Feature of the Day

Maybe I'll Catch Fire

This reminded me of the "Maybe I'll Catch Fire" album by Alkaline Trio. It's not exactly, but the warm tones of the city lights kind of did. Anyway, I saw this when I was drving home from an assignment tonight and I was feeling in a featuresque mood tonight. I shot another one for the paper earlier in the day so that technically makes two feature on the day. Possibly a record for me. If anyone knows me, they know that features are my least favorite part of the job most of the time. I'm just usually a guy with schedule and I like to keep that schedule generally.

The most amazing thing about this photo is that this is a handheld 3 second exposure. I braced my body against the windowsill of my driver's side door and held as perfectly still as possible. It's a tad fuzzy when blown up and at 1600 speed it's a little grainy, but I can't complain.

Tomorrow leaves two weeks left at my internship. I'm excited, scared and nervous all in one. I'm looking at possible job oppurtunities as a reporter at the Dekalb Daily-Chronicle and The Sterling Daily-Gazette. I'm hoping one of them if not both will lead to potential jobs. If I had to choose I'm not sure which one I would go with. Obviously money will be a factor, but at the same time Dekalb is closer to Rochelle which will make mine and Steph's life easier. Also, Dekalb's paper is a Lee Corporation paper and would have oppurtunity to advance to another Lee paper especially for moving into a photography position.

I'll just take it one step at a time and see how things fair. I'm suprised more and more at my dad's reaction to all this job hunting. He keeps telling me to calm down and that things will work out and to not get locked into one certain field. It's great advice, but I'm just not used to it. For some reason he seems to be the only person that can calm me down about all this stuff. Well it's late and I would like to read a few more pages out of 'Moneyball' before I fall asleep.

This job is so freakin hard!!!

I bet KFC wouldn't fry these chicks.

When the worst part of your day consists of being interrupted from your lunch to hurry up and shoot a couple of a photos of girls protesting KFC for their euthanization practices in their bikinis, I don't think you can complain about your job. Nicole and Maya here stood in front of the KFC store for over an hour in the low 40 temperatures just so little chickens wouldn't die.

Both of these girls were PETA members (read insane) and felt that there are other means of killing chickens than the methods KFC generally uses. I don't disagree with them, but in my experience, anyone that loves animals that much has a little bit of a screw loose. PETA members in general are nuts. I'm all for the ethically treating animals, but these people take it way too far. The girls were both very nice, but I can only imagine that in about 5 years when these girls are married, there will be some guy out there bitching to all of his buddies in a bar about how the dog gets more respect from his wife than he does.

The press release on PETA's website explains exactly what this is all about and gives a list of celebrities involved. Who knew Al Sharpton cared so much about chickens. Right here is where I could be really insensitive and add a racial joke, but I think you all know what I'm thinking.

My other photo from the day is from a prarie burn. This was something very interesting to me. I've never been to one of these and thought it was really cool. I really liked the closeup of the fire. I'm glad I brought my own camera along today so I could post a few of these images.

Only two more days and I get a day off. Unfortunately I will probably spend it by working at Pizza Hut. I'm down to three more weeks at the paper. Then working at Pizza Hut full-time until I find a job in Rockford/Dekalb/Rochelle area. If you hear of anything let me know.