Picture-less workshop? crazy.
When I arrived in Bowling, Green for the “spring” workshop Jim planned for us, I knew that I was going to be on the Multimedia Team. However what I didn’t know was that I would basically trade my camera for a mini-disc recorder and a pair of headphones that made me look like an alien.
As miserable as I was at first, watching the photo team take pictures while I got sounds, somewhere along the weekend I fell in love with audio. It offers so many details about a place or person that when combined with photographs, is incredible. But only if you do it well. So I’m officially now on a personal quest to become proficient with getting audio and taking pictures at the same time. I’ll let you know how that pans out….
When we get up the multimedia packages we produced over the weekend I’ll link to it. Thanks again to Hunter and Bret for helping out this weekend. You all rock. And thanks to Jim and Carla for setting up opportunities like this. I jokingly told Hunter that he saved my future by teaching me multimedia, but in a way its true. Newspapers require that now. Good thing I’m happily on the bandwagon.
The best laid plans…
I’ve come to realize that I will never have enough time to do everything I want to do. Or really everything I need to do. With only a week and half until Hearst picture story is due, Evarts is consuming my mind. I need to get back and finish my train story. Of course the way life works is that on the very weekend that I have planned to make the 3 hour trek back to Evarts, a really cool female boxing story with a potential national title begins unfolding. Irony…
I can’t really decide if I like all these better in black and white or color, maybe it just varies depending on the photo. I have also realized I am really into shooting boxing, it ranks among the funnest sports I’ve shot thus far.
the loose ends of Jackson
So I hadn’t posted anything from my photo story on Crystal Bruno going back to Jackson, because I was waiting for it to run in the Kernel. Well it ran, so here’s a few more from Jackson.
Crystal Bruno inspects an old classroom that suffered flood damage after its roof was ripped off in the storm.
Students survey the wreckage that used to be a dorm.
A student helps clean out a hall directors home.
Crystal Bruno looks across the damaged campus that she used to call home.
“I can’t believe that used to be my dorm. I can’t believe I used to live there.”
Honestly, I kind of miss being there. It was an amazing experience to tuck under my belt, and everyone there was so amazingly positive. It astounds me that people who have nothing were more positive and friendly than people at UK who now seem spoiled in comparison. I guess its all perspective.
Your problems always seem so big until you compare them to someone else’s. Tonight, I sit at my unbroken laptop in my dorm room that is still standing. My underwear is not strewn across the lawn and my cell phone isn’t missing. Tomorrow I can roll out of my familiar bed, stretch on the well-worn carpet of my dorm floor, and take on a new day.
There’s no telling what it will bring.
where the green grass grows.
When I was little I was terrified of college, and life after it. I didn’t understand how one could simultaneously dig themselves into mound and mounds of debt, live out on their own, and still have money to eat. While that still doesn’t completely make sense to me, it used to send my 5- year -old mind on full- stomached roller coaster rides. I always found peace in the fact that I could just find a really rich prince charming to pull me out of my mounds of debt.
As I wondered around my backyard taking pictures of my footprints with my blue plastic camera I made mental lists of jobs I wanted to have, and wondered how I would ever be able to pick one to become; a chef, a veterinarian, a fire fighter, a fashion designer, a lawyer, a writer, a photographer. It all sounded good to me. The job I favored varied on the day and my mood.
A good amount of time has passed since then, and I have decided. I picked the one thing that didn’t make me have to decide, because with photojournalism, I can see as much as I want in one day. I wake up each day, wondering what I will see, contemplating who I will meet. I love what I do, and what I aspire to do.
Every now and then I wonder what my life would be like if I had made another decision. What if I had decided to be a doctor; a job that will always be needed, will always pay well, and in some places will even pay off your college debt if you cant find prince charming to do that for you. What if I didn’t go away often, and my friends didn’t think of me as the girl who’s never around?
And then I realize thats just not me. The grass is greener on the other side, until you walk to the other side and realize its just greener because they have astro-turf. My pre-photo life sucked compared life now, no matter how stressed I am at times. Part of why I love what I do so much is the not knowing. The mystery of where you’ll be, and where I’ll end up.
I am happy, and no fear of finding a job will take that away. So for now, I will bask in the sun on my self-proclaimed green lawn with my camera in my lap.
Maybe I will get burnt out some day, flooring it down this fast paced never ending road to life after college newspapers and classes. In fact, I probably will. It happens to everyone. But thats why you have friends driving down the same road, who will stop when called, and come refill your gas tank.
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