so.