Toolkit 1 down – 2 to go..yeay!

The one thing I can say about this class is that I always enjoyed it in retrospect. Simple – when I was doing the work in the field I cursed and cursed, but once the results were out I was really glad I did it. Another thing I really enjoyed (and was also frustrated by) was the unexpectedness of things. A rainy day when you want to take pictures, interviewees who don’t say too much, unexpectedly helpful people, all of it!

I had come in to this class expecting much lesser than I got. But I feel so much more confident about some things that I had no idea about before. I came into this class after a web design class and was riding high on the ‘I want to know more about this online stuff’ wave. I am so glad this class went beyond my expectations. Now I want to learn even more about the online medium. I really wish we had gotten to learn flash too. That would have been a pretty good learning experience.

I know for a fact that all the things I learned in this class will be more helpful in reality than any of the research papers I wrote!

I am really excited about learning to make soundslides. I feel like going out and making soundslides of every single thing! Overall, though I was a little apprehensive about the fieldwork involved due to some practical issues I faced I am very glad I stuck with it.

Soundslides1 Critique..brrr!

I am critiquing Saman’s soundslides called Muslim Women Celebrate Ramadan in Gainesville.

1. Well, first off I do think there is a story there. It is obviously a story about a celebration. The narration explains what the event is and the visuals complement and add to what she is saying most of the time. For eg: The pictures of the food are delicious! They actually give you a feel of what it must be like to be ravenously hungry the whole day and eat only after sundown.

2. It is not necessarily the narration of the event that draws me in or even the sequence of events. What is interesting is the image of the subject herself. She is someone who is obviously wearing make up so I am sure she is relatively modern. However, her headscarf, and I mean no disrespect, at least in the conventional sense is not something we ordinarily see in this part of the world. That is what makes me “curious” to know more.

3. I am a little undecided about the conclusion. The audio seems to wind things up perfectly. However, I am not sure whether I would like to see the picture of the girl praying as the last image, or of her being in a reflective mood (This is the original last one). Hmm, actually I would like to see the praying image last. I think that would make a perfect ending with the prayer chant.

4. It did not necessarily seem like a campus life story. Though she says she is a minor, it would have been a big help to the project if Saman had named the soundslides Muslim Women Students or something similar with “students” in it. However, there are some pictures of her on campus and with other students. Somehow most of the story seems off campus. Overall 65% (not profile) about Ramadan , 35% campus story.

5. Just as someone viewing the soundslide, I would suggest taking out 2 of the red eye picture. Sadly, they are nice pictures, but maybe she was just unlucky. I can imagine how much it would hurt to take those out if they were “perfect” shots. But they are a little jarring.

Also, I would have LOVED to see a picture of the subject in a cafeteria on campus when she says “It is tough to see other people eating”. I see a picture of her with a good expression related to the audio, but she is nowhere near any food! I would have loved loved loved to see that shot.

6. I LOVED the prayer pictures, and the audio going with it. I think they were the best part of the soundslides because they really convey the feel of the event.

My photo 1 attempts

These were the two pictures I liked from my Photo 1 assignment. One of them was not approved by Professor McAdams, as it did not advance the story, but I was really attached to it so I wanted to show it off.

This was the good one. This one was aimed at showing the subject looking lonely and lost in a crowd. It was actually quite accidental. I was supposed to meet with her in school, but ended up on the same bus with her. The bus was so crowded that she did not notice me for a while — until of course after this shot. But I loved this picture. It was a shot I wasn’t anticipating. It just happened.

This was the one I wanted to keep, but I don’t think I can. It was ideally supposed to be an introductory picture of the subject, which gave us a glimpse of the fact that she is a student and that she is married. The necklace she is wearing is a symbol of marriage. It is the American equivalent of a ring. However, Professor McAdams thought it wouldn’t advance the story too much so I may take it out.

However, this close up reallly had me wishing we were doing profiles instead. Ah! The agony of losing one good picture!

Nat Sound – Less is more?

I know we are all encouraged to use the best equipment possible to record interviews, but I made quite an interesting discovery while recording the nat sound for my interview. Before going any further, I must clarify that I am all for recording interviews with the best quality equipment. What I am talking about is the nat sound.

Before I bought my own recorder, I was experimenting with an old recorder borrowed from a friend. Some of the nat sound I recorded involved the sounds of a crowd. When I went home and heard the recording, I was disappointed. The sounds of the crowd were muffled. We had heard in class, time and again, the importance of clear recording.

However, one discovery I made was that the muffled effect provided by the old recorder was actually perfect for the background sound, under the voice of my subject. Another question was whether purposely using such a recorder would constitute an “unethical practice”.

I would be very interested in knowing if anyone else has had any similar serendipitous encounters while recording the nat sound for their slide show.

Capturing the sunrise

Last week when I left class I was totally inspired by the guy who takes black and white photographs. I was especially impressed with the concept of “Where you stand..and when you press the button”. I made it my mission to make this weekend an exercise in photography. My friends and I had planned a trip to St. Augustine and I was delighted at the opportunity for capturing beautiful images.

I remembered Kobre’s advice of getting the overall pictures and the medium and close up shots to convey different moods. Initially, on the road it was mostly photographs of the scenery trying to get the overall picture. It all seemed to blur past, making for very bad images and sometimes very surreal ones. That is when I started learning how to use my friends fancy zoom lens camera. I put it into sports mode and lo and behold! Suddenly the scenery didn’t look like a scene from a Nascar race.

Then I tried taking these “medium shots” of some people in the back of a pick up truck. That however, made me feel very paparazzi-like, especially when the subjects gave me some dirty looks. Not a good idea fellow photographers! (Unless of course, you are an investigative journalist)

However, most times I tried sticking to taking pictures without too much interference by the equipment, i.e., zooming in and out, changing modes and all that kind of thing. Remember…where you stand and when you click.

But, there was one aspect I was really interested in, which was taking pictures in soft, evening light and retaining the softness of the light (not making it look like a day shot), and simultaneously making sure they didn’t look all dark either. For that, I exposed the lens to the light (basically leaving the shutter open so it lets the light seep in for about 30 seconds), and then clicked, so there wasn’t too much light from the flash, or too little from not letting enough light in.

In all the scenery shots, I mostly concentrated on composition. I must admit, Professor McAdams’ advice of looking at the frame of the picture before shooting really made a difference. It is amazing how much difference half an inch of interference can make.

Coming back to the Kobre reading, his advice about arriving early and leaving late is not very new to me. My father who is a Public Relations Officer and a journalist ALWAYS dishes out that kind of advice. Hence, reading Kobre’s suggestions on how to network to get stories, etc. felt like revisiting teenage memories. I must admit though, I have seen in my father’s case, how well it works. I have proof that Kobre knows what he is talking about.

Journalism Web Design Experiences

 

{Co[u/a]rse Work??? – My Journalistic foray into the realms of internet(-esting) commonality}

I was not a geek. Not a technology geek anyway. However, all that changed when I started the journalism program at the University of Florida. Fresh from Law School with a family history of the journalism bug, I did not in the least have an inclination toward the technological world. I was in the journalism program because I loved to write. Period.

I am from India, the land of the rising micro chip, and I’d be damned if I was to be another “computer engineer”. Little did I know of my latent geek potential.

My knowledge of the world of computers and online jargon was restricted to Yahoo Messenger and emailing homework to my professors. Typing LOL made me feel internet savvy. And, why did I NEED to know this stuff anyway. I was a lawyer and a prospective journalist. People in “our profession” didn’t need in-depth internet or computer info.

And then I encountered my first Web Design and Electronic Publishing course under David Carlson.

My adviser suggested I take the course to stay up to speed on the new trend of online journalism. I did not relish the thought of being ignorant and decided to dabble in some web design myself.

Initially it was very difficult for me to wrap my brain around the fact that it took complicated strings of jargon to come up with that one flower you saw on the screen. Why could they not have invented a simpler way of doing things? But, I must admit the satisfaction of seeing the final results in the class exercises, however small, made me hate XHTML lesser and lesser each day. Eventually, poring over lines of code to find glitches became a mission more than an assignment.

Gradually I got initiated into the alien world of geek talk. There were Cascading Style Sheets to discuss, strict and lenient codes to talk about and Dreamweaver to fall back upon like a true friend. Technology subliminally crept into my blood and made me feel like I needed to know more.

I designed my first web site in that class. It was an attempt at a guide to all things Indian. It was not necessarily a great journalistic job, but it was a pretty good attempt at Web Design. It spurred me on to design another Web site for one of my professors’ Visual Communication course. I am still waiting for that project to get online.

What excited me the most about these projects was their easy access. All I had to do was send my folks back home a link and they could view my entire project in a few minutes. That is when the potential of online journalism hit me. It was access to stories 24/7 from almost anywhere in the world.

My most recent encounter with technology has been in the Journalists’ Toolkit 1 class. Now I can totally relate to Professor McAdams going into raptures of delight about del.icio.us and Google Reader. I understand now, how it can all seem so overwhelming: this almost unlimited access to unlimited stores of information.

As for my pursuit of all things technological, I foresee a long but eventful journey. The last bit of computer jargon I learnt was “dual-boot”. I stumbled across it when I was doing some research on the new PC game Bioshock. I am not quite the computer gamer – yet. It was a gift for a friend who IS a techno maniac. So now I know that you can have two operating systems, Ubuntu and Windows installed on your PC at the same time. This lets you play games like Bioshock which are designed for Windows, while preserving Ubuntu for other processes. Didn’t quite get that? Well then, you will just have to wait for the next time I spout my latest findings at the techno geek convention!