Year of the tiger

I did my first story for the Columbia Missourian on the celebration of the Chinese new year at Jesse Auditorium. The assignment was to accompany the reporter that was writing a story on the event and get audio/photos that would add to her story. As with most reporting projects at this point in my career my thought process started with evaluating my strengths and weaknesses and how they would affect the story. The best way to explain this is to do it in categories.

Audio: Audio is still a bit of a mystery to me. It is probably my favorite medium and if I had been born 50 years ago it would most definitely be my primary focus. To be completely honest here, on this project i focused primarily on getting good photos and let whatever audio I got accompany them. As I’m writing this it occurs to me that i should find some time to focus some attention on creating a good audio story. Perhaps the best way would to go to an event that has audio/visual components and try to create a story that exclusively uses audio to describe it. In the end, I spent a lot of time getting photos together and quickly threw together some audio for this. Probably not the best strategy, but you can only take on so much at once.

Photo: This part of this assignment was the most interesting to me. I don’t know if this is unique to me, but I feel like a still camera to a journalist is as necessary as a notebook and pen. I carry my camera with me to every story I do whether it be a photo gallery or exclusively video. You can’t properly document an event without taking notes and to the same degree I think you cannot document it without still images.

I started the process of documenting this event by consulting one of my convergence professors. I had never shot a stage show in a dark auditorium before, and I knew enough about cameras to suspect that the lens I had would be little use in that setting. My professor confirmed my suspicion and suggested I rent a lens from the school that is quite a bit faster than the one I would have used otherwise. The lens I rented was an 80-200 so I thought I probably wouldn’t be getting any wide angle shots. I should note here that it was really cool to use a lens that can shoot at f 2.8 at 200mm. Taking closeups in the dark from that range is something that had never been possible for me. I shot with that lens and my own d200 camera right up to intermission. During the break I met up with the reporter doing the written story on the event and she asked me to get a shot of a girl she was interviewing in her traditional Chinese dress. I told her I would try and explained that with the equipment I had I would have to be across the room to get more than the center of her face. At this point she told me she had rented a camera from the school and said that I could use that. She then handed me a d700 with a 14-24mm f2.8 lens. She told me I should just hold onto it for the second half and take some shots with both cameras. If you know about cameras you can imagine how exciting this situation was to a guy wanting to get some photo chops on his first assignment. When the show was over I had taken over a thousand pics between the two cameras and was on a high comparable to a child’s after being put in charge on an FAO Schwarz.

I should probably apologize here for all the boring camera talk, but the experience warrants being documented if only for me.

Working with the reporter writing the piece was a really fun experience. After the show we sat together at the convergence desk in the Missourian newsroom for most of the night working on our pieces and taking time to help each other out when needed. She submitted her piece at around 4am and I finished mine a couple of hours later. In the end it ran on the front of the Missourian website for about 12 hours and made the top 30 stories for the paper for the week. All and all a very rewarding experience that reminded me of why I chose to come to journalism school at Mizzou.

Here’s a link to the story.

Camera

I bought a Nikon D200 this week. While I appreciate and enjoy the opportunity to borrow equipment from school, a camera is something I feel like I should own. I'm hoping this will help me get used to thinking like a photographer more of the time. I can't help but feel that developing solid skills with a still camera will help my visual skill set to improve as a whole. Now it's time to practice.

Goodbye to an inspiration!

I don't know what made you feel like we would be better off without you, but you're wrong. It's only a few hours since we heard you wouldn't be around anymore and all we can think about is how much we miss you. I don't know what brings someone to the point of actually ending their own life but it is incredibly tragic. Your smartest and most intuitive friends understand that taking your own life is nothing more than a ploy for attention. The tragedy is inherent in that understanding! So why did you do it? Perhaps you were that unhappy...perhaps you were heartbroken...perhaps the girl you lovrd didn't love you back... perhaps no one wanted to listen to what you had to say. Whichever it was...c'est la vie! Please beat up mj for me!

Last thoughts on Michael Jackson...

I'm beginning to fear that this blog is starting to sound like the incoherent ramblings of a girl experiencing her first period. I should probably correct that by putting an end to the posts about how I feel about my life and where its going and speak more clearly about what I see in the world around me. Michael Jackson died today. An event that not only shut down sources of information that were previously dedicated to more important things, but also brought out a legion of people championing the accomplishments of a man that was, if not fully, at least partially, widely demonized up to the moments before his death. The question isn't, "Was this man a good man?", the question is, "How do we allow ourselves to be so distracted by his passing that the problems we were so concerned about yesterday are suddenly forgotten?". As a wholehearted believer in the importance of the "Fourth Estate", I have to wonder what sort of ideology allows outlets of news who claim to provide the public with the pressing information that they need, to preempt all other potential stories with uninterrupted coverage of the death of one man. A man almost no one was thinking about yesterday. A man who yesterday was merely a misguided pedophile to so many, but somehow today is a hero to any who have the humanity to listen to his story. The reality is he was just a man. A man like any other. No more important than any of the casualties in the Iranian election controversy. No more important than any one of the 9 people that died in a suicide bombing in Baghdad this morning. So why do we care so much more? And, more importantly, why will the outlets we trust to provide us with the "most pressing" news lead with Michael Jackson tomorrow? Perhaps it is a result of an inability to comprehend the value of human life across the borders of nation and class. Perhaps it is because we deify celebrities to a point that obscures all rationality by the admirer and the admired. Whatever the case may be it is paramount to the achievement of empathy and equality that we begin to understand that pain and loss does not know nation or class.

Bears, Beets, and Burkas

The ability to love and speak freely is inherent to the American experience. While it might seem at some times that the United States is falling behind the rest of the world because of their forward thinking attitudes, occasionally something comes along that reveals where our place really is. Perhaps it's our tolerance of free speech that often embarrasses us, but in the end that is all we have to set us apart from other developed nations. The inspiration for this line of reasoning comes from

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/22/sarkozy-burqas-are-not-we_n_218920.html

the statement that French president Nicolas Sarkozy made regarding the Muslim burka. Sarkozy, in an attempt to support women's rights, said that they were not welcome in his country. While his motives may have been sincere the only thing worse than telling people what they can do is telling them what they cant. Denying women the ability to express themselves in a way that you think is oppressive only compounds the problem. Part of me thinks that a person who has the charisma to become the leader of a powerful country like France should already know this, and perhaps he does. Either way, the ban of the burka reeks of the same ban of female sexuality that brought the burka in to existence in the first place.

Heartbreak Nick Drake and You -Thanks for the words Mike

I'm kind of lonely now. And it's actually kind of nice. I've spent most of my life being surrounded by people, talking about subjects that were, albeit interesting, preventing me from discovering more of the intricacies of individuality. Moving here was easy for me, and I've met a bunch of really cool people since I've been here. Thats the easy part and the part I knew would happen. What surprised me was how it felt to look at four walls in relative silence and listen to the desires you alone have when no one else is there to hear. The silence is the first place I've ever found confidence in the direction my life should go. No more talk of "the will of god" or the practicality of the situation, only me and what I value to direct me down this path. It is a certainty that I've never experienced before. While loneliness may be part my journey, and running back home would be easy, I wouldn't trade it for anything. We will always have our duck!

growing up...at 28

Well, I just got accepted to a new school today.  I've really been looking forward to making some changes and my plan of action was heavily dependant on transferring schools.  I am going to get a journalism degree from a very good program and the whole thing seems quite strange right now.  For the longest time I really didn't have much of a plan at all.  Around my 26th birthday something (probably age) made me feel like I needed to do more to develop a sense of security.  The easiest way I could begin to develop that sense was to go back to school.  I suppose the decision was inspired at the time, but my focus had very little long term potential to fulfill my needs.  I grew up in a time when a lot of people were praising the benefits of studying technology related fields like computers to young people who wanted to be sensible and put themselves in a secure position to start enjoying their piece of the "American Dream".  Simultaneously, I grew up in an environment where I was always encouraged to find what I loved to do and pursue it.  This notion was often taken to the point of talking about a divine purpose and a life that would be hopelessly unfulfilled without it.  I suppose, as I look towards the crossroads I find myself at, and look back at what brought me to this point, the road I will soon travel is a combination of both philosophies.  I have spent the last two years working on a computer degree to satisfy that need for security in the most practical way I knew how.  However, staring down the barrel of a lifetime in a field that I don't even think I have much passion left or made it clear that a change was needed.  I don't think I'm ready to say that there is only one "calling" in life, but I do believe I need to find a place in the world that lets me do something I love to do.  It is strange to feel like I will love doing something that I have very little experience with, but I think that's where I am at right now.  So, I will write.  This blog that no one knows about, the assignments given to me by professors that will never let me know they are pleased with my work (even when they are), for the official and unofficial media outlets I will have access to, and I will write things for myself that no one will ever read.  I have no idea what to expect, or how good I will be at it, because it's something I haven't done very much.  To be honest, I'm not really that worried about any of it.  I probably should be, but I'm not.  I'm not because for the first time in at least a decade, I feel like I am doing something for me and no one else.  If that passion can be shared, then great, but I don't need to share it to enjoy it.  I don't think it warrants a pretentious title like a "calling", but it is a means to an end.  This path has a kind if security I didn't realize I needed.  It has the kind of mental and emotional security my life has lacked up to this point.  I think I'm gonna sleep well tonight.