I take a lot of pictures. I mean, a lot!
Probably the greatest compliment I get as I make my rounds from one end of St. Tammany Parish to the other is hearing this comment: “Man, you are everywhere.”
Hey, I’ll take it. At least you know I’m working.
But pictures in particular, yea, I take a lot. From the time we began The Slidell Independent, I followed the same approach for local coverage as I have for the past 40 years—people love seeing pictures, especially their own—so we put lots of them in the paper.
That’s where much of the younger generation has it wrong in their idea that people are not interested in newspapers anymore. The truth is, people are very interested in newspapers, if you put the right thing in it.
And believe me, as a guy who has done this for many, many years I know that people love seeing pictures, especially pictures of themselves, their kids, or their friends.
So the big thing we have tried to do with The Slidell Independent is to give you a lot of pictures and hence, I show up at a lot of things, always with camera in hand.
As something close to a one-man news show, however, that can be a little overwhelming when you are taking pictures at so many events, as I do. One problem is making sure the camera battery is charged, but more than that, I run into problems with memory cards in the camera suddenly flashing “Card Full” on the viewfinder. Suddenly, perhaps in the midst of several pictures I’m trying to take, I am shut down, unable to keep snapping.
I came up with a bit of a solution a few years ago by always carrying a second card in my car, and it has saved me more than once, even if I had to stop what I was doing for a few minutes and run out to the car to get it. But with a backup memory card, I could get right back to work and finish the job.
Last week, however, that still didn’t do the trick. I covered so many photo events day-after-day that I had apparently already used the backup card from the car at one event, and then two days later, suddenly needed to do it again. The first problem occurred Tuesday night when I attended an East St. Tammany Chamber Christmas party, sponsored by the Silver Slipper, that was held at the Chamber offices on Front Street.
On Thursday night I was at another Slidell event taking more pictures and again had a full memory card. Once again I ran to the car, got the backup—not realizing I had already gotten it days earlier—and put it in the camera.
I was surprised to see it say “Card Full,” so I just reformatted the card, which means anything on there is erased forever, and began to shoot again. By this past weekend I stumbled upon the horror of all photographers—I had erased pictures from three different events I had covered!
When I do something like that I honestly feel sick. I always pride myself in putting everyone in the paper who gets their picture taken by me. I know the bigger publications will take lots of pictures too, but seldom does everyone make print. With me, however, it’s different. I get every single picture in the paper every time I shoot anything.
So now the pictures from the Chamber/Slipper Christmas party, and some of the pictures from a Business After Hours at Slidell Memorial from Thursday night are now a thing of the past—lost in photo space somewhere—and you will not see them in the paper today. Believe me, I do feel bad about it.
But I did come up with one small way to compensate for what pictures you won’t see. I decided to at least mention the people who WOULD have been in the paper today. So here, for your reading pleasure, are the folks who I wanted to put in the paper.
Tuesday night at the Chamber I ran into my good buddy John Ferrucci, G.M. and popular face and voice from the Silver Slipper, so I snapped some shots of he and his wife, Bridget, along with some of the Chamber regulars. Then I took a picture of Nathaniel Lawrence, Larry Poche, Jamie Dakin and Anita Bruno with the Chamber, Ken Bieller and Slidell PD Capt. Kevin O’Neill. I promised Kevin a little mention about his plans to run for chief of police next year, so here it is Kev!
Later inside I took a picture of Dwight Denham from Slidell Adult Day Care, along with new Parish Councilwoman Michele Blanchard and Buddy Lloyd, former city councilman who just might pop up on a ballot somewhere in the future (my prediction, not his words!)
Over to SMH Thursday night for the final appearance by Bill Davis as this year’s Chamber Chairman, and pictures of Martin Earl, Dr. Jerry Hudson and Maria Popa; SMH regulars Jennifer Berger and Carole Haynes modeling the very fancy Women’s Health Alliance “take your healthy meal to work containers”; and then a final picture that is actually going to be in the paper by next week—the only one that came out on a new card—with Glenn Dorr, Tricia Collins, Tisha Batuk and Tom Perlic.
So there you have it, a full page of photos….OK, maybe not really photos….but the next best thing to it.
Kevin Chiri can be reached by e-mail at kevinchiri@gmail.com.