The Story was to cover sports betting which was of course, hard to show through images which is probably why I enjoyed it so much. I loved getting details that tell a story and talking with people to get them comfy with getting their images taken. These are the images for that story.

Mercury Perkins, 35, of Davenport sits in is lucky chair and watches one of the games at Rhythm City Casino, Monday, Nov. 25, 2019, in Davenport.

Moline senior diver Taylor Puglisi is Metro Pacesetter. Puglisi won her third straight Big 6 diving title on Saturday, also setting the conference 11-dive record with a personal best score of 426.35.

This is probably one of my favorite pacesetters that I’ve done for the Dispatch Argus. If I were to ever do an image like this again I would make sure to have the athlete wear goggles. Every single time the water hit her back her eyes would close. Out of about 60 images this was the only one with her eyes open. Shout out to the coach that I made throw water about 60 times.

I used to lights for this image! One was on the front lighting her and one behind lighting the water. I turned off almost all the lights at the pool so the swimmer and water were the only things lit. I had the coach on the watching deck so he was between the light and the swimmer throwing the water. That way the lights were also protected.

Main take away was to bring the goggles!

These last two sets of images were from a series the newspaper calls Wishlist. The stories are found through an organization where they help out folks in the Quad Cities get home items. I have so many mixed feelings about photographing these stories. Will these images help Will they make an impact? Will they help the people that are in the images? I think there is a lot of growing that journalist and photojournalist need to do. I think we need to be open to changing how we document and what productivity and humanity it shows.