Tillman

A lot of times when people find out what I do, they think it is super exciting. For the most part it isn't. Last night I was talking to my grandmother, telling her how work was going. I mentioned the hearing on Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. Tillman's mother Mary, and brother Kevin were there testifying on the coverup of Pat's death. It seems that a good portion of the hearings that I have covered have been about people losing a loved one unexpectedly. Very rarely do I get to cover "exciting" things like Gonzales (see previous entry).
Anyways, the one thing that really pulled the strings in my heart was the bracelet that Kevin Tillman was wearing in honor of his brother.

Don't cry for me federal attorneys

Yesterday I got to photograph the Gonzales hearing with the Jedi Master Doug, whose genius I can only hope I can attain. To quote Beck's song "Ozzy":
[Doug] you're the man...how can I grasp your power?

This is one of the photos I took. I was just waiting for (soon not to be) Attorney General Gonzales to start crying at any moment. Considering the tears I have shed recently, I can't say that I would have blamed him. He was getting a far worse critique than I have ever received. Then again, I don't aid and abet in stripping away civil liberties.

booooook

so for my class we have to make a book. i am choosing to do my love project, aka "el salvador". previously when i printed, i used watercolor paper. this time i am using luster.
i used to make fun of denny for using luster, and going to the darkside. watercolor saturates the colors just the right way. pinks look really pink, and bright colors are just eye candy. unfortunately, watercolor only comes in 13x19. as much as i love el salvador, i am not ready to make a book that size. since i don't have a paper cutter, i am kinda s.o.l.
so i bought a package of luster, 8.5x11. i admit to succumbing to the darkside.
when my book is finished, i'll post pictures of it. the cover is truly el salvador.
btw, i need to go back there. i keep trying to make my breakfast "tipico" and i fail miserably. i mix chicken broth with the salsa, i bought crema for my beans. nothing tastes like it did down there. the coffee is close, but the rest is bland. maybe if i had a cabana boy to serve me in the morning....
i need sunshine and lots of color. i need people to say "buenos" as we pass each other on the street. washington dc is so monochromatic. i feel used up in this town.



Merecedez, the sweets seller whose products are "con amor y carinos."

journalism ethics and the va tech shootings

since i am a photojournalism student, obviously i care about ethics. if i didn't, i shouldn't be doing what i do. unfortunately, in the journalism profession, all it takes is one bad apple to make the rest look bad.
this is an interesting article about the ethics of covering such a devastating event as the virginia tech shootings. it asks the questions- does the press over cover an event to the point where we are numb to it? are journalists invasive in reporting tragedy?

"How far is too far? The gold standard for journalistic
insensitivity was established in the 1960s by an un-
named British TV reporter who was trawling for news
at a Congo airport. According to foreign correspondent
Edward Behr's 1978 memoir, the Brit walked through
the crowd of terrified Belgian colonials who were
evacuating, and shouted, 'Anyone here been raped
and speaks English?' "

i won't spoil the rest of the article for you. i think there is a very fine line when you are reporting between sensationalism and news. i tend to feel that if you are sensitive about who and what you are reporting, then you won't cross over any lines. obviously you have to have tact and respect in approaching a victim. sometimes you have to ask questions that may seem inappropriate in order to get the full story. you don't want to be the guy mentioned in the paragraph above. one point the article make is that if a tragedy such as the va tech shootings weren't over covered, then the public would feel they weren't getting enough information.
another thing that interests me, that was linked in the article, is the effect covering a tragedy has on journalists themselves. i haven't covered a tragedy, and to be honest don't look forward to the day i have to. as i mentioned, you have to be sensitive about what you are covering in order to cover it well. this means absorbing the emotions that surround the victims.

"Some researchers theorize that reporters and photo-
graphers are potential secondary victims of trauma
by the very function they perform.
'Their hearts are exposed even if they are looking
through a lens,' cautions Martin Cohen, a Florida
psychologist who has worked with journalists at the
Poynter Institute for Media Studies. `They are in-
jected with a poison, a certain kind of energy that
can affect them for a long time if they don't deal
with it. The mere exposure to trauma can be traumatic.''

apparently a lot of news services have counselors as an employee service. few journalists however will use the service thinking that it makes them cowards or unprofessional if they do. you're supposed to be stoic and face trauma with a stiff upper lip. or there is the pressure of the deadline, in which there isn't enough time to decompress and emote with someone.
i can only imagine the mood my boss is going to be in when he gets back from blacksburg. he's another person my heart goes out to in this tragedy.

what's goin on?

i got my friend glen's email/spam this morning regarding the va tech shootings. at first i didn't think it was that big of a deal. i didn't click on the link in the email, i just assumed it was some boyfriend who got angry at his girlfriend type thing.
then i get to work and my boss, steve, is headed out toward blacksburg to go photo the thing. he tells me over twenty people died. when i get in the office, my other boss, doug is giving me the details. we were glued to CNN. they play the video a student took, in which you can hear gunshots going off in the background.
what is it about this country that makes people do this sort of stuff? going postal seems to be happening on an almost weekly basis now. doug says its guns, and that eventually they'll have to ban assault rifles. i agree with him to a point, but even if you took away the gun factor, what makes people want to do this sort of stuff in the first place?
next time people give me some bs about muslim terrorists, i'll point this out to them. because it is my fellow country man that i fear more than them.

Things that make you go hmmm.....

When I was younger, this was many moons ago, there was this late night show called Arsenio Hall. Arsenio was a comic and his show was millions cooler that the Tonight Show or anyone else. In his monologue he used to do this bit, "Things that make you go hmmm." It was mainly crazy stories pulled from the news.
Anyways, today I experienced something that puzzled me. It wasn't a crazy story. It just irked me. Let me begin by first publishing an outtake from the shoot today that made me go hmmm. This pict didn't make me go hmmm. I just think it is a nice pict, and didn't fit with the subject of what I was shooting, so I didn't turn it in.

This is Senator Kerry before debating Newt Gingrich on global climate change. I don't recall seeing too many pictures of the senator smiling. He was always portrayed as a grim fellow.



This is Senator Kerry debating the Newt.



Anyways, the thing that made me go hmmm was this



The genius that is Mark Abraham says it is glare. Even though I had my lens hood on, the light of the chandelier made for some nasty glare. In other pictures it even bleeds into Senator Kerry's suit. Needless to say I had a lot of pictures that were rather lovely, but couldn't be turned in because of the glare. Mark said back in the day they used to use cardboard to elongate the lens hood to prevent this, but I can just use my hand. The problem is I didn't see the glare when I took the picture, otherwise I would have move to a better location.
Oh well.

I feel like a genius

well...almost. i fixed my printer. turns out it doesn't like the prophoto RGB profile from lightroom, so i had to convert my photos to adobe rgb. no big whoop.

For you Struthophiles

The NY times (who has brilliant assistants I hear) published this article regarding Thomas Struth. Apparently this guy is a good photographer or something according to Eggery and Colin.

i hate my printer

i am spoiled. i have an epson 2200 printer. normally i would say it is a very nice printer. normally i would be very happy. but my printer is for some reason the most finicky thing on earth. i haven't used it in a month. nothing different this time, except i decided to print with luster paper.
big mistake.
so i went to epson and downloaded the driver for the profile for luster paper. i installed it, no probs. but now everything i print, no matter what the paper type or profile selected, has a cyan tint to it and is over exposed. i had to subtract 9 cyan from the color settings and it still looks funny.
these sort of things tend to happen on a regular basis with my printer and it is really annoying. if you spend $500 for a printer it should be WYSIWYG no questions asked.
seriously, if i wanted this many problems from my printer, i'd date it.

low bloodsugar=low tolerance

so for those of you who weren't in the know, i suffered from an extreme case of food poisoning over the past couple of days. it started midnight april 3 and ended at 8pm that day. for those of you who need the math, that is 20 hours of digestive holocaust. it is literally the sickest i have ever been. it was so bad, i needed the next day just to rest/recover.
my grandfather has a feeding tube in him, and complains just how much he would love to have a simple glass of water. that simple glass of water was making my stomach do cartwheels, and last night i would have given anything to change places with him.
in fact, i still can't eat something without feeling somewhat nauseous. thus i am eating very little. as a result, i have discovered what little tolerance i have when my blood sugar is low.
i thought this evening, i would do a few things i have been meaning to do, like schoolwork and ironing. so i started on my homework, and thirty minutes into that i got frustrated for some stupid reason and gave up. so then i moved to ironing. about 20 minutes into that i felt even more poopie and gave up on that. it suddenly occured to me just how much of a pain i am without food in my stomach, and why i have such a sweet tooth. my apologies to all who have dealt with my when my blood sugar is low.
so, here are some pictures i took saturday, while at the zoo.
btw, i have no clue what to do for our final project. any suggestions?







p.s. if only getting a date for humans was as simple as marking a tree, the world would be much happier. but, i digress.

April Fools

Its still April Fools in flyover country and the west coast. I just saw this and found it quite amusing. My advice: Don't be so dumb.

Multimedia

So for this weeks core class we will be going to the washingtonpost.com. As I am sure you all know, multimedia is a big part of news on the web. The thing that I was pondering as I was browsing through their multimedia site, was just how much of this was entertainment. Is there an entertainment factor that goes into deciding what to post on their website. News has always been a form of entertainment, especially now that entertainment has become the news.
I'm glad that multimedia allows the viewers to be informed, while being entertained. If entertainment is what is required to get people to pay attention to what goes on in the world, then I am all for it. But does news have to be serious in order to be considered news? Is it still news if Bozo the Clown was on network news? Will we need Bozo to tell us the news in order for us to watch?
I think I have had enough of my ramblings. I am beginning to sound like Eggery on LSD. I think it is time for me to go to bed.