Daniel Clark/Las vegas Review-Journal

I now work for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. They even pay me! I doubt anyone cares, but I will create a breif timeline of events to explain. Maybe this will be nice for me to look at in the future.

I am at my parents house. My brother comes home and informs me that there's some sort of sutuation over by my old high school. Against better judgement and logic I set off to see what's going on. I learn that there is what appears to be a hostage situation gouing on. No one can get close, unless they're me, and sneaky.

So I creep a bit, a man says to me, "Hey, want to see some smoke?" I tell him that I indeed would like to see some smoke. Se co down one dead end road and if you peer in between two houses you can see smoke wafting from the house where the alleged hostage situation is going on. I approach and find that from the backyard of these houses, I could see the whole situation below me. I wait. An old woman comes out of her home into her backyard. I ask her for entry, and I get in. Taking photos noone else has access to I phone the RJ. I ask them if they wanty them. They say yes. I finish up shooting and rush to a place to edit. I do, and then I send them off.

I get a call from the editor.

"These are great." "If we were running a story on this, these are the ones we'd use." (And various other nice things.) So I ask him if I could maybe meet him for coffee, just to talk about the photojournalism world. He tells me, "We have coffee here at the office, why don't you come down sometime?"

I go. We meet, he tells me that the photo world is inundated with new talent, and I'd probably have to get more school, or go somewhere else for a job in journalism. Another guy takes a look at my portfolio. He says that I need to trim it down, way down.

I leave.

I edit my portfolio, and I contact the person who'd looked at my portfolio. He invites me down again. We talk about my work, and he says that there's a lot going on at the paper right now and the photo editor I'd talked to was no longer the editor. We shake hands, and he tells me he'll shop my portfolio around when I edit it down and make it perfect.

I begin doing that.

Then, a phone call from a number I do not know as I sit watching TV. It's the interim photo editor, he tells me that he has work for me. The next day I do my first assignment, go to the office, and sign paperwork as a stringer.

People who need to ne thanked and without whom this wouldn't have happened:

Justin Yurkanin (Helped me with my portfolio, and showed my portfolio to people)
kevin Cannon (Interim photo editor who has given me this chance)
Jeffrey Scheid (Who let me come meet him at the RJ office, and looked at those initial photos)
Sean Clark (Who looked up the RJ phone number while I was shooting)
Deanna Jones (Who supported me and my crazyness)
My Parents (Who put me through school, which allowed me to develop the skill to do this)
And really a lot of people. Like...a lot. David Calvert, Amy Beck, Brian BBenedict, Jessica Estepa, Peter Goin, all my professors (art and jour)...

Seriously, without the help of others this path would have been nearly impossible. I'm not there yet, so don't think I'm just cosating along at this point. There's a lot of proving left to do.

Food Service II

So here I am again, blogging about my job. It's about all I have time to think about lately.

Ones

Really short thought here. I make tips which is fantastic. But I'm sitting here with a hundred and twelve dollars in ONES. What the hell am I going to do with that? Every day I come home with a fistful of thirty or so one dollar bills and I can't help but think someones going to mistake me for a stripper one day and ask me what the price is for a "private show".

Sugar Packets

I'm losing track of time. I have no idea how many days I've worked because it all seems to swirl together. I'm also worse at time than I used to be, which is saying something. Give me six watches and put Big Ben in my living room and I still might wonder what time it is. Point being, I keep 8 sugar packets in my pocket when I work. And for every hour that goes by I toss one into the trash. (If I'm really bored I'll start going by the half hour and have half sugar packets). The point here is that if I ever want to know how long I have left I pull out my sugar packets and count them. Oh, three sugar packets to go!

Thick Goo

Ranch, BBQ sauce, coleslaw, mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, relish, gravy, butter, oil, that pink dressing, that orange dressing, A1, honey, cream, syrup... My point is: Why is the human race so fascinated with thick gooey substances?

Food Service

Is a suprisingly complex operation. I mean if i'd thought about it I would have realized it. But a lot goes into it. It's pretty fast paced and keeps me moving. Blah blah blah. I like my job.

I'm headed to Goldfield NV tomorrow. I will be taking mad photos.

And just because this thought fits nowhere else: Damnit Joss! Why, Why do you have to torture me with this...this HORRIBLENESS!?

Ah, employment.

For those of you who don't know, I now have a job. Or I will very shortly. I went to Club Fortune, and within a few minutes I was offered a job. So that's awesome. They sent me home and told me to come back at hree to go get a drug test. I got there and then they sent me to the drug testing place. And i promptly got myself indescribably lost in downtown vegas. This map shows how I view this "shithole where street names switch like a funhouse".