Juletumtes and the search for the Julbock

Today I went to Bishop Hill, Ill. to make some photos of Julmarknad, a traditional Swedish Christmas market that they have every year. Amid my search for things to take photos of, I was assaulted with volleys of snowballs by a group of often mischievous characters from Swedish folklore, the Jultumte (pronounced Yule-tumpty). It turned out they were just children wearing costumes, but it was exciting none the less. Also, reporter Brian Krans and I searched for and eventually found the Julbock (Yule-bock), another Swedish folk character of Christmastime. But too bad for the Julbock, it too had an encounter with the snowball toting Jultumtes.

Festival of Trees

I've been shooting the annual Quad-Cities holiday event, the Festival of Trees, quite a bit lately. There are lots of different events stretching across a few weeks. Mostly I've been shooting stock kids doing holiday stuff, but through this mirror the standard merriment looks a little weird.

More River Trail Holga

I got another Holga roll developed and scanned, this time at a place I found in Rock Island. The scan quality isn't as good and they're a little bit cropped so I might have them rescanned at some point. But they turned out well enough, especially at less than 1/3 of the price to send them to Chicago. These shots were all made on November 4th on the portion of the trail between Sunset Marina and the Casino riverboat in Rock Island.

Basketball

Here's an outtake from shooting a girls basketball preview at United Township High School in East Moline the other day.

The Pelican Left Behind

Some excitement today. This American white pelican was left behind a few weeks ago when the rest of the flock migrated south for the winter. Animal activists and volunteer firefighters captured the bird today and took it to an animal hospital for examination. Watch the multimedia piece here.

Season's End

I traveled to the Chicagoland area today to shoot Rock Island High School's IHSA Class 6A Quarterfinal game. They got trounced 38-0, which was really tough on all the players. They end the season with a record of 11-1 and two wins short of the state champtionship; it was a great team to cover. See the game slide show here.

Fog

The foggy country road I drove down coming to and from an assignment yesterday near Reynolds, Ill.

Leaves and a Head

It was a slow day today so between my single assignment and a false report of someone about to jump off a bridge, I took pictures of the remaining bright patches of fall leaves around Moline and Rock Island. Again, thanks to Andy Wicklund and Dragon Fire Parade, I used one of their great tracks over the photos and made a pretty feature for our website. See it here.

Also I found this awesome dummy head in an alley.

More Election Night

Here is some more stuff from election night. Before I went to the election coverage party was covering a voting location in the west end of Rock Island and at Four Brothers Clothing in Rock Island where they were grilling and selling Obama shirts. We didn't end up having room in the paper for any of this stuff.

Election Night

I spent election night with a very fun, energetic crowd at Rexie's Gourmet in Rock Island. It was excellent.

See the audio slide show here.

Alpaca

I got to go to an Alpaca farm near Alpha, Ill. today for Radish Magazine, a monthly healthy living and environmental magazine that we publish. These are some outtakes. A very fun assignment.

Along the Great River Trail

This is the first collection of images from my holga on the bike path adventures. This is an ongoing project so I'll be adding and replacing images as I shoot them and get the film developed.

Rocky Football

It had been far too long since I shot a football game in the daylight.

Here's an audio slide show from the game.

Along the River Trail

These are 3 shots from my Holga explorations of the QC section of the bike path that runs along the Mississippi from Rock Island to Savanna, Ill. about 50 miles north of the Quad Cities. I've ridden the stretch of trail between Rock Island and Port Byron in sections on several different trips. In the spring or next summer, when it's warm again, I'd like to leisurely ride the whole trail and camp along the way. I'll post a whole slide show of all my images soon.