My favorite of my attempts at a weather feature. This was shot at the beach closest to my apartment in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood.

I wrapped up my graduate studies this week, which means I’m now officially done with my master’s degree. I won’t actually get my diploma until after next weekend’s ceremonies, but in my mind, it means that I’m now the proud recipient of a master’s of science in journalism with a certification in media management. Kind of a mouthful, no?

In honor of this milestone, I want to show off one of my most recent attempts at portraiture, one that I’m actually really quite proud of. I was lucky to find a great subject. I have struggled throughout the semester with going up to strangers on the street, getting their permission to photograph them and then saying, “okay, just act natural!” As someone who is notoriously un-photogenic, I understand only too well the implicit irony in telling them to just “act natural” as I’m hovering around in their personal space with a large camera. Still, when I spotted Juan sitting outside a tire repair center in Wicker Parker, I knew I wanted to try shooting him. I loved the contrast of the red writing against the black wall and I knew that, along with his black shirt, would help his face “pop” out from the background. Thank you again Juan, for being such a patient and excellent subject. 

Last week, on June 1, Illinois’ civil union law went into effect. To celebrate this move, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, Gov. Pat Quinn and other elected officials arrived in Chicago’s Millennium Park for a mass civil union ceremony.  A total of 36 couples were united in civil union in front of their friends, families, supporters and reporters on that day, June 2. I went down to document the day, which was such an amazing moment to behold.

For me , it held special significance from a career standpoint. The first national news I ever got to cover was a mass same-sex marriage ceremony. I was a junior in college, the managing editor of my college newspaper, when our town’s mayor made the very controversial decision to solemnize more than a dozen same-sex marriages. The action shot him and our town into the national spotlight, and before long, I found myself covering the story alongside the likes of reporters from the New York Times, CNN and a number of other national media outlets. Needless to say, it was a pretty pivotal moment for me. It was also the moment that cleared up any lingering doubt I may have had about what I was going to do with my life. And so, to cover a similar story nearly eight years later on the cusp of the completion of my graduate degree, well, it just seemed fitting.

In September of 2009, I went to Poland by myself and it was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had. I met wonderful people, saw beautiful architecture and explored a city with a painful history and an inspiring amount of hope. Nearly two years later, I’m still sorting through photographs and other bits from the trip, but I’m working on creating a more comprehensive slideshow. For now, there’s this.

My photojournalism instructor had us take photos of fruits and vegetables recently. The assignment was to give your chosen item of produce personality. In other words, our instructor “needs to care about that apple! Make me care about that banana!”

I’m not sure if I totally captured the true personality and essence of my chayote squash, and I certainly can’t hold a candle to the works of Edward Weston, but I gave it a valiant effort. This was one of my favorites:

I liked this one too.

I also took a lemon on numerous photo shoots and when I found this little rotting apple sitting forlornly on the other side of the fence, well, I decided to have my lemon join it.

I’m going through some things and found a copy of a narrative feature I wrote back in my undergraduate years. I think I was 20 or 21 – so it’s quite old.  I’ve always liked this piece though, so I’m resurrecting it. I’ve made a few punctuation/grammatical tweaks but for the most part, it’s as raw as the day I turned it the professor.  The assignment was to write about either something mechanical or something natural, preferably in a more narrative way. Here we go:

How I learned to drive, sorta

The 1991 Oldsmobile Delta 88 sits solemnly in the parking lot, a maroon steed grazing in a field of asphalt; JR, my boyfriend Kevin has nicknamed it. I approach JR’s driver side door cautiously, and mount the seat. The four-door sedan houses a 3.8-liter, V-6 engine underneath its beat-up shell. All of this means nothing to me. I have not been in the driver’s seat of a car in four and a half years.

We are in the parking lot of my alma mater, Greenville High School, the site of my crushing defeat: failing driver’s education the summer before my senior year. I was just shy of 17 and had the disadvantage of being taught by the aptly named Mr. Carr, a middle-aged hairy misogynist who wore polo shirts and Bermuda shorts. Continue reading →

One of my favorite things about having written for a number of publications in the Capital Region is when I’ve been able to cover the same topic over a period of time and from different perspectives. Each publication I’ve written for has had a different type of audience, requiring each piece to be written in a different way for each of these audiences.

A good example is the start-up company Ecovative Design, a company started by two Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students looking to design an eco-friendly building material. I first wrote about them for the Associated Press in 2007 when they were still in school and were growing the mushroom-like organisms used in their material literally under their beds. This piece was written for a national and international audience and got a lot of play. Continue reading →

About three years ago, two former reporters for the local NPR affiliate branched out on their own to create their own web publication, All Over Albany, a blog extraordinaire combining aggregated content with original content. The site is aimed at, in their words, serving as a  sort of evolving –or revolving, depending on how you see it — conversation about New York’s capital city, Albany, and the surrounding areas. I immediately liked their idea and their spunk and sought to get in on the action.

Shortly after the site debuted, I started semi-regularly contributing stories and that continued through much of the past three years.

I’ve written countless posts for them ever since. It’s hard to pick a favorite. Though a bit obscure, I loved the piece about a Columbia County man with a terminal illness who is re-writing — or should I say, hand-writing — the bible. Even something as simple as findingmy favorite signs in the Capital Region was fun. But truth be told, I think my absolute favorite was when I wrote about an Adopt-a-Highway sign that had always intrigued me. This post was my favorite because it helped us connect to the person behind it, which was incredibly cool.
Continue reading →