Julio Cortez Photography

Chicago Journal:
The Associated Press
Internship

Day 45 (Wednesday, July 26)

Remember yesterday I wrote about how I had to wait for more than an hour as Danica Patrick handled some business? Well, that was all worth it. Today, I got an email from Rebecca Neil and an instant message from Kevin Martin, two of my buddies that I met in New York City while doing the SPJ Convention two years ago. They both now work at the Indianapolis Star. They both were contacting me to tell me that my photo of Danica handing out tickets to the little boys was in their paper. Nice! Yesterday I got published in the Tribune, today in the Star. Wooohoo.

Not sure if y'all are keeping count. But so far, I've been in the Columbus Dispatch, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Austin Statesman-American, USA Today, Star, Tribune, Sun-Times and numerous of web sites including ESPN, ABC, Yahoo Italy, Washington Post, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and many others I cannot recall. Woohoo!!!

So yesterday I talked about waiting for an hour to be able to make some photos. Well that seemed like a long time. But it really wasn't, not after what I had to go through today in order to make my photos.

City Council voted on the big box ordinance today. I showed up at City Hall at 8 a.m. I made the above photo and the next two within 20 minutes of arriving there.

There were a lot of people gathering as they showed their support or their disapproval of the ordinance.

That was the first hour of the day for me.

For the next seven and half hours I sat on the outside of Council Chambers as the officials went over all their things in their agenda. Any minute and the vote would be taken. So, I sat there during all that time anticipating a result. It wasn't until I had spent nearly 8 and half hours at City Hall before the vote was in. That's when people went crazy. Well, the supporters of the big box ordinance, at least.

The supporters were enjoying their victory. Since the ordinance was passed, big companies such as Target and Wal-Mart will be forced to pay higher wages and give more benefits to its employees. Obviously, the local unions were pretty happy about that.

This is what waiting for seven and half hours is all about. The moment of anticipation. The phtos that tell you what happened at City Hall today.

I waited and waited, and waited. But the end result was great.

It was a pretty interesting day, to say the least. I had a lot of free time. And I thought about some of the things that I thought about this past weekend during my camping trip. The reporter for the local Univision news show is pregnant. She was there and she shared some of her lunch w/ me. It was very nice of her. Jorge, the cameraman was also very nice to me. I also got a chance to talk more w/ Luis, the cameraman for TV Azteca and their reporter, who I am sorry to say I forget her name. Seeing the reporter's pregnant belly got me thinking of the same stuff that I've been thinking since camping this weekend.

I want kids!

Yesterday - Main - Tomorrow