Everblades win the Kelly Cup title!

As you probably know, my trip to Vegas two weeks ago was to photograph the Everblades, our local minor league hockey team, in the Kelly Cup Finals.

Games one and two were out in Vegas, and they won one of the games. Games three, four and five were back at home, so I covered those games too.

They won last Friday night and then again on Tuesday. Here's the link to last Friday's photo gallery. And here's the link to the photo gallery from Tuesday.

So as it came down to game five, the News-Press decided to do a special section to distribute on Wednesday night at the Arena if they won. I came in early to put in extra photos from the series. Here's the final product. I never got one in print, but here are the PDF files....

Luckily the won on Wednesday night, and I avoided another trip to Vegas. They won in overtime and with help from Sarah Coward, the paper turned out pretty well on Thursday morning. Here's my gallery from the win Wednesday. Here's the sports front.....

and here's the photo page....

Today, there was another special section. I gotta say, it was fun covering these guys. The guy in the picture above hugging the coach lost five of his teeth in the first game and I never even know he got hit because he kept playing. He must have spit his teeth on the ice and kept going. That's tough, y'all. It feels good to see a team win a championship and to feel like I captured a few of their happiest moments.  Sometimes I love my job.

Viva Las Vegas!

I saw the strip for exactly two hours last Sunday night when I arrived in Vegas. The rest of the time was spent in the lovely but depressing Orleans Hotel about a mile off the strip.

It was a clean and comfortable hotel, but it wasn't glamorous and I spent most of my time working. I was covering our minor league hockey team, the Everblades, in the Kelly Cup Finals against Vegas' team, the Wranglers. They played in the arena attached to the hotel, so it was convenient. The casino was full of slightly depressing-looking people smoking really long cigarettes. You get the picture...

Anyway, here's some of the few photos I took. We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel.

Here's a little video of the end of the Bellagio water show....

And here's a few of the views from my hotel.
from my room....

And from the end of the hallway overlooking the strip. You can see the New York hotel...

While I was there, like I said, I was photographing two hockey games and covering practice and shooting and sending video for the website, so I was pretty busy.

You can click here to go to the News-Press website to see all the photos and videos I did while I was gone.

Here's one of my favorite photos from the games.....

and a little fightin' for ya....

And I got to see Mike Tyson and Carrot Top at the hockey games. Here's Mike Tyson...

On the way home I made sure I'd have a window seat. Luckily, I picked the right side and got to see the Grand Canyon from the air. It was so, well, big! The guy beside me probably thought I was a lunatic snapping away on my iPhone camera the whole way to Dallas.

This is Lake Mead...

 And the Grand Canyon...

Then there was a lot of nothingness. More than I have ever seen. No roads. No houses. No nothing.

Then there were crop circles.....

And more farm land....

Super Moon

Today we cleaned the house, but tonight we decided to do something different and actually photograph something in our own town. Of course I do that every day at work. But we usually don't take the camera out on weekends.

Today was different. It was the super moon. It's the closest that the moon will be this year and the brightest.

Without further ado...

And a few before the moon came up....