Meet Independence Day

I'm finally back to a blogging mindset, with a ton of photos from the summer to share. Here are a few shots from some assignments, which included a patriotic band, a patriotic orchestra and a very patriotic dentist with a 10-foot replica Statue of Liberty.

Nostalgia Friday: ISGC

For the next week, I will be focusing entirely on the research and writing of my research proposal, the final paper for my qualitative research methods class. Today, I've been looking through Robert D. Putnam's "Bowling Alone," which talks about how Americans are gradually becoming more disconnected from one another and the implications this has. The primary theoretical basis of the book deals with a concept called "social capital." Boiled way down, social capital is what you and a group reap from you being part of a group and the group helps the individual socialize.

This has me thinking about my choir back in Boston, the Inner Strength Gospel Choir at Boston University. Not only because my Masters project was inspired by my time with the choir, but also because the choir is the source of a lot of many people's social capital. Neither the choir nor its members are the same with the other lacking. This becomes even more apparent during "Tour," when the choir goes on the road to Baltimore or Detroit or Oakland to sing and do a service project or two and grow closer to one another.

I only went on one tour in my tenure with the choir, to Baltimore in the Spring of 2007. I roomed with my already good friend Paloma and we both got sick on the day that half the choir decided to fall ill. We spent the day in our room, being crabby, snot-filled messes, but in seeing each other at our worst, we actually grew closer (and always have something to laugh about).

This shot, which has always been my favorite from the trip, is from the day after we were sick (everyone who had been ill (flu, food poisoning) miraculously recovered), early in the morning as Paloma ironed her skirt in preparation for the first of two concerts that day. That Sunday was joy-filled - full of smiles and song - and our evening concert was definitely the best of the tour. We bonded as a choir and as friends; the semester-end concert two months later still sustained the close-knit energy sparked on tour.

Meet Danielle

Danielle is a senior in high school who is an avid dancer and who also has diabetes. Sometimes, she dances to lower her blood sugar, but at times the fatigue brought on by the disease keeps her on the sidelines. Despite this, she still dances on an elite level and is part of a nationally recognized dance team.

Meet the view from the Cherry Street Garage

I came out of an assignment last Saturday evening to a sky full of magnificent clouds and the setting sun. After running back to my apartment to grab an extra lens, I barely made it to the top of the parking garage at 10th and Cherry to try to get some shots. I didn't get the best of the light on camera, but I still got to see it and enjoy it. Turns out I wasn't the only person enjoying the view. On a nearby garage, a couple alternated between watching the clouds float away and slow-dancing. I think this first shot is cute, though it may touch on being a bit stalkerish...but I still like it.




[ contrast was boosted on this photo ]

Meet some contest results

I finally entered the SportsShooter Week's Work Student Contest for the month of May and won second place! Check it out:

http://www.sportsshooter.com/student_portfolio/index_new.html

Meet the Show-Me State Senior Games

I shot a few events of the Show-Me State Senior Games a few weekends ago, including darts (which was set up in a hallway and didn't really work on a set schedule, plus it was tough to get a good shot without putting my eyes in harm's way) and 3-3 basketball. There was only one women's team, so they automatically won gold, but they managed to schedule a few games with some men's teams. There was good camaraderie between the two teams and I like how I caught that in the third photo. The woman was joking that she was holding his jersey to make sure the guy wouldn't cheat, which I found delightfully reminiscent of elementary school.









[ Did someone get caught looking? ]

Meet "Skull School"

I needed to find an enterprise story for the Missourian the other day, so I called a friend I met through an assignment for my Fundamentals class and followed him around while he gave kids a tour of the Natural Resources Building. I had a tough time working the situation, but I liked the faces in first one and the light in the second one.

Meet Max

Though I have a lot of experience as a photographer, I don't have a lot of experience as a journalist, particularly in a daily newspaper setting. The coolest thing about this summer so far is meeting different people with really cool stories. I like the challenge of trying to show their stories and their "coolness" - or, more clearly said, the "so what" factor - when doing my job. This guy, Max, is a lawyer and a quadriplegic who gets around town on his own, but, because of the poor construction and upkeep of many sidewalks, is forced to use the streets in his travels. "I am forced out of necessity, not convenience, to do this," he said. Watching him do his regular routines on one of the busiest streets in town really freaked me out and showed me what his daily life is like. Max would rather navigate through traffic than risk toppling his wheelchair over on the steep sidewalk cuts, narrow sidewalks and poorly groomed curbs. I was so moved by what he has to go through that I don't think I did an exceptionally good job photographing it, but I still hope that my photos and the story being written will help spur some change to make things safer for Max.

Meet the past...

I shot a story last week about a media recycling program and they had massive piles of outdated technology and storage devices around the workspace just waiting to be obliterated in the granulator and resold to manufacturers who recycle plastic.



The rapid turnover of storage media in technology makes me feel old.

Meet Jodie & the city of Chicago

Last weekend, I took a long but cheap bus ride up to Chicago to see it for the first time and to see my good friend Jodie for the first time in a year. I am a big fan of the Windy City and could definitely see myself living there. It helped a lot that the weather was absolutely perfect.









We roamed around a street fair both of the days I was there and, genius photographer that I am, did not have my camera with me for the more entertaining day of the two. Worst case scenario, I chuck it all and dance my cares away:

Meet Dr. Edward Adelstein

I photographed the medical examiner for Boone and Callaway counties for VOX magazine and came up with some pretty cool photos. Dr. Adelstein is a cool guy with a warped but entertaining sense of humor (which, really, is to be expected after 18 years in the biz.



If you're interested in the article, you can find it here: http://www.voxmagazine.com/stories/2008/06/19/hands-and-human-body/ (The online photo play is...not so good (but if you can get your hands on a hard copy, that looks pretty awesome).)

Meet some honest emotions...

I never got to post shots from my best rehearsal with the choir because of the looming final project deadline. They had a really emotional practice the last time I stayed for the full time and some of my favorite shots from the whole project came from that day. Regrettably, I admit that I shied away from what could have been some really stellar shots because I was a bit uncomfortable staring that much raw emotion right back in the face. But I'm working on it.

This first one especially embodies - to me, at least - what gospel choir really feels like...

Meet life in Mid-Missouri...

I am back in action (after a much-needed bout of inaction) both as a photographer and as a blogger. This summer, I am taking a few classes at Mizzou, including Staff Photojournalism, where I work as a staffer at the Columbia Missourian (www.columbiamissourian.com). It's probably the most perfect time for me to take the (required) class because there are absolutely no official athletic events going on, so I will be forced to shoot features and portraits and news. Below is a pile of my first two weeks' photo highlights. Enjoy!

Wednesday, May 28

First day on the job and we have spot news - I am quite the lucky photographer, especially because spot news doesn't really happen in this quaint town. There was a bank robbery nearby, which I covered by bike (more detail on that fun can be found at fotofobe.blogspot.com).

The suspect ditched a bag of cash and a hat with hair attached in a bush close to the bank and was apprehended a few blocks from the bank. The suspect, who was from Florida, was not terribly smart, as the suspect robbed a bank approximately 6 blocks away from the city's police station.





It was a big day for the Columbia Police Department and nearly everyone seemed to show up at some point in the robbery's timeline. I am used to Boston cops and was fairly timid in my photography (plus, I was dragging my bike around with me) - I thought this photo went well with my fear of authority figures.



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Thursday, May 29

I enterprised both Wednesday and Thursday, but I don't have the Wednesday photos with me yet. Thursday, I was supposed to photograph some retirees playing Wii Bowling, but the event was cancelled due to lack of participation. I rode my bike around Stephen's Lake for a bit and found these kids fishing with their grandfather. I spent about an hour with them (regrettably, without sunscreen - the farmer's tan is in full effect on this photographer) and got some cool shots. I was chatting with the grandfather and we decided that our activities - fishing and photographer - were remarkably similar. Both required extreme patience, some strategy, a bit of luck and the award-winners were few and far between.







(Vignettes seemed appropriate, because the whole situation reminded me of moments in my own childhood.)

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Saturday, May 31

We're required to work two Saturdays over the course of the summer and I signed up for the first one so I could get one out of the way right off the bat. It was a long day - the rummage sale started at 6 a.m. and we were on-scene at 5:30 a.m. In the future, I need to do a better job of pretending to be awake and alert so I can get some better shots. I got a bit of a break until the carnival, but almost missed it. I was kind of dragging my feet in going (it was a day-long thing) until my obsession with local doppler radar pointed out that the event was about to fall victim to an intense thunderstorm. The carnival was only one block over and I shot for about 10 minutes before the fat raindrops started to fall. Later that evening, I shot a high school graduation, which proved surprisingly frustrating because I had to stay up high with the parents. I really liked the first shot here, with the two "tardy" boys running in to line up, but we couldn't run it because (1) the guy on the left is looking right at me and giving me a thumbs-up and (2) none of the teachers I found knew either of their names (it was a class of 551, so...that's understood). But that's why we have blogs these days! Also, several episodes of graduate volleyball broke out - I got an okay shot of that.













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Wednesday, June 4

Yesterday was a very typical day in the newspaper world. I covered the "State of the City" address, which was painfully boring and visually gross (TV cameras blocking everything, TV lighting casting shadows, etc), so I had to be creative and ultimately, had to keep myself entertained for the duration of the speech. The upshot, however, is that the media crowd in Columbia, Missouri, is significantly smaller than that of Boston, Massachusetts. Go figure. After that, I went to Stephen's College to do a portrait of the president, Wendy Libby. She was nice and easy to chat with and, it turns out, a fellow New Englander (Brooklyn, NY). I liked these two shots because they are fun and we were laughing about personal neuroses (she arranges the clothing in her closet by hue, I line up books on my shelves in descending (left to right) height.