Coddington Benefit Concert, Aug 23

Mark your calendars for a special music and raffle extravaganza Sunday Aug. 23 at Skipper's Smokehouse from 4-11pm to raise money for Stephen Coddington and his family.

For those of you guided here by Lara Cerri's email, these are the photos from Marian's trip to Chicago, and here are the ones of her return home. Lara's been the driving force behind this event, and I know she's arranged a party you're not going to want to miss.

Hope to see you there!

Schedule of Performers:
4:00-4:30 Lara Cerri and Dan DeGregory w/ special guests Carol Blair and Amy Wimmer Schwarb

4:40-5:10 Wendy and Don Morris w/special guest

5:25-5:45 The ReKorders (w/ Demorris Lee)

6:00- 6:30 September Penn

6:45-7:25 Uncle John's Band

7:40-8:20 Ocean Road (w/ Dave Scheiber)

8:30-9:10 The Deadliners (w/ Eric Deggans & Kerry O'Reilly)

9:25-9:45 Car Bomb Driver (w/Dave Reeder)

9:55-10:15 Super Secret Best Friends (Stephanie Hayes, Emily Nipps, Alex Zayas)

10:25-10:55 The Unitards (Rob Farley, Chris Tisch, Ron Matus and Edmund Fountain)

Emcee is the wonderful WMNF DJ Ed Lehmann, host of the Saturday Morning Folk Show

Rewind

I've been slack about updating the blog, though I really haven't been a *total* slacker at work. In fact, the opposite is part of why I haven't been around here for a while.

So I thought I'd share some photographs from the last couple of months, and maybe push a little web traffic to tampabay.com (c'mon people, those clicks might actually put a few cents in my paycheck). No particular order or anything, just however I stumbled across it.


Check out the story and slideshow about Spyder, a blueberry protecting Barbary falcon.


Some of you saw my graduation stuff on my Sportsshooter page, but here is more of what I shot at graduation. I shot 3 of the 4 graduations in the county, so my boss' pics are in the show, too.


Sunflower maze in Masaryktown.


Learning to swim.


A brushfire that was sparked by a lightning strike near Bayport that ended up consuming about 1,200 acres of swampland.


Fourth of July Machine Gun Shoot at the Hernando Sportsman's Club. I love automatic weapons on Independence Day...smells like victory.


Superkids Triathlon. Gotta love the light at 8:30 a.m.

Thanks for looking!

Christmas in July

It's been way too long since I've dropped any fresh frames on here.

This weekend I had two opportunities to shoot fireworks, I definitely had the better vantage point in St. Pete from atop the Bayfront Tower.

Then today my new 5D Mark II showed up. I unpacked it, charged the battery, then did what any of you would do with a $2700 piece of electronic brilliance... I got it wet.

Marian Returns

Marian returned home last night. She hadn't been home in just over a year, having had her first aneurism last April.

From Ron's email:

She has been in Northwestern Hospital in Chicago since December. But will now stay at home and receive outpatient therapy to continue her recovery. Steve has applied to medicare for home health care but will have to stay home with her until it is approved. Hopefully that will not take long. As wonderful as this is, it may also be some of the hardest time they will endure.

But no matter what happens, the Coddington family is back together under one roof and that has to be good.


Aside from a little confusion with the taxi service on getting Marian home from the airport, their trip was smooth. Steve, Grant, and Chloe took turns cutting the hospital bracelets from Marian's wrist, and everyone got a kiss goodnight.

Steve asked me to meet him at the airport and to be there when the kids finally got to see mom again. Here is a bit of what I witnessed.

A fun assignment

I had a good time covering the 5th annual Hernando County Parks and Recreation Department's Father Daughter dance. In this first photo, Todd Klukowski, 34, dances with his daughter, Kaitlyn, 7, at St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Brooksville Friday night. Klukowski said that this is his third time at the dance, he has four daughters so each year he brings a different one. "Every year they get to pick the color of their dress and a shirt of matching color so I never know what I'm wearing," Klukowski said, "Last year I was in purple, and the year before I was in pink." I heard a lot of good stories like that during the evening. They might not be portfolio pieces, but I really enjoyed making these pictures.

Sometimes it gets cold in Florida...

...and that usually means I'm out of bed before 5 a.m. and out the door by 6, scrambling to make a picture of frost on something before the sun comes out and it melts away.

This time I headed for a U-pick blueberry farm where the proprietors had spent all night sleeping in 2 hour shifts and making sure their sprinklers were running to ice their bushes. The temperature bottomed out around 22 degrees, though the thermometer I photographed was in the path of a sprinkler and got stuck just under 30.

I know it's been forever since I've updated this, I'll be making an effort to be better about it.