So apparently after stepping foot on Taylor’s campus, I somehow lost my blogging ability. Or, I just got really busy and never had enough time to really sit down and blog. Not that I didn’t have free time, which I did; I just never had free blogging time. There’s a difference, trust me.

Insect Inhabitants
Moving on. The big story of this semester was bed bugs. Yes, bed bugs. They’re real, not just the imaginary insects of that pithy saying. Someone had brought them to my room over the summer, and I found them, or should I say, they found me, the first night I slept there. Long story short, I moved out for 2 weeks, they gave me a hotel room over labor day weekend, moved back in, only to move out again for 4 more week. My roommate and I didn’t end up moving back in until fall break-ish, which is halfway through the semester. But, they did provide me with a car, and gas too. So that was nice.

I actually attempted to write up the entire story, but only got 1/3 of the way through. So I’ll try and finish that up and post that. More for posterity, but you might be interested in reading it too.

that Echo extracurricular
Some other big things. Our newspaper went through 2 big re-designs. Once when we first got back, and once again about 4-5 weeks before the end of the semester. One of the editors in chief hired his design friend to help us out on the layout side, and boy has that been great. Last year I was the go to design guy, which wasn’t bad, but I’m not majoring in design. This guy is, and it’s pretty obvious.

Here’s the progressions of the designs.

Last issue of last year:

Download entire PDF here

Issue before 2nd redesign

Download entire PDF here

Issue after 2nd redesign

Download entire PDF here

That’s been real exciting helping out with that. Like I’ve told other people, I’m really happy with our new look. We look legit. I can see this on the newsstands.

Also, this year I finally got the title of Photography Editor. Not that I wasn’t doing it last year or the year before that, but for some reason I wasn’t allowed to have it. Well, now I do. I’ve been trying to step up my game too at the paper, and I feel that the photography has really been improved at my time here.

I’ve got 2 new photographers with me this year. They are new the newspaper shooting, but both of them have been shooting before. It’s been interesting, since they’re both completely different personalities, and even shooting styles. It’s been interesting for me to try and work with them to get the best work out of them for the paper, while trying to keep them happy and such. I’ve learned a ton about managing and working with people.

But even with all the work, I’ve been very happy with their work as a whole so far. So if you girls happen to read this, keep up the good work, and I’m excited to work with you second semester.

Pushing my photography
Since this is my 3rd year here, taking photos has sort of gotten routine for me. Which isn’t good if I want to keep producing my best work. There are only so many angles you can shoot from, and I’ve shot from most of them the past 2 years. So after shooting the sport for the fall season, I felt extremely uncreative. I was still getting some alright shots, but it wasn’t fun.

So I started to experiment with some portraits and such. I borrowed some lighting equipment from the campus PR guy and photographer, Jim Garringer, and came up with some pretty ridiculous photo ideas. Like for a portrait of our brother sister tennis duo, I decided that I wanted a ton of tennis balls falling down behind them. So I got some ladders, a ton of tennis balls, and several assistants. It took almost an hour to get set up, but at the end I was happy with what I got. Below are some of the other portraits I shot. They’re pretty similar lighting wise, but I haven’t had much time to research stuff, so that’s to be expected.

I’ve also started up what I call EPT, Echo photography training. Both my photographers this year are seniors, and I’m going to have to replace them for next year. So I decided over the summer that I would train some younger photographers throughout the year this year. Then, they would be ready to go next year, with very little time wasted on training. It also would save me the hassle of interviewing at the end of this year. I had to interview at the end of last year, and boy did that suck. You think it’s hard to be an interviewee? It’s 10x hard to be the interviewer. While the interviewee may be nervous about having the right answers, the interviewer is a ton more under pressure since they have to ask the right questions, and getting the best picture they can of the interviewee in 15 minutes.

So that’s gotten off to a slow-ish start thus far. Mostly b/c I haven’t put a lot of pressure on them to shoot stuff. But there are about 4-5 dedicated people, and it seems like they enjoy shooting. Hopefully I’ll be able to step it up second semester and get them shooting more.

From what I’ve seen so far, I haven’t been too impressed. Mind you, I’ve been taking photos since 2003, so it takes a lot to impress me. But it made me realize what a gift I’ve been blessed with, and how much work it takes to take good photos. I just assume it’s just as easy for people to get decent shots like I get, but apparently a lot of stuff goes through my head before I press the shutter. So that’s sort of pushed me to try and pass on that knowledge more to others, since what good is information if it’s not shared?

Of more recent news, I had to recently re-import 57,000 photos into a photo managing program. I found out over break that the program I used before, iView Media Pro, could only store 1.8GB worth of data in each of its catalog files. This was a no-no for me, since I like to have all my photos in one location. I wasn’t about to create multiple catalogs and look through them separately.

So I decided to bit the bullet and move completely over to Aperture. I had used Aperture before, but only to sort through photos. The way it manages photos takes up a ton of room, since it stores 1024px thumbnails of each photo. iView lets you pick the thumbail size, so it can take up less space. So I moved all my photos off onto my external HD’s and am only storing the Aperture files on my computer. It took a lot of time, especially for my computer to create all those thumbnails, but after 3 or 4 days, it’s all done. I’ve sorted and labeled all the different events and such, and it feels good. I know this is better for the long term, especially since I’ll be able to look through all my top rated photos together now.

Lacrosse leadership
So at the end of the summer, I had mixed emotions about the upcoming lacrosse season. While I new I wanted to do something with the lacrosse team, I didn’t really want to play. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t have enough time, I just didn’t want to dedicate the physical energy to play. I knew that if I were to participate, I wouldn’t put in the time in the off season / out of practice. I didn’t think it would be fair to the team, so I decided that I wasn’t going to play.

I talked to some of the senior guys on the team, and they saw where I was coming from and understood. I told them I’d be willing to help out in other ways, maybe as a manager. So going into the season, I thought I was going to be a manager. But that role would change as the season progressed.

We got a new coach this year, which was a real blessing. Previously, the team had been player coached, with our most recent coach being a recent graduate of Taylor. The problem with this is that he wasn’t able to be there all the time, so we’d end up running the practices ourselves. There wasn’t a real overall sense of respect for each other on the team, as far as leadership-wise, with the older guys feeling they were entitled to the respect since they had more seniority, and the younger guys feeling entitled b/c they though they were better. There would be arguments and conflict, and it just wouldn’t be good.

But this year, we’ve got a coach. It helps that he’s a little bit older, and sort of carries that authority. While he’s never coached lacrosse before, he has coached sports before, and most recently was a softball coach down at DIII LeTourneau. He’s a quick learner, and picked up the sport pretty quickly. But he didn’t know the offense that well, and I helped him out a bit.

Going to a tournament in Wisconsin in the fall, I helped out in my usual roles. I helped to manage the lines and move guys in and out of the game. I helped with some play calling, taking stats, and just helping the game to go smoothly on our side. At the end of the game, as we were shaking hands with the other team, I started to realize that the other players were saying, “Good game coach” to me. They didn’t know that I was a former player, just that I was on the sidelines wearing a polo and shouting at the guys on our team. So to them, I was a coach.

Then came the realization that my role had evolved from just a manager to an assistant coach. That was pretty cool. And just thinking back on the fall, it was interesting to see how much more respect I got from guys on the team, just b/c I wasn’t playing. I had played lacrosse in HS, and knew my stuff, but last year I was treated as a “new guy.” This year, just by not playing and helping out, I was treated as a “seasoned veteran” who knew his stuff, and if you had any questions, you should just ask him. That was quite the change to see.

So as we move into j-term and the spring, I’m really excited about what’s in store. We’ve got a new coach, a bunch of new players, and there’s a lot of potential out there.

End of an era
In other big news in the world of Timmy, I will be selling off most of my shoes this January. I’ve built up quite the collection of sneakers. Besides being the photographer on campus, I’m known by some as that dude with a ton of shoes.

But I’ve begun to think more long term, and I think it’s in my best interest if I sell off most of them. I decided that in the fall, I’d like to have a Canon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS lens to shoot fall sports with. It’s not going to be cheap, and will set me back a little under $2000. I’m also doing my internship this summer, so there probably won’t be many opportunities for me to work up the money. Thus, the money is going to have to come from somewhere else. In addition to getting that money from the sale of my shoes, it’ll also help to just cut down on the amount of stuff I have. I realized after moving in and out for what seemed like 5 katrillion times during the bed-bug situation that I just had too much stuff. So this will help me in the future when I have to move out to wherever I’m going to med school and after that.

Anyways, that’s pretty much been my semester thus far. Hopefully this is the start of something more consistent. But considering I’ve said that maybe 15 other times in the lifetime of this blog, it’s highly doubtful. From Austin, Merry Christmas and good night.