OneTwo to TwentyTwo

An Army carry team carries a transfer case containing the remains of Sgt. David J. Chambers from a C-17 on Saturday, January 19, 2013, at Dover Air Force Base, Del.. Chambers, 25, of Hampton, Va., was killed Wednesday by an improvised explosive device while on patrol in Panjwai district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. Chambers was based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division. Chambers was on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan.

My last day at the Casper Star-Tribune came on January 9th. After 10 months of amazing assignments in a gorgeous state, it was time to start a new adventure back home at The News Journal in Wilmington, Delaware, just one county over from where I grew up in Maryland.

Before I started at The News Journal, though, I took advantage of my employment gap to pick up a freelance assignment for The Daily Press in Newport News, Va., a paper I had interviewed with before deciding on Wilmington.

Sgt. David J. Chambers, of Hampton, Va., had been killed by an improvised explosive devise in Afghanistan, and his remains were arriving at Dover Air Force Base for dignified transfer. I wasn’t expecting to hear Daily Press photo editor Adrin Snider on the other end of the phone when I answered it with a moving box in my hand the night before the transfer, but was grateful to have the chance to pick the assignment up.

I’d seen Steve Ruark’s work over and over from Dover. Covering transfers for the AP, Steve has covered almost all of them since the Obama administration opened the process up to the media. Ruark spoke to The Baltimore Sun about his coverage last year and as you’d expect, dozens of media outlets turned out originally, but now Steve is usually the only media representative there, sometimes accompanied by Getty’s Patrick Smith (who is another phenomenal shooter).

I was lucky both Ruark and Smith were there when I arrived to cover the transfer. I’ve always wanted to cover the transfers, and I hope now that I’m at The News Journal, maybe I can help devote more attention it now that I’m here. At the same time, with staffs shrinking everywhere, it’s totally understandable why few transfers get covered by anyone. The reporters and photojournalists just aren’t there to be sent.

Steve and Patrick detailed what would happen for me. They explained the nuances of each branch of the military’s transfer procedures: How the Marines appear to have a very slow walk, and how fast the Army seems to move. All-in-all, the whole process takes just a few minutes.

They weren’t kidding about the speed for the Army. From the time Chambers transfer case left it’s C-17, to the time it was resting in a transfer vehicle, only 2 minutes could have passed. I’m not sure a single second of that transition went undocumented between the three of us. I’ve never heard shutters clicking so fast and so constantly. It’s amazing, though, the different images that came out of my head while having to remain pretty stationary and watch a transfer team walk perpendicular to me over just a few minutes. In all I sent eight different images to The Daily Press.

A C-5 on a training flight circles Dover Air Force Base behind members of a transfer team as they march toward a C-17 carrying the remains of Sgt. David J. Chambers on Saturday, January 19, 2013, at Dover Air Force Base, Del..

The stars and the faint arm of the Milky Way can be seen over a wind farm just north of Medicine Bow just before moonrise at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, January 3, 2013. The glow along the horizon is light from Casper, more than 80 miles away.

With my last few weeks in Wyoming closing out I decided to try one more shot at the night sky. Every night I came back from Laramie and drove past the wind farm Medicine Bow, I wondered what the wind turbines would look like against the stars. Finally knowing I wouldn’t have the chance soon, I made an image.

Jack Nowlin braved the blistering -7F degree temperatures and 45mph winds with me to make a few frames, and the one I pulled off actually wound up a in a few papers around the country after hitting the AP wire. I even got a note from a friend in Sacramento, where I interned in 2010, that it was in their photos of the day gallery.

I learned more about the night sky that night too. The Milky Way dominates the sky in the summer, but in the winter, the shear number of stars you see is mind blowing. There must be hundreds of thousands visible to the naked eye.

I’ll miss Wyoming’s beauty now that I’m back on the east coast, after accepting a position on the photography staff at The News Journal, in Wilmington, Del., where I interned in 2009. The sacrifice is worth it to be near my family and friends I grew up with again, but there will always be a piece of my heart in Wyoming, where the wild skies left me in awe.

Orin Young poses for a portrait in the center of the Midwest Electric Plant on Tuesday morning, December 4, 2012. The plant, which was the first natural gas power plant in Wyoming, has sat dormant since it’s shutdown in 1958. Young’s father was an engineer at the plant in it’s heyday.

Before I left for my pre-Christmas, Christmas vacation, Adam Voge and I went out to Midwest, Wyo. to tour an abandoned power plant with Orin Young, whose father worked at the plant as an engineer.  More and more coal power plants are shutting down across the United States as coal becomes more expensive in the face of stricter regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency. Many that aren’t shutting down are converting to natural gas, which is much cheaper and in a lot of cases easier to obtain.

Back in 1958 this power plant shut down in Midwest, but it burned natural gas.

The plant was built in 1923 to power the pumps throughout the surrounding Salt Creek Oil Field. Natural gas, at the time, was seen as a nuisance byproduct of oil drilling, and usually vented or burned away at the pump site. But, when the need to get rid of this abundance of flammable gas was met with the need to power hundreds of pumps throughout the oil field, the plans for the power plant came about.

The plant ran steadily out in the middle of nowhere some seven miles north of the town of Midwest until the transmission lines around the plant were bought by another power company, and the plant wasn’t needed.

The building as it stands now looks like something out of an episode of The Walking Dead or some other post-apocalyptic fantasy. It’s once glistening and shining windows have been rilled with bullet holes and rocks. It’s walls show the graffiti of 54 high school classes that have tagged it since it’s shut down. The hum, though of a power substation sitting next to it, still makes the building sound alive.

As one newspaper clipping we found at the Midwest museum noted, “If you were to hold a seashell to your ear you might hear the ocean, but inside the Midwest Power Plant you hear the sound of purpose.” (The quote was something to that effect at least.)

That couldn’t be a more accurate description of what walking through that building was like, especially with Young painting pictures of what it was like to see the building when he was a kid.

Give Adam’s story a read, he did a great job with it: Gas Plant

Check out the gallery at the top of the story while you’re at it.

Clouds pass over the Midwest Electric Plant on Tuesday morning, December 4, 2012.

Wyoming forward Derek Cooke Jr. poses for a portrait at the Arena-Auditorium in Laramie, Wyo. on December 6, 2012.

Derek Cooke Jr. didn’t play high school basketball. He wouldn’t be playing college basketball if not for a chance meeting with Cloud County Community College’s head coach at a basketball showcase in Washington, D.C. in which Cooke impressed the coach enough for a scholarship offer.

Though raw, Cooke gained the attention of Wyoming and a few other “mid-major” basketball programs, including a team I used to cover, the University of Evansville. He even had looks from top schools like Oregon and WVU, but they weren’t ready to commit with just a year of JuCo ball under his belt.

Though just averaging six points and just over eight rebounds per game in one year of organized ball at Cloud, Cooke would move on to Wyoming with three years of eligibility and a coaching staff that saw a diamond in the rough.

Cooke now has the opportunity to learn not only from a strong coaching staff at UW, that has the team at 11-0, but gifted players like Larry Nance Jr. and Leonard Washington (who is a shot blocking machine).

It’s interesting, readying Ben Frederickson’s article that I did this portrait for, that Cooke could barely dunk at 6’7″ in pick-up games after high school. At 6’9″ now, and a whole lot of training under his belt, Cooke only missed two dunks through the 20 or so I put him through in a 20 minute period at the Arena-Auditorium back on December 6th, and those really only came after Cooke had worked up a good sweat and started trying to pull off a few unnatural moves.

Derek was great to work with, and I see a lot of the potential his coaches see too. He could have a really bright future ahead of him.

Fans rush the court, jumping on Wyoming guard Luke Martinez’s back, as the buzzer sounds at the end of Wyoming’s 76-69 win over Colorado at the Arena-Auditorium in Laramie, Wyo. on Saturday night, December 1, 2012.

It’s been a crazy week in Casper, and if you haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve heard the stories of the shooting/stabbing at Casper College. Reading the team’s reports on it, it sounds like something out of a movie. For a writer, it’s got to be a clip that would stay in the portfolio for a while. The singles I’ve seen come out, not nearly as exciting, and that’s got to be expected since it just looks visually like any other crime scene.

With that in mind, I’ll consider myself lucky that I was off on Friday, in preparation for my LONG day in Laramie on Saturday covering women’s basketball against Eastern Michigan at 2pm, and Wyoming men’s basketball against #19 Colorado at 8pm. With a 2.5 drive each way, that’s 5 hours in travel time stacked on eight hours of coverage, excluding processing time. That all equals a long, long day.

The drawback to being in Laramie all day was missing out on a chance to cover the follow up to the shootings for the New York Times, who called me on Friday evening to see if I could pick the assignment up. The plus was I got to cover one of the biggest wins recent Wyoming basketball history.

Colorado came in ranked #19 in the country and 6-0, Wyoming was standing at 7-0 but not having played much of anyone. Wyoming’s defensive style frustrates every team they play and keeps them in most games, but Colorado was going to be a real test. It was one Wyoming handled well.

I’ve covered almost every home game Wyoming’s had to this point, outside a few in a tournament the team hosted during the week, but I’ve not seen them dominate a team as competitive as Colorado yet. The win was huge for the Cowboys and the fans (who finally showed up to a game) showed it. Fans rushed the court as the buzzer sounded, some even leaping on Luke Martinez’s back for a ride. I snapped a few frames and rushed to the catwalk to try to get the madness from above. By then, though, the players were on their way off the court.

Overall, it was a great game to cover, and the second major upset I’ve covered in the last two years. The last one came when Evansville topped Butler (fresh off their appearance the previous year in the NCAA Tournament Final) at home last November.

And it just dawned on me, I forgot to link to the gallery from the game. Check it out: Wyoming upsets #19 Colorado

Wyoming’s Leonard Washington puts up a shot over Colorado’s Josh Scott in the second half of Wyoming’s 76-69 win over Colorado at the Arena-Auditorium in Laramie, Wyo. on Saturday night, December 1, 2012.

Daniel Holmquist raises his forklift to the top shelf of the Sierra Trading Post Fulfillment Center’s racks to a pick a product off the shelves at the Cheyenne facility on November 13, 2012. Holmquist, working his first day at the center, will be much busier in two weeks when Cyber Monday hits.

A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Sierra Trading Post fulfillment center in Cheyenne, Wyo. It’s a warehouse, but don’t call it a warehouse, they made that clear.

I wasn’t all that familiar with Sierra Trading Post to be honest. I’d heard of them, but outside of that had no idea what they did. Turns out they’re much like the Amazon.com of clothes and outdoors equipment, and the center showed it.

Normally these kinds of tours are pretty interesting, but not much for the visuals. This was about the best I’d ever seen though, and the photos have gone somewhat viral I guess. I got a note from my former editor, Kevin Swank, in Evansville that he saw one on the wire and got a chuckle out of it. I heard from a friend in Gillette it ran in their paper, and it also made an appearance on A1 of the Southern Illinoisan in Carbondale.

I’ve always kinda wanted to work for a wire. Seeing your work show up everywhere is just really rewarding. It’s one thing when one photo editor likes what you did enough to put it in print,it’s another when a few dozen do.

Probably the coolest thing about the shoot, though, was Beemer, the “morale dog,” of the fulfillment center. He reminded me a bit of my dog back home, Buster. Lovable, curious, and an affinity for stealing socks.

Beemer, a German short-haired pointer from the kennels of Sierra Trading Post founder Keith Richardson, sniffs boxes of gloves and socks in the Sierra Trading Post Fulfillment Center in Cheyenne on Nov. 13. Beemer is the fulfillment center’s ‘morale dog’ and frequently makes his rounds through the facility collecting treats, and the occasional sock, along the way.

Dubois’ Tage Walker leaps into the arms of Kyle Tea as players celebrate at the conclusion of the fourth quarter of Dubois’ 54-30 win over Little Snake River in the Class 1A Six-Man State Football Championship game at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie, Wyo. on Friday afternoon, November 9, 2012.

This past weekend I covered the Wyoming State Football Championships. Wyoming has five divisions, Class 1A-4A, but 1A is broken into 6-man football, and 11-man football, giving small schools in towns like Baggs, Wyo. (pop. 438) and Dubois, Wyo. (pop. 982) a chance compete. I drew the two 1A games, while Alan covered the 2A, 3A and 4A games.

I wasn’t initially thrilled to do 1A, since most schools that small pass the ball about three times a game. The games were exciting though, and having never seen 6-man football, it was fun to learn the sport on the fly. Scoring is pretty rampant (the first three scores of the game came on the first three plays), and extra points are backward (kicks are worth two, while scoring plays are worth one).

The games were part of a long weekend of sports coverage where I also covered the men’s and women’s basketball home openers at the University of Wyoming each night too.

Check out the 11-man gallery and the 6-man gallery on the Trib’s website.

Lusk’s Zane Hladky (55) reflects on his team’s 40-6 loss to Southeast as his teammates walk off the field behind him after the Class 1A/11-Man State Football Championship game at War Memorial Stadium in Laramie, Wyo. on Saturday afternoon, November 10, 2012.