on being

the washington post pretty much eliminated my skepticism towards video with this great series. the profile on the hindu singing teacher is what my heart needed today.

limitless

thanks to sitting around the office on super bowl weekend, i had comp days to use. i seized the opportunity and fled the tropical and bizarre to seek an embrace from the temperate and carefree.

another weekend at casa casey.


bike rides at night without fearing for my life. i felt as big as a house.a backyard performance of the gainesville bone and bottle symphony.
an amazing night of sushi at the hussin house.

bretty and mikey from the block.

and although i'm almost certain that steph doesn't play the guitar, she is often photographed with them.

greekfest!

An older, more satisfying community news assignment on St. Demetrios' Greek Festival.

Unlike Morgan, I suck at dance photos. So despite their whole-hearted attempts at folkloric choreography, I had few successful photos of the kiddie Greek dancing. The editor scrolled through the GB and a half of unlit/harshly-lit/haphazardly-lit dance frames and would dwell on the backstage/anticipation stuff. Whether this should be indicative of a weakness in place or a strength in another, I'm not sure, but I had fun meeting the characters working the stands and shoving a variety of Greek cheeses in my face for sampling.

My favorite was Handsome James. He told me tales that painted the images of an idealized Greece with white walls, blue waters and fresh air. He is a handyman at the church and was working the cheese flambe table. More than anything he wanted to make me comfortable while I listened to him praise his wife, his country and his first step on American soil.
But I was still only brave enough to shoot from my seat. His presence was pretty dominating. I was just glad his heavy Greek accent was resonating enough to drown out my shutter blades.

hair glue

Foxy Brown, of my middle school memories, walked into Hayssam Ghoneim's beauty shop and bought a 99-cent bottle of hair glue took it to the ladies room and began touching up her extensions. Ghoneim knocked and told her to get out because the store was closing. Brown, whose had a past sprinkled with violent incidents, responded by squirting the hair glue at Ghoneim, spitting on him and hurling insults at him. They sent me to get a portrait of him that never ran, but it was fun anyway.

trees

Literally stumbled on these branches in the middle of one of these hyperspeed, crappy days and had to stop and take a photo. They look like dry trees and even have dry leaves in them. Something about finding these laying there like this in a Publix parking lot made me stop long enough to catch my breath and wrangle my composure back in. My personality is just psuedo hippie this way sometimes.

el chonto soccer academy

Former player for the Colombian national selection Luis "Chonto" Herrera and his soccer academy full of happy, yet uncoordinated kids just ain't getting any love from Brian Piccolo Park. Despite always coming through in a timely manner on the rental fees, the park has frequently refused them to use the field for a number of reasons, including "wet grass." When I went to take photos, they had to cut their meeting extra short because the park wouldn't turn the lights on for them. They canceled their session because it was too dark. For some reason, the baseball field just beyond the soccer field did not have a problem holding their practice using park lights.

train to bodies

Because I'm on the perpetual commute for work, I've been trying to avoid my car as much as possible on off days. I took my bike to catch the train to Sunset Place on Saturday. I ate a ridiculous amount of tiramisu gelato in glorious 60 degree weather and went to see the bodies exhbit with the bff.

i snagged a few cell phone photos before the little man in his 30s with the faux-hawk told me photography was not allowed.

joe and dutch

With fall/spring internship deadlines approaching, I forced myself to stare at my photographic work till my eyeballs fell out this last week. While I now have a heavy psychological burden to carry due to the heavy scrutiny I put myself through, I also saw some photos I liked that I previously overlooked.

happy valentine's day

On this day of mass produced affection, I was reminded that I am as lucky in journalism as I am in love. Today I spent much of my shift covering the Anna Nicole beat. Along with most major broadcast stations, I was stationed outside of the Broward County Coroner's office just in case Anna Nicole Smith's mother would pick up her body.

Fans set up a memorial outside the office where her body is just waiting to be picked up.
Teresa talked my ear off about life, death, drugs and Anna. "I got the rest of the day off. I'd probably just go home and watch television about this anyway. I might as well just be here." She came with a notebook of frantically scribbled questions to ask Anna's mother and the coroner. I had another deadline to meet, so after four hours and nothing for the paper, I left to grab some food and head back to the office. As far as I know, Anna Nicole's body is still there, despite Teresa's gut feeling that her mom would show up.

playground

sometimes, I use feature hunting as an excuse to play in the sand

cloudy

Old weather feature : The kite hit my face pointy-side first as I was looking at the LCD screen. Shame on me for chimping.

el weekend

After nine days of shifts, this weekend's South Florida fun was very warranted:

Friday night was my godfather's surprise birthday party. Hanging out with aging Peruvians can be pretty fun occasionally.

My dad has a pretty white belly for such a brown man. Family-friendly crunk times.

When I need a check on my sometimes overbearing cynicism, I know I can turn to Karla.

This weekend my house was also turned into a makeshift youth hostel for an evening as Jeremiah rolled into town with three other UF kids to do some Miami documenting. I went with them to Little Havana, the Grove and South Beach. Their project should be posted online sometime in the near future, I hope.