Welcome to Churchill Downs.

(From an intern’s perspective)

As a recent transplant to Kentucky, I am experiencing the Kentucky Derby for the first time. Well actually, I am experiencing racing and horses — lots of horses — for the first time. Read more

My vacation camera comes in handy

I recently bought a nice little vacation movie/still camera called the Sanyo CG6 Xacti. It’s 6 megapixels, shoots stills and MPEG4 movies, 5x optical zoom, and does a very credible job, especially for Web use. I tucked it in my pocket when I covered, using my Canon SLRs, former President Bill Clinton as he campaigned Read more

Shooting the moon

Canon MKIII, 300 mm 2.8 lens with 1.4 teleconverter (420mm equivalent). ISO 400, 3 second exposure f/6.3.

I new the lunar eclipse was happening Wednesday night, but really hadn’t given it much thought since weather reports were calling for clouds. Plus, I had a game to shoot in Richmond which would take most of my evening.

On the way to the EKU/Morehead game, though, I watched one of the more beautiful full moon rises I’ve seen recently. The skies were mostly clear as I drove down I-75 to Richmond. But the eclipse wasn’t due to start until I would be in the middle of the game. Since these things last a while, I figured I’d have a shot at it after the game.

Apparently the editors at the Herald-Leader figured I’d have a shot at it too. They called me during the game and told me to try to get something of the moon after the game. As I left the game, the moon was just about to enter into total eclipse - when the full moon passes into Earth’s shadow and is blocked form the sun’s rays that normally illuminate it.

A picture of the moon on it’s own can be quite nice, but generally we look for something else to give the photo another element. A good example of this is a nice moon-setting photo by Charles Bertram in Bourbon County in 2005.

Driving back from Richmond I saw the steeple from the White Hall Holiness Church from the interstate and was able to get to the church parking lot and check it out. Just at the time I was set up to shoot, and just as the moon had become enshrouded in Earth’s shadow, some cloud cover moved in. I had to wait about 45 minutes for the clouds to part again, and by this time it was getting past 10 p.m. and I was really pushing the limits of my deadline.

But it worked out, as you can see above, and by the time I got home, it was cloudy enough that I couldn’t see the moon anymore. And it’s too bad we won’t get another shot at seeing a total lunar eclipse until 2010.

Boy oh Boy, who’s in charge, anyway?

Well, this blog site is called Final Frame, so this is the last situation from a Backstreet Boys fan picture session before I was, ah, asked to leave. If you look closely, you can see the four Boys in that mix of people. Often someone will tell me how lucky I am to get access to photograph famous people. But it’s not that simple, or pleasurable.

But let’s back up a bit. The Backstreet Boys made an appearance for Make-A-Wish Foundation at Louisville’s Fourth Street Live on Thursday, November 15. They were interviewed and then posed, with about 15 fans at a time, for pictures.

I know that, especially with music performers, you always ask if a credential is needed for media coverage. That morning, I called Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Karrie, their PR person, said she would have George, of WXMA radio, who was going to conduct a live interview on stage with the Backstreet Boys at 5 p.m., talk to me. George said to just come to the radio tent next to the stage and he would fix me up.

I arrived an hour before the event. George said that “Troy” would get me in front of the crowd barricade so I could get a clear view of the stage where the interview would be conducted. (The Boys didn’t perform because their guitarist was unable to attend the event.) Troy, it turned out later, was inside a restaurant where some Make-A-Wish children were meeting privately (no, I couldn’t go in I was told) with the Boys, so George said he had told Troy of my arrival and George led me past security into the area in front of the barricade.

Nick Carter

The Boys’ appearance went well, with good photos of fans and the Boys on stage. (They even sang a short number without a banding backing them.)

But when the Backstreet Boys left the stage to pose for photos with fans beside the radio tent, someone asked me whom I was with. When I identified myself as David Perry with the Lexington Herald-Leader, she said I would have to go “over there”, behind another set of barricades, since “we can’t deal with someone at the last minute”. I then asked where Troy was, and she didn’t know, but I would have to get out of that area. In this era of kooks, I can see an issue, but I wasn’t asked for more ID (I have plenty, and I was wearing my H-L ID around my neck.) I asked her to identify herself, and I think she said “Bridget of Jive Records”, but it was a little hard to hear above the screaming fans.

Going over to a side area, I was, as you can see, still able to shoot the fans with the Boys.
But after a couple of groups posed, Bridget said, “you can’t be in there”. I said, “You TOLD me to go in there.” A man behind me said “You need to leave this area” and I asked where Troy was. He said “I’m Troy.” Wow! I finally found the mysterious Troy! I said George, the radio personality, had talked to him about me. He said, “George didn’t talk to me.” At that point I gave up and said, “I’m gone.”

The point isn’t if this mob scene shown at the top is a good photo op. It might not be. It’s about the organization of the event and the treatment of a legitimate news outlet.

So that’s the story about how Brian Littrell’s hometown newspaper was booted out of a Backstreet Boys appearance. By the way, the Courier-Journal and the Louisville television stations were not there. So the only media outlet that gave a hoot about this event was asked to leave.

And by the way, Backstreet fans, there will be better photos in Sunday’s newspaper (Nov. 18). And this episode in no way reflects on the Backstreet Boys. As far as I can tell, they are all genuine good guys. But me being lucky to photograph famous people? Nope. I’d rather photograph any average Joe or Jane than any famous person with “handlers”, bodyguards, or posse.

A new Dawn? Four years in the making

I knew that following Dawn Nicole Smith’s progress through Fayette County Drug Court could take more than a year. That’s how long it takes most addicts to finish the intensive treatment program, if they finish at all.

Well, more than 8,000 photos, 10 hours of audio and three years after we met Dawn in March 2004, we’re publishing her story. We’re doing it in a six-part series using 18 inside pages in the newspaper and with 130 photos in a six-part multimedia presentation online.

Her story was far more complicated than I ever imagined. It tested me in ways I never predicted. There were occasional access issues. There were ethical dilemmas. There were scheduling problems. (How do I do my job on a regular basis and still find the time to spend with Dawn? How many times do I have to apologize to my wife and family for being with Dawn on our anniversary or a birthday?)

Dawn’s life – victimized by men and under the grip of addiction – was one I could only imagine a few years ago. Now having witnessed many of her most intimate troubles in person, I can say I have a new understanding – and compassion – for her and others like her.

Many of us know someone touched by addiction, whether to drugs or alcohol. But what we don’t understand – unless we’re living with the person - is the true degree of destruction it can have on a life.

Photographing Dawn throughout this story, sometimes when she was at her worst, was never easy. Her life was always in some kind of turmoil or chaos. But she never even hinted that she might not want her picture taken at one of those down times. She was very unaware of the camera, which is evident in many of the more intimate photos we published.

That brings me to one of the more telling photos I took during the course of this story. It is a picture of Dawn and her mother, Brenda Raines, in their Nicholasville home; they were on the brink of eviction. You can see in the body language how much alike the mother and daughter are. Looking from the outside, reporter Mary Meehan and I could see the traits, good and bad, passed from mother to daughter. We often wondered how much Dawn’s children would be like her.

This photo says a lot on its own. But I shot a number of photos that I thought revealed different aspects of their relationship. You can see the tension, the anger and the love between them.

Mary and I would frequently have discussions about where Dawn’s troubles started and how they could have been avoided. She later admitted that her life may gone down a different path had she lived with her father after her parents divorced.

No doubt, Dawn’s mother has had a huge impact on her life. Dawn would often complain about her mother’s behavior, yet we would see some of the same behaviors between Dawn and her children. We asked Dawn more than once if she saw the similarities, the continuing cycle. She couldn’t see it. Or maybe she didn’t want to see it.

For more about the story, you can read the editors’ blog, Behind the Headlines. All of the stories are available on Kentucky.com, and the six-part multimedia will be rolled out as the series is published this week.

–David Stephenson

Next Page »