Tales From The Press Pit: W.C.Fields Was Right, Sort Of.

It seemed like such an easy project. Take pictures of Nashville's G.O.A.L. program, talk about the atmosphere around the event and make some slideshows of the kidlets (ages 4-7) on the ice. Somehow over the course of the month, I ended up with around four thousand pictures and have been spending protracted periods of time in a state that my friend, Beautiful Alice, would describe as "just...fraught".

Camping out in one of the penalty boxes of the B rink at Centennial Sportsplex every Monday afternoon in June gave me a chance to see the G.O.A.L. participants develop a sense of their own potential as athletes as they explored what it was like to do more than watch from the sidelines. I wanted to catch that evolution. I also hoped to capture the energy and commitment Predators Youth Development invests in their outreach programs.

I enlisted a friend who does photo editing for a dead-tree sports publication that shall remain nameless. He whistled when he found out that the 350 pictures I cropped and edited were only from the first week. 

"You need to pick the best twenty-five of each week," he said.

"I can't do that."

"Hon, you've got a lot of great pictures, but this is way too much." 

I sighed. "Okay, here's the thing. When I was 14 I attended Nashville Academy Theatre.  One of the papers came out to do a feature.  They took lots of pictures and kept moving me to the edges of almost every group shot. When the article came out, I was the only kid in the entire program who was not named or pictured in the article. To the best of my -our- ability, we're going to be sure every kid gets a good picture in this. Okay?"

"Jas, that's sweet.  It's also nucking futs."

"I'm stickin' to my guns here, Bubba.  As Captain Picard would say, 'make it so'." 

We went round and round on pictures and his need to be a good editor and my need to follow my own ethos. What I had hoped would be a couple of weeks' work has stretched into a couple of months.
 Over the course of that time, we have both had to step away from this project to cool down.  I've reminded him that these are children and he has accused me of being possessed by random Drew Barrymore characters.  To our credit, we still adore each other to the point that we would to go to the airport if we needed a ride. 

Weeks 1 and 2 are now ready to go.  I think they meet my criteria and show off my bud's mad skills as a teacher.  So, whew!  If you want to see more, visit Greetings From Smashville to get a gander at the slideshows and check out the TheHockeyWriters for more of my articles on hockey.
  



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