Funny story for a funny picture… After taking this photo and writing down all the caption information, I proceed to take it back to the office to upload in our system. After we finish working up the photo, our workflow requires us to print out a black and white copy and place it in the corresponding edition’s bin. Since we have 23 newspapers, this keeps things a bit more organized.

As I’m putting the photo of Sam and several other pictures from the Worthington Art Festival into the Worthington bin, I see another staffer’s picture that catches my eye. It was a shot of Sam at the Worthington bike race from the day before! Talk about random! Never once did Sam’s owners mention he had just been photographed by someone from my same paper. After calling the other photographer to share the story (and getting a pretty big laugh out of the whole ordeal), we decided to use my photo of Sam looking at the bird photos due to the irony of the situation.

CAPTION:
Sam the retired 27-year-old blue and gold macaw from the now-defunct Kahiki Restaurant admires David and Joanne Kelch’s bird photography while being pushed around the Worthington Art Festival by his owners Jim Rush and Beth Mitchell, not pictured, on June 21. Sam, who worked at the Kahiki from 1982 until it closed in 2000, was admired by festival goers young and old throughout the morning.