I am now a railroader.

What is a railroader, you may ask? Your guess is as good as mine.

While I’ve been interested in transportation for a long time, I’m afraid I still couldn’t quite tell you what exactly it is I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future.

I was hired by Union Pacific Railroad as a “Train Service” employee in Sioux City, Iowa. My responsibilities include riding on and working around trains.

Today was my first day of a three-week classroom training session; all of my training will take about 3 to 4 months. As my instructor introduced himself this morning, he said, “Welcome to the railroad…it won’t be easy, but I can tell you I’ve never had a railroad paycheck bounce.”

Of course, like everything good, it has its downfalls. I have no set schedule; I have no specific hours. I could go to work at 5 in the morning, I could go at 11 P.M.

And the railroad is a 365 days a year, 24 hour a day operation. Whether its 90 degrees and sunny or -30 and a blizzard, I’m expected to be at work. There is no Christmas, there is no birthday…they are all just another day the railroad is running.

Not too much unlike photojournalism.

My plan is to continue to update this blog as much as possible. Hopefully I can help give you a better idea of what exactly the railroad does and how the people working around them can make it all come together. I can’t guarantee there will always be photos, but there will be information. It is definitely a career path not normally pursued by the normal college student, so I can only imagine my experiences will be worth noting. I’m excited about it though, don’t get me wrong. All I know for certain is that I have a lot of hard work to look forward to.

Perhaps the title of this blog is a bit more appropriate now.

Take care,

Wesley

What I thought would just be standing around waiting for baby chickens to pop out of their shells became an all-afternoon crash course in the stages from chicken, to egg, and then back to chicken.

I only expected to get one feech photo out of the day, but ended up coming away with enough content to run a half-page photo story, along with a teaser photo on A1. My search for a photo story kind of found me.

The last few days have found me frantically searching through my photo files for submissions to an upcoming contest. One of them I found was this portrait of Illinois track star Angela Bizzarri. I was just about ready to copy the file when I remembered that I took it this year; all submissions had to have to be taken in 2009. Unfortunately looking back now, I didn’t shoot half as much last year as I already have this year, with being the Photo Editor and all last year. Oh well, I shall adopt the words of my forefathers (all of them Cubs fans); ‘Wait ’till next year.’

From what I hear, it’s the longest-recorded game in BTT history, going into double overtime.

Even thought it was a back and forth throughout regulation and the first OT, the Buckeyes managed to edge ahead ever so quickly in the last five minutes of the game.

Afterwards, I jumped into the locker room to get some reaction shots. Illinos’ Mike Davis seemed to be taking the loss the hardest. Even so, they played remarkably their two days in Indy.

Now we’ll have to wait and see on Selection Sunday if Illinois’ last-ditch efforts were enough to secure them a spot in the NCAA tournamet.

After waking up at 8, going to a midterm I had to take early in my professor’s office, and hitting the road by 10:30, we were in Indy with about 45 minutes to spare before the game. Even though I didn’t get much prep time, things went very smoothly. While many of the DI folks on our roadtrip (including myself) expected to be back in Chambana for the staff party tonight, it looks like we’ll be using our hotel reservation with Illinois’ win over Wisconsin, an opponent who we’ve had an interesting back-and-forth relationship with all season.

Conseco Fieldhouse is a completely different experience; not only is it much larger than Assembly Hall and the first neutral court I’ve ever shot on, but it also doesn’t glow neon orange from the audience and floor paint. White balancing is a bit easier, to say the least. As I sit and type out this blog post, Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” is blaring over the PA system. LOL.

Being a photographer with the DI since my freshman year, I have never been an active participant of the holiday. I have however always observed as a photojournalist, and this Unofficial was no different.

Intoxicated people are a mixed bag. Some are more than willing to let you take a picture of them, and some just want to use you as beer can target practice. I managed to find some rather cheery people this year, and also have gotten to take my fair share of photos with police nabbin’ the naughty kids.

I decided to go with the lighthearted side of Unofficial for this post. I’m about ready to go out and shoot some more, but as the sun goes down in C-U, Unofficial tends to get uglier. Wish me luck.

After heading up to the suburbs this Friday to be at my sister Katie’s graduation, I subsequently missed my Metra connection into the city this morning from Glen Ellyn. After a frantic few minutes that involved thinking of every way possible to get to Union Station by 8:15 AM to board my Amtrak train, including a $49 taxi ride, I decided to just play it cool and take the next bus south. This gave me plenty of time to grab some grub in downtown Glen Ellyn.

A search of restaurants with Wi-Fi found me the Glen Oaks, a local eatery that caters to families, the elderly, and anyone else up at 8:30 on a Sunday morning drinking coffee. Not only does this place have some of the best French Toast I’ve ever eaten, it has giant windows facing the train tracks. Always a plus for me.

This post also gives me a chance to try out my newest lens, a 17-50mm f2.8 impulse buy from yesterday afternoon. It’s good to own lens(es).

The race for student trustee has started, and their first debate was held last night. Dan Weber, who won the election by over 600 votes last year, was decertified because of allegations of illegal campaigning. “Dan The Man,” who is being watched like a hawk in this election, was in full Dan style last night. This particular photo was made while one of his fellow candidates was proposing platform points on sustainability, in particular the idea of building a power-generating nuclear reactor on campus.

It’s off to a good start.

In recent weeks I’ve been doing much more work with studio lighting. Even though most of my work is in natural light situations, I forget that I really love working with this stuff. Former staffer Trevor Greene gifted us with some remote flash triggers during his visit this weekend, so I made some quick atmospheric portraits of Photo Editor Ned at his desk last night.

This stuff really is fun.

Just goes to show, it doesn’t matter what equipment you use as long as you’ve got skill, patience, and a little bit of chutzpah.