A look at "The bells of Florida"

One of my classmates produced their soundslide on The bells of Florida. I watched and listened to the presentation, and had some thoughts on what she’d done.

This soundslide is interesting for the information it brings, but the interest is present in spite of the absence of a strong story. Why isn’t it a story? A story is based on movement of characters and action through time, while this is, essentially, a good presentation of static facts. Part of the problem in turning this into a story is presented early in the soundslide — Century Tower is a long-time fixture on the UF campus. For most students, it is the definition of an unchanging landmark on campus. If the presentation had followed the evolution of Gill as a carillon player, or the development and practice of a single piece of music from initial introduction to finished performance, it would have been easier to create a story flow, but it would have been a very different soundslide.

The beginning has some inherent interest since almost everyone at UF is familiar with the carillon, but there’s a quote mid-way through the piece that seems a natural lead: when Gill talks about the carillon players not being like Quasimodo, I felt a natural lead. This soundslide led with an introduction to the interview subject (as my soundslide did), but the more I listen to soundslides, the more I wonder whether placing the interview subject ID might not better be left for later in the soundslide.

I felt the conclusion of the soundslide was successful, giving information that we didn’t have earlier (it’s possible to get a tour of the tower) and the interview subject’s feeling about an aspect of her work in the tower. The only thing that I missed is technical — after all the carillon music in the background, it would have been nice if there had been time to let the piece end on a chime note that faded out. It would have added a second or two, but it would have made for a great ending.

This piece ended up being weighted to the profile side rather than the campus life side, by about 65 – 35%. I like this proportion, and honestly think that making it more a "tour of the tower" would have weakened the presentation. In this case, letting us see the tower and the carillon through the eyes of a musician brought deeper understanding and a new perspective — both great things when it comes to a taken-for-granted landmark.

If asked to improve the soundslide, I would make the following suggestions:

1. More shots of students around the tower. We’ve been told it’s a common part of student life, but I remember only one shot of students — one or two more would be nice.

2. Tighten the practice console section. This is interesting, but could be tightened by a few seconds without losing impact.

3. Filter some of the heavy breathing/wind noise in the section where we hear footsteps going up the stairs. I really like the footsteps, but the breathing is distracting.

4. Use the seconds you save in (2) to close with a longer carillon note.

5. Lead with the Quasimodo line. It’s great.

My favorite part of the soundslide is the background track — the bells, footsteps, and other environmental sounds that underlay the interview. These sounds really added a great deal of interest and "feeling of place" to the overall presentation. I thought they were very effective and well done throughout.

All in all I enjoyed the soundslide very much. I learned new things about something I hear every day, and I was impressed with the quality of both photos and sound.

Bicycles and Repairs at UF

You can’t be on the University of Florida campus very long without noticing the number of students riding bicycles. Some ride out of environmental principles, some out of convenience, and some because they’re too cheap to pay for gas and parking. When I thought about bicycles and their riders as the subject of my first soundslide project, I began looking for a way to focus the subject, both topically and geographically. I had noticed the free bicycle repair offered by the Student Government Association, and decided to focus on the activities and people at the bike clinic. I spent several afternoons taking photos and talking with the mechanics, though the final interview heard in the project took place over the telephone — I was in the Javits Center in New York and Ian Knabe, the interview subject, was back in Gainesville.

The soundslide on UF Bicycles and Repair is my first. I’m pleased, though, that I’ll be using the technique again in the near future: the assignment I was on in New York has expanded to include multiples soundslides.

Lemonade Photos

So I went to the bike repair station this afternoon, because I really wanted to re-record my interview. Guess who wasn’t there? At all? That’s right, the repair crew decided to take the afternoon off. I moped around for a few minutes and finally decided to take some photos while I was there. Maybe it was the rain, maybe I was just feeling a bit funky, (and maybe it’s because there weren’t really any people to take pictures of) but my shots today turned out to be rather more “art-y” than journalistic.

One of the things I did was to change the ISO setting on the camera from my usual 400 to ISO 200. At 200, it seems to emulate some of the good Kodak chrome (slide) films a bit more. It’s tough to tell in these small versions, but the resolution on larger shots is really amazing.

First, I saw a piece of broken chain lying on the ground.

Shot taken with Nikon D80 at 1/125 sec., f/5.6, ISO 200.

I enjoyed the way the light played off the edges of the links, and the holes in the links gave some nice dark areas to contrast against the reflections.

Next. I’d been looking at a stack of tires and wheel the guys keep under the workbench.

Shot taken with Nikon D80 at 1/80 sec., f/4.2, ISO 200.

This just seemed a very dynamic image of some very static pieces of metal and rubber. There were interesting things on top of the bench, too, especially when I climbed up into a chair to get a good angle on some stray parts.

Shot taken with Nikon D80 at 1/80 sec., f/4.2, ISO 200.

Once again, the lights and darks in the box of hardware was really nice. I thought about framing the shot to be solely within the box, but I sort of like the stray GoJo cups of parts off to the side.

Finally, I did find some people to put into a shot. The two students in this picture just seemed visually “right” on a Fall afternoon that had turned sunny.

Shot taken with Nikon D80 at 1/250 sec., f/5.6, ISO 400.

This image is cropped down from a shot that included many more trees and much more hedge. At full size, I like all the “stuff” around the two individuals, but as I brought the size of the image down I found that the people were getting lost, so I had to really focus on them to keep the shot interesting.

So that’s the day. Life handed me lemons, so I tried to make…well, you know. Now, I just have to figure out how to get that make-up interview before next Thursday…

The Power of Images

Over at the PhotoJournalism blog, Mark Hancock interviewed Ken Burns during a recent lecture stop. The first video on the page covers his ideas about photography. I think Burns’ thoughts on the power of still photography are fascinating given both his work in film and his heavy use of still photographs in those films. It’s obvious that Burns has given this a great deal of thought, and his thoughts — especially on the importance of "trust" in photography — make a great deal of sense to me.

The second video covers his latest film, and there are some interesting thoughts there, too. Burns has been such an incredibly influential film-maker that it’s fascinating to listen to the way he thinks about the subjects and his work.

A New Toy

I have to admit it: I love tools and gadgets. This week I did a little bit of extra work and justified buying something I’ve wanted for a while: I got a Zoom H4 Handy Recorder. I think we’re going to be very happy together.

The Zoom is much smaller than my earlier digital recorder, and the sound from the on-board microphones is super. Why did I go for the H4 instead of the smaller and cheaper Zoom H2? It really boiled down to a couple of things. First, I remain unconvinced of the utility of the H2’s mid-space mic capsules. I know that you can, with a little work, record 5.1 surround sound using the device, but I really don’t need to do that much work in surround sound. I hope that, when the day comes that I need to be reporting in surround sound, I’ll be able to buy a Nagra (and hire a grip to carry all my equipment). Next, I like the fact that the H4 can work as a high-quality A/D converter for my mics. The sound card in my laptop isn’t awful, but the H4 is better, and it will provide phantom power to two microphones, greatly increasing my audio options.

Carol says she’s going to put a string mouth and googly eyes on the windscreen. Until then, I’ll just look like I’m going to Tase my interview subjects…

New Blog for a New Media Era?

The new MediaShift Idea Lab blog features a bunch of folks blogging about "reinventing community news for the Digital Age." The participants are people who’ve won the Knight News Challenge to create local news communities, and the early posts are talking about the projects they’ve begun or are beginning. There are some very interesting posts there, like Gail Robinson’s description of a site that will use games to cover and explain New York City politics.

I’ve been involved with on-line communities since 1984 — I’m looking forward to seeing innovation in using them to further community news and interests.

Blogging for Dollars

We usually don’t like to spend a lot of time thinking about the economics of journalism, but I’ve found that I enjoy staying current on my mortgage payments. A relatively new publication, Blogger and Podcaster, looks at both the content and business sides of, well, blogging and podcasting. The current issue has articles that look at how targeted content sells, as well as information on getting better readership for you blog. (NB: Most of the tips in this second article will be familiar to everyone in Journalists’ Toolkit I.)

There’s another reason we should all start paying attention to the "money" side of journalism. The most recent versions of the Federal Shield Law working their way through congress define journalists as those with a substantial economic benefit from journalism. In order to be protected, then, you must make a non-trivial portion of your living from journalism. That’s very easy for folks in staff positions, but can be a real hurdle for many freelancers. Learning how to make some money from your blogging and podcasting could be critical if it ever becomes necessary to seek the protections of the (still theoretical) shield law in court.

Taking Better Photos

I’m always looking for tips on how to take better photos, and found a good list of possibilities here at DigitalPhoto. They have quick points on everything from light to perspective, and the tips don’t require that you have a particular kind of camera.

Thanks to the always-helpful LifeHacker for the pointer.

Photos That Tell a Story

Ethics and mechanics. These two critical aspects of telling a story in any medium play an especially large role in photo stories. As I worked through the most recent readings for class, each side of this equation came into focus a bit more clearly, and I was reminded of a lesson taught by my college choir director. The late Hugh Thomas said that any musician needed to be able to split their awareness between the performer — totally in the performance, fully committed to the music — and the critic, coolly observing the performance and drawing the performer back from self-indulgence or emotion that overwhelms the necessary musicianship. In many ways, a successful photojournalist has to call on those same two parts of their professional person to create a compelling story while staying clear of polemic or ethical difficulty.

It’s obvious that a photojournalist has to be committed to a story before they can commit the time and energy necessary to take the shots required to gather the necessary images. In a story like AIDS Orphan Vickie’s Story, the hours that Joe Amon spent with the subject, getting to know the story and taking photos over a period of months, are evident in the images of Vickie and her family. It seems highly unlikely that he would have spent the time with a desperately ill young woman and her family if he didn’t see a powerful story to be told. At the same time, Amon edited the final sequence of photos into a story, rather than a simple collection of images. This editing (which may start with the decision not to take a potentially powerful shot that might exploit or be demeaning to the subject) is difficult when it requires leaving an emotionally-gripping photo out of the final story.

I was more impressed with Amon’s work than with many of the other winners I saw, because there was a clear narrative in the collection of photos presented. I must be honest, here, and admit to a couple of biases: first, if something is presented as a story, I want it to tell a story. I’ll give you a bit more on my ideas of a story in a moment, but I think that the total package presented should have a coherent narrative that moves the viewer/reader from one point to another in their understanding of what is happening in the life or lives of the subject. Next, I don’t know that every story has to have the same components, but if a component exists it should work to tell the story. I found the captions for many of the photo stories distracted me from the story being told or, at the very least, didn’t help tell the story. An example is the story that was awarded first prize in enterprise picture story (large market). The captions describe each image, but I found the repetition distracting, and neither the images nor the captions presented a clear narrative. Please don’t misunderstand: these are powerful and important images, but that doesn’t mean they’re a story. Frankly, comparing the captions of the two pieces I’ve mentioned has reinforced the importance of captions in the soundslide story I’ll turn in.

Speaking of stories, much of my understanding of the mechanics of a narrative story comes from reading Robert McKee’s Story.If you’ve seen the movie Adaptationyou might remember the screenwriting seminar the lead character attends. The seminar was based on McKee’s seminars, which formed the basis for the book. I know it sounds odd for a journalist to list a book on screenwriting as a significant influence, but I’ve found what he says about the structure of stories to be useful as I build narratives. The Poynter Institute has presented a number of free on-line classes on narrative journalism, and I’ve taken several, but McKee’s ideas have been quite helpful.

A Lesson in Photo Sizing

When Mindy wrote me about my post on photos for SoundSlides, she ultimately asked about why the photos had been cut off. I was traveling when I received her message, and looked at the post on my laptop. Sure enough, the photos were trimmed on each side. I figured that that the center column was narrower than 800 pixels, so I planned on re-sizing the photos and creating a new post.

Tonight, when I began working on the new post, I looked at the post once more…and the photos were not cut off at all! Why the difference? At my desk, I use a dual-monitor setup with a laptop screen and a 22″ wide-format flat-panel display. When I look at this blog on the wide screen, there is no photo cut off. It’s only when I bring the sides of the browser window in as I reduce the size that I begin to see photo cropping. Here, then, is the question:

How wide should I assume my viewer’s screen will be? In class, we discussed the reason for the size of our finished photographs, and the fact that they should fit on most screens if displayed as a SoundSlide project. That’s fine, but we have to acknowledge that there will be some viewers who set things up in ways that lead to the photos being cut off or shrunk in various interesting ways. I work for one publication that still insists that all screen shots accompanying articles be captured at 800 x 600 resolution, a resolution far lower than most people currently use. In my case, the large monitor is displaying 1680 x 1050 pixels, while the laptop is displaying 1280 x 800. Who’s right? In a technology environment that sees rapid changes in product capability, what do we assume that our readers can use to see our photos, videos, and stories? It’s an interesting question, and I look forward to various answers. Me? I’m still making up my mind…