A Big Day for your Esteemed Author

Anyone remember the photo above?  Well I didn’t either until I drifted over to DCist.com.  You see, DCist is a blog that includes all things DC.  From concerts to food to ‘Skins games, you can get your fix of what’s next in the metro-DC area by checking out this sight. 

But because there are about a million kids in DC that like to take pictures like I do, and we all dream of being published someday, DCist has created a brilliant business model that has all of us submitting pictures to their site that they can use FOR FREE!  DCist has a Flickr pool where you can submit photos you think they could use, with no expectation that you would get anything in return. Looking back, this sounds more and more like a scam, but hey, it worked:

http://dcist.com/2009/11/wsj_makes_paper.php

There is a slightly amazing feeling having your name under a photo on the web.  While it may be one picture out of the millions floating around, at least I know that the people who read this post saw a little bit of my work.

But to make the day ever crazier, I went on an assignment to the White House to preview the Obama’s first State Dinner (which I will post on later), and one of the correspondents asked me to take pictures with my blackberry and shoot them over to him.  Well, wouldn’t you know, I made another celebrity appearance on the internet(s):

I have now made it as a journalist.  I can now leave my job and feel that I have reached the zenith of my career.  Mark Knoller is a legend in the White House, someone I’ve looked up to for a long time.  Being mentioned in his Twitter is, for a journalist, like a teeball player being mentioned by Cal Ripken Jr at a game.

Now, I’m kinda kidding about it being a big deal, but it is pretty cool.  Turns out his tweets get around, and my stepmom sent me a link that she found where they linked to my pictures on his twitter.  Not only that, but they ended up using one of them on our website.

So I think it goes without saying that I am a pretty big-deal photographer now.  You need me to take pictures for you?  It’s going to cost you at least 5 or 6 dollars.  Too much? OK, I’ll probably do it for free.

BTW, here are the pictures (remember, they were taken with a blackberry):