Soldiers return from duty in Iraq

Spent most of the day at Fort Indiantown Gap covering the return of soldiers of the 628th Aviation Support Battalion from Iraq via Fort Dix. About a fifty soldiers making up Company A and Company B arrived in two buses. Company C, including about 20 locals, will arrive Wednesday.
Homecomings are always special for me to cover. Anyone that knows me knows that I’m a big supporter of our troops and if you throw in a few cute kids and crying women, it creates about the best assignment I can imagine.
Welcome Home to the soldiers of the 628th and Merry Christmas to you and your families.
Thank you for your service

Winter wedding wonderland

Congratulations to Laura and Johnny!  Steve and I spent the day documenting Laura and Johnny’s wedding and it was quite a challenge. Accuweather’s forecast for 1-3 inches with no covering of the roads was a little off the mark down in The Brogue, as the local’s call it.  Traveling was a bit tricky and I did a fare share of slipping and sliding but we all made it through the day.

Pho-Tac.com is going live

As some know, I’ve been volunteering as the team photographer for the York County Quick Response Team for the past several years. Through my contact with the QRT team, I’ve been published in SWAT Digest (including an article about the York team) and have been in contact with several other publications, agencies and businesses that are related in some way to the “tactical” world. With a bit of encouragement from George Mathias of Modern Combative Systems, I’m developing a web based business for photography and multi-media production. My goal is for Pho-Tac become the name in tactical photography production. Once completely up and running, the Pho-Tac site will host information about my photography services for training, and documenting police involved incidents. Stock photography will be available through the site with a corresponding search function via PhotoShelter where prints can be purchased and images can be licensed. I’m also going to start producing “tactical” photographic art prints which will be available through the site.

It’s been a while

I have been spending a considerable amount of time lately trying to figure out what’s next in my life. I’ve recently bought a couple of domain names and am trying to learn how to host, build and maintain web sites and upgraded my PhotoShelter site. It’s all quite overwhelming, especially my attempts to learn web design. Why can’t web design software be simple? Drag and drop functions would be nice, and tutorials that make sense to an old darkroom tech would be helpful.

On top of all the photography oriented stuff, I’ve been working hard at getting my 40 year old body back into shape and to develop new skill sets for my side career in personal security training. Add to all this three very active kids with soccer games, band shows and football games, and I haven’t had time to shoot photos for myself in months.

Two weeks ago, York Harley Davidson hosted their annual Open House and York City held a parade and bike night as part of the weekend festivities.  I was assigned by the newspaper to cover the first morning of the Open House. I’ve covered this event for several years, and decided to try something a bit different for the video I was to produce. I decided to go old-school (kinda) and shoot B&W images for use in the video. I had been using my old Nikon D1 with it’s 2.74 mp sensor for some time as a B&W camera for weddings, as crappy as the sensor is, it produces beautiful B&W’s that have the look of old Tri-X film.

The images and the video looked great so after deciding to attend Bike Night, I lugged the D1 with one lens to the parade. This might be the final year for Bike Night, as Harley is thinking of relocating the York plant out of state, so I decided to shoot some images for myself to remember the event.  While I didn’t get real in-depth with my coverage, it was a lot of fun just shooting pictures for myself again and overall I’m happy with the results.

Corning Glass Museum

The misses and I went to New York last weekend to photograph a co-worker’s wedding. Took advantage of being away from the kids and spent Sunday on our own. Our choices were to visit Watkin’s Glenn State Park or the Corning Glass Museum. The weather made the decision easy, it was raining, so off to the Glass Museum.

I think Kat had more fun there than I did, honestly, I was a little more then bored but I did make a few interesting photos.  This one is of the front of the museum, which of course is all glass.

Carl and Sara get hitched

Kathy and I returned last evening after spending a wonderful weekend in Corning, New York, photographing the wedding of my co-worker Carl Lindquist and his lovely bride Sara Easton. Mother Nature blessed Carl and Sara with beautiful weather for the rehearsal party, Friday, and for the entire wedding day Saturday.

Carl and Sara were married in a small chapel in front of about 80, and celebrated their marriage at the Corning Country Club. Congrats to Carl and Sara, Thank You so much for an awesome weekend!

On of my best roadside finds…..ever (from May 22)

Meet the Trick Master.

click on photo to see video.

Truck driver and basketball Trick Master, Victor Wells of Hillside, NJ with his tools of the trade, Friday, May 22, 2009. Broken down along Mount Rose Avenue in Springettsbury Township on his way on a run to Baltimore, Wells spent his time waiting on a mechanic practicing his basketball tricks, delighting passing motorists.
John Pavoncello photo

My daughter called from the high school this morning (getting me out of bed), needing me to run some things up that she forgot. On my way back to the house, I stopped for the traffic light at Mt. Rose Avenue and glanced to my right. There was a tractor trailer sitting in the parking lot of the old Tom’s with it’s hood up, and a guy doing his best Harlem Globetrotters impersonation beside it.

Even though I had a TON of stuff to do on my day off, I decided that a feature like this doesn’t happen very often and quickly pulled into the lot to find out who this basketball spinning truck driver was.

Victor Wells is a former All American basketball player who was drafted for the NBA but then became a truck driver. Wells practices when he’s waiting for loads to be put on his truck, or when his big rig leaves him waiting for a repair. Check out the video (click on the photo) to hear Wells describe his life on the road with his basketballs.

Baby Hummingbirds

Got a call from a friend who has a hummingbird nest in the tree in his front yard. I’ve never seen a hummingbird nest before, it’s amazing how tiny these things are. The two young will probably be out of the nest before the end of the week.

Remebering our fallen soldiers

Nearly 5200 flags were pushed into the ground at Prospect Hill Cemetery in York, one each to remember every soldier, sailor and Marine killed in the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The flags were transported from Hefner Funeral Home, escorted by almost 100 Patriot Guard riders and York County Sheriff’s Deputies that shut down traffic along Route 30 to allow the procession to pass.

The flags were installed on a hill near the entrance to Prospect Hill by Gold Star Mothers and family, the Patriot Guard, York County Sheriff’s and volunteers. It took about one hour for the hill to transform from a green lawn to a red, white and blue sea of flags.

2009 Keystone Awards

It’s contest season, actually, contest results season, and I found out last week that three of my photos took awards in the Pennsylvania Keystone competition.

2nd Place News Photo

1st Place Feature Photo

2nd Place Sports Photo