Day 54 (Thurs., July 22)

OUCH! Yeah, today was an "ouchie" day of many sorts. Let's start with the early part of the day. I started by working at Ameriquest Field (formerly known as The Ballpark in Arlington) where the Texas Rangers took on visiting Anaheim Angels. The photo above made the front page of the Sports section and it's of pitcher Ricardo Rodriguez, who went down with an injured elbow after he was struck with a comebacker. That made me say "ouch" for the first time. However, the day continued with more "ouchies" as I shot this game under near 100-degree heat. Shooting day games is awesome for the better lighting on the field. But, standing in the heat for three hours gets to you very quickly.

Covering the Angels/Rangers game took me back to my child hood. I noticed something really odd. On the Angels dugout sat Manager Mike Scioscia leading the way for the former World Series champions. On the Rangers side stood pitching coach Orel Hershiser. Now, let's backtrack to 1988. The Los Angeles Dodgers, the best team in the world, is playing the Oakland A's in the World Series. On the mound stood Hershiser poised to lead the way for the Dodgers. Sixtyfive feet away, wearing his catcher armor crotched Scioscia as he fired pitch signs to Hershiser. It was nice to see familiar faces on the field today. Also, it was great to see the new ones. Just seeing them was great. But it made me think of two things. 1.) the Dodgers have not won a World Series in such a long time... "damn!" and 2.) I'm getting old. Double "damn!" and one more time: "ouch".

Mike Scioscia, former Dodgers catcher, leads the way as manager of the Anaheim Angels.

Orel Hershiser, the Rangers pitching coach, pitched for many years for the Dodgers and Scioscia was his catcher on many work days.

 

The "ouchies" continued later as I made my way to a concert tonight. The assignment was to shoot Kalimba and duet Ha Ash during a performance in Dallas. I went there and produced the following photo:

That's a good photo. It has Kalimba (center) and Ha Ash performing together. They only performed one song together. But that single song saved me for a huge "ouchie". The photo depicts what the night was about, the three performers going at it. However, things could have not been good. And for a minute, they weren't. Kalimba went on stage first and made the ladies go crazy as with his funky dancing and slow songs. Then, after a 15-minute break, Ha Ash came out and did the same for the males. During that intermission, however, I decided to look over my photos and erase the bad ones. I guess the few brain cells I had still remaining after 10 consecutive work days finally gave out. They did so right when I hit the wrong command buttons on my camera and erased all of the images on my card. I thought "ouch" for a second and then I just laughed real loud. I think all the attractive women near the stage thought I was crazy because I just laughed out of nowhere. Now, committing such a big "ouchie" would have made any photographer mad. I was happy. Why? Because I finally done it. I always fear that I will erase the photos or format my card before saving the images onto a computer. It finally happened and I was relieved. The photos I shot during the Kalimba portion of the show were OK, but I wasn't going to die if I never saw them again. My only worry was how was I going to explain to my boss that I had photos of one performer. Woops. Luckily, the photo Gods were upon me and sent Kalimba out to perform one song with the duet and saved my life. Whew, that was a close one. But still, I had my final "ouchie" of the day.

I got a little creative tonight. A minute after erasing the card and I scared the attractive females around me, I got back to business and saw this special scene. It was one of the stage spotlights with a Modelo Beer neon light on the wall. A little bit of fog and you come up with a sort of artistic image like the one right above. It's great to see how much I have grown in the last year. I think that if I would have committed such an "ouchie" like this a year ago, when I couldn't control my temper, I would have been "#$%^*$&" instead of "ouchie" and "hahahahahahahahahhahahahaha".

Yesterday-Main-Tomorrow