Day 73 (Wednesday, August 23)

I love photography.

When I first started shooting photos for fun, I always thought about my photos being seeing by everyone. It was a small dream. It all started when my photos appeared in the school newspaper that I realized that it would be fun to make photos and shared them w/ everyone.

Today, while reading the play report from Mexico City I realized that one of my photos from Monday was picked up by a newspaper in the country's capital city. That's right, El Universal, a newspaper that calls itself “El Gran Diario de Mexico” (The Great Mexican Daily Newspaper), published one of my photos today.

The play report is a list compiled by AP staff members across the world. One person in the bureau goes through the major local papers and jots down the photos these newspapers used from the wire services. It's a way to see how many photos were used by the Associated Press as opposed to our competitors.

I was pretty excited, needless to say. And most of y'all know how much because I sent a mass text message to all my contacts bragging, I mean sharing, the news.
This is pretty big news considering El Universal is a Mexico City newspaper. It gets delivered to my hometown in Mexico State. It's a paper my grandfather would read when he was alive.

So, of course I was very excited to get some play in my hometown. I called up my family in Mexico to share the news and to get them to go buy the newspaper. While talking w/ my uncle, we got into a conversation about Elvira Arellano. He told me that her story has been all over the newspapers and television shows there. I asked him what type of photos the newspapers have been using of her and turns out he described my photos. He was looking at photos that I shot and that appeared on Ovaciones, another major Mexico City newspaper.

I was pretty pumped by all the news.

Those were all good news that set the pace for a great day.
I headed out toward Elmhurst where I was scheduled to make photos of gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka. She gave a speech about taxes and building casinos from the front yard of someone's home.

© The Associated Press

I had never been to an outdoors press conference, so that was pretty exciting for me. I tried to use that to my advantage. So, I shot a variety of photos that show the yard and the politicians.
© The Associated Press

© The Associated Press

© The Associated Press

After my assignment, I rushed over to the Blue Line train stop at Clark/Lake. That's where I met w/ Renee Petrina, a good friend of mine who flew in to take part of the Society of Professional Journalists convention this weekend. Renee and I were on The Working Press staff in New York City two years ago during the SPJ National Convention there. Tomorrow morning our other good friend Rebecca Neal is flying in. She's also a former coworker of mine at The Working Press in New York. Last year while I was on The Working Press, I was able to hang out w/ them after work during SPJ's Convention in Las Vegas. The two are staying w/ me for the weekend as we thought it would be a cool way to save cash on lodging and chance to hang out and remember all those cool nights in New York City and Las Vegas.

A lot of people are coming in from out of town this weekend. So, it should be a fun weekend. There are some plans, but we'll have to wait and see what happens.

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