When it comes to the "Invasion of Ded Morozy and Snegurachki" event that took place in Millennium Park earlier today, two of my mom's saying comes to mind ( Read more... )

I don't know what it says about me, but winning one of the Illinois Press Associations awards isn't as exciting as it used to be. Not unless I win first place. So when this year's results were announced and I found out that I got a second-place award for news reporting (in the mid-size weekly community newspaper category), I didn't even mention it ( Read more... )

Even before late May, I heard that Lifeline Theatre,a respected theater in the Chicago's Rogers Park neighorhood was putting on a play adaptation of officialgaiman's Neverwhere. But thanks to a post on rowandoll's Facebook wall, I found out that they were running a photo contest to go along with it. Since the original TV mini-series was set in the secret world beneath ( Read more... )

So remember how, back in the early December, a kid tried to rob me with a toy gun while I was interviewing someone for an article over the phone?

Well, I won an award for the article that the interview was for.

( And that wasn't all )

A couple of months ago, my editor at the Niles Bugle told me that I was a finalist for the Illinois Press Association’s annual journalism contest.

If you are a Chicago area journalist, there are two journalist awards you probably care about - the Lisagor Awards and the IPA awards. Up until this year, Lisagor awards are run by Chicago Headline Club ( Read more... )

Back in February 18, I got an e-mail from the last place I expected.

Ratko Radojcic, the Assistant Art and Photo Editor for Chicago magazine, wrote that he wanted to use a photo he found on my Flickr stream for an upcoming article. It was a photo I took back in 2012, when I was exploring a less gentrified portion of the Near West Side community ( Read more... )

If you've read my mom's LJ, you already know at least the basics. As for everyone else...

For the past few weeks, I've been regularly freelancing at three places - the 22nd Century Media's North Shore newspapers, the Niles Bugle and Austin Weekly News. With Austin Weekly News, the editor and I agreed that I would get paid a certain amount of money ( Read more... )

First, a little background.

Back in June of 2009, I walked across the entire Bloomingdale Trail, a (largely) abandoned railroad line that runs west through Chicago's Northwest Side. The railroad was elevated, which made it a bit of a pain to access, but it also made it something of a rarity in Chicago - a 3-mile-long oasis of post-industrial ( Read more... )

One of my Cabrini-Green photos was featured at Goto 2040 blog. Unlike some of the other bloggers who used my pictures in the past, they never bothered to ask permission, but they did credit me and linked back to the original, so I am not going to raise a stink over it.