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

Fiesta parade

July 20, 2008: Everyone loves a parade

Just another event from the summer. We took our tumblers and cheerleaders from 5 Star to march in McHenry’s Fiesta Day’s parade Sunday July 20. It is one of the bigger parades in the area and the kids had a lot of fun.

We have been in parades before but this was the first time all the parents got together and built a float.

Tumblers taped their fingers to protect them from the rough streets, cheerleaders were tossed in the air and Joe in his party hat showed off his Diablo skills as we marched the route.

John

Baby Two

September 01, 2008: Run, Run Run, stop

I have never been accused of standing in one place too long. Many moons ago as a senior in high school I managed to compete in 5 sports (cross country, gymnastics, indoor track, wrestling and outdoor track) in one year, I’m still not to sure how I pulled that off.

This summer has been no different. Between the Olympics, White Sox, Cubs, Bears, and all the departures at work. National tourneys, parades, running a website and remodeling at 5 Star. And cleaning up after the dog, helping the kids get back to college and trying to finish our basement at home I have fallen a bit behind on this blog

I have been shooting a bit over the summer and managed to squeeze a few hours of Lollapalooza in before working a couple weeks ago but most of my pictures have been of family.

It has been a run, run, run summer. Last weekend was more of the same getting up early to help build a new cheer floor at the gym before work. Monday afternoon rolled around and we took a ride up to Wisconsin to visit our new granddaughter and time stopped, what a beautiful thing!

Monday at 4:15am my stepdaughter, Suzy, and her fiancé, Aran, had their second baby, Amira Athena. We watched Guinevere the night before and after about 5 hours of working on the cheer floor we took her to see her baby sister for the first time. I edited the afternoon down to about 80 pix but here is a triptych of big sister’s first visit.

Guinevere is almost 2-years-old now and she kept saying “baby,” “touch ‘em,” “hug “em,” “kiss ‘em” and that was the first thing she did. We got Guin a big sister t-shirt and she is handling it pretty well, so far. Another of my favorite moments was when Aran and Guin were sitting on the bed with mom drinking milk shakes.

Tuesday it was back to run, run, run again. Up early to finish the cheer floor and back to work.

Next on the list…build a first year blog for Amira.

Cheers,

John