I ain't lyin'!

Just so I don't prove myself a liar, here's some older stuff from December. The first is of Ms. Jones, showing off her tattoo (it translates to "love conquers all," a happy ideal for all of us hopeless romantics out there), and the second is off Mike Groves, a tattoo artist who works at Pain and Wonder in Athens, Ga. Good people, both of them.


This was mainly just to show that, yes, I am really going to be updating with foto shtuff. I ain't lyin' ... this time ...

I Need a Stretch

So, seeing that I'm out of school (graduated and all that good stuff), and am once again shooting for a paper (and once again in the less-than-enviable-but-better-than-nothing position of "Photo Intern"), I should start posting again.

And I will, I swear. At the moment, however, I'm having issues because I can't get the 'net at my new abode, but I'll starting doing a mobile update from wherever I can get signal. Soon. Truly. Promise.

Speaking of "my new abode," I've moved up to Chattanooga, Tn., for the time being, and am interning at the Chattanooga Times-Free Press, which was voted the best newspaper in Tennessee, according to the big trucks outside. I basically live an hour away from my parents, a fact which they have yet to abuse (thanks, guys), and about two hours away from anybody who would seem to want to talk to me.

Phhbbbbbtttt.

But the staff is great, my roommate's cool, and I do enjoy the city. Things are decent/good enough.

Enough babble, I'll post when I've got something to show you. Till then, cheers, ziveli, etc, for a new city and a new job. Maybe if we run fast enough, we'll outpace the bad stuff.

Body Art

Though I have no photos right now -- tonight, I may change that -- I'm going to be doing a documentary photo project on body art for my advanced photojournalism class. I'll be posting the photos on this blog and tagging each with the "DocPhoto" line, as well as anything else that may occur to me.

As usual, it might work, it might flop, it'll probably some combination of the two, but that's life, no?

Yeah, I'm still kicking

... though some of you may wish otherwise.

Been a tad busy getting back into Athens, trying to submerge myself back into the student culture and mindset. First couple weeks were a massive pain in the butt: I kept getting worried about not having a paycheck, got too bored a couple times, got too apathetic a couple times, debauched a few times too many that first week, felt a little neurotic about things for a while, and such other minor hiccups.

But I have been shooting some. And here's the evidence.



I have shot something other than just "cute" photos, but those are on a different hard drive. I'll get back to posting more news-like photos soon enough, I hope, though I'll warn anybody looking for visuals that I'm going to be focusing on my writing this semester. I need to that into a better shape than it currently holds.

Till later, y'all.

Blondes on his mind

This is an old story -- heck, I shot it back in November -- but I've been a little rushed on things lately, as ...

a) I'm moving back to Georgia on Wednesday.
b) Wednesday also happens to be my last day at the internship.
c) It's friggin' Christmas.

... so I'm going to post this and then That'll Be It For A While. As in, I probably won't be post for a week or two (or three) as I make the move back to Athens, college, and actually having a social life. Looking forward to all three of those. And not so much the same about leaving Birmingham.

... on second thought, I'll be posting something kinda a reminisce-y about the internship and Birmingham on the whole. Maybe not a whole heck of a lot, but just something pretentiously nostalgic and maudlin.

So, the story: there's a group that makes bikes for kids with disabilities. It's a cool idea, since what little kid doesn't love the idea of finally getting mobile? I think the excitement of a bike for a four-year-old is motivated by the same feelings a sixteen-year-old has for his first car. Anyway. It's a cool story, and the writer, Rakhia Nance, found a pretty cool angle to suit it.

This little guy has an unidentified mitochondrial disease that affects all the muscles in his body. He has practically no muscle control, none at all. He can't hold himself up, he can't lift his arms and legs, he can't even swallow on his own volition. I'm in awe of his parents. And these guys decided to build him a bike. It turned out more like a tricycle, but it'll allow him to sit up in the bike and be helped along by someone behind him.

Biggest thing I remember about this assignment: the kid was unabashedly attracted to blondes. A couple of the girls helping out at the foundation where they presented him with the bike were young attractive blondes, and every time one would walk by, he'd loll his head to the side to watch them, then give them this little grin. Mitochondrial disease or not, guy knows what he likes.

With grandma.

Just hangin' out, waitin' for my bike ...

Blonde alert.

With his mom.

The trike needed some adjustment when they first got him into it, but it wasn't bad for a first time.

I hope things work out with the little guy.

Okay, more later.

Sigh

If you're gonna post something neither constructive nor grammatically pleasing, at least have the balls to leave your name. That's one of the things that I don't like about the Internet -- the death of civility due to anonymity.

BTW

For some reason, posts made from this computer are a little wonky. That all looked fine in the composition tab. Anyway, I'll try to fix it later, but I'll not worry about it now, since it's a minor annoyance. Just wanted to let y'all know I'm not a complete design boob.

FYI

Just so y'all know ...

My HP laptop, which has been giving me issues of varying degrees for the past couple months, has gone (temporarily, I hope) to the great ... whatever ... in the ... well, whatever. It's dead as a door nail (though I assume nothing on the vivacity of door nails), gone to this digital realm and on to the next, an ex-notebook/current-paperweight, et cetera, et cetera ... needless to say, I'm a tad distraught.

But anyway, though I had a good handful of posts and photos to put up, that's going to have to be put on the backburner for the moment.

On the good side -- HP has recognized the issue as widespread and is offering an extended special warranty to fix the issues (it's a motherboard thing, so it'd be either ~$600 out-of-pocket, which I simply can't afford, or two or three weeks without my 'puter whilst they fix it). So it'll be going off after I get the harddrive backed up and come back in 10 days or so with the original factory settings.

Sigh. Not really been my week -- long drives all week; one of my fan belts snapped, leaving me without power steering and air conditioning; got a little sick at the beginning of the week; computer's busted for the time being; some jerk continues to steal my newspaper in the mornings ...

But hey, hope springs eternal, the weather will cool down, I'll meet interesting people, and catch the twerp who's stealing my paper.

I'm an official Iron Pour photographer

I won't go into heavy explanation of Infocus, aside from saying that it's pictures that don't really have accompanying copy. It's a rotational thing, and I'm on that particular rotation. The Ed gave me the concept of doing a theme of "people figuring out what they want to do with their lives or something like that" since I myself am an intern. So I said, cool, okay, and then he told me about the sculpting students doing an iron pour and suggested I hit that up for some photos. And thus it was so ...Adam Bodine, 22, prepares for the pour.One of the assistants at Sloss Furnaces feeds the fires of the furnace.
Adam Bodine waits alongside the students. Bodine, an art student at UAB, is an intern at Sloss.
Bodine lights a cigarette for his "partner-in-crime," Forrest, during a break in pouring.
Bodine and Forrest attempt to break open the mold of Bodine's grate a few hours after the pour.

I'm trying to track down a ballerina somewhere in the city to continue the series. A ballerina because another ballerina's been on my mind as of late.

Humorous aside -- after the photo ran [not one of the photos above, by the way], I actually got a letter from someone who think he's a good candidate for an Infocus. He might be, too ... I'll keep ya posted.

Ciao, y'all ...

A graphical representation of my firstfew weeks

Yay for photos -- I'll add some captions, too. These are from past assignments. Not everything, but at least it's a little something more than nothing.

Joey Steele works on tires at Bob's Bikes in Homewood.

Chin Hockchye, a PhD student, inspects one of the "Specialized" series of bikes at Bob's Bikes.

Holly Andrews finishes out the morning's boot camp exercise regimen with a few long stretches in front of Adory High School.
Police Chief A.C. Roper meets with officers outside Banana Joe's in Southside [ed's note: two blocks from my apartment] after two people were killed in a shooting outside the club the weekend prior.
165 Army National Guard officer candidates from the training center at Fort McClellan complete a seven-mile forced march at the Talladega Superspeedway.
Officer candidate Time Dubeansky, from Columbus, Ohio, rests and stretches after a seven-mile forced march that ended at the Talladega Superspeedway.

I'll post more later. Ciao till then ...

Good ::yawn:: morning ...

Stayed up a little later than I should have last night, and then my alarm clock failed to go off this morning, so I'm a little tired and was a little late this morning. Good thing about smaller papers is that things are a lot more relaxed, so I can wear (unripped) jeans and a tee with an over shirt and get away with it. Usually, I try to wear something without logos, but I figured I'd endorse my dearly-beloved Capoeira Athens/UGA this morning ... but I digress ...

... from nothing. Gah, I want assignments, I want stories to shoot, I want the hustle-and-bustle. I imagine next week will be a little better -- the Boss Lady's leaving on vacation to Michigan, I believe, and I'll be the only shooter here.

Having breakfast with Karmin, darling girl, who has been sleeping all morning, in a little while. I'm blowing out of here for about two hours because I don't have anything to shoot/do until 12 (more goddamned ribbon-cutting; I bet it'll be the same people with the same stupid cardboard scissors). Slow times at the Calhoun Times.

Ha, the life editor just got a shock -- an anniversary announcement for a gay couple. Their first ever. I get the idea that she and some others on the staff are of the "Adam and Eve, never Adam and Steve" mindset.

So bored -- at least I get to catch up on my news feeds. 17 girls in New England made a get-pregnant pact so they could raise their kids together; Eco-Friendly Nightclubs are on the rise overseas; and always make sure your tattoo artist can spell.

By the way, I'm kinda adorable. Or so she says.

Ciao, y'all.

Hm

Well, this is ... interesting.

For Posterity

It happens to everyone, so why shouldn't we celebrate it?

The Failure Blog.

Ain't life grand?

Revamp

I realized I have been leaving out tags on pretty much all my posts, so I just went back and added tags to them. Also, "I tell (Insert Adjective) Stories" seemed a little ... flimsy ... or something ... for a blog, so I changed it, too. As well as the address. They're both now jakeforddaniels, three quarters of my name.

The weekend was long and fraught, to say the least, I had a minor case of insomnia last night, I'm really tired, and I won't be eating until nigh on six. As my roommate Tilley would say, "Good times, good times."

Ciao.