Please don’t take my photos away!

That is precisely how I would feel if someone was to take all the photos I had shot and etched a deep red mark across them saying, “These just don’t cut it!” Pardon the pun, considering we are talking about editing.

Combining my Photo 1 experience with what I read in Kobre about editing and the ethics of photojournalism, made me uncomfortable. It made me think.

After shooting nearly 250 photos, I was sorting through the pile, trying to get my “best 20″, when I realized that I am probably the kid who needs boundaries set for me. It was extraordinarily difficult for me to dissociate from the emotion or thought I had experienced while taking the picture. It was exactly what we talked about in class — Trying to make the image look like what you thought it was SUPPOSED to look like. Kobre, in his section on editing talks about the the diametric views Life and Look magazines had about letting photographers edit their own work. I realized that if I was working at Look, I would never meet a deadline. It is a little easier not being in the room when someone is taking the red ink to it.

It may be argued that it is unprofessional, but it is easier just realizing it, than thinking you are a whole different photographer than you think you are.

Also, in the same section Kobre points out that photo editors need to “find out what pictures their readers are actually looking at, than base editorial decisions on their own biases”. I have a problem with that view. I believe, the choice of the editors almost always depends on the content of the newspaper/website/magazine. I mean, how many pictures of poodles and babies can you print in Time magazine? Also, as we saw on the MSNBC site, if photo editors started pandering to the audience, we would never have witnessed some of the most moving pictures in photojournalism history.

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!