Photo Story - HVAC Contractor: It's a Dirty Job and Joel Salinas is the Man for It.

Joel Salinas takes a few moments to take a break from his work as an HVAC Contractor to get a Gatorade from his work van. Salinas works for Evergreen Heating & Cooling.

Salinas has to clean up the dry wall he cuts out of the walls, to install new vents for a forced air system.

Salinas is proud of his one-handed dry wall scrap balancing skills, saying his girlfriend would be proud because she's a server at a restaurant.

Salinas shakes the bits of insulation and dust from himself, next to a pile of supplies he'll be using to do the installation. Being an HVAC Contractor is a dirty job. 

Salinas looks through the hole he's cut in the ceiling for the air return to check the measurements he made inside the tight attic space, before the hole was cut.

Feature Writing Week 10

My three goals at the beginning of the term:

This term, I'd like to improve my interviewing skills because a good interview means a better story. I'd like to get better at coming up with good questions to ask people I'm interviewing because it would lead to a better story. I would also like to be better at managing my time and get the ball rolling on my stories sooner, rather than later.

I didn't do so hot when it came to achieving my goals this term due to unforeseen circumstances. I do feel like I improved slightly with asking good interview questions though. I learned to ask people how they got started in what they do, which can really give a lot of information just from that one question. I did not improve my time management skills whatsoever, but I feel like I stayed mostly on top of things during a trying time - better than I thought I would have.

Photojournalism Week 10

I really love the photo I took of Russell Tripp. It may not be the most perfectly balanced for lighting or extremely well framed, but he looks really pleased and interacting with him was a really cool experience. He's a very nice person and happy to humor people.

What it reflects about what I learned is to really pay attention to faces and expressions.

My photography skills grew a lot over the last 10 weeks. I have gotten a little more comfortable taking photos of strangers. To get to where I want to be with that will take a long time I think though. I'm not afraid to get some weird angles now, and I'm also working on getting closer to my subject.

Things I pay closer attention to now include are what's happening in the background of my subject, particularly behind their heads, and the depth of field, and light sources.

Feature Writing - Writer's Choice: LBCC Opens1993 25-Year Time Capsule at 50 Year Anniversary

In 1993, Bill Clinton was president, gas was $1.60 a gallon, you could buy a brand new house for $130K in Albany, and a 25 year time capsule was buried in the courtyard at LBCC.

“Anyone remember what this is?” asked Jon Carnahan, former president of LBCC, as he held up a VHS tape. He had just removed it from the time capsule which was unearthed last week on Wednesday, May 16. It marks the 50th Anniversary of LBCC.

Many LBCC representatives, old and new attended the event. Bob Ross, LBCC's first full-time staff member who still teaches today; Russel Tripp, LBCC Founding Board Member; Jon Carnahan, previous president of LBCC; Greg Hamann, current LBCC president were all familiar faces at the event.

Trisha Melcher attended the event because she was a student at LBCC in 1993 and her daughter Mandy Melcher was at the child care center at the time.

Some of the things in the time capsule showed how much the world has changed in 25 years. A floppy disk, homemade cassette tape and an LB school phone number list are good examples of that.

Other things from the capsule, like giant textbooks and an HP printer ink cartridge that look extremely similar to the ones used today, show the world hasn’t changed as much as one might think.

A new time capsule was buried the same day, set to be dug up in 2043 to celebrate the 75th Anniversary of LBCC. People were asked ahead of time to make suggestions of what to put in the new time capsule.

LBCC President Greg Hamann's favorite of the items to be buried are a bottle of Roadrunner Red IPA from Deluxe Brewing and a baseball signed by the LBCC 30-consecutive-game winning baseball team.

The complete list of items that were put into the new capsule included LBCC’s mission/ core themes/ values, pennant, Roadrunner Red IPA, baseball signed by the 30-game winning streak LBCC baseball team, viewbook, schedule of classes, marketing materials, 50th anniversary button, Rocky the Roadrunner plush, fidget spinner, 2017 solar eclipse items, aerial photos of campus, Commuter student paper from May 16, part of the old gym floor, recent news headlines, gold medal from classified appreciation day, Democrat Herald from May 16, fast facts about LBCC, inspired t-shirt, drawing by LBCC Cooperative Preschool, and 49 issues of The Commuter 1970-2018 digital.

Photographer of the week

Born as Margaret White in 1904 in New York,  Margaret Bourke-White studied photography at Clarence H. White School of Photography in 1921-22. Her father was an avid hobby photographer, but she never picked up a camera until after his death in 1922.

She then spent five years attending four different universities from 1922-1927. She attended Cornell University and made money selling photographs of the buildings at the school until she graduated in 1927.

During her college days, she married and then divorced in two years. At the time of finalizing her divorce, she took the opportunity to legally change her name. She took on her mother's maiden name (Bourke) to create her hyphenated professional last name.

In her early days, she was an industrial and architectural photographer, traveled to Germany and Russia to do photo essays, and photographed the great American dust bowl. She was recognized by early on from her architectural and industrial photos. Her father spent most of his life working as a designer and engineer, and many speculate that this had an affect on Bourke-White's eye for her early work.

This work caught the eye of Henry Luce who started Fortune Magazine and she became the first staff photographer for the new periodical.

In 1936, she became one of Life Magazine's first four photographers on staff. She was also the first female photographer for Life. One of her photos was even used on the very first issue of Life magazine. It featured the Fort Peck Damn in the process of being built. This was for the feature story in the magazine which highlighted the life and boomtowns around the dam construction, of which Bourke-White took the photos for.

Working directly with Life, she covered World War II, covering the siege of Moscow, and liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. These graphic photos shocked the world with images of concentration camps and gas chambers. The photos ran in Life Magazine.

Afterwards, she travelled to India to photograph Gandhi and mass division caused by religious devision between Hindi India and Muslim Pakistan.

In 1969, she retired from Life magazine. At this point in her life, she was suffering from Parkinson's and spent the later part of her career at Life doing things other than photography due to the effects of it. She passed away just a few years later in 1971.

My favorite photo of hers is the first cover of Life Magazine. I really love her use of contrast of light on her architectural work.

Image courtesy of The Met.

Photojournalism Week 6 - Free Shoot: Event

Russell Tripp poses next to a photo of himself breaking ground on the Albany campus building site in the 1960's. It was part of a display of photos at the 50th Anniversary event at LBCC.

Former LBCC President Jon Carnahan, pats Russell Tripp on the back while they look back on a photo of burying the time capsule that was buried in 1993, and was about to be unearthed at the 50th Anniversary event after being underground for 25 years.

Many people gathered for the 50th Anniversary event in the courtyard at LBCC on Wednesday, May 16.

Current LBCC President Greg Hamann high-fives Rocky the Roadrunner after they and George Van Keulen put the new 25-year time capsule into the ground.