BUT I do have one complaint, there were very few traditional Lucha Libre masks and the few (ahem three) wrestlers who wore them only wore the black and white ones (yawn). So my dreams of brightly colored masked wrestlers launching themselves off the ropes of a ring located in a Mexican restaurant’s parking lot were dashed but I tried to make do with what the Photo Gods had given me.

Here are a few:

Here are a few images that I liked from the shoot:

With his hands full of luggage, USS John C. Stennis sailor William Jones carries a rose for his daughter Makenna, 4, in his teeth as he searches for his family on the pier of Naval Base Kitsap Bremerton on Friday, March 2, 2012 in Bremerton Wash. (AP Photo/Kitsap Sun, Meegan M. Reid)

Cearah Woods and Tammy Swanson await the arrival of their husbands; Sean Swanson and Joey Woods as the USS John C. Stennis approaches the dock at Naval Base Kitsap Bremerton on Friday, March 2, 2012 in Bremerton, Wash. (AP Photo/Kitsap Sun, Meegan M. Reid)
Sailor Jonathan Jewell, is greeted with a kiss by boyfriend Sean Sutton after the USS John C. Stennis returned to Naval Base Kitsap Bremerton on Friday, March 2, 2012. (MEEGAN M. REID / KITSAP SUN)

***All Photo Copyright MEEGAN M. REID/KITSAP SUN***

And without further ado (and because I really don’t have anything else to write here), I present you with my favorite photos of 2011:

I just can’t help myself. For one I get tired of lugging big cameras around every minute of my life and the iPhone and fun app gives me some great photos and fits snuggely in my pocket. And two, with all the different lens/film combinations the artistic possibilities seem endless and can give a rather boring scene a nice ambiance.

So I decided that I should do a post with my favorite ones since the number of photos on my phone is getting close to 2,000 and I better start cleaning it out as to get ready for the 2012 hipsty pics to come.

Now most people think that being on the sidelines of such a thing is the ultimate experience, and don’t get me wrong it is a lot of fun but it’s crowded with a ridiculous amount of photographers, officials , security and who knows who so my bet is that it is much more enjoyable to watch a game from the stands where you can actually see what is going on and you don’t have to elbow your way along the sidelines to get a clean shot of the action on the field.

But I digress, a good time was had, a few nice photos were made (I was honestly just happy I got anything usable being as the only football I shoot these days is high school football) and Larry and I have decided we will happily once again give up our Sunday to shoot another game or two this season.

Here are a few of my shots from the first half, being as it was our day off and we weren’t technically required to stay for the whole game since we weren’t being paid, so we only stayed for the half and booked it out of there to catch the 3:00pm boat back to Bremerton:

So, needless to say, when that rodeo weekend arrives I shoot a ridiculous amount of photos.

It also adds to the fun of all that picture taking when you get to mingle with all those handsome cowboys behind the chutes who call you “Ma’am” and “Darlin’ ” which is funny because I find being called “Ma’am” or “Darlin’ “  while I’m working to be quite offensive if I am addressed that way by anyone other than a cowboy.

Here are a few shots:

 ***ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT MEEGAN M. REID/KITSAP SUN***

Here are a few shots:

**ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT MEEGAN M. REID/KITSAP SUN***

(Then ramble on a bit about how words are just annoying and how you are refusing to post cutlines with the photos, which are really just a bunch of photos you’ve taken this summer that you shoved into the “To Blog?” folder on your desktop and you keep meaning to post them but haven’t gotten around to it, HERE)

(Close with promises of better blogging practices HERE followed by very random assortment of photos below)

Baeven H., 9, wears a rhubarb leaf on her head as she wanders around Poulsbo’s Rabb Park Youth Garden during the “Worms in Our Garden” summer camp activity. (Meegan M. Reid/Kitsap Sun)

Valentino Rankins kisses his girlfriend Tameka Lampkin prior to his departure aboard the U.S.S. John C. Stennis for a seven month deployment to the Persian Gulf on Monday, July 25, 2011. (MEEGAN M. REID/KITSAP SUN)

ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT MEEGAN M. REID/KITSAP SUN

While the whale was alive when it first washed ashore, it died shortly after, so the photos of biologists with tears in their eyes as it swam away with a wave of his tail, did not materialize.

Fact: when a “very skinny” juvenile gray whale washes ashore on your beach, Fish and Wildlife officers will tell you to poke it in the eye to determine if it is alive or dead. That’s right, the beach owner had to poke the poor whale in the eye. I like that with all these advances in technology, that the old “poke it in the eye” method of determining if things are alive or dead is still the way to go.

I admit I was tempted to give the poor thing a hug but it was covered with whale lice and let me tell you those things are huge, and you can hear them and if they are strong enough to attach themselves to whale skin well I’m assuming if they grabbed onto human skin it would hurt like a son-of-a-gun.

Because the tide was coming in, biologists had to wait until the next day to perform a necropsy (thankfully it was a cool cloudy few days or my goodness that smell would have been horrendous). Apparently biologists rarely get to do this kind of work on such a fresh body so while the whale died he will live on in their research. Part of his chin was even being sent to the Smithsonian.

Here’s hoping the next one I see is alive and swimming happily.

***ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT MEEGAN M. REID/KITSAP SUN***

Okay so the photo of the ladybug that MSNBC is currently featuring in their “Week In Pictures” contest (the photo that is currently even sitting in second place with 8835 votes) well here’s the thing… I’m really not all that thrilled with the photo.

That’s right, I said it!

***oh by the way you can visit the MSNBC “Week In Pictures” contest site here to see the other 13 chosen photos and vote for whichever you like the best…I myself voted for the kid with the toy spaceship photo because I liked that one the best***

I almost didn’t even turn it in for publication because I just wasn’t that thrilled with it and felt I could have shot it better or that it could have just been a stronger photo if there had been any other bugs around. And truth be told in the parks that I visited that was the ONLY non bee or fly that I saw in either so she/he was my only option.

It should also be noted that it was a very slow news day hence my taking of the time to wander through gardens looking for silly bugs to photograph as a “wild art”.

I admit that I have always wanted to be featured in the “Week in Pictures.” I don’t want to say it’s a prestigious thing, heck I don’t even think you get anything even if you win the top spot for the week but it does feel really nice to have editors pick your photo out of the thousands that have been moved across the various newswires for the week and decide that it along with 13 other photos deserve scrutiny and voting…even if it is just a frivolous pretty photo of a silly bug that deserves to be beaten by the true photojournalism of the current #1 photo of a starving child.

But as fellow journalist and Herald Journal alumni Adam Benson put it so eloquently on Facebook, “A glimmering, docile ladybug in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest is a superior respite from the the ubiquitous suffering and anguish we are accustomed to seeing. So go nature!”

So I guess I would first just like to thank the academy because it really is just an honor to even be nominated…

A ladybug crawls across the blooms of a plant at Blueberry Park in Bremerton, WA on Monday, July 11, 2011. (AP Photo/Kitsap Sun, Meegan M. Reid)