week 2's stories are posted. i worked on a video of a local church's drum corp and stills from a wheelchair yard sale.

This was my first attempt at video and I'm happy with the results. I had some great coaching from Andre Jones. I learned a ton about what to do next time. So much to learn, so little time left. We're already reporting on our final stories from the beat and I'm contemplating stowing away in the Poynter building so I don't have to leave.

exhausting and exhilarating.

our first stories published on www.pointssouth.net

check 'em out.

from the tour o' the neighborhood on day 2...










this kid walked it out for us in his pottery studio. rad.

long first week at poynter. i'm still figuring out the blogging policy here, so forgive the long silences.

the first 5 days felt like 5 weeks already. so much information was shoe horned into our heads in between incredible speakers and walking our beats. i cranked out a short "getting to know you" multimedia of our neighborhood that i can hopefully post here. we'll see.

my team's first project this week has been hectic. the kid's program we are profiling was closed when they said they'd be open, and open when they said they'd be closed. friday it was all supposed to come together but the program suspended classes for an all afternoon dance party. the director of the program offered to have the kids stage the class. he didn't understand my ethical opposition to it. "you a student? we do this all the time for the people working in the media." "yeah, well, not for me." after a talk with my editors and a few beers on friday night i stopped freaking out a little.

tomorrow is the last chance for this to come together in time for our first deadline. fingers and toes are crossed.

one of the reporters and i were wandering through our baking hot beat today and i spotted these kids having a small pool party. i think i remember having the exact same jungle animal print on the side of our pool when i was their age. some good summer fun never changes.







no real use for these in our beat coverage so far, but it was a nice relief to get soaked on the job.

so incredibly tired.

the drive from chicago was uneventful except for tropical storm barry. nashville was an unexpected gem. atlanta, an unexpected traffic nightmare. it rained for most of the drive on day two but as soon as we crossed the florida border the clouds parted and the sun bathed the world in eerie beauty before closing again.



every minute here thus far has been filled with people and class and newness and inspiration. i'm excited to start working the beat, but tonight i am utterly exhausted. starting next week you can see what i'm working on at www.poyntersummerfellows.org. i'm working the east o' 34th beat, so if you hear of any action in the deuces let me know.

i'm deep in crazy time right now. on top of everything else my work laptop died last week, so i've been running back to the office to file everything. ugh, exhausting. i hand in my gear today, eat a final lunch with the boys, shoot two assignments and then i'm not the intern anymore. i still have a few stories to produce, umm, tonight i guess. it is a night shift technically.

i have a few days to shoe horn all this stuff into my car and head down to FL. i'm looking at all my stuff in various states of packing and trying to eyeball the square foot storage space of my trunk. i got rid of some stuff, but acquired other stuff. and there's a whole other person i have to fit in the car this time. hmmm.

it will all work out. and as soon as i can slow down a bit i'll post some shots from the final days at the DH. *tear

canoe marathon

sunday was cold and wet and busy. i had this rad assignment to cover the 50th annual canoe marathon. it had multimedia written all over it. i tried to get another shooter to take my 12pm so i could make something with a stronger narrative, less dependent on the "official" talking. alas, i had to bust it down the race route shooting along the way then sprint to schaumburg to shoot a cycling tour in the cold pouring rain. then haul it back to the finish line to get "the end" then race up to lake zurich for a graduation.



the canoe marathon was aptly named for me too. haha. so this is what i could piece together with less than ideal time spent.



i'm new to this whole video compression thing. these shots are suffering sharpness, i'm not sure how to rectify that. if you use the minimize window feature on the direct feed at youtube it looks normal again. now to get that to display with this remote feed...hmm...

making these audio slideshows is a satisfying learning experience. every time i do it i think of other ways i could tell the story, other visual pieces to gather, audio bits that would have made it better. the same way it felt to see all the erasure marks underneath that perfectly written essay...these are leading to better and better stories.

my days over the past few weeks have been split between sports in the glorious sunshine and courtroom stalker duty. i know someone has to do it. blah, blah, blah. doesn't mean i have to like it. every short trip down there ("it will just take an hour, i promise") turns into a half a day's saga at least. my other assignments are farmed off and i'm left with hours of anticipation for 30 seconds worth of rapid fire shutter that makes me feel more like part of the problem than part of the solution.

i'm cherishing every bit of community journalism that comes my way these days.

a portrait for the newspaper's all-academic team. i wish i had piped up about making this a more cohesive series instead of the haphazard hodge-podge it has become. a few kids are farmed out to each shooter who makes either a formal portrait, or environmental thing, or candid thing. everyone's using different lens choices, has differing amounts of time to spend, so they look all over the map. this girl was a standout in her school's theater program. i brought lights but the stage lighting was drowning it out, so i decided to work with what was there. pretty straight forward i guess.



i wanted to make a studio standard prop, like a desk and have each of the kids bring props signifying their hobbies or specialties, the reasons they made the academic team. the desk would stay the same but their personalities and talents would make each picture different. oh well, maybe for the next paper i work for?

this game was played in between down pours. sadly there were no mud puddles.
keeping the ball in play.




i was on the wrong side of the gatorade for this one, but i couldn't help liking it. the ball is so perfectly falling between the two. just another reason i need to shoot from third base more often.


hit by a pitch.


i went to what is probably my last pro-baseball game for this internship. the sox were annihilated 11-1 on mother's day.

chicago day trip

i abandoned work last thursday to see the cezanne - picasso show at the art institute. i had procrastinated until the last possible moment to see it. i am shocked it is mid-may.

i went downtown early to beat traffic and had a few hours to kill before the museum's free hours kicked in. hot town, summer in the city. the fountain in millenium park was a nice break from scorched sidewalks.



it's hard to make a bad photo of the bean. shiny reflective surface, odd shapes, endless lines of people completely unaware of others as they stand in awe of the thing, and i see something new every time.





once i forgive myself for taking pictures of something so photographed (so "done" already), i just get lost in it and have fun. somehow i think this is what it feels like to paint, responding to form and moment in a half-imaginary way.



the exhibit was beautiful and packed with people.



underneath this portrait of vollard by cezanne there was a quote from the artist, "I am not dissatisfied with the shirt front.” i almost laughed out loud. i've had similar thoughts about every image i make. not that i'm anywhere close to cezanne's mastery, but it's good to know even the masters struggle with perfection. it was a pretty exquisite shirt front, by the way. hard to tell in this small image but it has a cyan opalescence to it. see it in person if you can.

i remembered a lot about the artists, tidbits about their lives, and the ideas that inspired great works. i had an amazing teacher for art history in high school. thank you janet russell. i don't remember a lick of calculus but some of the pieces we studied have become companions in life in a way. i run into them in strange places, in different times in my life. i find new things in them, new resonances, each time, but they also take me back to the other times i saw them, the first time i saw them.

the galleries were hot and packed but for the most part silent. it's amazing how quiet a few hundred people can be. a few cell phones pierced the hush drawing groans and dirty looks.

most people were taking the audio tour. somehow having a black headset on makes you oblivious to others and excused for trespasses against social graces. no apologies for stepped on feet or walking right in front of you. i'm in an alternate world because i'm listening!

the best example of this was an old man moving slowly across the floor with a cane in hand and headset blasting. with each step he let out loud farts, each one with it's own extended gassy coda. for those too cheap to buy the audio tour, myself and other hipster-student types, it was like a car-wreck in the gallery, a really funny, yet totally embarrassing car-wreck. we all watched the guy walk to the other room, unable to stop staring, sure that at any moment he would realize, or other people would realize, or there would be some recognition of this amazing display of flatulence. but there was nothing. the audio headset crowd just moved along in his farty wake.

the rest of us waited for the air to clear, tried not to laugh, and then followed.

there was more to the show. more than i can write about. scenes of paris and being moved to tears. thankful for the same anonymity afforded the farting guy. the space to feel in a crowded public place without needing to flee.

a busy week with a swollen face. i can open my mouth about an inch right now. i've found a new appreciation for quesadillas, soup, and finely cut corn dogs.

got the dredded "village board meeting" assignment. these brownie scouts made the night. eight-year-olds are too wiggly to not have some shenanigans. sure beats a vote on a new ordinance.



i'm tired of the no-strobe rule with the IHSA. this is 1600iso on a D2h which is more commonly known as granola-grain. i had to post a photo from this though. i played volleyball for seven years, a setter for most of them. as i watched these guys warm up at the net i got goosebumps every time there was a nice set with soft hands that hovered perfectly off the net, or when a body became perfectly aligned with forward motion and full-range swing for an awesome kill. my body still remembers what that can feel like.



i had to stalk motorola stockholders, carl icahn, and ed zander as they met for the annual stockholders meeting. i've seen jesse jackson show up to some weird things, but i would've never expected him here. the rainbow coalition is a stockholder. who knew?



this was a "living rosary" service where 60 people each represented a bead on a rosary and lit candles, one by one, as they recited the appropriate prayer.



and then cinco de mayo. i ran into that dance troupe i photographed a few months back at a local fiesta in the park. still very fun to shoot. and i wasn't surprised when they ran everything in b&w. it just seems to be the aesthetic of the DH.