©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
From the courthouse in downtown Chicago you get a decent view into many office buildings next door. Since covering courtroom-related news is usually a game of hurry up and wait, there is plenty of time for me to gaze out towards the galaxy of cubicles and wonder about a career path in photojournalism that enables jeans, long hair and beard scruff. I guess that sounds freeing in a Harley-Davidson kind of way, but there has always been a conventional side of me that wonders about what it would be like to wear a tie everyday to work. A good friend of mine who went from plumber to civil engineer loves doing so, feeling himself the educated man he worked to become. I’ve tried ties, but with camera straps from two heavy bodies, credentials, and what some p.r. person may want to hang around my neck to confer legitimacy, I may as well start pulling a plow I’m so strapped in. It also seems that the day I wear a tie with nice slacks and dapper shoes is the day I get assigned to shoot a pig farm. Of course, nowadays, the world is more casual. On most days I’m probably better dressed than some billionaire software engineers I’ve met in Mountain View, CA…