Hola

28 Ocotober 2008: OOT for the week

We are out of town down in Cancun for a week at the AAU National Convention. Tough job but someone has to do it.

After checking in on Tuesday and getting settled we decided to take a cab down to the restaurant district to check out a little nightlife. Everywhere you go there are people on the street trying to pull you into their establishments and they all want to make a deal.

It is a little slow in Cancun right now so I am not sure if they are as aggressive in the busy season. As soon as we stepped out of the cab 2-3 guys wanted to sell us tickets to Congo Bongo, some kind of a show that boasts quotes from NYT, LAT and others about how great the show is.

Forty-five dollas a ticket, but we make you a deal. Forty for the women...thirty five...but the guys are still forty-five...forty. We decline but they still hover. I am sure the show is good but not today, so we crossed the street where we were pulled in by more of the bar rip tide.

It did not take long and a buy one get one free deal got us in the door. That turned out to be the last stop of the night for us. We hung out, had some drink, had some dance and a few shots but I learned one lesson. It is best to pay as you go when drinking down here. At the end of the night the tab seemed a bit higher than we thought but we were stuck.

Ah I am rambling and do not want to go down that path. Here are a few pix from the bar.

The beers came in buckets and we used the same bucket to keep the margaritas cold we did not have to take a chance with the ice, so far so good.

From time to time everyone in the bar got in a congo line and danced out of the bar into the street and back into the bar again. After coming back into the bar everyone crammed onto the stage where the wait staff poured tequila for the patrons, no glasses needed.

With everyone dancing on the stage they shot the crowd with a can of CO2.

More tomorrow.

salute,

john

Underwater football

13 September 2008: North-wet-stern

It has been a busy month in our house. Paulette was on the road again this weekend so instead of sleeping in I went in the opposite direction. We did not have a staffer to shoot the Northwestern game so I grabbed a credential and some long glass on Friday night and figured I would polish up on my football, I just did not realize I would need a boat to shoot the game.

When I woke up Saturday it was raining and I briefly thought, "I can sleep in and use a wire photo," but I did not want to wimp out so I rolled. I gave myself 2 hours to get to the game but that was not enough, I missed the whole first quarter of the game because traffic was so bad.

With the Edens Expressway flooded all the side roads were gridlocked. When the game started I was about two miles from the stadium and traffic was still so bad it was going to take another hour to get to the game. Being the genius I am, I figured I could save some time on the side streets and my GPS would guide me right to the game. What I did not know was that half the streets in Evanston were underwater. It still took me about 25 minutes to get there and I almost washed out my car in a few puddlakes.

I had rain gear for my long glass but it rained so hard I never bothered to shoot action with my 70-200, by the time I could find the camera in all the plastic and vinyl I would have missed the play. When the action got to the goal line I just backed up as far as I could and shot it with the 400mm. No great shakes on the action I lost a lot of images because of my rain covered lens.

I worked a few rainy features of miserable looking fans and puddles but did not want to get to brave with my cameras.

This game reminded me of a season of Illini games I shot during college in the 80's. I was stringing for AP and was always the guy who stayed on the field while the staffer went in to process and transmit. Every week I shot a game and had to take my gear apart and let it sit for a couple days to dry out. That does not work so well with cameras these days.

Once again a dry set of clothes saved me for my editing shift.

-john

The family photojournalist

11 September 2008: Amira at home

At one time I thought about just doing a blog and calling it the family photojournalist since most of the photos I make these days are of family. Here are a few more.

This was our first visit to see Sue and the baby after they got out of the hospital. Sue needed a hand so she could go to the store. So this is Amira at home and her first trip to the Walmart.

Still working on the Amira blog, I created the blog but I am toning the photos.

-john

Strike three

05 September 2008: Walking the line

On this Monday Paulette was out of town with the USTA national team and I told the office if they needed any help out my way to give me a shout. Turned out the Huntley area teachers went on strike and they needed a photo for the metro section. Woohoo, a news assignment.

With the flooding in the city and a depleted suburban staff this was not a real big story and Huntley was a long way from the city but not to far from me.

The teachers were in a few different locations and our reporter was at the school district office and trying to talk to families in some of the neighborhoods. I called her and told her if she was able to talk to some of the families to give me a call and I would swing by.

So the first place I went was the high school that is out a way, surround by farmland.

When I walked up on the scene the first person that spoke with me had to tell me no one could talk to me and give me the phone number of the official spokesperson. I told them I was not writing the story and just need to get names and basic information but of course to the minority I was the evil media.

It puzzles me why some of these people wonder why media coverage seems one sided but they will not even give their names to a photographer. I did talk to several of the teachers who were very nice and I even told one of them who’s son is a journalism student that I would be happy to show his son around the newsroom when he is in Chicago.

As I was leaving the high school the same teacher approached me when I showed up yelled out to the group, “Did anyone even ask for an I.D. from that guy? How do we even know he works for a newspaper?”

I walked back and presented my id to the first person I saw.

Two days later the strike was over.

We used a pretty generic group of teachers walking with signs shot in the paper but I like these three better.

I shot a lot on long lens pix because all the wide stuff looked busy until I found a low angle with a nice puffy cloud background.

After shooting at the high school for a while I swung by the school district office and trying to get anything different I used a the reflection in a puddle to make a photo.

At the high school I recognized one of the teachers who used to coach cheer at McHenry High School when Kati was there. He was taking his turn keeping count of motorist’s opinion with notches on his sign. No response was the leader with positive reaction running a distant second.

-john

Cheerios and TV

01 September 2008: TV time

With Sue and Aran at the hospital Paulette and I stayed with Guin at her house. Guin does not watch a lot of TV but those kids shows grab her attention.

Here are a few fames of Guin enjoying her breakfast and watching TV. Later we brought her to the hospital to visit her new sister Amira who was born while we were sleeping.

-john

Hey goat, say hi to your motha for me

24 August 2008: Milwaukee Zoo

I could not resist. If you have not been following SNL your have to check out the skit Mark Walberg Talks to Animals by Andy Samberg.

Okay, back to the pix. Sue is ready to deliver the baby so we took Guin to the zoo to walk it out. Since I just don't know when to put down m camera I put in two triptychs; family and animals.

This was Guin’s first trip to the Zoo so she got to feed the goats, walk with mom and hang with mom and dad.

Here are my 3 fav animal shots.


A flamingo with a cigarette butt in it’s mouth, a bored ape and a peacock family eating popcorn.

-john

More flowers

11 August 2008: Flower power

Visiting Sue in Bartlett I was shooting some flowers when Jude popped in for a peek.

Flowers.

Jude.

Leaves munched on by Japanese beatles.

-john

Catchupalooza

01 August 2008: Lolla

It has been way too busy this summer but I see a light. I have been trying to get this blog fired back up but if it is not one thing it is another.

USTA nationals...Done. Olympics...Done. Cubs & Sox...Done. Bears...not done yet. Trib redesign...Done. Summer...Done. Bears & Blackhawks...not done. Bulls...getting started. Basement...working on it. Adoption...still waiting.

I have caught up on everything that happened over the summer so here goes.

Lollapalooza was in town at the beginning of August and I always wanted to get out there and see what that was all about. So before my editing shift I bounce out to Grant Park to help Red Eye editor Chase Daniels cover a stage and look for a few features. We also had a request in to shoot people wearing fedora hats for the At-Play section so I was looking for that in the mix.

It was smoking hot out there so I brought a change of clothes to work in since I knew I would be drenched by the time I was finished. My personal goal was to find a couple nice features but it was early and the crowds were still pretty sparse.

I shot the band Yeasayers from New Jersey on the AT&T stage. The music was fun but they were pretty typical concert photos, nothing to blog home about. Most of the crowd were there waiting to see Radiohead play one of the headline shows at night.

I ran my ass off for about 3 hours before I had to cut bait and walk back to the office and jump on the sports picture desk.

I was just starting to get warmed up but here are three okay features, no real moments but just trying to make something out of nothing. My card with hot weather features that I downloaded to a laptop at the event is still out there. I waited so long even the edits are no longer in our archive because we did not run one in the paper. If I get the images I will do a hot weather tryptich later.

After wandering though the crowds looking for some fan photos I came across a guy who lives near Grant Park and had been to every Lollapalooza framing up a show in his camera. I used a 300 and stopped down to f14 to get maximum depth of field to just make out the Lollapalooza banner on the stage behind him.

My second of this day was a fedora shot of a guy from NY another photo that I used a stage banner as my background.

Finally a shot of Yeasayer on stage. Usually you get to shoot the first two or three songs at concerts before getting the boot so you have to figure out what you want to shoot and git er done. I usually like to back off and shoot bands with longer lenses and I shot both here but this wide worked out.

A few photos were used in our web gallery and I could have stayed and shot all night, but the desk called.

Rock on!

john