World War II veteran Dr. Quentin Smith holds a replacement congressional medal honoring the Tuskegee Airmen awarded to him during a ceremony held at City Hall in Gary, Ind., Friday, April 20, 2012. Smith, 93, fought in World War II as part of the famed 99th Fighter Squadron. Smith’s original medal was stolen when his home was burglarized last summer.

I’m a nostalgia junkie. As many of my close friends can attest, I have a very keen memory for events I’ve experienced and special people I’ve met throughout the years. In fact, part of the reason I enjoy photography so much is that, other than allowing others to see the world through my eyes, I get to freeze my life

Ginna Hoptman and Pavel Filchenkov during the senior pairs free dance of the 2013 U.S. Figure Skating Nationals at the CenturyLink Center in Omaha. A slow shutter speed of 1/10th of a second was used to create this ghostly image.

I’m not sure many other photographers raised outside cold weather climates could have successfully walked across fifty yards of glassy, slick ice without falling on their behinds. Heck, I’m not sure many would have even attempted it! Alas, there I was, on the wrong side of the rink at the 2013 U.S. Figure Skating Nationals in Omaha with only minutes to spare until the on-ice awards ceremony that I wanted to photograph began. With no time to walk back through the bowels of the arena to the correct (and carpeted) entrance onto the rink, I stepped over the wall and began my trepidatious walk towards the other photographers gathered near the center of the rink.

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(From left) The Glen Theater board chairman Vernon Smith talks with African-American Achievers Youth Corps members Joshua Perry, 16, of Merrillville, Ind., along with Gary, Ind., residents Christopher Woods Jr., 16, Ramon Luckett, 17, and Stephen Jenkins, 17, prior to a production held at the theater in Gary, Saturday, November 10, 2007. The youth corps members work shows at the newly re-opened theater, completing tasks such as ushering, cleaning, and technical jobs behind the scenes.

In keeping with a New Year’s resolution to myself, I’ve decided to prevent the dust from accumulating on my often-sedentary blog. A new feature that will help me attain this goal is something I’m going to call Rewind, where I’ll feature a shoot from my archives that I may have never shared before.

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Revelers gather in the Times Square area of New York City near the intersection of Broadway and 48th St. during New Year’s Eve celebrations, Wednesday, December 31, 2012.

Some four hours after the ball dropped on Times Square (officially bringing in 2013), the feeling has finally returned in totality to my lower extremities. Even though the jumbo-tron thermometer called out what should have been a balmy 38 degrees for this Chicago boy, a stiff breeze brought with it some discomfort to my first Times Square New Year’s Eve experience. I can’t tell if more pain came from the cold, standing for over ten hours with a near-capacity bladder, or being in more than a few packs of people pushing so hard and fast that my feet were nearly swept from under me.

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