I’m heading out next week to cover the APME 2009 conference in St. Louis as a volunteer through school. Yes, that’s the Associated Press Managing Editors – and the Associated Press Picture Managers (APPM) sessions will be covered as well.

In the last few days, I’ve set up the flickr account and the flickr pool, while other team members set up the twitter feed, facebook page and wordpress blog.

Yeah, we’re everywhere.

So, while setting up all these things for the coverage of this event, I realized – HEY! I’m covering the Associated Press. I’m going to be meeting all sorts of cool people.

… I have no business cards.

:: headdesk ::

My resume and letterhead have my newest [read: originally created three years ago] logo, font and colors. But I struggled with the business card for the longest time. So today, I sat down with my trusty copy of InDesign and channeled my inner graphic designer and started concepting. Here’s the final result, which will get printed at Kinkos sometime between now and Tuesday afternoon. (I’d rather get them done professionally, but I really only need a few, and I can’t afford the rush charges on getting them done with moo.

Spiffy, eh?

Someday, they’ll match my equally spiffy website . . . that currently exists only in my head and temporary files on my server.

Maybe I’ll update it over winter break. Maybe.

I don’t know why I’m procrastinating so much today. Maybe it’s the 32 hours + of gloom and rain we’ve had here. (Although I believe it has stopped raining now, it’s still pretty gloomy.) Or perhaps it’s because I’m in the middle of reading an article for my Mass Media Seminar class that’s so over my head, I don’t know half the words it uses. See sentence example #1:

“West argues that the epistemic skepticism found in some strands of faddish deconstructive criticism and the explanatory agnosticism, or nihilism, associated with the work of descriptivist anthropologists and historians have made the “categorical mistake” of collapsing epistemological concerns of justification in philosophy into methodological concerns of explanation in social theory.” (Kincheloe, McLaren. “Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research.” p141.)

Ummm, yeah. Maybe we should look at some pictures I’ve been meaning to post instead.

An outtake from my “Interaction” project for Fundamentals. I didn’t show it because you can’t really see either face, but there’s just something I like about it. Maybe it’s the angles? Or the idea of a hairdresser being an unsung artist?

(On a unrelated note, our aging neighbor who is on constant oxygen just walked past our door, coughing and wheezing like something from another world. I worry about him sometimes.)

These are some of the single images I submitted to CPOY this year. I doubt I’ll win anything, but at least I’ve entered. Next year though, watch out. I hope to have some stellar work.

Okay. Now that I’ve been productive in my procrastination, I’m feeling like I should be productive on some school work first. But where to start . . . the paper about MPW this year? Reading more dreadfully scholarly articles? Or maybe re-writing my lit review question to actually reflect what I wanted in the first place? (I’m hoping to research agenda/image setting through a question about the White House photo office.) Or figuring out the specifics on my ethics term paper topic? (Image manipulation and where the ethical line stands, something like that.)

:: sigh ::

I agree. Let me barrel through this reading. Only a few more pages to go on this one and three more interesting (hopefully) articles after that. Then I’ll write fun papers.

Wheee!

Grad school is slowly turning my brain into mush and re-organizing the compartments where the goo gets stored for easier access to the newly important information.

Or so it feels.

For my latest Fundamentals of Photojournalism project, I’ve been feeling a bit apprehensive about shooting. Not necessarily the act of taking photos, but in finding a good place to achieve the goal of the project.

See, I live near downtown, and everyone photographs downtown. I see these hippie-looking, homeless-looking denizens hanging around outside one of the coffee shops, and I think, “I really want to photograph them. I want to know why they are hanging around all the time. I want to know the toothless guy’s story. And the pregnant girl’s story. Why are they here.”

But, as shown in our first class critique, they get photographed and interviewed all the time. I don’t want to be typical. I don’t want to be where everyone else has been. (Even if their efforts have not produced the stories I want to hear.)

The rest of downtown has this same feel. There’s so many interesting spots and people, and I feel as though I’d be selling out if I completed an assignment there. But then again, if everyone has this feeling, then no stories will come from downtown. And that would be a shame.

So, today’s assignment took me all through downtown for a second time. I thought maybe if I took my bike down, I’d stumble across something interesting, maybe something no one else thought to cover before. Nope. Just apprehension about even walking into a situation to ask that tortuous question, “Can I take your picture?”

And then I remembered the animal rescue just a few blocks from my house.

Bingo! Something clicked as I walked up and I felt like myself again, able to put myself into the situation I needed for my project. The many volunteers were quite welcoming and let me hang around for about an hour or so. I got fantastic information, took a bunch of photos (some perfect for my project), and even heard some interesting ideas to possibly pursue for my final project.

Moments like these are rare. I need to remember that not every assignment will be easy to find, and not to give up until I get what I need. For every time I worry that maybe this project will fail, I need to get out and try again.

Because I can do this.

The photojournalism department sponsored a picnic for staff and students tonight out at a local park, Stephens Lake Park. The weather couldn’t have been better – we were originally forecast with 40% thunderstorms and ended up with a cloudless sky all night long.

It was nice to meet some of the other photo-j students, although it’s a little intimidating that there’s so many of them and so few of us new kids. I’m sure by the end of this semester, that feeling will dissipate.

The semester so far is going well. My brain hurts, but that’s to be expected. There’s a ton of information being crammed in there. Thankfully, as I explained to my adviser today, it’s all things I’m interested in, so it’s slowly finding places to sort out and settle into. Lots and lots of readings, and a ton of writing to match.

But every day, when I go to bed, I think about where I’ve been and where I am and where I’m heading, and I’m undoubtedly happy with my decision to come here for school. It was the right time, and it’s the right place. I miss DC terribly, but I know it – and many of my friends – will be waiting for me at the end.

Now to remember how to write academically and not just newsworthy.

:: think! ::

(Also, for you photo-nerds out there – check out the EXIF data on my file. I hand-held that baby at 1/5 of a second. The +.50 exposure was done in post to give it a little more detail.)

After long wait, the tomato and pepper festival story is now online (and hopefully in the paper, too)! A photo of the hard copy will be updated here.

MU’s Bradford Research Center to host annual Tomato Festival

Why the title of this post, though?

Byebye shoes.

Note to self: do not go tromping around in a tomato patch after a few days of rain. You will get stuck in the mud, and you will destroy your shoes.  (At least I didn’t kill my sneakers!)

Quick update here, since Scott is busy putting together a chair. (Yes, he’s here. More to come on that later.)

In the last post, I mentioned some video and audio work. Posted today and linked here for everyone’s viewing pleasure is the multimedia piece Jarrad put together for the website. He did the editing and stills, and I shot the video. Yes, even the moment where the play comes directly at me. There’s nothing like watching two giant football players come flying at you while looking through a screen.

Watch the video here!

Jarrad did a great job in a short time period, and I’m super excited that I could be a part of this project. I can’t wait until I get to do it again!

I let the best get to me today, and I totally missed out on a good opportunity for a story tonight. I should have called earlier in the day to talk with a PR person, but I got sidetracked on another story I’m working on and it totally slipped my mind. By the time I called, it was too late.

The same event is happening tomorrow morning, so I have a chance to redeem myself. I just have to make sure to get a chance to call the right person in between orientation sessions. Our journalism school orientation is tomorrow, but thankfully only until 10:30am. The [tentative] plan is to head over to the event after the orientation’s over. I don’t know if I can miss the budget meeting, but we’ll see. I would really like to get it right the second time around.

This whole thing today really put me in a funk. I made poor decisions, and have now spent 95% of my evening sitting on my couch. Granted, I played my guitar for an hour – which is something I have not done in a long time – but still, I’ve been sitting in the same damn spot all night.

There’s no other chair to sit in yet. It’s in pieces in the spare bedroom. I don’t know how to put it together. Only Scott knows.

While I was sitting here earlier, I took a look over at his bike in the corner. Sadness came again, thankfully not quite as bad as when I hung up his shirts. We realized yesterday that we’re just barely making it through these two weeks. There’s no way we could have done this long distance for two years.

At least I know we made the right decision in this move together.

Yesterday, my classmate Maggie and I went to the State Fair in Sedalia, MO in search of a story. We really lucked out sticking with the pig competition, and met two amazing Boone County high school kids. But we were even luckier than that – one had just won the Grand Champion title.

We did all the reporting, research, interviewing, brainstorming, and draft writing together. She wrote the majority of the words, and I worked on photos to submit. Together, we put together a small, but strong package that was published on the Missourian website today, and ran in the print edition, too. I think we made an awesome team.

*****

We saw this little piggy laying (lying? Where’s my AP Stylebook?) with his buddy, butt to butt, in their pen. Maggie noticed that his little tongue was sticking out and we had to get photos. I went ahead and submitted this to Cute Overload, too. They sure like animals with tongues!

After a long and studious week, my classmates and I went out to Cooper’s Landing to see our professor, John Schneller, play some folk music with his band. It was an awesome evening, with fantastic weather, great Thai food, fun music and good company.

Which Wich, a yummy sandwich shop

I find it rather amazing that a group of thirty people can be given the same set of information, the same parameters, and manage to write thirty different stories without anyone writing exactly the same words.

Boot camp is going well. Last night, I stayed up until 2am with my homework assignment partner, Kristen, while we finished up our profile stories. We were to interview each other, and then write a creative profile, touching on a telling story. And we found it rather funny that two photo students ended up writing together. I love the story she wrote about me and the angle she took, and I happen to like the one I wrote about her, too. If it hadn’t been so late, I may have reworked the beginning, but I was cross-eyed.

Kind of how I feel now.

Tonight’s assignment was not quite as difficult as I thought originally. We had a “lunch work” assignment, which I managed to bomb. Writing news leads from a small set of information is really hard when A. you’ve never done it before, and B. well, you’re just clueless. But listening to what everyone else wrote helped me for tonight’s piece, and that makes me happy. I’m understanding the concepts, it’s just taking a little bit of practice.

I haven’t gotten any feedback yet on these writing bits, so I’m not linking to them yet. But after I hear if I got it or if I’m totally missing the point, I’ll see about putting up links for you to see.

Until then, I think I should get a bit more sleep. I think I’m rambling.

Yeah, sleep.