Month 6: Newspaper Spreads – Highlighted Photos by Melina Pizano, Orange County Register – Aug. 2013

Although I’ve began photographing community news recently, instead of showing my normal top 10 photos, I thought I’d show my favorite Orange County Register and community newspaper spreads that my photos have been included in. A big thanks to our designers at the OCR who do such a great job with the design.

The spreads start off with a story that I pitched when I started about a Westminster basketball team who had pink ribbons sewn into their jerseys in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness, which made them our very first team of the week. Next up was an OC Varsity baseball cover photo where the team, Kennedy, came back to win the game in the 7th/last inning after being down 11 runs at the top of the 5th. The spreads continue on with an HALO’s annual Dance for Autism performance, views of the Balboa Bay Club’s 65th anniversary celebration, the U.S. Open Badminton Championships, actor John Walcutt’s portraits for his upcoming plays in OC, the beautiful Irvine Lake, colorful Balboa Art, and (second to last) an Orange County Fair five senses idea that I pitched and photographed.

More recently is the last spread, which came unexpected and is my first cover photo on the Orange County Register. The intent was to show the existing hotels behind the current hotel construction so it was somewhat limited to where I could shoot from. I tried photographing the construction from an existing hotel’s fifth-floor hallway, but there was a lot of tree blockage. I found the better vantage point was to climb a light pole – which is what I did to get the printed photo.

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