©2010 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
I was a vulture today. At least that was the term used by a police officer. He and I were both watching a group of television cameramen and reporters surround a couple as they left the scene of a triple murder in the suburbs. I wasn’t a part of the group, although I easily could have been. I had been photographing people’s reactions, such as the man above in what was a very heartbreaking scene. Even though I was out there with everyone else, waiting to find whatever tidbit of information we could find, I didn’t see a picture in that one mob so stepped away. So the officer muttered “…vultures..”, and truth be told, I saw it too. At face value, either in movies or in real life, it is ugly. And I struggle with it. There is another side, of course. If there were no photos to show the emotion of a scene, news such as this would have less capacity to arouse the body politic to action, and to ask countless questions that urgently matter, such as, is the killer on the loose? Was the home invasion random or part of a pattern? Is the community safe? Emotional pictures are like an alarm bell to pay-attention-to-this-one. They encourage connection, empathy, concern, and hopefully action. Having said that, there is such a thing as too much. Both in process and result. Invasive. Gratuitous. Insensitive. I’m sure there are countless stories of this, and I won’t seek to defend them. I’m not alone in trying to balance the need to get information out quickly, with the need to respect someone’s emotional space in a public setting. My television colleagues have pressures that I don’t fully appreciate, but those I respect also struggle with it. Perhaps I should take the advice of a different police officer who said later, “you’re just doing your job.” In the end, this post is not meant to be a confession, a defense, or an appeal for absolution. It’s just a statement of fact. I felt like a vulture today. And I’ll never get used to it.
©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
When this photo blog (almost 100 posts ago) first got going last year, I wasn’t quite sure what kind of pictures to post, and whether I could keep up the quality of the images on a regular basis. As I have been looking back at the last year, I think it was a mistake not to include this image from a Boys and Girls Club event. It had a community journalism feel to it, and I was wanting to create a different vision or look for the photo blog. But what has emerged over time through the blog is a desire to have images that can connect and uplift with you the readers. In doing so, it helps me to be inspired. Given some of the negative stuff that comprises news, I think most of us news consumers need a steady dose of positivity. The activities of the Boys and Girls Clubs are very inspiring, and the fun expressions of these boys was fun to experience and to photograph.
©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
The hour when I drive in to the city is showtime for the sky. If you see more than a few morning pictorials on this photo blog, it’s because I’m just capturing a sliver of the elusive beauty that slips across the sky. Even with my photographic “dusty mirror”, the colors and the light that presents itself gets me going even more than the morning joe.
©2009 Alex Garcia
I was in a parking lot on the near west side when I looked up and saw the full moon rising over the Chicago skyline. I checked my watch. It was only about 4:30pm…
©Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
Walking through Pioneer Court recently on a rainy day, a new statue bust near a stairwell caught my eye. Sure enough, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable has finally gotten his due. Known as “The Father of Chicago”, du Sable was a Haitian colonist in North America of mixed French and African ancestry and was the first known permanent nonindigenous settler of our city. That a statue of him at Pioneer Court, the site of his settlement, did not exist was irritating to many – especially to Jesse Jackson, who would attend shareholder meetings of the Tribune company to make the point. At 230 years later, it’s not the biggest statue in the court, but at least there is one. No one really knows what du Sable looked like, so the sculptor had to take some creative license. As I was photographing the bust, I noticed the sculptor was a high school friend, Erik Blome. Great job Erik!
©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
I had other pictures in mind to post today, but this moment kept coming back to me from a school assignment last week. It’s not the greatest-stop-the-presses-run-this-baby-big-on-the-front-page, but after weeks of covering school violence and failing schools, to watch a student high-five a teacher on his way to class was a breath of fresh air. It was a spontaneous exchange after the boy playfully challenged his teacher on whether or not he was her favorite student. A more positive spin of the phrase “Question Authority”…
©2009 Chicago Tribune/Alex Garcia
Normally, cruising the skies in a helicopter is a very cool assignment. But circling the largest polluters in the Chicago area on a hot day for three hours while breathing chopper exhaust isn’t exactly what the doctor ordered. But hey, it’s still a helicopter ride. The images were for one of several environmental stories we’ve published since taking a more aggressive watchdog role this past year. This past Sunday the Tribune published a story about how state politics had reduced environmental law enforcement, requiring federal regulators to step in to cite such companies as the one which owns the coal-powered plant in the photo. The state didn’t see any problems with the emissions, but since that very company was represented for years by one of ex-Governor Blagojevich’s top campaign aides, well, let’s just say something was in the air…
I thought many of you might appreciate an inside view of the control room of the famous Buckingham Fountain. The Park District is giving paid tours of the fountain, so you can say this photo blog has just saved you $50 by showing you the “money shot”:-)! Of course, you don’t get to see the boiler room and you can’t turn the levers, either… The fountain has seen better days – it is undergoing a three-phase renovation, and is clearly desperate to drum up more funds. It’s also in the shadow of Millennium Park’s Crown Fountain (y’know, the one that spits water) which has ignited the imagination and delight of Chicagoans. Being the age of interactivity, the Old World-style Buckingham has clearly lost its grip on the city’s enthrall – and I don’t think any amount of “Married With Children” reruns and its Buckingham cameos will change that anytime soon…
It’s not often that I photograph someone who can accurately guess the shutter speed of my camera by simply hearing the click. But such is the attention to technical detail of NASA’s chief scientist John Grunsfeld, a Chicago-born astronaut who repaired the Hubble Space Telescope and who the Tribune profiled this past Sunday. Immediately after his slide presentation at the Adler Planetarium, I was to shoot a cover photo that was more interesting than a guy standing next to a museum exhibit. Pressed for time, we quickly entered the Atwood Sphere, an interactive exhibit, and while a docent held an off-camera flash, I used a tripod and a long exposure to capture the spinning sphere that shows the night sky. It was a bit of a calculated gamble, since we only had time for about 10 frames, and there wasn’t a lot of time for testing. At first I tried light-painting, but there was too much movement on our mechanical platform. Given that his grandfather helped design the dome of the Planetarium building, there was a palpable sense that history and astronomy had come full circle for the Grunsfeld clan.
For the Chicago area and our economy, it seems like there’s always the threat of more rain. Occasionally to this column I’ll be publishing flashback photos – pictures that represent a timeless Chicago and that most of my blog readers have never seen. This scene was from a July in which I found myself on LaSalle Street for an unexpected downpour. The humorous aspect of this picture is that I was trying to keep ahead of this businessman to frame him within the street yet he kept speeding up at the sound of my footsteps. He didn’t look back, and so couldn’t have known who I was. But he pressed ahead more quickly. Perhaps his healthy paranoia of the unknown is a useful commodity in today’s business world!:-)
Coming back from a shoot, I stumbled onto workers ripping out parking meters and hurling them into the back of a truck. Chicago is switching over to a citywide system of payboxes instead of meters because with the new rates of $3.50/hour in some places, or, 14 quarters per hour, meters were filling up with quarters too quickly. With all the havoc THAT created, I’ll bet you could have found a lot of people willing to chuck parking meters into the back of a truck, for free. All these meters, if all goes according to plan:-), should be replaced by the end of the year.
You can’t launch a Chicago blog without including some of its famous denizens. Chicago is in the national consciousness now stronger than ever because of President Obama. I was assigned to shoot his first interview with a newspaper after winning the election. Alas, “No portrait”. I was to meet him in his transitional office after his three layers of security. Fluorescent lights. Sterile. Don’t show the bullet-proof window barriers. Unwilling to walk away with just a talking head of our newest president, I quickly set up a softbox and looked for a mood to show the big issues he was struggling with. Whether you agree with him or not, he seems a thoughtful and introspective person – traits I was looking to capture. I find that photographing executives who only have a few minutes often involves more fast-thinking (technical, aesthetic, and interpersonal persuasion) than shooting spot news as a photojournalist.
Welcome to AssignmentChicago.com! It seems appropriate that to start a blog in Chicago, to publish a recent skyline picture. I was heading to another assignment when I saw stormclouds and lightning on the horizon. Shooting weather is a question of timing, timing, timing…and location. Sensing something big was about to happen, I decided to drop all my bags and get the camera ready. Although a few thunderbolts materialized, they were too far in the distance to be thought of anything more than a stray hair on my CCD. As clouds began to rotate, I thought for a moment we actually see some kind of funnel cloud. What did materialize was a fascinating beam-me-up-Scotty cloud formation – which left as quickly as it came.
