Day 28 (Wed., Sept. 28)

Today was absolutely non-stop. Well, for the most part. I am sitting her on the edge at home writing today's entry while watching my favorite show Jeopardy. It's only 7:47 p.m. and my day is done. I know there's still a fifth of the day remaining, but my day's pretty much done. I had a full plate today. The highlight of the day was improvising. I walked in to the office shortly after my first assignment. I was fixing to get edited and turn in my photos from that assignment, but I was handed a last-minute assignment. Turns out we didn't have a main photo on our Page 3 of our local section. That's an important place to run a photo. It's as important as the front page photos. So, my assignment editors found something worth covering and they sent me out to it. I was sent out to the Miami-Dade College's north campus. There, the students were enjoying a Chinese Dragon Festival. Among the activities was Chinese Dragon Boat racing. The racing is part of Chinese mythology, in which they remember the fight over the heavens so that rain can come down onto the farmers' crops. As if Ft. Lauderdale and Miami need any more rain, right?

I showed up at the event and quickly looked around. The long boats were prominent on the small lake in the middle of the campus. I thought it was a cool event. Then a bunch of students were asked to volunteer so they can have a boat race. About 20 students lined up. Meanwhile all the newspaper photographers and the television cameramen found their perfect place to shoot pictures of the event. I didn't find a comfortable place. So, I approached one of the persons in charge and told him I wanted to be on the boat. His initial reaction was "hmmm, I dunno." But I told him it would give me a different angle and I told him it would be prominently placed on Page 3 of our local section. I told him how important the Page 3 photo is and he agreed to let me on the boat. He asked me to sign a waiver and then told me to throw on a life preserver.

A life preserver? Oh, oh! Suddenly, I wasn't sure I wanted to take myself on a boat conducted by a bunch of people who had never done this before and put all my equipment at risk. Well, I had done enough lobbying for my photos, so I couldn't back out. Besides, every other news agency around was going to have the "far away" shot even if they had telephoto lenses.

Lately, I have been second-guessing myself. Should I be aggressive? Should I be more careful at work? All of this because of the dare I gave myself last week when I went to Key West and got in trouble for it. It is kind of difficult deciding when it is cool to be aggressive. So, when I got back to the office I made sure to talk to my boss and see if what I did was OK and wouldn't get me fired. Besides, by then I had the photo, so if I would have gotten in trouble, then I couldn't back out.

Luckily, my boss said that it's cool to take risks and be aggressive. She said it was cool that I "hustled out there, good job." So, I felt good. I had the only angle no other newspaper around would have. Today I beat my competitors. I succeeded.

Jumping on the boat was cool for a second. I was a little worried when the boat started to tilt more to one side. I was hoping no one would do something dumb and have us fall into the water. I would have been in deep trouble if I would have gotten the equipment soaked. As you can tell on the first photo, I did get the equipment wet, but the water spots adds to the water urgency of the event. It also gives it mood to what these students were doing.

Being on the boat and finally taking a new risk w/o getting chewed out felt good, even if I looked like a little kid w/ my bright orange and yellow life preserver.

Unlike the past two days, today I had an early assignment. I headed out to a German deli, where I documented the art of making sausage. It was fun. I'm glad I had breakfast before going there, looking at all the raw meat wasn't very appealing. I learned the process of making veil sausages from Dieter, the owner of the restaurant.

Above, 40-year-old Mario dropped some veil into the sausage-making machine. That machine is pretty cool, Dieter said it could whip out 280 sausages a minute. Cool! Another cool thing was that Mario's last name is Cortes. Very cool!

I hung out at the office for the most part after that. I was also thrown a quick assignment a little bit after coming back from the Dragon boats. It was just a quick portrait of a travel guru. He mentioned there are a lot of stories that need to be told from his homeland in Colombia. He said I should go and document some of it and that he can make it possible, just as long as I have a good subject. So, it's time to brainstorm.

Speaking of thinking, I came out w/ another photo project to pursue in the next few weeks. Keep posted as I will put the finial project on here once it's all complete. Right now it's in the behind-the-scenes sector, so you're going to have to sit patiently until I am done.

Finally, my last assignment was cool. I drove around for 30 minutes as I could not find the address I was sent out to. I got too confident and believed the directions on the photo assignment were accurate. Wrong! As a journalist, I should double check everything. Especially something that another journalist wrote down.

Watching Jeopardy to end the day was great. I did pretty well. I usually do not get a chance to watch my favorite show. So, today was cool. Not a bad way to finish a day in which I learned how to make German sausage and road on a Chinese Dragon boat.

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