Spent two days at Bucs practice. This is exciting as it got. Just waiting til training camp...
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Happy graduate. (who will oh-my-god-HATE this picture)
Sleeping dogs.
Regal puppy.
06 08 2008 - TAMPA - Tampa firefighters battle a blaze that consumed the Tampa Bay Hardware store at 5511 N. Nebraska Ave. on Sunday. BRIAN CASSELLA | Times
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06 02 2008 - BRANDON - Jordyn Coughlin, 5, (right) leaps with other participants in a kids fitness class Monday night at The Athletic Club in Brandon. BRIAN CASSELLA | Times There's all kinds of things wrong with this photo compositionally, but I still liked the anti-gravitational children.
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Spent a few hours at the county jail for a quirky story about why so many people seem to smile for their booking mug shots. One of our reporters noticed that on a given day, about 12% of the people who showed up in the jail log had big grins on their face, which is not exactly what you'd expect on a group of people who had just been arrested. The booking area turned out to be nothing like I expected. Extremely laid back, with a steady stream of people arriving to be searched and fingerprinted, only a few of whom seemed at all upset to be there. The sheriff's deputies were equally relaxed, secure in an area where there seemed to be few flare-ups with inmates. They also recognized quite a few of the new arrivals, whom they called "frequent fliers" for their repeated trips through the familiar process. Turns out people smile for all kinds of reasons. Particularly if they've been there before, they know their photo will immediately appear on the police website where their friends can see it. There are also some tabloids out there where run "best of" galleries of funny mug shots, and people try to make it into there. I didn't stick around for the DUIs after midnight, but I heard they tend to be the most relaxed group...
06 02 2008 - BRANDON - Hillsborough Fire Rescue frees a 15-year-old boy trapped in the limbs of a tree at the intersection of Bloomindale and Kings avenues on Monday night. The teenager had slipped into a crevice between two limbs and had become stuck, leading to a 3-hour effort to chisel a wider hole and hoist him out. BRIAN CASSELLA | Times This was something I'd never seen before. Got a call at home at 9:30 that a child was stuck in a tree way out in the suburbs. Expecting it to be over before I got there, I was surprised to see a couple dozen firefighters and a park filled with spotlights. For the first hour, just his right hand was visible out the top and his feet dangled out the bottom. I shot a few pictures while the team cut away at the tree around him to widen the gap, and called into the office to let them know the pictures were decent and to expect a vertical shape. At 10:53 pm they finally squeezed him out the top. I already had my laptop out in front of me, transmitting some of the early photos because I had no idea how much longer it was going to take. After he popped out, I picked a file on the camera, copied just that one onto the computer and fired it back to St. Pete by 11 so they could re-make the local cover in time. Apparently the whole thing was broadcast live on the news, too... big news in the Fla.
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