Day 6 (Fri., June 17)

Tonight I am completely drained. We are done with the project. But I am completely drained.

The day started... Well, let's say yesterday never ended. I was up very late last night having some Fort Worth fun and did not make it back to my hotel until just minutes before I had to be at my first assignment this morning. It was fun exploring the city as the sun came up. I must say that it was just a very cool experience. But because of that I suffered a little today trying to stay focused.

In spite my lack of sleep that has accumulated over the course of the past week, I went to work and tried my best to do a good job. I started by going to the sports talk where I heard from Hall of Fame baseball players, a local boxing celebrity, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a few really cool Latino sports journalists (below). Everyone in the sports journalism world was there. Even Mauro Diaz, the sports editor for Al Dia. It was a good thing that he was there because he knows the quality of my work and asked to buy one frame for tomorrow's section. That was really cool.

Later, I headed out with Mariana (Florida) to the Ft. Worth stockyards. We were in search of a cool western wear store. We found it at Luskey's. I was amazed on all the different type of leather they use to make boots. I saw everything from the traditional bull leather to as exotic as shark skin. There was all sizes, colors and styles. Since I am spending so much time in Texas, I might as well get me some boots. But then I saw the price of them and my cowboy fantasy was slowed down. Some boots were priced as high as $380. Man, that's a whole lot of money for some kicks. And I thought paying $150 for a pair of Jordan's was too much.

The cowboy wannabe mode continued at the next location. We were back in downtown Ft. Worth and I headed to Peter Bros., a hat-making store. I saw how they steam shape into a hat and the different patterns they have to make the right hat for a custom look. I wanted to get me a hat, then I flipped one over and saw $100 on it. So, if you keep count that's $480 for a hats and boots. I wonder how much the horse is going to cost me. Oh well, I'll just stay w/ my sneakers and baseball cap and keep on becoming a city cowboy, instead.

Once that assignment was done, I was pretty much done for the week. I didn't want to be, though. I headed to see John Leguizamo as he talked about his latest projects: “Secuestro Express” and "Cronicas". I was there for fun but I still wanted to get a nice shot. So, I came up with the photo of his silhouette as his image was shown on a clip they played on the screen behind him (below). It's always good to go to an event and not being assigned to it. I feel as if my creative side comes out a lot more than usual. I am not worried to get the "perfect" shot and I experiment a lot more. I think I did a good job with this photo. Well, the stuff that we are running in the paper tomorrow is a photo of him talking to the microphone. I think my photo is better. But I can see how it's easy to stay conservative while on assignment and being more daring if there just for fun.

Throughout the week I have been looking for different "views" of the convention center. I love shooting things from above. All week I have been walking on the third floor looking straight down. The two locations I wanted to shoot were the entrance to the convention center where there's a big Fort Worth and longhorn display on the ground. Also there's this really cool window setting on the west side of the convention center where you can see a star pattern from above. Today I was finally able to get photos of people on these floors. Patience worked well for me.

Once I was done with all I decided to take advantage of what was going down on the convention center main floor. I visited with a few newspapers including the Washington Post, New York Times, Associated Press, Press Enterprise, St. Petersburg Times among others. I got all the information I need for a future internship. I saw an old friend there Reggie, the top recruiter for Knight Ridder, one of the companies that owns many newspapers throughout the United States. I will be seeing more of him later this year when I do my Society of Professional Journalists internship in Las Vegas in October. I am very excited about next year. I graduate, I will be applying at these organizations and I will be ready for a "real" job. I think internships are a good way to learn things in a short period of time, but I think I am getting to the point where I can learn more in a long-term setting.

During the free time I decided to go and get my portfolio reviewed by some of the top photographers around. Pablo Alcala of the Lexington Herald-Leader, who photographed the war, looked at my work. His newspaper is part of the Knight Ridder company, so he spoke nicely about me to Reggie. I got lots of feedback on my work and I will be working on the stuff the pros told me to work on.

I bumped into Omar today and I was disappointed to see he didn't wear the pink look as we agreed. I had on my pink shirt and tie, but not him. I felt betrayed. Haha. Just kidding. That would have been too weird. His reason for not wearing the pink threads was because he was going to go to the job fair and didn't want people to think "hmmm, this guy is from San Francisco and wears pink" as he told me. Very funny, dude!

The above photo means a lot. That's Aurora (Miami) the day after she had lost her cell phone. Last night she was pretty sad because she couldn't find it. Turns out she left it at the Los Angeles Times booth when she went to get information yesterday during time at the job fair. Oh, I see how it's done. Aurora wanted to make a lasting impression on the recruiters. So, you leave your phone at their booth, come back the next day and then they will always remember. When you are ready to get a job, you'll call them and they will know who you are. Haha. Just kidding. I'm glad you found your phone, girl. Tonight it was Gilda's (El Paso) turn to loose her cell phone. I am hoping she finds it tomorrow. At least that's what Gibran (New York) told her. "Trust me, you'll find it," he told her. We'll see about that.

Tonight was very fun. I hooked up with Omar and his crew at the pub crawl that NAHJ took part of. Tonight we were treated to four different locations in downtown. I had too much fun and only got a chance to make it to Fox & Hound restaurant and City Streets night club. At the first location Omar and his crew played pool. I joined Maribel (Houston) and played a game against Israel (Corpus Christy), who actually worked before at the Standard-Times where I am interning this summer, and his partner, whose name I forget but works for a television station in Las Vegas. Maribel and I won. If you are keeping score, that's two times this week I teamed up w/ a girl from Houston to win a game of pool. The other time was on Sunday, memer?... Yoo memmer, memmer? This mixers and fun-on-the-town type of activities are great. I met some cool people whose job I want to have some day. I met Robert Lopez, who is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. This dude is cool. He is old school. He has done some great work and I was very excited to shake his hand. Like I said last night, it's good to meet with all these great people. Just as it was yesterday at Billy Bob's, I was bombarded with free drinks from cool people. Serafin who works for a television station out of Washington D.C. kept the drinks coming. At one point (just like yesterday) I had two drinks coming my way. I had to make him drink mine. I was not about to get drunk on a night I should remember every conversation I had with such important people. Serafin has been really cool to me this week. I don't know why, but when we met just outside of the elevator at the hotel a few days back, he took a liking of me. He's pretty cool and liked visiting with him. His girlfriend was also very cool. I remember dancing with her at one point last night at Billy Bob's.

City Streets was cool. Went there and networked while hanging out with some really cool writers and editors from across the country. I even met Gustavo Arroyo, who works for the California senate. I also visited with Richard Guzman of the Desert Sun in California. who once was part of the NAHJ student project and told me all about his experiences with the internship. He told me a little about his job and how great it is to be doing what he does. There was a lot of dancing and a lot of drinking tonight at these places. But the cool thing is that I was hanging out with people I will be working with, for and against in the future. I also hung out with a crew from Brownsville. There were writers, editors and a photographer in the mix. Later I hung out with Al Dia Newspaper managing editor Alfredo Carbajal. Good times talking and visiting with good people.

We had fun until 2 a.m. came around and we were forced out of the place. But the party didn't stop there. A few of us went back to the hotel and hung out there. I don't remember much only that Antonio (Oregon), Gibran (New York) and Aurora (Miami) were in my room before I passed out. I am not sure what happened after that. I hope they didn't play any pranks on me while I slept. That would have been fun and I would have missed out. If you did, please send photos. You must have photos, right?

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