Richfield – Fans of Rich High School’s girls basketball team traveled over 260 miles to see their team win the 1A state championship game over Piute High School at the Sevier Valley Center, Saturday, February 16, 2008.
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Monthly Archives: February 2008
2007 Portfolio: World Cup Bobsled
From my 2007 Portfolio.
Romania’s Nicolae Istrate. Park City – at the FIBT World Cup Bobsled Competition at the Utah Olympic Park, Saturday, December 8, 2007.
; 12.08.2007
"Rotater" Art
The front page of the Tribune’s website has this cool thing that rotates through several of the top news stories of the moment. Once in a while as the rotater switches from one story to the next there’s a slight hitch in the system; for a split second the displayed text doesn’t match up with the displayed photo.
This little tech hiccup has created a new source of entertainment for some of us staffers, trying to capture funny screen captures. I found the one above and thought it was pretty funny. But then fellow photographer Scott Sommerdorf caught this one and stormed the leaderboard:
1998 Africa: Church in Guguletu
February 22, 1998: Cape Town, South Africa.
Not much sleep once again. And no breakfast. Do I need to type that every single day? You can just assume it. I didn’t eat today until 5pm. But it’s our last day in Africa, so we wanted to maximize our time.
The good news is that I finally had a chance to have my clothes washed. I had been wearing the same pants for the entire trip and rotating between two shirts in an attempt to travel light. I hop in the shower and look forward to putting on my clean clothes. Clive is picking us up in ten minutes to go to church services in the township.
I open up the laundry box and feel the clean, pressed shirt. This will be nice. Then I notice something. My pants are missing. I can’t believe it. My pants. Gone, lost, misplaced. Housekeeping is no help. All hotel laundry is done by an outside service. They take my address and say they will mail them if they turn up.
So it’s ten minutes until church and I’ve got no pants. The situation is fixed with a quick call to Clive, who brings me a pair of loaner pants that end up fitting quite well.
We drive to the township of Guguletu. Before the meeting, an elderly missionary from the US talks to me, joking, “We didn’t know anything about South Africa before we got here. We thought this was where they boiled missionaries in pots over a fire.”
As the meeting started, I realized that I didn’t come all the way to South Africa to be timid about photographing the church service. I got up during the opening hymn and took some photos from the back of the room. But after only a few shots, one of the leaders stood up and walked over to me.
“Could you stop taking pictures during sacrament meeting? I know you’re from Salt Lake but it’s against the rules. Sorry.”
I put my gear away and sat down for the rest of the meeting. Then a young man got up to speak. He was holding up a picture of Jesus as he read aloud from the Bible. It was an incredible shot, which I had to pass on. If only I had waited to start shooting, I could have had it.
Clive later suggested we recreate the moment, that the boy would be more than willing to re-enact his talk. Sorry, I said. Ethics and all.
The leader came up to me again after sacrament meeting and was very polite and offered his apologies. He was sorry that I couldn’t shoot, but said I was free to photograph anything else in the remaining meetings.
I photographed the Priesthood (the men)…
Relief Society (the women)…
and Primary (children) meetings.
They were practically indistinguishable from the same meetings held in the US, which was interesting in its own way.
With that our trip came to an end. We hit our ninth airport in ten days. Somehow I was upgraded to business class for the return flight. I reclined my seat and slept for several hours. Walking off the plane, I was met with laughs from friends and family. It was bitter cold winter in Salt Lake City and I was wearing shorts.
Links to the rest of this series:
Church in Guguletu
1998 Africa: Into the Townships
February 21, 1998 – Cape Town, South Africa
More incredible luck in finding people to help us with our work. Last night I met a man who agreed to take us to church services in the townships. Clive knew the townships very well, having served as an LDS branch president there. It was a relief to find him, as we had no desire to attend the mostly-white ward that others had arranged for us to visit.
Clive called this morning. He was down in the hotel lobby and ready to take us around. We drove into Langa and Guguletu townships and met with various church members, including this lovely woman (above), a mormon as well as an apparent Beatles fan.
Mildred Mvula, with her photograph of the LDS temple in Salt Lake City.
The scenes in the townships were so visually striking.
I tried to grab whatever photographs I could in the little amount of time we had there.
At one point he stopped the car and asked a roadside vendor, “How much?” I looked closely at what was cooking on the barbecue. Sheep heads.
Later we found out something else incredible: Clive knows my neighbor Mel, the South African who lives across the street from me. At his home, Clive pulled out photos of my neighbor who had lived in Durban many years ago. I photographed them so Mel could have copies. These photos are from the 1957 dedication of the LDS chapel (The Grove) in Durban, South Africa.
At this point I felt very strongly that throughout this trip some higher power led us to certain people. Our course throughout this trip had fallen into place too well. It seems beyond any coincidence that we met all the right people at all the right times. Ben, Glen, Khumbulani, and Clive. Their help and knowledge were invaluable to us.
Later on, Clive takes us around the Cape on a sightseeing trip. It turns into a very long drive along the coast and though it’s beautiful, I’m thoroughly exhausted. I’ll close this post with a photo of the sun setting over the Cape. I was completely drained by the time he pulled the car over to watch this sunset. Eight airports in eight days had taken their toll. I only have this photo because Clive literally dragged me out of the car to take it. My thanks.
Links to the rest of this series:
Into the Townships
1998 Africa: Cape Town
February 20, 1998 : Cape Town, South Africa
At the Cape Town airport, we are met by a strange young man and a portly man. The portly man would say something he thought was funny and then burst into violent laughter. It got very tiring. I figured if he was going to laugh that hard I had to laugh as well, even though he wasn’t funny.
No one knew where our hotel was. They hadn’t heard of it. That is a bad sign. But our first priority was to find a photo lab so we could have my film from Soweto developed. We only had fifteen minutes. We found a one-hour lab in a mall. I told the guy in the lab that I needed three rolls developed, negatives only, as soon as possible. I told him I had no extra time. He said no problem, it would only take fifteen minutes.
He figured out I was a professional and started asking me about what cameras I used. I said Nikon. He asked which model. I said F5. He couldn’t believe it. He begged me to bring it in when I picked up the film so he could see it. I went out into the mall and looked at some shops, then returned to the photo lab after fifteen minutes.
When I walked in, the guy was just barely putting my first two rolls into the machine. I couldn’t believe it. I grabbed my third roll back and told him I wouldn’t have time to run all three. I could only hope that my best shots were on those two rolls.
I pulled out my camera. He was amazed I would let him hold it. He showed it to a co-worker and said, “This is the most highest professional camera in the world. It costs 28,000 Rand.” (US $5,600, more than twice what it cost me in the US.)
I pulled out my Leica to take a picture of him looking at the camera. That sent off another wave of astonishment. “You have a Leica M6 too?!”
Because he thought I was cool he gave me a 10% discount, which saved me sixty-cents.
We got in the van with the other Utah reporters (Deseret News and KSL-TV) and drove to the next spot that LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley would be speaking. Since our competition flew into Cape Town early this morning, they had no time for anything like the trip into Soweto we took this morning. We made sure to tell them how great it was, just to rub it in.
These other reporters seem to have done nothing other than cover Hinckley’s speeches. We’ve done that as well as filling every spare minute finding other stories and seeking out people to interview. We’ve been working our asses off and great stories have been the result.
Tonight’s meeting is in an mostly white, upscale community.
At the end of the meeting, those gathered waved goodbye to Hinckley. It was a very emotional moment, and many were brought to tears. I was drawn the image of this man, Atholl Howden:
At the end of the day we finally reach our hotel, starving and tired. We just have to file our Soweto story and then we can eat and finally have some laundry done. But is it ever that easy?
I should have known this hotel sucked when I walked in off the pleasantly cool street into the unbearably hot lobby. It’s only after we check in and hit our rooms that we realize there is no room service or laundry, which we desperately need today. This just isn’t going to work. We stay long enough to send our photos and story back to the newspaper and quickly check out.
We find another hotel just down the street and it’s worlds better. At 11:30pm we finally get our first real food of the day.
Links to the rest of this series:
Cape Town
1998 Africa: Soweto
February 20, 1998
I found this story in a local newspaper today: A doctor in Kenya who removed a bean from a six-year-old girl’s ear reinserted it when her father was unable to pay the full $6 fee. The father offered to leave the girl at the clinic while he went to raise the balance of the fee, but, “the doctor refused and shoved the bean back into the girl’s ear.”
Our hotel in Johannesburg is very swank. I took advantage by ordering a huge breakfast from room service. But then Khumbulani showed up and we left for Soweto before my bacon, eggs, freshly squeezed orange juice and cinnamon french toast were delivered.
In Soweto, Khumbulani bought us some breakfast, township-style. It was a greasy scone with a slice of ham in it. Later we bought a cob of corn from a woman roasting (burning) it on at the side of the road. Those two township delicacies were the only things I ate all day.
Khumbulani had served as an LDS branch president in Soweto, so we were in good hands. Having a guide makes all the difference. As he drove I photographed whatever I saw out the window.
At the Protea Glen LDS chapel we met some local church members. And also a pigeon. It was trapped in the building. Khumbulani chased it into a corner, trying to get it to go out a window. It flew quickly across the room, and one of the other men reached up and plucked it out of the air.
We spent the little time we had interviewing Bishop Thomas Mogapi for our story on the LDS Church in Africa.
Khumbulani dropped us back at our hotel and we waited for our ride to the airport. And we waited, and waited. Pretty soon we got very nervous about missing our flight. Finally our driver called the front desk asking for us. He didn’t think he needed to pick us up since we didn’t call him last night, but he says he’ll be right over.
We wait longer and longer, and just as I have the doorman hail us a cab, our driver and his wife pull up. We were now desperately late for our flight. And our driver was so slow.
His wife says things like, “Are you sure this is the way?” And he says things like, “This is a shortcut that Fred taught me.”
His “shortcut” drops us way off in the parking lot, nowhere near where we need to be. Carrying all of our luggage and equipment, we run, exhausted, to our flight.
Links to the rest of this series:
Soweto
