Best to Forget

The morning after Remembrance Day I opened up the Winnipeg Free Press, and lo and behold, photographer Joe Bryksa had captured almost the identical image as I did of the roses at the Brookside Cemetery. I emailed him my images and in turn he replied with an invitation to accompany him on a shift. We selected today. I was to meet him at 9:30 am at the WFP offices. I got to the offices by the agreed upon time, informed the security desk that I had arrived, and was told Joe was not in. I then contacted Joe by cell phone, locating him at a homicide in Transcona. Apparently he had emailed me with a delay in plans to meet after I had checked for any emails earlier in the morning. Half an hour later I met him in a backlane near the suspected murder site. Joe invited me to take photographs, following the same guidelines that he and another photographer that had just arrived, had to adhere ... no crossing the yellow police line. I used my 75-300 zoom lenses @ 300mm, handheld at ISO200, f/5.6 @ 1/1000 sec. I was walking a few steps behind Joe, walking up to the other photographer, thinking to myself, "I had better get these settings right NOW, or else I would land up looking kind of studentish." It took about half a dozen instantanious attempts to get the right settings, as I was walking and clicking, then I got it, and was ready to shoot alongside the two news photographers.
Next we drove to another location to check out rumour that the TAC Squad (tactical squad) was still at a house in the north end of the city, but no squad in sight. Back to the office to check the command centre, where all notices come in and all assignments are assigned. Joe picked up some assignments for some images, we drove to St. Vital, took a shot of a house that had just been sold, for the Sunday housing section, then headed to South St. Vital to look for an extra image for the Sunday edition. As Joe was almost done his shift at this point, he was good enough to drop me off at my home before he headed back to the offices to retrieve his personal vehicle, and head home. And who was taking over the evening shift after Joe left for the day? None other, than a graduate of last year's PrairieView class. I also received an invitation to join him on another shift as well as sit in on an evening editing shift back at the offices. Both of which I plan to follow up on.