The pain of journalism

This is an unadulterated, unedited photograph. It may look crappy: blurry focus, no face for the Northwestern student, dark. I could go on. I posted this photograph because it tells the story of my night.

Assigned to cover the Mens Basketball game against Indiana University, I hopped on the shuttle to Ryan Field and stepped on the court just in time for the game. But wait, I was sitting on the wrong side of the court. I quickly walk myself over to Northwestern's side of the court and settle myself between a Big Ten Network cameraman and a Chicago Tribune photographer. It was going to be a good night (come to think of it, the incident I am about to describe did not make it a horrible night. It made the night more memorable). I chatted with the Chicago Tribune photographer, and even conversed with an Associated Press photographer in the second half, but that is getting ahead of myself. I am taking pictures, nothing unusual. Freshman Ivan Peljusic comes down the court and pulls a dunk. Or at least, what I thought was a dunk, because the next thing I know, Indiana's #44 tackled me. I fall back. My camera hits the floor. I do this faux-somersault, all in a blink of an eye. Next thing I know, #44 and his fellow teammates are offering me a hand and pulling me up off the ground. The Northwestern crowd bursts into a cheer, yelling things about how this is what North By Northwestern goes through and how the camera lady is a beast.

That was the highlight of my night. We ended up winning 77 - 75 and I got some half-decent shots. I may have to send my d90 in for repair though. After the hit, my Nikon started acting up. The shutter started closing randomly, the autofocus would stop working...I am worried, but I think I could pull it off as a camera malfunction. God, I hope so.

Apologies for not updating for the past week. My winter quarter took a turn for the worse and I have been running from one class to the next and from meeting to meeting.

I promise you, I will try to blog in a timely fashion. Me and my bruises.

The Kindness Connection

"Everyone can be great. Because everyone can serve," Martin Luther King Jr. said, as quoted by The Kindness Connection on its website. As such, I felt it was only appropriate for me to do my share on my day off. Along with a few of my fellow Rotaract members, I volunteered at The Kindness Connection's Martin Luther King Jr. Day event in Winnetka, Ill.

Children, parents and seniors helped The Kindness Connection make handmade crafts benefiting organizations such as homeless shelters, The Hadley School for the Blind, Hines VA Hospital and the Special Olympics. While the children busy decorating place mats and making door hangers may not have entirely understood the causes, the simple knowledge that service is appropriate for all ages and that they, as children, can help others is an early way to inspire philanthropy. Plus, the event was successful. Children hopped from table to table, wanting to make picture frames, decorate wooden toys and draw on place mats. More than 100 volunteers came, which tripled the average number of participants at their past events, according to the organization's director of marketing Robyn Hall.

I could not think of a better way to spend my day off than to hang out with children and give back to the community.

Early morning erg

The sky was still dark. It could of been 10 p.m. for all I knew. The morning air bit, numbing any inch of skin that left uncovered. As I walked the length of Sheridan Road, I asked myself, "Why? Why did I choose to wake up at this unearthly hour?" To shoot Northwestern Crew practice, of course. Knowing that I had no other time in my day to finish my journalism assignment, waking up early sounded like the best option. The barely-there morning light offered some great photography opportunities though.

I wish it was 60 degrees...

Apologies for not keeping up with my blogging resolutions. After coming back to college, the work began piling up and is now way over my head, so I am trying to find a way to stay afloat. Honestly? I have not read for leisure yet, so there goes another resolution. Hopefully once the meetings stop, I get back on top of my work and fend off this cold, I will be back on track.

When I was younger, my family would take lengthy family trips. We took road trips to Oregon, Alaska, Las Vegas, Hawaii. The list goes on. But, as my brother and I became increasingly busier with schoolwork and schedules started conflicting, trips became shorter and shorter. So when we all find a break in our lives, my mother likes to take small day vacations...and hello, San Francisco.

The light breeze on the beach hardly compared to the below-zero degree chill waiting for me in Evanston, Ill. People were out and about, making campfires, playing with sand and pails, and walking alongside the shore.



I don't care what others say, graffiti is an art form.




When my brother hits the beaches, his eyes immediately fall to the ground as he searches for smooth, flat rocks that he can skip across the water. As I helped him look around for these tiny skipping rocks, this man bent down to sift through the sand too. I am not sure what he was looking for, but I like the little red flower pinned to his jacket.



Seagulls scare me. Especially when they are flying up in the air in flocks, but this girl was having a blast. Her mother handed her pieces of bread and she would twirl around in circles, fling the bread at the birds, and occasionally rush towards them, making the little buggers take flight.







Skipping rocks.

Spilt words

I don't know why I have such an affinity for hearts and such. I can be such a hopeless romantic sometimes. I took these photos during the same San Francisco trip with Natalie, Chiraag and Neil. We were walking around City Lights Books on Columbus Avenue where they have some type of art installation of overturned books hanging across street lights. The set-up looked curious and after walking beneath them and looking up, I looked down to find words engraved in the cement under them. Very clever. I know the woman's leg is not in focus, but I still like the photograph regardless. In addition to this one corner, some person or organization had painted words all over the district. To no surprise, the one that stood out to me? "One Love."

Lunchbox

Remember the sunglasses on the pipe? I find a similar innocence in this little lunchbox on top of a garbage can in San Francisco's Mission District. I always wonder what the story is behind things like this. Did a little child lose his lunchbox? Or did he put it down to play in the gated play area? Or, did he finish eating and run off in a hurry? How the most random things can spur my curiosity.

Graffiti

In Balmy Alley, this particular part of a mural caught my eye. I cannot explain exactly why, but it did. Maybe it is the carefree, happy expression on her face that seems so uninhibited and genuine. Or the lines and geometric shapes that the artist used to create the figure. Or maybe, because I am a sucker for hearts, it is that small heart that ties the entire mural together.

12/23: Balmy Alley, panaderias and cafes

During break, I admitted to my friends a disconcerting feeling that had me dreading going back to school: I was not looking forward to my journalism classes. It seems shameful, I know. As a journalism major, I would imagine that I would always be at the edge of my seat, ready to jump at any opportunity I had. To some extent, I am excited and open to opportunities, but four years of high school yearbook and newspaper taught me that my passion and love of journalism does have a bittersweet tint that mainly comes from overwhelming stress.

Yet, my dread and lack of excitement lifted the minute I sat down for my first journalism class of winter quarter. Oddly enough (or not-so oddly enough), the minute I step into these journalism classes or hear of any exciting opportunities, I feel my heart lift because I am genuinely interested in my field of study. It seems too simple to be true. Perhaps that is where the stress and overwhelming workloads come in. Regardless, I'll face it head-on because, until proven otherwise, this is what I want to do.

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On to photographs taken from my winter break. Before Christmas, I got a chance to hang out with a few dear friends of mine. Of course, I had to go to San Francisco with Natalie. After all, she is my excursion buddy. Chiraag and Neil tagged alone and I am glad they did. Natalie and I showed them around the Mission District, walked through the Financial District and explored the city our way.



Balmy Alley. We found new murals we did not see last time we went to San Francisco, which I find interesting. These murals are surely time-consuming and are gorgeous art pieces in themselves that I wonder what compels someone to paint over them.









I love this photograph of Natalie. We were walking close to a gated children's park and Chiraag decided to walk in so that Natalie could take photographs for her photography final. We all just cracked up and started laughing as Chiraag fell into a pile of leaves.





I just love this picture of Neil. There is just something about it that says something about his character. He can be such a bottle of fun, yet when he used to stand in front of the entire student body during weekly Monday meetings, this is how he seemed.

On the spot

I have thousands of things I want to say, but clearly no time to say it all as it is 11:15 p.m. PST, I am not done packing, and my flight leaves in less than seven hours.

There will be an update later with photographs from Friday, but all I wanted to say is that I love hanging out with groups of people that I feel comfortable enough to make a fool of myself with. Moments from the day? Camping out in the audio books section of Borders in matching yellow Threadless T-shirts, making fools of ourselves. Almost dying of laughter from naming Isaac's future children, all of whom will end up in therapy for having traumatizing childhoods filled with mocking and teasing. Packing six people comfortably (loosely used) into Richie's truck and simultaneously breaking out into song, singing at the top of our lungs. Curling up on the tiny beige ottoman, finally settling down from a day of hanging out to have some real talk, in Heidi's living room as my other two friends have decided to sprawl across the two- and three-seater.

I had a list of things I wanted to do back home before I head back to my other home. While I did not necessarily hit all the "to-do's," I would say break was well-spent.

Time to go back, hit the books and brave the cold.

- Update -









Missing two lovely girls in these photos, but it will do.

Dark chocolate cupcakes

Happy New Year, everyone. For those of you who see this as the perfect time to kick off some drastic changes, may things work out for you. For me? Well, I am just hoping for some fun times and more memories to tuck into my back pocket.

I baked these dark chocolate cupcakes with my brother the second night I was home. Sprinkles sells these cupcake mixes that customers can take home in attempts to make their delicious cupcakes straight from the kitchen. What I learned? While these cupcakes were delicious, they hardly lived up to in-store Sprinkles cupcakes.





I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's Blink last night and I highly recommend it. His ideas about the powering of thinking without thinking are just a reminder of how equally important gut feelings and careful analysis are. Next on my list? Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Outliers.