On call

People often ask me if I am on call 24-7 for the Tracy Press. The answer is no, for now I am scheduled to work five days a week-eight hours a day. But news never believes in following schedules.

I had just got home Saturday night when I heard that sound that bodes of bad news. Sirens. Lots of sirens all passing by me. It seemed that the sirens went on for about 20 seconds or so. That is a really bad sign. I turned on my scanner thinking it was maybe a structure fire nearby only to hear the dispatches for a major accident on Grant Line Road at Bird Road. There were two cars in the crash, lots of people hurt and at least one child was ejected for the car.

So on my day off I grabbed my camera gear and headed out to the scene. On the dark two lane road two cars had impacted and were in a muddy field while a third was still on the roadway. Three Tracy Fire engine companies were treating the patients along with three ambulances. A fourth Tracy Fire engine company had to be dispatched to man the landing zone for a helicopter called in to transport the injured child.

So on my day off I tramp through mud to get a better view of the damage to one of the cars. It is crushed on the drivers side and partially ripped open. The helicopter circling the crash site with his spotlight and the flash of the emergency lights are the only illumination on the country road.

It is an eerie walking in the darkness watching out for traffic still passing through the crash scene. the helicopter is sent to land at a nearby school as the crash site field is too soft and muddy for a safe landing.

And that how it is. One minute goofing off at home on your day off and the next standing in a muddy field wondering if the child will live through the crash. You just turn it on and off. I'm not really "on call" as much as I just have to drop everything and run whenever I hear breaking news. Not a very fun thing to do and one of the things I like least about the job.

The high road

So on the same theme of looking for a different view on basketball I decided to try a higher approach to the game action, shooting from the top row of bleachers.

I used to love this shooting position covering basketball at Fresno State. The action at a Division college is up around the rim more often so I would designate at least 10 minutes of game action to shoot from somewhere in the stands of Selland arena. Shooting high school action form above is a low percentage shooting angle, there is not a lot of action even with the rim and the background is far from clean but every now and then you get a shot that works.

Boxed in

This is for all you cat lovers out there.

Armpits and elbows

Just a couple games into league play and I think I am getting burned out shooting basketball. I have lost track of how many games I have shot this season already but it is a bunch. Sometimes it just seems like a see of armpits and elbows through the lens.



The easiest shot to get is a rebound. As soon as hot comes off the fingertips I pan over to the group under the basket and wait for the melee. Watch for the ball to enter the frame and I rip off a sequence and hope for a nice collision and tortured facial expressions under the basket.The hard thing is trying to find something new and exciting on the court. I'll pray for a scrum for a loose ball, those are always fun to see. Or maybe a nice full court press where the players collide and the ball goes flying. I'll take anything instead of the armpit shot.



I'm sure to have many more games this season. A few of our teams have a chance for the playoffs so I could be shooting basketball into March. It's about that time I pray for the start of baseball season and then come mid August after my thirtieth Little League game I start wondering how long until basketball season opens again?

Odd

I didn't notice this until I got back to the office. I was sent out to take pictures of a steel shed that was flipped over in the high winds south of town. What I find odd is not the overturned structure resting on a fence next to a dog run but the Rolls Royce golf cart sitting in the field. I wonder what that would look like on the course?

Rainbow

I caught this sight leaving the office in between rain showers. The sun peeked through the clouds just enough to light up up this rainbow over downtown.

Contact

The recent spike in gang violence has Tracy residents on edge. The police have promised to battle the gang problem in Tracy and part of their answer is the Gang Suppression Unit.


The Tracy Police teams two patrol officers together and assigns them to patrol the areas of Tracy that have a high gang member influence. I took a ride along recently with two of the officers to see what life on the front lines of the gang issue in Tracy is like.


I was on patrol with Tracy Police officers Amber Moon and Leticia Infante as they cruised what is becoming known as Tracy’s tougher neighborhoods. The streets seem like any other Tracy neighborhood but they tend to have a higher potential of gang activity. Areas they searched included Holly Drive, Central Avenue, 8th Street and part of Grant Line Road. The neighborhoods are nice overall but they do have their pockets of problems.


The officers tried to make as much contact with people who might be gang affiliated. Most of the stops were consensual where the person stopped could walk away from the officers at any time. If they found them to have tattoos or some type of gang affiliation they were questioned and any markings were photographed.

The pressure is defiantly on; people on the street know that officers are looking for troublemakers. Hopefully the pressure will quell the gang members and curb the recent outbursts of violence in our town.

Storm front

The sun makes a brief appearance over Tracy between the waves of storms slamming into California.

That sinking feeling

It’s not that often I am shooting a sink hole in Tracy. In fact as far as I can remember this was my first one.



According to city crews at the scene cold water from the mountains reached the concrete pipes in town somehow and the pipes contracted and cracked sending a geyser of water into the air through the road on Kavanagh Avenue near Tracy Blvd. The resulting gush of water flooded nearby streets and created a traffic nightmare during the morning storm.



The torrent of water from the cracked pipe washed away the soil beneath the road surface and the road eventually cracked and collapsed. Crews had to cut away an even larger section of the road to see how far the crack in the pipe had traveled.



This was one of the three pipe breaks around town in two days and with the age of the concrete pipes it will likely not be the last. I can only imagine what residents in the neighborhood thought as they walked out the front doors to be greeted by a flood.

Sticky business

I was shooting the new Kimball High football field earlier this week as it neared completion and even though it is a great looking field what caught my eye was a piece of equipment being used to help assemble the turf. There was a wheelbarrow covered in what looked like industrial-strength snot.

Dripping with a waxy-yellow goop I would later find out the cart was an important piece of gear used to seal the edges of the synthetic turf. The cart carries a hopper filled with a thick rubbery glue. A piece of tape is pulled through the glue and then put down below the seams of the turf. It is then rolled to help seal the turf down.

The glue is down right nasty. It looked like a five-gallon can was good enough for about half the length of the end zone. Workers were careful to wear gloves when handling the glue impregnated tape lest the become part of the field.

Shutter count

This is a pretty boring photo of the Tracy Unified District office I shot this afternoon. What is interesting is how many pictures I took to get it. Not at this assignment but just over the life of the camera. I downloaded a utility that looks at the EXIF data on the file and reads the embedded count of total shutter actuations on the camera. The camera I use for work is a Canon Eos 1D MK II that is rated for 200,000 shutter actuations in it's life span. This photo reads to have been the 573,703 the shutter was fired on the camera. Technically it is living on borrowed time, just the way I feel most of the time.

Bugged

While we were on the Uvas Canyon Waterfall Loop trail we stumbled across this colony of ladybugs gathering on the side of the trail. We saw a group like this at Mount Diablo last year and we stopped to watch them swarm about the leaves and trees. My macro lens came in handy for some up close and personal shots as they mingled together.