The Free View-- weblog of a presidential candidate

Peace March Photo Opportunity

My picture's in the paper today. Not a photograph of me -- a picture I took yesterday.

I went to a local peace march yesterday. I was running a bit late, and they had already begun when I got there. In my effort to catch up, I cut through downtown on foot, and ended up just in front of the marchers. I had brought my digital camera, so I figured I'd make good of the situation, and I climbed up on a fence to take a few pictures. Later, I got a chance to take a couple more from a different elevated position.

After the march was over and almost everyone had gone home, the photographer for the local paper showed up. Apparently no one had notified them (don't blame me -- wasn't my march! :-)), and they just found out by random luck, and too late, obviously.

The photographer and remaining peacefolk (myself included) tried to salvage the situation by doing a simulated march -- essentially a posed picture where the 9 of us walked across the street a couple times. Nobody was really happy about it, and the march's organizers lectured the photographer to make sure the caption was going to accurately reflect what the photo was (i.e., that it wasn't the real, full-blown march).

Instead, I offered my photos as a possibility. The photographer was understandably reluctant about it, and when I offered at first I let him take a pass. But after we did the posed pictures I mentioned, I didn't feel at all good about leaving it at that, and I pressed him harder on how to get my pictures considered instead. The newspaper's office is closed on Sundays, so I knew I wouldn't be able to get mine in on time unless I found the way in. Eventually, the photographer said I could follow him there, and to make a long story short...well, here you go -- they used one of mine.

The page will go into the archives (and require a fee) after a while, so here's the pic and caption for posterity:

Protesting for Peace

About 100 peace advocates march along Church Street in Grass Valley as part of the "Sunday Stroll for Sanity." The march is in response to "the country moving into war as if there is no dissent," said Diane Rosner, organizer of the march.

They dissed me on the credit, which surprises me because I typed in the caption and credit at the paper myself. It's no big deal -- my concern was getting an accurate picture published, not expanding my photojournalism fame -- but it's weird. The caption is exactly as I typed it, but my name got lost in the mix somewhere I guess. I suppose it could be that the staff rubbed me out out of jealousy, but I'd like to assume the best. I can prove I took it, in case you don't believe me -- here's the original.

I've been unavailable for the past couple days because my company's web site has been having uptime problems, and that's a major no-no. We have a pretty constant presence of people discussing things at our site, and many of them spend time there basically all day, every day. So any downtime results in immediate and extended frustration of our members. I've been spending a lot of time dealing with that. Also, I had this message almost ready last night, then lost my DirecWay Internet connection for a few hours. Thus, the recent gap in my messages.