As I take a quick break from studying for tomorrow’s exams, I thought I would post a link to the blog we will be writing as we journey into the Southwestern United States. Amanda Higgins will be writing and posting the content to the blog. I’ll be providing photographs to go along with those posts. The blog is here:
http://cvcc-swa.blogspot.com
If you would like to travel along with us via the blog, we would love to have you!
This will possibly be my last blog post here until I return on May 15th or 16th. If I’m not completely dead tired at the end of any given day of this trip, I may post a comment or two here.
Until then…
Miscellaneous
Well, this is the last week of my semester at school, and my adventure begins on Saturday morning at 5am. I have a few exams to knock out this week and then I’m on the road for the next 11 days to visit New Mexico and Arizona with a group of students from school.
The Southwest Adventure is a program at Catawba Valley Community College where are group of students are chosen from an application process to participate in two classes that end up in this 11-day adventure at the end of the semester. The first class is History 227 (Native American History) and the second class is Sociology 230 (Race and Ethnic Relations). Our last class meeting in this program is tomorrow afternoon.
I’m excited about this trip. There are going to be some difficulties, but I believe the overall experience is going to be life-changing. We have a total of 14 people piling into a 15-passenger van early Saturday morning. We will put 800 miles on the van on Saturday and another 800 on Sunday before arriving at our first destination Albuquerque, New Mexico. Part of my responsibilities on this trip include photo documentation. Some of the places we are going to visit look phenomenal. I have listed a few links to photos of some of our destinations during the seven days we will spend in this area:
When I get home I expect to have a ton of photos from this adventure. We will be blogging our adventure as we go, and I’ll provide a link to that blog later this week.
Until then…
Miscellaneous
Hickory Crawdads - Angel Gonzalez
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
I have been busy lately trying to finish the semester at school and complete a set of photos for the Hickory Crawdads first set of 2007 baseball cards. I thought I was going to have plenty of time to complete the first set. When I initially inquired about when they had to have them, I was told the end of May would be my deadline. That was going to work out well because I’m going out of town between May 5 and May 15. The Hickory Crawdads front office called me on Friday and informed me that they need the photos by this coming Friday, which is the day before I leave. As of today, the Hickory Crawdads have only played six home games. They should have played nine, but three of them were rained out and could not be made up. I couldn’t attend one of the six due to a schedule conflict of my own. We have one more game tomorrow afternoon, and that will be my last opportunity to shoot these photos before the deadline.
Unfortunately, I’ll have to shoot a few stand-up shots of a couple players rather than on the field during a game. I hate having to do this, but I guess we gotta do what we gotta do :)
I have exams this week and a few minor projects to complete for the school semester. My last exam is Thursday and then I’ll be off for the summer while I wait for the verdict on my acceptance or rejection to the Radiography program at Catawba Valley Community College. I should find out sometime in June.
Sports
2007 SWA - Bakers Mountain Hike
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
This group of people makes up the Catawba Valley Community College 2007 Southwest Adventure program. The Southwest Adventure is a program offered at CVCC where the students apply for acceptance through a competitive process in which ten students are chosen to participate. The program is worth six credit hours and is comprised of a History (Native American History) and Sociology (Race & Ethnic Relations) class. The program finishes with an 11 day trip out to New Mexico and Arizona to visit sites related to Native American History.
Today, we participated in a group hike to the top of Bakers Mountain. We met at the college at 9:30 this morning and traveled up to Bakers Mountain Park. We hiked one of the loop trails up to the top of the mountain and back before having a picnic lunch at ‘base camp’ :)
I shot this group photo after we had lunch as a commemorative of the event, and as the first photo of many that will arise from this project.
On May 5, we leave for New Mexico and Arizona. We’ll be taking a two-day drive out there where we’ll spend 7 days visiting locations such as The Grand Canyon, Chaco Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Acoma Pueblo, Four Points, Petroglyphs National Monument, just to name a few. After all that, we will spend another two days driving back to North Carolina.
It’s gonna be an experience :)
Miscellaneous
Carlee Carpenter - Bandys
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Sorry I haven’t been blogging lately. The end of the semester is near and Minor League Baseball has started, so I’m busy. The baseball team is on the road until the 28th, so I won’t have a lot of extra work to do again until then.I had two sports assignments today. The first one was a softball game between Bandys and Maiden, two local rivalries. I have always been amazed at how these girls can sling this ball with any accuracy at all. I didn’t notice this little tidbit until I looked at the photos a little closer, but this pitcher (Carlee Carpenter of the Bandys Lady Trojans) is throwing a knuckleball! If you click on the photo to view the larger size, you can see it clearly.
The Bandys girls went on to win today’s game 3-2 in 9 innings.
Sports
Aaron King - Fred T. Foard
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Fred T. Foard’s Aaron King set a few records in tonight’s semi-final play of the annual Easter Classic baseball tournament. He got four hits in one game (one of which was a 3 run dinger out of the yard) and he also has eight hits on the tournament, which ties a record. He still has one game to go in tomorrow night’s final against the Cougars of Alexander Central High School.
The weather man is calling for rain tomorrow, so the final games of this tournament will likely get postponed until Thursday evening…
Sports
Baseball SeasonOriginally uploaded by John Setzler.
Today begins a five-month busy season for me in sports photography. The Hickory Crawdads (Low-A Pittsburgh Pirates Minor League Affiliate) kicked off the upcoming season with an exhibition game against the Bears of Lenior-Rhyne College tonight at L.P. Frans Stadium in Hickory, North Carolina. When I’m not shooting a high school event for the newspaper, I’ll be covering these games throughout the season. I provide photography to the team and to Minor League Baseball throughout the season.The Hickory Crawdads start regular season play on Thursday with a four-game road trip to Hagerstown, Maryland before returning home for eight consecutive home games. I won’t be blogging much here about the Hickory Crawdads. I may make an occasional post, but I am blogging Crawdads material at another site:
http://pirates.mlblogs.com
This is part of a larger group of Pirates blogging.
Sports
Alex Simmons - Hibriten
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Golf is a sport I don’t get to shoot very often. In fact, today was only the second time I have ever shot it. My first time was at the Greater Hickory Classic Seniors Tournament last August. Today’s assignment was a local high school conference tournament at the Rock Barn course. I’m so used to the fast-paced action of the other sports I shoot. This is quite different. Golf isn’t so fast-paced. I think the above photo goes a long way to promote golf as a thinking-man’s (woman/person/whatthehellever) sport. I found it rather relaxing though. Well… all except the part where I had to haul my fat ass back up to where I started. I followed a group of golfers through a few holes and I didn’t even notice that it was down hill all the way. It was up hill all the way back :)
Sports
I’m sure that some of you participate in various online communities. If you didn’t, you probalby wouldn’t be reading this. My personal poison is photography, so I like a couple different online communities of photographers. I was lucky enough to find my first one very early in its existence. There weren’t a lot of people involved, but those who were, were like me. They were learning and sharing. The discussion forums were great. The content of those forums was priceless to me. This was just about 5 years ago when I found this particular site. The site hosts digital photography competitions as well. I participated in those throughout my learning process. Over time, the site grew. When I first joined, there were about 50 or 75 active participants in those competitions. Of those, there were 35 or so who participated in the discussion forums. Now, there are hundreds and hundreds of regular participants in the contests and quite a few of those are active in the forums as well. The site is very popular. It’s membership spans the globe.
This growth has been good for the site owners. I’m sure they are making a nice chunk of money from the membership dues and the print sale commissions. I’m very happy for them that it’s so successful.
I have basically stopped participating in the photo competitions now. The number of photos that appear in any given competition is so large that it’s nearly impossible to evaluate each photo properly and vote fairly. Much to my dismay, I have also practically stopped participating in the discussion forums as well. There are so many people posting that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with what’s going on. What bothers me the most is that the forums are relatively unmoderated. The only moderation that comes into play is when flame wars get started or when the site’s terms of service have been violated in some way. Lots of users on the site seem to simply enjoy seeing their name on the screen, so they start forum threads that have no apparent meaning. The site is a photography site, but discussions on photography seem to be rare.
Chances are, if you are reading this, you are also a photographer. Do you participate in any online photography communities? If so, do you have similar issues or is your favorite site much better? Let me know…
Discussion, Miscellaneous
I was listening to NPR while on a few errands this evening. I caught some brief blurb about Circuit City ditching a bunch of employees in favor of ones who will work for less money. I made a mental note and decided to check it out in a little more detail when I got home.
LA Times Story
It seems that the electronic giant cares absolutely nothing about its employees. If someone goes to work here and gives a piece of his or her life to the company, what they have to look forward to in the future is being canned. In a real-world business model, this seems a bit backwards to me. When you have a certain amount of time and money invested in an employee through training and any potential benefits provided, it seems counterproductive to send them home in favor of someone who will work for a dollar or two less per hour. It’s already hard enough to find a salesperson in those stores who can really tell you what you want to know about the products they sell. So now, those who probably know the most will be signing up for unemployment and will be replaced by a new batch of high school kids who know a good bit about the latest video games. I wonder what the cost for the company will be in unemployment insurance? I wonder how many of those employees will actually take a pay cut to keep their jobs?
The article states very simply that people didn’t lose their jobs because of performance or any other issues. It was clearly stated that the amount of money they were making was not consistent with whatever market studies the company had done. What a slap in the face…
I don’t work for Circuit City and I never have. After reading this story, I’ll not shop there anymore either. A company who would treat their own employees this way probably don’t have a large amount of respect for their customers either. If the cared about me as a consumer, they would want senior employees dealing with me whenever possible.
So, in a nutshell, Circuit City has just become the McDonalds of electronics superstores. You can go to work there, but you can’t advance beyond a number on a spreadsheet, no matter how hard you work. The article didn’t discuss any pay cuts that management was taking to increase profitibility.
Discussion
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