Fairfield resident Christina Hartley, 29, was shot in the legs after she intervened in defense of a family friend being beaten and robbed outside her Union Ave. apartment.

Vacaville Christian High School varsity basketball teammates Christina Southern and Lyndsey Elm, in red, react to the missed shot of one of their teammates during their game against Forest Lake Christian High School Tuesday night. Despite any game mishaps, the Falcons went on to win the game and maintain a tie for first place in their conference.

The other night I got an assignment to document a local comedy club here in town for a vacant/emergency opening story slot in the paper. Here is the little piece I wrote with the photos.

As the final half-light of the day bleeds into night and Fairfield transitions from work to play, a billboard beacon glows golden in the sleepy downtown sky. In the midst of the awakening night life stands Pepperbellys Comedy and Variety Club. Six days a week the big glass doors open, welcoming the young and old into one of the premier comedy clubs in the Bay Area where the stand-up routines of traveling comedians, variety acts and karoake entertain throughout the evening. As the night ripens, the club smoothly transitions from a single comedian in a golden spotlight to a packed dance floor bathed a dynamic multicolor. And as the night wanes, customers leave with music rhythms pounding in their memories, phone numbers written on napkins and smiles on their faces. Until the next time.

So for the last two weeks I have been working on my first photo story of the new year dealing with the topic of teen obesity. I met Alfredo, a 15-year-old sophomore at a local High School, who decided that it was time to change his lifestyle. A recent doctors visit yielded troubling news that he was at a dangerous risk of developing type II diabetes and had fat tissue growing around his liver. With the help of his brother and uncle he began a pretty intense work out routine and after a month, he has lost 20 lbs off his 6’2” 370 lbs frame. He’s a big boy. His goal is to lose over 100 lbs and hopefully try out for his High School football team next fall. This project is still in its infancy stage and has a long way to go.

Well, a new year has arrived and it marks my one year anniversary of writing my Fish and Clicks blog. It is astounding to look back and see how quickly 2008 went by. It feels like just the other day I was headed out my door to catch a plane to Argentina. Needless to say 2008 was a great year and I want to thank all of you for checking in on this ongoing project, for your comments, and overall support. I have had a lot of fun with this. It is interesting for me to look back on this past years work and see how I have grown as a photographer. I still have much to learn. Now all I need to do is keep my new years resolution to make more frequent posts.

Here’s my first two weeks worth of work for January.

I’ve been wanting to get this up on my blog for the better part of a year now. Back when my brother Eric and I were making our way through Bolivia, we stopped in mountain city of Potosi in hopes of buying some dynamite. This is a video of our expedition to seek out the rumors and purchase something that is pretty impossible to come across legally in the States. Here’s a link to my original post:

http://mikegreener.blogspot.com/2008/04/playing-with-fire-part-one.html

I decided after months of procrastination (and the fact that it was slow around the office today) to sit down and see what I could make out of the mess. I fused my photographs with Eric’s point and shoot camera video sequence of the event. I think you will all get a kick out of it. Happy New Year everybody. Let’s start this party off with a bang!

Monterey Bay Aquarium is the perfect bridge encompassing all the bay’s wildlife, habitats and conservation efforts and then brings it to light in wonderful detail for it’s visitors. The Aquarium is built right on the edge of the bay and blends beautifully with the seaport town feel. From the outside it looks no different than any of the other old time fishing port buildings that line the shoreline. But inside they have built very impressive exhibits that really allows a person to leave feeling they have witnessed all of the different aspects that make the bay so special. I had a lot of fun documenting people exploring all its wonders.

Eric and I said our goodbyes to the family and decided to spend the next three days driving up Hwy 1 on the California coastline. Our plan, or lack-there-of, was to drive up through Big Sur and spend some time mountain biking throughout the state park. Turns out the Big Sur area got hammered this summer with forest fires and the majority of it was close down for fear of landslides. Probably should have googled that one before hand. We were able to find one campground just off the shoreline and we built up a fire and nurse some cheap beer in conversation. The next day after realizing our bad timing we continued on northward and headed towards Monterey Bay.

By some miracle I found out earlier in December that I would have five days off from work around Christmas. This came as a surprise because first year employees at my paper don’t get vacation time in their first year. Somehow the stars had alined in my favor and I decided to take full advantage of the sudden time off. My brother Eric unable to make the expensive trip home for the holidays, decided to drive down and have Christmas with me. We decided to follow suit with the past year’s tradition of adventure and we made road trip arrangements to explore the California coastline. We headed down to Grover Beach, CA on Christmas Eve to spend the big day with our cousins and their families. We had a great time with them. My cousin Karl has two children, Hannah and Ethan. It was the first time Eric and I had ever really spent a solid chunk of time with them. Now instead of being babies crawling around like in past visits, the two had grown up a bit and were never ending balls of energy anxious to play with their older cousins. These kids are hilarious and I spent some time photographing them as they played out side their house.

I have quickly found that there is a hidden sense of irony in the vacation time of Christmas. You think it is going to be a time to relax and catch up on things (like blog entries) when in actuality it tends to be even busier your normal routine. Hence my lack of blogging. I aim to remedy this situation. My week leading up to the Christmas holiday was filled with last minute Christmas events and stories. Veterans laying holiday wreaths at the graves of the fallen, school children participating in their annual Christmas themed play at school, and plenty of daily work kept me on my toes at work.