Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Cover Jinx?



I've always heard of the cover jinx on athletes, be it the eerily coincidental string of injuries suffered by NFL players after they appear on the cover on the Madden video game box, or the supposed SI cover jinx. But those all happen after publication right? (At least the ones we know about)
Last week I made went out to make a photo of a promising young quarterback and his new head coach for the cover of our prep football tab. The story was focusing on the quarterback, so I made him prominent in the photo and then designed the cover around that. I had a simple design in mind and was happy with how it came out.
Two days later, I get a call from the office telling me our talented young cover model had blown out his knee in a scrimmage and was out for the season. Probably not the best idea to keep him on our cover. The other problem is this happened on a Saturday and our tab was going to print on Monday, leaving no time to come up with another feature. I pulled several photos from football season last year and designed a generic cover to go out instead.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Grounded


This week I was supposed to get a media flight on the Liberty Belle, a World War II B-17 bomber, as it made a stop in Concord. Monday morning I got a call from the plane's PR guy telling me ground fog where the plane was kept it from taking off in time to make it for our flight. The rescheduled time was set for Friday (a day before the public flights) and I show up with my reporter ready to go. As soon as we get there, we find out the engine is not working, so no media flight ... all we get to do is go out and see it sitting there on the runway. Ben, my reporter, climbs up in the cockpit and I made this frame of him (we might as well have some fun right?)