Magic Hour

_{Photo by Chad Ryan}

Last night (that's Monday, May 24th, for the two or three of you who''ll read this any day other than today) I shot and wrote about a softball sectional game in Angola, Ind., between Fort Wayne high school teams Bishop Dwenger and Concordia Lutheran. It was a good, close game most of the way through. Bishop Dwenger features the state's leading hitter, Andrea Filler, who's batting average was .723 going into the game, and Concordia featured Angie Doerffler, who hit .638 going into the game. Filler broke the 0-0 tie with a two-RBI double in the fifth inning, and the Saints went on to win 7-1. Filler, also the Saints' No. 1 pitcher, picked up the win and allowed just three hits - all to Doerffler, a Valparaiso recruit.

My editor wanted me to write a feature-style piece instead of a bland game story, and I gave it the good ole college try. I actually liked the end result, that is, until I read the copy editor's version of my story this morning. Nothing like changing a carefully-constructed lede to straight AP style to ruin the feeling of a story. Anyway ...


_{May 24, 2010 - Angola, Ind. - Bishop Dwenger's Andrea Filler watches the ball as it flies to the outfield during the first inning of the Saints' 7-1 win over Concordia Lutheran on Monday in the Class 3A Angola Sectional. Photo by Chad Ryan.}

So after the game I strolled down I-69 south back to Fort Wayne and decided to stop to shoot some updated photos at the new Parkview North construction project. Magic hour, the time just after sundown but not quite dark, was fast approaching and I like the set up to get photos of the shell of the building. I wish I could have shot from a higher location, but you take what you get, especially in these run-and-gun situations. So, in any case, I thought the paper could use pics of the building, and I wanted to get something before they wrapped the outside. The picture, shown above, isn't exactly what I wanted, but doing something like this makes for a much better design in the paper than using a standard building mugshot shot in plain, boring daylight. It's these kinds of nights where I wish I could just make pictures and not worry about having to write stories. I could do a lot more of these on-the-fly projects that I think our readers would appreciate. Oh well, on to writing something else ...