Rain on the car window, on Beverly Road overlooking I-90 at 4am

Localins will know that we’ve had quite a number of strong storm systems in the Chicago area of late. I love ‘em. Can’t get enough of them. Well, on Friday I ended up crashing in bed much earlier than usual, must have been a weighty day. I woke up at 3:00 am to the sounds of a storm starting to roll in.

Crashes of lightening and bellows of thunder that just make me giddy with excitement and awed at the display of power.

So I did what any photographer would do, jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera from my car and started walking towards Congdon Avenue in Elgin. I got about half way down the blog and decided I needed a trash bag to keep my (weather resistant) camera dryish. By the time I got towards the house, it was pouring like mad.

It was great. I was SOAKED.

(Camera was fine, woot for a 1D Mark III!)

I was hoping to get a lightning shot, but I just wasn’t able to get one and wasn’t really prepared. Tripods help a lot, as well as something to really keep the camera dry and the lens clear. After some attempts from my car on Beverly Road over I-90, the storm started to pass. This was what I came away with from the adventure. All-in-all, the 45minutes spent in the rain was fun enough.

More to this post, but it’s kinda emo. (okay, not really, but tis heavy.)

Well, I have a lot on my mind these days not many places to put it…

I turned 24 on one of the weirdest days I’ve ever experienced. Some things just are built up so much in your mind and then when they pass, it’s like they left a void, some empty place you used to process the most horrific of possibilities, I guess. And then when it passes and everything was just fine and life continued on unabated, it’s a strange and surreal experience.

Suddenly I was sick of California, could focus on anything again, needed to get back to work, missed my car… that kind of crap. It was like some switch was thrown and two weeks just disappeared. It’s really tough to adequately place my finger on it.

I get back and everything’s the same. Same frustrations at work, at home, in my heart.

And suddenly it’s almost July. June, where did you go? I usually enjoy the month of June. This one has been funky. Blegh.

Well, this is getting a little down, so time to double-clutch it into third gear…

I am starting a full-time position at Judson effective this Thursday (July 1st) and will be scaling back considerably from the job that has provided for me for over 5 years. The place that hired me as a silly 19 year-old and gave me the flexibility to still be in school while working, while still giving me an outlet for my tenuous love of math and algebra. It was a job uniquely suited to me and it still is strange to think about leaving. I’m still going to be around there now and then, especially since the shop is super busy through the summer.

At Judson, I’ll be doing what I’m already doing (managing the website judsonu.edu) but adding some more responsibilities and projects on top of it. For one, I’m on the planning committee for Judson’s World Leadership Forum in April where George W. Bush will be the speaker. Kind of a big deal, I’m excited. It’s also a job where I’m eager to know the ‘biz’ better and pick up some web development skills. At the shop, I was never really interested in learning too much more than what I did on a daily basis because I was not really interested in being there forever.

I hope this will also give me an opportunity to freelance for the newspaper more (part of what’s been missing the last 4 weeks).

I also finished my first graduate class (sorta, it was cross listed as an undergrad class…). Overall, I enjoyed it, even if it was kind of a joke in weeks 5-10 . I find that I do like writing in a journalistic style. I need more practice.

I’m actually planning on doing a few tech-related posts coming up. I love gadgets and technology and would love to start writing more formally about it. My friends are probably sick of being my knowledge-dumping-pit for my many interests.

First, up, I think will be a review of Sprint’s EVO 4G Android-based phone. I switched over from my iPhone and kind thing I’d like to write about it.

So yea, lots of words above. Well, only 775ish, according to my word counter in WordPress. But I bet it felt like more.

Oh, and php looks like a big pile of spaghetti with some semi-colons thrown in for good measure. I don’t much like spaghetti.

Peace
- KS

This post and its predecessor’s title came from the song “Never Knew” by The Rocket Summer from the album Do You Feel. And yes, it’s true. (oooooh, mysteeeeeriosssss)

Or part of the chorus of a song.

They are signs of God’s hand on my mom and dad (and family) along their journey to rid the world of brain tumors, one person at a time. Or something like that.

We later decided to coin the term “Owl in the Road” for any event of significance, an epiphany moment, or a “sign” (not necessarily a crop circle like in Midnight Shama-lamma’s movie).

As we go through this ordeal we try to look for God’s healing hand upon our hearts. Sometimes He speaks to us and comforts us through our relationships with other people, sometimes it is through events that make us gasp and say “No one but God our Creator could have done that.” Some call them “signs”, some say they are “just coincidences.” To us its an “Owl in the Road.”

This is an excerpt from the blog my dad is maintaining along this journey. Check it out here:

Owl in the Road: History and Current Events Relating to Dana’s Brain-a

Should be a good read, my dad’s quite the writer.

I had my own little adventures getting. I apparently book a flight for 5:18pm FRIDAY night, not Thursday. My mom’s surgery was scheduled for Friday. Smoooooth. Luckily I was able to get on a flight last night to still get to Cali before the operation. Whew! Second obstacle: waiting in O’Hare for 5 hours before the flight would take off. Fortunately DeeDee K. was on hand for entertainment! Thanks for making it an enjoyable wait!

So pictures. Here’s some.

Okay, I’d say more. But off for surgery!!

Peace
- KS

Been a number of weeks since I put up any journalism assignments. So here is a selection, this time around with comments!

Elgin's Brandi Hernandez (1) steals second base against Larkin's Lexi Smithberg (5) during their game at Elgin on Thursday, May 6, 2010. (Kevin Sherman | For the Courier-News)

I don’t have super good lenses for outdoor field sports. Need to spend a couple grand to get me there. As I like to say, maybe when I grow up. I have a 1.4x extender that I use for field sports, but it’s barely good enough. Sure, the action’s the important thing, but what separates a decent action photo from a good one is the background. I think the cars are really distracting. I’ve shot a baseball game recently too, but it’s just embarrassing to post any of those.

Shanon Gehrmann and her 19 week old son Brayden, left, and Meghan Consdorf and her six month old daughter Ashley talk during the New Mom, New Baby Support group at Sherman Hospital in Elgin on Thursday, May 6, 2010. (Kevin Sherman | For the Courier-News)

This was a fun assignment. The new Sherman Hospital (a fantastically neat facility) was just starting up these support groups for new mothers. It’s pretty much impossible to take a bad picture of a baby. Kind of an awkward room to shoot in though. The paper was looking for a shot of a specific nurse, but I also looked around and watched the interactions between the new moms. Was a pretty neat thing to see really.

Major General Freddie Valenzuela signs his new book "No Greater Love" for Algonquin resident Mary Chase (not pictured) at Barnes and Noble in West Dundee on Friday, May 14, 2010. Mary's son-in-law Chase Campbell, a Chaplain's Assistant, was recently deployed to Afghanistan. (Kevin Sherman | For the Courier-News)

This guy oozed awesome. An Army Major General (!) has been working hard to support Hispanic soldiers, created educational programs in at-risk communities and served for over 30 years in the Army. It was an honor to meet the man that work he has been doing is nothing short of incredible. I guess he is also listed as one of the most influential Hispanics in America. Like I said: awesome, oozed. He is also a great photography subject. He just has one of those faces that you can’t take a bad picture of.

My mom is having surgery this Friday (!). Her doctor is in California, I’m flying out on Thursday and staying until June 6th, so I’ll be there for my birthday. I’m a bit anxious for the operation, obviously. But there is a lot to be thankful for in this process: best doctor around (he pioneered the expanded endo-nasal surgery), minimally invasive, caught early and just seems like a lot of things are falling into place. I know it’s still brain surgery, but just seems like a lot is going right.

I’m also pretty excited to go to California.

But before I go, I have a ton of work to get finished, especially at the shop. I keep getting loaded up with projects that all have to be done yesterday, all in the week that I have a significant article due for my class and trying to get all set to leave. Oy!

It’s funny, God, you know. Despite how much it seems that I feel distant from him, he always gives me these little moments of excitement. Let’s see if it pans out this time around.

Peace
- KS

Today’s title is from “Cannonball” by Damien Rice, on his album O. I love the final chorus in this song. I’m a sucker for a song where the main ‘character’ learns or changes by the end of the song. I like the juxtaposition of things teaching us something about the opposite of it’s own reality.

Stones taught me to fly
Love, it taught me to cry
So come on courage, teach me to be shy
‘Cause its not hard to fall,
And I don’t want to scare her
Its not hard to fall
And i don’t want to lose
Its not hard to grow
When you know that you just don’t know

First, I am working on a new “Galleries” page. Some of you have noticed that my Gallery tab disappeared. For the last two years, it was hosted with an Apple MobileMe account, a service which I have since deemed to be a waste of money when you already have a hosting service and Google Sync. Additionally, it was more trouble than it was worth to update and couldn’t be organized exactly the way I wanted it to be. I plan to use SlideShow Pro for a pretty slick gallery page, but I need some time. I’ve already decided how I want it to look, so now I have to figure out how to make my dreams into reality. Along with that, I need to sort through my pictures all over again to find distinct categories. As some may know, I recently had a hard drive issue that resulted in the loss of some photos, but more importantly the loss of any semblance of organization I might have had at some point. I’m getting close, I can feel it .

From that data loss, I thought I had lost the panoramic pictures I had taken in Israel, some composed from as many as 17 pictures. Turns out, I’ve had them all along. I was looking for the original CR2 RAW files, when what I should have been looking for was the Photoshop PSD’s that I made from those RAW files. That techno-speak for WHEW!! Probably will share them here soon.

What else.. Well amidst all this, I have been super busy. Aside from my regular 8 to 3 and 3:30 to 8′s, I have started doing some freelance drafting and freelance photography. In 12 days, I also add Grad school to the list. I feel like I’m starting to go a little nuts, but it is probably more due to the fact that I can’t really do what I want to do: photojournalism. With such a tight schedule, it is difficult to try and slap something else on top without something else being tossed away. Right now, I can’t really put anything aside. I’m hoping that from my Grad school program at DePaul, it will open up some unique opportunities that I can feel better about casting aside some work to pursue what I want rather than being driven by circumstances. I really am fortunate and blessed to have the jobs I have and I don’t take any of them for granted. But at some point its time for something new. My first class is on writing/reporting for the media which should be interesting. Certainly will be great to develop another skill.

Some of you may remember my post from the middle of the summer, entitled “Hope“, where I talked about my mom having a brain tumor. Well, the so-called “Space Invader” has grown and my mom will go under the knife sometime in mid-May to get that baggert out. So yeah… Scary. Apparently the only surgeon in the country that can do the endo-nasal (doc-speak for through the nose) procedure is in Pittsburgh. Any thoughts and prayers are always welcome.

I feel like I’ve blabbed enough for one post. Just a lot going on right now and I’m trying to balance it all and trying to find a way to take care of myself as well. Its pretty tough.

Here’s to the future!
- KS

Today’s title comes from the song “Hills and Valleys” from The Rocket Summer’s latest album Of Men and Angels. I can’t get enough of this album.

We're coming off of hard and harder times.
Gonna be starting something,
That gets us, straight up out of here...

Say you're with me,
There's gold ahead, there's golden dreams
In life's hills and valleys,
Yeah will you hold on with me

I have had some trouble getting it posted, partially because I don’t feel an entire sense of closure from the experience. It taught me many a lesson, most specifically that I have a ton to learn (not that I didn’t know of this, but was made all the more apparent) and I love the work. I feel like in some ways I didn’t learn enough, that I felt more like an inexperienced worker than an eager learner.

And since the conclusion of said internship, I have immediately moved to working around 60 hours a week, started my last two classes of my undergraduate education (pray it be the end of my formal education) and experienced the loss of my father’s father, my grandpa Jack Sherman.

What can I say about the man? Not much here. His life means more than anything I could feebly write in this space. What I was humbled by and excited over was the significant quantity of my own pictures of him throughout the funeral home during the visitation and his service last Friday and that he held in his hands a picture I took of the whole family at his 85th birthday party earlier this year. A good man laid to rest easy; a trying week and a half for the family.

As such, I feel as though this semester didn’t simply start, but rather rolled into being. The waters are pretty muddy and I feel partially withdrawn but partially bored. I like most of my work, but none of it places a camera in my hands often, if ever.

What do you do to find inspiration? How do you jump from boredom to action? A project I have considered attempting was to carry with me an object and take a picture of it everyday, somehow. I think this might be an exercise in working a subject to death and interests me, but I have a hard to springing to action. Any suggestions on an object? It must be reasonably easy to bring with me everyday, or I just will stop (knowing myself).

Any words are appreciated. Gotta rock the car out of the mud!

Peace
- KS

Earlier this morning I was driving with my brother to see my little sister’s ice skating competition (pictures to follow soonly). On Golf road as we turned to get some breakfast, I saw a goose standing in the middle of the street, hardly moving. I was unsure why it was just standing there in the middle of a highway, making no attempt to cross to the other side, odd.

Then I saw why.

In the left turn lane there was the reason for the goose’s hesitation: another goose, apparently ran over by a car. The body was just laying there in the left turn lane, feathers spread all over the place.

The second goose was standing there waiting for the other to move, to continue their journey across the road, maybe to swim in the near-by pond in front of the hospital. Of course, I will never know where they were off to, but there stood the goose ever still, waiting for some sign of life from the other, perhaps not understanding the scene in front of him (I of course am not able to truly identify the gender of either goose, therefore I default to the standard masculine forms).

We went through the drive through and as we pulled out to continue our journey, the scene was much the same. Another vehicle stopped and removed the dead goose from the middle of the road, but the other was still there. At this point however it seems as though that goose had come to terms with the fate of the other and had now squatted down in the same place he stood ten minuted prior, though now with his head tucked into his body, unable to move in the face of tragedy.

And I can’t help but make this more than a story about a goose that got hit by a car, for there was clearly emotion in the lack of motion of the living goose.

I can’t help but think of this same occurrence that happens thousands of times every day in different parts of the world as loved ones, friends or acquaintances are suddenly ripped off the face of the world without warning.

I can’t help but think of the scene in Genesis where Able is slain by his brother Cain; I imagine their horror, disbelief or their lack of understanding in the fact that a son and brother would no longer get up and finish the walk across the street.

I can’t help but think of that day when in the garden, Adam and Eve made the choice to take a step away from their Creator; to see the pain and torment of loss that was sure to be felt by Yahweh, as his children choose certain eventual death over an eternity of community.

I couldn’t help but think of that short verse in John 11:35, simply “Jesus wept.” His friend Lazarus had died, this could have been Jesus’ first experience with the death of a close friend; Jesus reacted much like any one of us would when faced with the sudden loss…

We know of course as the story goes that Jesus was able to raise his friend from the dead, I remember first asking that if he knew Lazarus was just going to be raised from the dead, why did Jesus bother crying about it? It seems likely that he was so knocked off his feet by his loss that he was unable to move, like the goose. There was nothing for him to do in that instant but stand there, waiting for his friend, unsure of what would happen next.

But as Jesus called for his friend, trusting that his Father had heard his prayers and his laments; sure enough, out came Lazarus.

Of course, we do not have that ability to simply call our lost ones back from the dead, rather this story gives us hope that life does go on; Jesus’ ministry continued, Adam and Eve had more children and God still cared and kept his promises to his people.

These two geese, one no more, taught me a great deal today. I am forever grateful that I can move on to tell the fallen one’s story.

Peace
- KS

Today I bring you Google’s April Fools joke, equal parts hilarious, useful and nuclear-war-inducing-dangerous. Introducing, GMail Autopilot!

Much less April Fools-ie, but instead rather real but perhaps more disturbing than the above. NASA, in their attempt to connect to ‘the people’ decided to put to vote the name of their new room on the International Space Station. Stephen Colbert did as Stephen Colbert does and encouraged his fans to petition NASA to name to room after himself. And he won. Yes, its true. Almost as hilarious/cliche, the second place name was ‘Serenity’… Com’on guys, thats the best you could come up with? In a few hundred years, are we going to end up with a USS Enterprise as our flagship space craft too?

Enjoy your April Fools Day!
- KS

At this point, I realized that I had utterly failed to secure a ride to the airport, so I had no idea how I was going to get there and my dad wasn’t able to answer his cellular device. Fortunately, Pete would have been able to give me a ride, but fortunately for him my dad got home as I was leaving.

But before all that, I decided I would copy all my pictures from my external hard drive down to my internal so I could pimp my pixels around the conference. This is where my second stroke of genius occurred. [geekspeak] In Windows, when you copy one folder with the same name and the computer asks to overwrite, it typically syncs the data between the folders, adding what is not in one folder in. So I thought, before I copy everything down to my internal, I would do a quick update and put any new pictures onto my external since I hadn’t in over a month. Well, in OS X when it asks to overwrite, it means it is going to remove all the data from the old folder and only copy what is in the source. Thus, I in effect deleted all my pictures from 2008. Baller. I did have a small flash of brilliance and realized that this was probably not doing what I wanted it to and cancelled after only a few images were copied. Fortunately, this should be reasonably easy to recover the images lost, but the software costs in excess of $50-80. [/geekspeak]

So after that lovely start to the day, I managed to get everything packed and get to the airport and checked in just fine and plenty early. Sweet, now I could listen to some music or watch Frost/Nixon or something. But then I happened to look at my boarding pass. When I searched for tickets, I only searched to have my flight land at Dallas-Ft Worth Airport but apparently the flight I chose landed at Love Field, another 20 minutes east of my destination and my ride at DFW.

I talked to someone at the ticket counter and she suggested I hustle over to another gate on the other side of Terminal 3. Now, if you know O’Hare, you will understand my pain, literally.

So after walking a marathon, they told me the flight was already way over booked and the standby list was long. So much for that. It eventually boiled down to me needing to rent a car for the weekend and the rental companies don’t think of me as 26, so I had to pay a lot more for the rental. I do have a pretty nicely decked out Chevy Cobalt, which honestly has been a pleasure to drive so far.

Well, I got back to gate G11 to wait for my flight and needed to get my phone charged up for the flight. After all, I still had Frost/Nixon to watch. And who would be sitting next to the only power outlets but another photographer. Now, you may be asking, “how does one know another is a photographer?” and that is a valid and sometimes difficult question to answer. Fortunately for me, it was easy because he had a Canon 1D Mark II with a 16-35 f2.8L in front of him. Score. We got to talking and I found out he worked for the Chicago Tribune and also knows Scott Strazzante, one of the speakers at the conference. Cool! We had about an hour and a half before the flight and I had a stack of my portfolio CDs so we popped one in his laptop and he gave me some slick feedback on my portfolio! He also worked for the Daily Herald and the Elgin-based Courier News for a few years back a ways. Was a pretty neat encounter. See though, had I been able to switch flights and get to DFW, I wouldn’t have met John. Is that worth $168 for the rental? I think so. Its all about networking baby! Maybe $168 for a rental is way excessive, but I didn’t much have a choice.

Well, now that I am here safely, things are going pretty good! I got to place with a wide range of Canon’s glass since they have a table at the conference. Got to hold a 1D Mark III and a 1Ds Mark III, as well as the new 5D Mark II. I will post some pictures form the 5DII tomorrow. I recorded a bunch of short video clips too, can’t wait to see how gorgeous they are!

I got a chance to sit down with Scott from the Tribune and had him go through my portfolio and some other random images here and there. Was really cool and he has a different perspective on pictures than most PJs I have talked to so far. He is pretty amazing, so he has that license. Overall, I think he liked what I had, but of course said that my portfolio would get a whole lot better with the internship. He offered too to keep in touch over the summer for my internship and give me feedback on my pictures! I hope I can get 2-5 people like that that I can just get all the professional feedback I can from people I have met.

I guess that about wraps up most of today’s insanity. Here’s to hoping that tomorrow goes much smoother. I’m excited to meet more people tomorrow and getting rid of all the portfolio CDs I made and give a way a lot of business cards! Have a good night and thanks for reading my 1000 word essay.

Peace
- KS

So I am a little bummed that I didn’t get it, but also very relieved. I plan to re-open the house buying idea in the fall. Who knows what will be around then!

In other, non-house related news… I got the photojournalism internship at the Daily Herald!!! Unfortunately, it isn’t until May but I am so excited! Though it means I will be working between 60 and 80 hours a week! Which is really just fine for me .

Had two big tests today, I have a few pictures to put up maybe later today, but more likely tomorrow. Watch this space and thanks for stopping by!

Peace

- KS

One of my plans for this blog is to have it be a little more than just a photoblog. I hope to show you guys what I am looking at, what sort of articles and images move me (ruminations) and not solely a place for my images (illuminations).

I look forward to starting this again and hope you stay tunned!

Peace
- KS