Personal | Alex Farris Photo Blog

I finished at the Journal & Courier on April 13, and by the looks of the blog I haven't done anything since. Not true, though: I did three freelance assignments for the Star, one freelance assignment for the J&C, one contract private birthday party and a quick actor headshot for my uncle in between then and now. I must also add that a lot of my free time recently has been spent, not on updating the blog, but on reading Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses and E.O. Wilson's On Human Nature, both of which I highly recommend if you ever want to fill your mind with profundity. On Human Nature especially appeals to my science-minded self, and it surprisingly holds up considering its publish date of 1978. It's certainly worthy of its 1979 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction.

Seriously, you should buy or rent it the first chance you get. You won't be sorry.

For more photos, head to these Star links for the Christamore House Guild event, the Vacant art show and Perry Meridian High School's prom, and the J&C's EyeSpy gallery of the Grand Prix Breakfast Club.

Students reach for money thrown into the air during Perry Meridian High School's prom, themed "Moonlit Memories," on Saturday, May 4, 2013, at the Indiana History Museum in Indianapolis. (Alex Farris / For The Star)

Yesterday, I started a month-long stint as a photographer for the Lafayette Journal & Courier. I'm filling in while one of the photographers is on leave, and I found an empty room in a house of graduate students to stay in, meaning I'll be under long-term exposure to "the enemy" (of course, Purdue has never been my enemy).

Before that gets going, though, I want to put up something from Guatemala. Last week, I translated Spanish and English for the Mooresville branch of Operation Walk, an organization that goes to developing countries and does orthopedic surgery for those who need it but can't afford it. The humanitarian trip alternates every year between Guatemala and Nicaragua, and this year we were stationed at Hospittalia Amatitlán, a hospital about an hour south of Guatemala City. Simply put, this is the best thing I've done and been a part of in a long time. To say that I was part of a trip that resolved 99 joint cases in 69 patients in four days is nothing short of an honor. The head of the trip (who is also my research-job boss) invited everyone back next year, and I can't wait to do it again.

I didn't have a lot of free time, but when I did I took some photos. Many of them I took on my iPhone because I was too busy to run around with my big DSLR as I gave patients instructions on physical therapy and their medications. Regardless, I hope this gives you a taste of all the good things we did in Guatemala. If you'd like, you can go to the trip website and go through the photos of the extremely talented Jim Brown, former journalism professor and associate dean at IUPUI.

MP4, WebM, or Ogg.
A 3.5-hour time lapse of Operation Walk volunteers outside the operation rooms at Hospittalia in Amatitlán, Guatemala.

Last year, after the annual Indiana News Photographers Association awards judging, I didn't have much to do. I hung around Bloomington a little bit, somewhat aimlessly, until I recalled the Lilly Library. I had been inside the repository of Really Old Stuff maybe four times as a student, and even though I got to hold John Ford's Oscar and read Ernie Pyle's letters, I didn't fully appreciate the library and its treasures. On that day, though, I finally took advantage of my free time. I flipped through the card catalog, and in no time I had my hands on personal letters, handwritten notes, and a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation, all of which flowed from Lincoln's pen.

This year, I decided to treat my dad to that same awesome privilege. I was more prepared this time, though, and in my preliminary research I found that the library hosted, along with its manuscripts, bronze casts of parts of a life mask of the 16th President. So, my father got to hold faithful representations of Lincoln's face and hands.

Even with my preparation, we still got a surprise: the library also holds the Sumner-Wormly copy of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Note: This was an event for Dad, so I only took my iPhone into the library.

This is the Thirteenth Amendment. Or at least the Sumner-Wormly copy, made soon after passage in Congress. Before it was sent out to the several states for ratification, Lincoln made what some call a constitutional faux pas: he signed the document, even though the executive has no formal part to play in the process of amending the Constitution.