After several hours with Mr. Wheeler, I learned a lot about life.

His life, at least.

Kelvin’s is a life that can only be described as regretful.

After 18 years with a partner that he said he loved dearly, he’s left only with guilt and sadness for the fights he had with her and the times that he was unfaithful.

But after seeing all the things that I don’t want for my life, I still felt for Kelvin. And I don’t mean pity.

I think anyone can empathize with regretting an action that can’t be taken back.

The important part that we miss out on isn’t that we shouldn’t screw up. We shouldn’t, but that’s not the point.

We must learn to ask for forgiveness and to learn to forgive ourselves.

Here’s the multimedia piece that I put together over three days with my new friend Ben.

Wounded Wheeler.

Here are few of the fishing poles that Kelvin Wheeler used to use with his longtime partner, Georgia Cofield. The poles are all out of commission since her passing in April 2009.

How do you not take a photo of an adorable puppy?

It’s actually not that hard not to, unless you have Cara’s voice in the back of your head telling you that you had better do so.

I did have that voice, so I snapped the photo.

Poynter College Fellow Ben Hancock records the sounds of St. Petersburg residents playing basketball on Tuesday.

A group of us fellows did a little exploring and even less reporting around the St. Pete bay area.

More photos from my time so far can be found here.

The people at Poynter are great – both the faculty and my peers.

Above is my new friend Ryan. He lives and breathes philosophy.

I was anxious coming into the program and after a lot of talking and schooling, I’m still nervous. But at the same time I feel better.

It’s hard to feel too awful when you’re learning and meeting great people in a place as beautiful as this. More on that later.

While searching for a way to “illustrate three,” I found a whole mess of frogs.

Actually it would be a knot of frogs and as far as I know, these could be toads. Maybe my friend Hayley Wilhite will educate me. Just found out that all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. Squares and rectangles, I guess.

Later today I will depart for Broken Bow to go camping with some of the best friends life has to offer. I hope to make a few photos in the process.

Here are a few others from the day.

Semester has closed, but I don’t feel finished with my photo project on the winningest freestyle motocrosser in history.

Because of other projects, I never was able to travel with him to a competition. 

But I did get several good opportunities to show him on and off the track. I’m happy with what I have so far, but it’s definitely incomplete.

Here a few others, if you’re interested.

The Non is awesome. Orchestras are awesome.

Together, they were perfect. I hope you were there. If not, “on.” will have a couple of videos up soon.

More photos here.

The Iowa tribe released an eagle into the wild for Earth Day south of Perkins, Okla. on Thursday.

Bald eagles are awesome.

Everything about them.

Native Americans are cool, too.

I took photos of several different people who blessed the eagle before it was released. And afterward when asking for their names, they offered their life story and connection to every other person in attendance.

I like tightly-knit groups of people. The Iowa tribe is definitely that.

And very in touch with nature. The lady bokeh’d above is from the eagle clan, which she said means she is related to the eagle.

Another lady told me that the eagle is close to their god because eagles soar high and god is high.

For more photos, go here.

In honor of the NFL draft, here’s a photo I took recently of a few guys who have hope of getting taken in the late rounds.

All three of these guys always stuck out to me at games, even when on the sidelines.

Lucien has an awesome beard and tackles harder than anyone in recent memory at OSU.

Swanson has sweet hair and is almost always smiling.

And Keith always looks tough, often mean mugging.

More photos here.