I came home at 10pm tonight from volunteering at the CPOY judging going on all week at school. During that eight hour shift, I saw some really bad photos and some mind-blowing amazing photos. Take a look at the winning photos from sports portfolio [screencast only for now] and portraits, and if you really want a good laugh, tune into the semi-final round of the portrait session to hear me read off the entire set of captions.

Anyways, it reminded me that I should post some fun photos from the last week or two. I do have assignment images done – somewhere – but I haven’t uploaded them yet. I’ll share those when I can actually think about writing something witty. My wit left the building hours ago.

The fall colors were spectacular this year. I hear it’s not a regular thing out here, so I feel pretty lucky.

Also spectacular were the sunsets in St. Louis during the APME conference. This view was the best part about the strange hotel.

Our next class assignment – sports. I can’t wait to showcase the good shots. I took over 1,100 frames between two sporting events, and ended up with quite a few winners. How the hell did I shoot sports for the paper so long ago on a D1/D1X with 512MB and 2GB cards?

Yes, I’m a jersey girl. I know my bagels. And we managed to find some in town that could vaguely pass as being a decent bagel. So we bought some. Okay, more than some. But hey, they were half off!

Enough of this non-witty banter. I need sleep, and I’m uninspired by my own photography today.

Almost midnight, Monday.

This week’s (well, and last week’s too) project for Fundamentals was the classmate project. [cue scary music] We picked names out of a box for a round-robin style photo assignment, where I photographed someone, they photographed someone else, who was photographing someone else, and so on.

The goal?

Tell this person’s story. Whether it’s a literal ‘thing,’ like the significance of this one kid’s blue shoes, or a feeling, as with the adjusting period of some of our international students, we needed to convey the story in picures.  It’s a lot harder than it seems.

My story was about Christie, a stretched-thin sophomore taking 19 credits and being active in a sorority and three other volunteer groups on campus. I wish I could have had another week to work on the project, but I lost that due to MPW. More situations in which to take photos may have brought a bit more variety to the images. But we learn from each assignment, and I hope to carry that across to the next big story project, our final.

Here’s my opening image.

Editing was tough. I knew I wanted certain photos, but filling in the holes was near impossible. I found myself attached to certain images, but tossing them aside for something that told the story clearer or was better technically. Eventually, I went back to the entire take and found some overlooked gems that ended up in the final edit.

But looking at my classmates’ projects, I could easily see what worked and what didn’t. I knew what I wanted to see to drive the story that the photographer didn’t necessarily have. This time, I was a bit more vocal in the critique, making sure to ask “what’s the story?” if it wasn’t inherently clear. Usually I’m on the quiet side, as our critiques are often much more lenient than I would be if left to my own devices. Today, I felt it appropriate to ask that simple question and make those critical observations. I hope my comments helped.

Maybe I am good at this editing thing. But only when the photos aren’t mine.

I don’t know why I’m procrastinating so much today. Maybe it’s the 32 hours + of gloom and rain we’ve had here. (Although I believe it has stopped raining now, it’s still pretty gloomy.) Or perhaps it’s because I’m in the middle of reading an article for my Mass Media Seminar class that’s so over my head, I don’t know half the words it uses. See sentence example #1:

“West argues that the epistemic skepticism found in some strands of faddish deconstructive criticism and the explanatory agnosticism, or nihilism, associated with the work of descriptivist anthropologists and historians have made the “categorical mistake” of collapsing epistemological concerns of justification in philosophy into methodological concerns of explanation in social theory.” (Kincheloe, McLaren. “Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research.” p141.)

Ummm, yeah. Maybe we should look at some pictures I’ve been meaning to post instead.

An outtake from my “Interaction” project for Fundamentals. I didn’t show it because you can’t really see either face, but there’s just something I like about it. Maybe it’s the angles? Or the idea of a hairdresser being an unsung artist?

(On a unrelated note, our aging neighbor who is on constant oxygen just walked past our door, coughing and wheezing like something from another world. I worry about him sometimes.)

These are some of the single images I submitted to CPOY this year. I doubt I’ll win anything, but at least I’ve entered. Next year though, watch out. I hope to have some stellar work.

Okay. Now that I’ve been productive in my procrastination, I’m feeling like I should be productive on some school work first. But where to start . . . the paper about MPW this year? Reading more dreadfully scholarly articles? Or maybe re-writing my lit review question to actually reflect what I wanted in the first place? (I’m hoping to research agenda/image setting through a question about the White House photo office.) Or figuring out the specifics on my ethics term paper topic? (Image manipulation and where the ethical line stands, something like that.)

:: sigh ::

I agree. Let me barrel through this reading. Only a few more pages to go on this one and three more interesting (hopefully) articles after that. Then I’ll write fun papers.

Wheee!

I promise, blog readers – I’m not neglecting you. This last week was full of extra work to get ready for my adventure with the Missouri Photo Workshop. I’ll catch up on my outtake from class assignment #2 and my CPOY entry once I get a chance. Until then, on to MPW!

(This is an evening session. We are watching a cool presentation by Rick Shaw on the POYi contest.)

And what is this MPW thing? As coined by Phoebe Sexton (a graduate student a few semesters ahead of me), it’s “Photo Nerd Camp.” To others, it’s a week of intense storytelling photography and lack of sleep. To all, it’s an immersion program that documents stories of a different small town in Missouri every year and is now in its 61st year. Phew!

I went last year and told a story about a “Band of Brothers” and their mom, all dealing with the life change of dad working in Iraq for a year driving trucks.

This year, I’m working on the vortex team, where we ingest all the photographers’ photos, rename them, and put them (via LAN!) onto the team computers for review with the faculty members. It’s a lot of work, but a lot of downtime, too. Thank goodness – I’ve had a lot of reading to do in preparation for writing two papers, one due Monday and one Tuesday.

(Not sure who wrote “face.”)

We’ve also been having quite a bit of fun around all this work. Here’s a few more photos of the fun stuff. The entire set can be seen here.

Grad school is slowly turning my brain into mush and re-organizing the compartments where the goo gets stored for easier access to the newly important information.

Or so it feels.

For my latest Fundamentals of Photojournalism project, I’ve been feeling a bit apprehensive about shooting. Not necessarily the act of taking photos, but in finding a good place to achieve the goal of the project.

See, I live near downtown, and everyone photographs downtown. I see these hippie-looking, homeless-looking denizens hanging around outside one of the coffee shops, and I think, “I really want to photograph them. I want to know why they are hanging around all the time. I want to know the toothless guy’s story. And the pregnant girl’s story. Why are they here.”

But, as shown in our first class critique, they get photographed and interviewed all the time. I don’t want to be typical. I don’t want to be where everyone else has been. (Even if their efforts have not produced the stories I want to hear.)

The rest of downtown has this same feel. There’s so many interesting spots and people, and I feel as though I’d be selling out if I completed an assignment there. But then again, if everyone has this feeling, then no stories will come from downtown. And that would be a shame.

So, today’s assignment took me all through downtown for a second time. I thought maybe if I took my bike down, I’d stumble across something interesting, maybe something no one else thought to cover before. Nope. Just apprehension about even walking into a situation to ask that tortuous question, “Can I take your picture?”

And then I remembered the animal rescue just a few blocks from my house.

Bingo! Something clicked as I walked up and I felt like myself again, able to put myself into the situation I needed for my project. The many volunteers were quite welcoming and let me hang around for about an hour or so. I got fantastic information, took a bunch of photos (some perfect for my project), and even heard some interesting ideas to possibly pursue for my final project.

Moments like these are rare. I need to remember that not every assignment will be easy to find, and not to give up until I get what I need. For every time I worry that maybe this project will fail, I need to get out and try again.

Because I can do this.

The photojournalism department sponsored a picnic for staff and students tonight out at a local park, Stephens Lake Park. The weather couldn’t have been better – we were originally forecast with 40% thunderstorms and ended up with a cloudless sky all night long.

It was nice to meet some of the other photo-j students, although it’s a little intimidating that there’s so many of them and so few of us new kids. I’m sure by the end of this semester, that feeling will dissipate.

The semester so far is going well. My brain hurts, but that’s to be expected. There’s a ton of information being crammed in there. Thankfully, as I explained to my adviser today, it’s all things I’m interested in, so it’s slowly finding places to sort out and settle into. Lots and lots of readings, and a ton of writing to match.

But every day, when I go to bed, I think about where I’ve been and where I am and where I’m heading, and I’m undoubtedly happy with my decision to come here for school. It was the right time, and it’s the right place. I miss DC terribly, but I know it – and many of my friends – will be waiting for me at the end.

Now to remember how to write academically and not just newsworthy.

:: think! ::

(Also, for you photo-nerds out there – check out the EXIF data on my file. I hand-held that baby at 1/5 of a second. The +.50 exposure was done in post to give it a little more detail.)

I got to do one of my favorite things today.

I covered football.

My main goal was to write a story about the game, but make it more about the players than the actual game. It’s not always easy – a game recap is technical, but simple. Just pay attention to the action on the field, and you’re set. Getting an interesting story though, is not as easy. It takes interviewing people, watching the players on and off the field, listening in on coaches giving pep talks, and keeping an eye out for anything interesting that may cross your path.

Tonight’s story, in my opinion, was pretty successful. I got some of the highlights of the action, plus an interesting angle – the team I was assigned to cover had a dismal 1-9 record last season, and actually did quite well at the jamboree tonight. The players were buzzing after the game, energized for the start of their season next week.

Preseason football jamboree energizes Rock Bridge
(My awesome editor wrote that headline. My original one was pretty blah.)

But the best part of the night is due in part to the fantastic photographer, Jarrad, assigned to the event. While he was off shooting photos, he had me working his Flip video recorder, trying to get some sound and video bites. My favorite clip of all was of a play that unfolded right in front of me, and then literally ended up where I had been standing. (Nothing like two 180lb+ guys hurtling at you while looking at a camera screen.) If I can get my hands on that, I’ll post it to the blog.

Then Jarrad needed to head up to the press box to get the video camera ready for some post-game interviews with players. Into my hands was thrust a D2Xs (I think?) with a 17-35mm lens, and I was told to see what I could get. I haven’t seen my take on a computer screen, but I may have gotten some neat shots of the players with awesome clouds and wide-angle goodness.

Once we got the interview area set up, he realized we needed extra audio, just in case the main camera didn’t pick that up. The Flip found its way back in my hands as I tried to capture alternative angle video and hopefully backup audio. We then crashed an interview being done my our other reporter, and I handheld the camera to record one of the coaches talking about the game. (The tripod was missing a plate for the camera. Oops.)

What a rush. What a learning experience. What fun!

I need to get in on more football action this fall. I don’t know how, but I must.

I really love covering football.

After a long and studious week, my classmates and I went out to Cooper’s Landing to see our professor, John Schneller, play some folk music with his band. It was an awesome evening, with fantastic weather, great Thai food, fun music and good company.

just posted a new set on Flickr of an inspired experiment.

check it out.

hi friends. it’s been a while since i’ve updated for real. apologies, big apologies.

anyways, i just wanted to share that i’ll be covering the National Spelling Bee for an awesome group of 22 kids from all over Canada. if i can get a hold of the links of where my photos will appear (they’re being distributed to over 20 newspapers!), i’ll post them for you all.

first photo finds!  not sure why they posted it with such poor quality.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/Life/Canadian+spellers/1629147/story.html

http://www.vancouversun.com/Life/Canadian+spellers+gear+tough+challenge/1628955/story.html

http://www.theprovince.com/Life/Spellers+enter+world+toughest+challenge/1631710/story.html

http://www2.canada.com/news/spellers+enter+world+toughest+challenge/1631710/story.html?id=1631710

http://www2.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/story.html?id=1628955

http://www.canada.com/story_print.html?id=1628955&tab=PHOT&sponsor= (be careful with this one, it’ll resize your window.)

http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/maritimes/Canadian+spellers+gear+tough+challenge/1628955/story.html

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Life/Canadian+spellers+gear+tough+challenge/1628955/story.html

in the meantime, i got my press credentials today. YEAH!

erin and her bee credentials