Pro-life march to Planned Parenthood
or Thank God for payslips
2011.02.01
I was out of Bloomington the weekend of Jan. 21 because I took photos of the Wisconsin basketball game and stayed with friends I met while studying in Madrid. Since that Friday was the end of the pay period, I had to wait to fill out my payslip until the following Monday.
On the drive there, I found a group of pro-lifers marching two days after the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. (I'm guessing they waited until the next weekday in order to maximize eyeballs and rubberneckers. But that's only a guess.) Once I filled out my payslip, I parked along Third Street and joined them on their march of prayer toward the Planned Parenthood office. Photos of their rosaries (and of their noise complaint) appear up ↑ there →, as do the four lines of copy I wrote for the paper.
(P.S.: Read some tweets here and here for answers to the question, "Is Alex Farris a real journalist?" Trust me, it's relevant.)
Pro-life marchers walk down Third Street toward the Planned Parenthood office Jan. 24, 2011, in Bloomington, Ind. (Alex Farris | Indiana Daily Student)
IU men's basketball vs. Illinois
2011.01.30
Mixed among the first entries of the new blog (or the AFPB, if I feel pretentious) are a few catch-up things from the week before the founding. This is one of those entries.
In the thrill of rushing the court with camera in hand after the IU men's basketball team beat No. 20 Illinois, and in the frantic submission of photos after the game, I missed something. I was so focused on the frame that said it all (below) that the story of the first victory over a ranked team by Tom Crean was lost, and indeed the story of the game itself. I had interviews at the Associated Press job fair in Indianapolis on the following Saturday, so on Friday I looked through my pictures again and found a cohesive plot. The “plot” appears in the gallery button up ↑ there →.
Sophomore forward Derek Elston (32) and other Indiana University players celebrate after their 52-49 victory over Illinois on Jan. 27, 2011, at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Ind. (Alex Farris | Indiana Daily Student)
You've come to the right place?
2011.01.29
If you've come here to read a blog on the very best of photojournalism, go here, here and here. If you've come here to find international work that pushes the limits of danger in order to expose injustice and (in)humanity, go here. If you've come here to be inspired by the work that your fellow (wo)man can do, both in front of and behind the camera, go here. If you've come here to follow the work of the best young photographers on the planet, go here. (And here.)
Seriously, you won't find the best of anything on here. Anything universal and quintessentially human can best be captured currently by someone else, and in the wide spaces of the internet there is no shortage of that work on other websites. This blog can provide none of that for you.
If, however, you've come here to watch someone try to get to here, here, here, here, here and here but who is clearly not there yet, then you, my friend, have come to the right place. I do not claim to be worthy of the work on those sites, but I do claim that I am trying my damnedest to reach the top without sacrificing the promises of elegantly simple photojournalism. I want to go to there, and this blog will document my path to there.
If you would like to stay, save the blog page in your favorites and peruse the forthcoming photos and galleries (which will appear up ↑ there →). If you'd like to go to the other pages linked above, please do so. Hopefully, when you come back, the photos here will be worthy of the sites there.
Thanks for reading.
Taken during an IU football game. Courtney and I took photos of each other to mark places on the card where one photog's photos stopped and the other's began. We switched equipment after each half for this game.
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