Sikeston, MO

We travel year round, which is great if you're visiting a town in the summer, spring or fall. The weather is generally nice and there is plenty of foliage to be found.

But winter is a totally different story.

I had an assignment to photograph this old band stand in one of the parks in downtown Sikeston. I did a couple of drive-bys and knew it was going to be a challenge to photograph. The trees were all bare and the sky was cloudy, which wasn't going to make for an appealing picture.

I decided to shoot this as the sun was going down but soon realized this wasn't the best part of town to be photographing at night with about $5000 in camera equipment. My next option was to shoot at sun up, which meant getting up early. And I'm not a morning person.

I got to the park about an hour before sunrise and set up a couple of 580ex stobes with omnibounces and triggered them with pocket wizards. I put my camera on a tripod and waited. I took this about 15 minutes before sunrise.

Much better than the alternative.

If you're ever in Sikeston, you have to eat dinner at Lambert's. It features all the good food your grandmother used make after church on Sundays: chicken and dumplings, fried chicken, black-eyed peas and fried okra to name a few. 

Their claim to fame though is their "throwed rolls."

Story has it, back in 1976 and impatient customer couldn't wait for the server to bring him his roll. He screamed across the restaurant "Throw the damned thing!" And they've been throwing them ever since.

I followed Jeremy Prino, one of the "throwers," around during lunch as he continued the 40-plus-year-old tradition of the "throwed roll." His accuracy was pretty good. He could hit a customer from one end of the restaurant to the other. I watched him throw about six dozen rolls, with only about a handful missing their mark.