Happy Chinese New Year (Dragon)

Reblogged from eye contact consciousness:

Gung Hay Fat Choy! Today Chinatown Chicago celebrated the start of a new year. According to their calendar this is the year of the dragon. As I was shooting today I actually began to feel terribly frustrated. How to make a new image of a traditional, annual display? And then I began to reflect on my inclination towards masses of color, painterly notions of late. Pair this with an inclination to high contrast…and the whole thing made me wonder about how to pair what I started the day thinking were …

Louisville to Chicago Midway, 11/30/11

Reblogged from Cornfield Meet:

Last fall, I flew from Louisville, Ky. to Chicago Midway for a business trip. It was a cloudless flight, but it had snowed north of Indianapolis, so we were treated to a very cool view of the transitioning landscape below as it went from patchwork green to sun-glare reflections and powder white. They’re not the best photos, being from the cell phone and dealing with the sun and the reflections and all, but I really like the way several of them came out, and I’m always kind of enthralled by the way hills …

this is a tight picture.

Chicago biking forecast

It doesn’t get much better than this. Unless it’s winter. And you’re into it. Two weeks a year, is my bet, Chicago has weather this pleasant. Sunny fall days and windbreaker nights. I mean, this is August when it could, and maybe should be, sweltering. If I ride early enough, I can make it to work without really sweating. A surprise sprinkle would really round it out. I’ll try to take and post some new pictures using Flock, which I learned about this weekend from Walter Mossberg‘s piece in Saturday’s Chicago Sun-Times. I was able to organize several emails accounts, Facebook, WordPress, flickr, and YouTube, I think, together. It could help in developing a solid workflow that takes into account both my Mac and PC, prepares pictures for archives and smaller samples for those multiple sites. I haven’t played with the news aggregators, yet. Got way distracted with Flock’s Media Bar. It’s thorough. I’m looking forward to how well it plays with C-SPAN. Not sure if it’s portable, should be. Will soon find out.

And now for the goods.

perfect weather in the Windy City

See you out there.

Bush in Beijing

While I understand the need for heads of state to attend the Olympics, watching Bush through NBC coverage had me asking questions. Perhaps he could appear to be having less fun? We are in the middle of a war(s).

This photo says a lot.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Bushbeijing olympics volleyball

Fun with Jim

ROCHESTER FIRE DEPARTMENTDeputy Chief Sam Mitrano: 279-4032HAZ-MAT: 428-6642, backup pio; Mitrano’s cell: 764-8818.

IRE Convention, Phoenix, AZ

Wow. I’m still trying to figure out how to use the picture I took from my hotel room as the header for this site. The national convention seems to be the epicenter of the most elite journalists and those aspiring to be them . I snatched up just about every piece of paper, reprint and business card I could get my hands on. If you are a reporter and want to improve your craft, I highly recommend learning a little bit about Investigative Reporters and Editors.

I was fortunate to attend the conference as a Philip L. Graham Diversity Fellow, an award for minority journalists. Part of the prize was a priceless conversation with Joe Tanfani, a Pulitzer-prize winning reporter and now investigations editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer.

In the coming days I’ll try to synthesize the tremendous amount of information I came away with and add links to resources and tips I picked up. But the best advice I could give is to visit IRE and seriously consider joining. According to outgoing executive director Brant Houston, membership “costs less than a cup of coffee a week, especially if you’re going to Starbucks.”

Enough of the pitch, hopefully you’ll see the tremendous resources the organization provides.

The Gysels

I’m still not over posting the details of my own life but since it is my job to discover and relate those of others I will try to get over it. I never really care about winning or losing. Whether it’s play or work, just being a part of the game is enough. But today was different. Today I lost at the Gysels. I am incredibly proud of my colleagues who were recognized for their absolutely stellar work. I just wish I had been one of them.

Dealing appropriately with this fact will take some time. Hopefully I’ll be over it tomorrow morning. Thursday is only 16 minutes away.