First holiday away from home. It was a tough one.

But I tried to make a few frames out of a less-than-crazy Black Friday, because in all honesty, it wasn't. It was Thursday. 

Go home and be happy with your family. Don't waste that time at Best Buy or Target. I don't care if it's tradition or what. Tradition is time with loved ones. Get on it, America.

Just over a week ago, I had just a great assignment. One of those that is just inherently sweet, and filled with emotion. It was a really nice change of pace. 

I shot Adoption Day! Several families were scheduled to finalize adoptions of foster children (or children that they already had a relationship with) on the national day for adoption. The press and public are invited in hopes of showing that adoption is an option and a positive thing. Regardless of its inherent 'for the press' factor, it was really nice to hunt for those genuine moments these families had been waiting for a long time for. Judges helped the children celebrate and commemorate the adoption by bringing them up to the stand and having them bang the gavel.  

Here are my favorite photos from the day. 

-Grant

This was a nuts day. Definitely unexpected. 

I was told a few weeks in advance that Sam Gause and I would be shooting state cross country. Cool? eh. Cross country has always been difficult for names and making something new and interesting, but I was cool with it. There was one catch though, we had to shoot it for the entire state. That meant we didn't only just have to make sure we get the people we need for our stories and our coverage area, but attempt to get every school and top runner for every MLive paper in Michigan. 

shit.

so daunting.

Oh yeah, it was raining.

So Sam and I woke up really early, ready for our super long day, groggy. Got to Michigan International Speedway, where the eight races were being held and immediately stepped into some puddles. 

Shot a few races, just clicked tons of frames in these four different spots that big white vans hustled all the photographers to and from. It was pretty fun! I ran into Timothy Galloway and we hit 70mph+ on a NASCAR track in a passenger van. We were lucky enough to have an awesome, loud, hilarious group of photographers with us. 

After the first few races, I saw some nice frames Sam had made and I realized I needed to start making some features and some photos I wanted to make. I needed to start thinking, which was hard with the maybe 6 minutes of shooting time we had each race + maybe five more post race, before getting driven to the first spot to start the whole thing all over again. 

Here are a few photos from the day that I liked. 

Fans would run along with the runners and take these crazy short cuts to try and see their kids or loved ones an extra ten seconds. There were hordes of them. We called it the gauntlet, and I sprinted between two of our shooting spots with fans and bailed on the van and lost my shoe in this giant puddle of mud.

Thanks for the eyes,

Grant