Nothing in sight

The week between Christmas and New Year's is very slow at work. I work at a newspaper, so that's not good. Not much going on. Schools, businesses and city/village offices are closed. Sometimes it feels like the whole county shuts down. During this time, it is a big struggle to find events to photograph. But every other week of the year is also a struggle.

The staff photographer called in sick today. I assigned the event written on our desk calendar to one of our freelance photographers. While on the phone with the staff photographer I noticed that there is nothing written on the calendar for Wednesday. I told him that I would find him something to shoot.

I'm a woman of many sources, so I first went to the city park and recreation winter activities book. All of the events that the city sponsors starts back up in January. Then I searched the visitors bureau website. There are no events listed for tomorrow. Most of the December listings left on the calendar are for New Year's Eve. That doesn't help. I looked through a week's worth of newspapers for anything. There was nothing for Wednesday, but I did find something for Friday. Its bad, so if we're desperate, we will shoot it. My final plea, I went to the reporters and asked if they knew of anything going. One reporter said, "school is on break." Meaning he didn't have anything. Another reporter said the Boys and Girls Club. We were already there a couple of weeks ago, so that is off limits. We can't repeat the same place within a month or two. I left the reporters with no ideas.

While driving to a weekly assignment at the Humane Society, I saw construction. I thinking he can shoot that tomorrow. Unfortunately, the weather forecast tomorrow is calling for rain. But I'm hoping the rain will stay awhile, at least for the staff photographer to get what he needs. If it does rain and the workers aren't outside working, then we are back to square one. Nothing to shoot and no signs of a lead anywhere.