I am the eyes of Chicago. Whether on the sidelines at Soldier Field or in a storefront church on the West side, my job is to visually interpret the comings and goings and the ups and downs of the citizens of this great city.

Scott Strazzante was born and raised in the shadows of the steel mills on the far southeast corner of Chicago. The son of a tire dealer, Strazzante first became interested in photography when as a teen he started taking his dad's camera to Chicago White Sox baseball games. In 1986, after graduating from Ripon College, Strazzante began his photojournalism career when he was hired part-time at The Daily Calumet in Lansing, Illinois. In 1987, Strazzante moved on to the Daily Southtown in Chicago and then migrated to the Joliet Herald-News in 1998, where three years later, he was named National Newspaper Photographer of the Year by the National Press Photographers Association and the Missouri School of Journalism in the 58th Pictures of the Year. In 2001, Strazzante started work at the Chicago Tribune where he spends his time as a general assignment photographer. Strazzante, a seven-time Illinois Photographer of the Year and two-time Southern Photographer of the Year, has covered the Super Bowl, the World Series and three Olympic Games, but he is more proud of his work that uncovers small but universal moments in daily life. Strazzante was recently named Northern Illinois University's Journalist of the Year, only the 2nd time in 37 years that the award has been bestowed on a photojournalist. Strazzante was a small part of the Chicago Tribune team that won a Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting in 2007 for a series about faulty government regulation of dangerously defective toys, cribs and car seats. In 2008, MediaStorm published Common Ground, a multimedia piece on Strazzante's personal project on the transformation of a piece of land in suburban Chicago from rural to suburban. The 15-year-long project, which still continues, has been published in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, Mother Jones and National Geographic. The project has also been honored with POYi's Community Awareness Award and first place in Feature Video in the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism con

Besides my family, photography and catching the occasional White Sox game, I mostly try to get as much sleep as possible.