Author: EJohnson

We’ll look at your practice assignments together and troubleshoot any issues you may have had with the camera equipment or Premiere.

The Business of Multimedia Journalism

Learning how to come up with a story, report that story, compose a photograph, mix sound, and shoot B-roll and then put it all together into a clear and cohesive story is only half the battle. Something that often gets left out in school is the practical side of how to make a career out of this. Sure, you might get a good internship while you’re still in school and then get hired and start working your way up. But there are a lot of different ways into the industry, and a lot of them involve taking a little bit of initiative. I’d venture to say that most journalists I know have freelanced at one point or another.

Freelancing can be a great gig, and it can also be terrifying when you’re first starting out. Here are a few common issues freelancers often run into:

Do I need a website? YES. Showcasing your previous work is more important than any well-crafted resume. The importance of being able to refer an editor to a slick portfolio website cannot be overstated.

How do you know how much money to ask for? It’s easy to undervalue your skills when you’re first starting out, but it’s worse to ask for too little money than to ask for too much. Some publications have set rates: a flat rate for a certain kind of story, or a day rate, or they’ll pay by the word. In other cases, there’s room for negotiation. If you’re not sure how much to ask for, consult your colleagues. Always try and get them to reimburse expenses.

What’s the deal with taxes? You still have to pay them. You’ll become very familiar with the 1099-MISC form. Keep your receipts so you can write off as many business-related expenses as possible: Equipment, plane tickets, etc.

How do you make sure you get paid in a timely manner? Send an invoice as soon as you file the story. I usually ask the person receiving it to confirm they’ve received it and to tell me when I should expect the money to arrive. If they don’t respond, follow up early and often. “Polite but incessant” is my motto.

I can’t use the school’s programs anymore. How much is it to buy Adobe Premiere and Lightroom and all that stuff? Not actually as bad as you might think, because you no longer even have the option to buy them outright; there’s a monthly subscription service to the Adobe Creative Suite that costs anywhere from $10 to $50 a month, depending on how many programs you need.

What kind of equipment should I invest in? When it comes to still cameras, if you’re on a small budget, I usually advise people to start with a pretty basic camera body and to invest in a few good lenses if you’re going to spend money somewhere. When it comes to video, it’s become kind of an arms race out there and DSLR cameras don’t always cut it anymore.

The good news is that if you don’t have five grand to drop on a camera and audio equipment tomorrow, you can rent gear from places like Adorama and KitSplit.

I just spent an insane amount of money on my new equipment. How do I protect it? Insure your stuff! Renter’s insurance can sometimes cover your gear, but there’s usually a pretty high deductible for theft etc. If you’re planning on working internationally, insurance tends to be quite expensive, especially if you’re working in areas considered “high-risk.” NPPA members get a discount through one company, but make sure to shop around.

Freelancing is lonely. How do I meet other people in the industry? Journalists tend to be a social bunch. It’s an industry where skills are obviously important but where you can also go pretty far on the strength of your personality and on who you know. You already have a huge advantage by virtue of the fact that you live in New York, one of the world’s biggest media hubs. Make yourself known to editors and colleagues by checking out industry events like these:

ScreenUp NYC 

Video Consortium (New York chapter)

The Bronx Documentary Center

Resources

• Photojournalism

The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA membership gets you certain benefits, including discounted camera insurance and press accreditation; follow them to find out about grants)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2233179993/

Photography/Multimedia Internships and Jobs (great place to find out about entry-level opportunities)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/608650785837641/

Photo Grant Opportunities (great place to learn about grants/competitions/exhibitions for emerging photojournalists) https://www.facebook.com/groups/205928780146/

Lightstalkers/N11 (for photojournalists)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/5235712822/

Photojournalism Now (blog focused on photojournalism and social documentary photography)
https://www.facebook.com/PhotojournalismNow/

Women Photograph (a resource for female* documentary and editorial photographers and the people who would like to hire them—GRANTS!)
https://www.womenphotograph.com/

Eddie Adams Workshop (a prestigious, game-changing, three-day workshop for emerging photographers in upstate NY that puts you in a room with some of the biggest names and top editors in the industry)
https://www.facebook.com/EddieAdamsWorkshop/

The New York Times Portfolio Review (free but competitive, puts you in a room with some of the top photo editors in the world for advice and critiques on your ongoing photo projects)
https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/…/applications-open-for-the…/

Photoville
http://photoville.com/

The International Festival of Photojournalism
http://www.visapourlimage.com/en

• Audio Journalism

Third Coast Audio Festival
https://thirdcoastfestival.org/

Public Radio NYC Google group. Be warned, you’ll get a LOT of emails but it’s a great place to pick up transcription work and the occasional tape sync, which usually pays about $150 for a fairly easy recording gig: [email protected]
(Let me know if you’d like me to add you.)

Radio Women Rule the World (for women in radio) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1514423228769048/

• Video Journalism

Storyhunter (online brokerage where videojournalists and filmmakers can apply for assignments)
https://storyhunter.com

Global VJs
https://www.facebook.com/groups/globalvjs/

Binders Full of Video Journalists (for female VJ’s) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1006816089433804/

• All Media

Vulture Club (for international journalists) https://www.facebook.com/groups/197918473577006/

The NVC (the non-Vulture Club, founded by people who were kicked out of Vulture Club—long story)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/439000736155194/

Freelancers Get Your Freak On (for freelancers who work in different media and are looking to collaborate) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1021852794578554/

Journo Housing Exchange (for wandering journalists looking for short-term housing around the world) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1639458896367607/

Journalism and Trauma (a place to discuss how we as journalists engage with trauma, from how to interview someone who has experienced it to how to cope with our own direct or indirect trauma)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/468146643386958/

Ladies Writing and Journalism (for female print journalists)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/159810750800770

Binder of International Reporters (for women who work internationally) https://www.facebook.com/groups/634887219990543/

Binders Full of Digital Journalists (for female journos who work in digital) https://www.facebook.com/groups/globalvjs/

Riot Grrrls Of Journalism (global group for women who work in all different media) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1698979077092920/

• Formal Groups/Organizations

New York Association of Black Journalists (NYABJ) https://www.facebook.com/NYABJ/

(NABJ) National Association of Black Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/NABJOfficial/

South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA)
https://www.facebook.com/South.Asian.Journalists.Associati…/

Asian American Journalists Association
https://www.facebook.com/AAJAHQ/?ref=br_rs

National Association of Hispanic Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/NAHJFan/

Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association (AMEJA)
https://www.facebook.com/AMEJAGlobal

Association of Health Care Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/healthjournalists

Society of Environmental Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/SocietyOfEnvironmentalJournalists

Native American Journalists Association
https://www.facebook.com/NativeJournalists

The International Association of Religion Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/The-International-Association-of-R…

Association of Food Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/AFJeats

Overseas Press Club of America
https://www.facebook.com/opcofamerica/

Society of Professional Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/SocietyofProfessionalJournalists/

Committee to Protect Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/committeetoprotectjournalists/

Blink (resource where outlets can search for and hire freelancers)
https://blink.la/

• Funding Opportunities

International Center for Journalists
https://www.facebook.com/icfj.org/

The International Women’s Media Foundation
https://www.facebook.com/IWMFpage/

Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
https://www.facebook.com/Pulitzercenter/

Open Society Foundations
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/

If you know of any others, please feel free to share! This is an ever-evolving and incomplete list.

Reminders and Upcoming Dates

Video pitches due on Thursday. (A 2-3 minute, character-driven, non-narrated video.

Here are a couple of student videos for inspiration:

This last one was made for the advanced multimedia reporting class I typically teach once a year. If any of you are interested in pursuing video further, I recommend looking into this class.

The classic sequence that every budding videographer learns when starting out is the five-shot sequence.

• Close-up on the hands.
• Close-up on the face.
• Medium shot.
• Over the shoulder shot.
• One additional creative angle.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=h1QeTIWqQwA%3Ffeature%3Doembed

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SUjnEc6Ak6o%3Ffeature%3Doembed

You won’t always edit things in this exact way when you do a sequence in the real world; sometimes it’ll only be three shots, or it might be ten, and they might be in a different order. But the five-shot sequence is a useful framework for thinking about depicting an activity clearly and engagingly with video.

DSLR Camera Settings
…and how we apply these settings to video

White Balance

You can always use auto white balance on the fly or if you’re uncertain as to the light temperature. The problem with AWB though is that it can change when light changes, even a little bit. So if you’re shooting a person talking and they lean forward, the colors in your shot could potentially take on a different tint.

• White balance will only appear in the menu as an option if you’re not shooting in Auto.
• There are little pictures in the camera to help you with white balance.

• The picture of the light bulb is TUNGSTEN LIGHT. Tungsten light is most indoor light (except for FLUORESCENT LIGHT, which has its own setting)—lamps, non-fluorescent overhead light, most stage lights, etc. Tungsten light is ORANGE. So when you tell your camera you are shooting in this orange Tungsten light, it corrects for it by adding what is at the opposite end of the color wheel (blue).
• The picture of the sun is for outdoor light, or KELVIN LIGHT. Kelvin light is BLUE, so the camera corrects for it by adding orange. There are also pictures for different gradations of light (i.e. shade, cloudy).

• You can also MANUALLY set your white balance in numbers based on the KELVIN SCALE. This is very useful for two-camera shoots where you want the light temp of both cameras to match.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=iu1LxvYUXZo%3Ffeature%3Doembed

EXPOSURE

When you are controlling for exposure, that means you’re telling the camera how much light to let in.

What overexposure looks like.

When using a DSLR, there are THREE WAYS to tell the camera how much light to let in

• Shutter speed
• ISO
• Aperture (F-stop)

SHUTTER SPEED

• For still photos, the shutter speed is important because it tells the camera in what way you want it to freeze motion (do you want a bike whizzing by to be a blur in the photo or do you want it to be completely frozen so you can see every detail?) Since we are shooting moving images, we don’t have to worry about this. For video, as a rule of thumb, you want your shutter speed to be double the number of frames per second you are recording. Since with these cameras, we’ll be shooting in 30 frames per second, WE SET OUR SHUTTER SPEED AT 1/60.

• We shoot with our shutter speed at 1/60 probably 99% of the time. However, to let more light in in a low-light situation, you can get away with setting your shutter speed at 1/30.  DON’T SET IT LOWER THAN 30 BECAUSE IT WILL MAKE YOUR IMAGE STUTTER.
• If it’s really bright out or you’re shooting a performance with hot stage lights and you want to let in less light, you can, however, set your shutter speed higher than 60 (in multiples of 30—so you can set it at 90, 120, etc.)

ISO

 ISO tells your camera sensor how much light to let in.

• THE HIGHER YOUR ISO NUMBER, THE MORE LIGHT YOU ARE LETTING IN.
• Remember, with DSLRs it is always a give and take, push and pull relationship with letting in light and image quality. So the higher your ISO number, the grainier your image.
• In general, if you are outside you’re using a lower ISO (like 100 – 320) since outdoor light is brighter, and inside you’re using a higher number (like 800 – 1600) since indoor light is weaker.
• Generally if you use an ISO 2000 or higher you start to see grain on these cameras (although that doesn’t mean you should never do it.) 

APERTURE (F-STOP) 

• F-stop tells your lens how much light to let in
• THE LOWER YOUR F-STOP NUMBER, THE MORE LIGHT YOU ARE LETTING IN
• The other important thing your f-stop controls is your DEPTH OF FIELD
• DEPTH OF FIELD: the distance between the nearest and the farthest objects in a shot that appear in focus.
• The LOWER your f-stop number, the SHALLOWER your depth of field.
• The HIGHER your f-stop, the DEEPER your depth of field (i.e. more is in focus)
• Even though a shallow depth of field looks really cool and cinematic, you have to ask yourself if it is serving the story well. There are absolutely storytelling reasons you would want everything in the shot in focus and other storytelling reasons you would want only a small portion of the shot in focus.
• MAINTAINING FOCUS WHEN SHOOTING WITH A SHALLOW DEPTH OF FIELD IS WHAT TRIPS A LOT OF PEOPLE UP. At f/2.8, for example, your subject’s eyes might be in focus, but the tip of her nose is not. If she moves forward even half an inch, her eyes are no longer in focus. So you have to be on your toes at all times shifting the focus ring to maintain focus on her when she leans in to tell you that juicy secret, or your moment is lost.

The relationship between the ISO and the f-stop is what you’re always negotiating when deciding what to shoot.

The LCD screens on our cameras skew a little dark, so it is easy to OVEREXPOSE (let too much light in so your shot is blown out—similar to blowing out your audio because your mic levels are up to high, or “too hot.)

But if you can master depth of field, you can use pull-focus or rack focus shots to great effect.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=I-N_7QXA6xE%3Ffeature%3Doembed

FOCUS

 It is really easy to shoot video that is OUT OF FOCUS with these cameras. If your stuff isn’t in focus, you just wasted a lot of people’s time. So pay attention to focus at all times.

• Use the focus ring on the lens to shift focus (turn ring with your elbow down, not sticking out sideways)
• Zoom in all the way on your subject and focus, then zoom back out to your desired framing; the subject will stay in sharp focus

Once again, I’ll remind you of the importance of good audio:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-PLMiA18tBc%3F

Thanksgiving Break Assignment:

Shoot a 30- to 45-second interview clip and a five-shot sequence of that person doing something. Make sure the raw video is available to you by class time on Tuesday the 28th, our next class after Thanksgiving. We will be using these materials in our video editing workshop.

In the interest of efficiency, this CAN be someone from your main video assignment if that works with your planned shooting schedule—you can just use a short piece of your interview.

Intro to Video Journalism

With video, we build on the compositional techniques of photography and the structural, storytelling aspects of audio with one obvious additional element: Motion.

How does video storytelling for the web and mobile differ from TV and film?

• Need to be CLOSER to your subject. Web videos are smaller and more compressed.
• A large percentage of online viewers bail on a video within 10 seconds. So you don’t have a lot of time to grab your viewers and make sure they stick around.

How important is audio?

Good audio is of paramount importance. If you have low-quality video and good audio, the video will still be watchable. If you have gorgeous visuals but terrible audio, it will not.

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Shooting Your Video

There are two main components to any video: your interviews and your B-roll. The rules of composition we learned for photography (thirds, colors, patterns, symmetry, etc.) all apply here, but you also need to keep an eye out for motion. Tracking shots involve following the action with your camera, while static shots involve keeping your camera still, but that doesn’t mean there’s no motion involved; you might just be letting the action go in and out of the frame.

As with the photo essay, since you will be shooting on your phones for this assignment, it is hugely important that you DO NOT SHOOT VERTICALLY.

What is B-roll? And what difference does it make?

A big difference.

Things to keep in mind while you’re shooting B-roll:

1. Shoot more than you think you’ll need.
2. Get a variety of shots. Close-up, medium, wide, detail shots, static shots, tracking shots.
3. Use a tripod whenever possible. If you don’t have one or you’re shooting in a mobile, chaotic situation, be resourceful about stabilizing your shots.
4. Think about your interviews and let them inform your B-roll shooting decisions. Look for shots that illustrate what the person is talking about.
5. Hold your shot longer than you think you need to. A good rule of thumb is to hold it for at least 10 seconds (AFTER it’s already steady).

Things to keep in mind when you’re shooting your interviews:

1. Frame the shot with your subject on one of the thirds, angled so that they’re looking slightly INTO the frame. Have them look at you, not at the camera, so be mindful of where you are sitting. It’s a bit intense when someone looks directly into the camera.
2. If you’re working with a translator, be mindful that the subject will want to look at them, so make sure they are positioned in the ideal place to draw the person’s gaze.
3. Prioritize good audio.
4. Make sure their face is lit, but not too harshly.
5. Think about composing the shot in a way that allows for some negative space where the Lower Third will eventually go.

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When is narration necessary?

Sometimes, you can let the subjects of your video tell the story all on their own — as long as you edit with care, presenting what they’ve told you in a way that makes narrative sense. One benefit of non-narrated videos is that they can feel more organic. There’s no disembodied voice stepping in to tell the story, which keeps the focus on the characters in the story.

But sometimes, for clarity’s sake or for stylistic reasons, narration is necessary, or text.

Narrated videos

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000007049738/as-coronavirus-approaches-mexico-president-looks-other-way.html?playlistId=video/Most-Viewed

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/americas/100000005277141/the-last-taushiro.html

Text-Narrated videos

These are more and more popular thanks to social media distribution because they automatically start playing as you scroll through your feed and they can be watched without sound.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=E2h0bltV6Rc%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Non-Narrated videos

Islamic exorcisms used as a ‘cure’ for homosexuality in Indonesia: ‘If I am Muslim, I can’t be gay’

Reminder that your scripts for your actual radio assignment are due Thursday, Nov. 2. Please sign up for a script editing session with me that day here.

Tuesday, Nov. 7 will be a production day in class when you can work on editing your radio stories with my assistance and advice.

The final radio story, along with script, edited audio, and one photo, should be posted to the class blog by class time on Thursday, Nov. 9.

Intro to Audio Editing

Audacity: Free to download.

Audacity shortcuts to know:

Play/pause: space bar
Split track: Command I
Zoom in: Command 1
Zoom out: Command 3

In the tool bar, this is the selection tool that allows you to click and highlight and delete sections of track or select a spot where you want to split it:

This is the tool that allows you to move sections of track:

And this is the one that lets you adjust the volume, basically the same way the pen tool works in Premiere:

In both programs, when you’re finished editing, you’ll need to export the finished sound file before you can upload it anywhere.

In Audacity, it’s File –> Export Audio –> select “WAV” from dropdown menu and give the file a name and location, then hit “Save” and “OK.”

Assignment: Using Audacity, mix your practice radio story according to the script you wrote from the interview you did with your classmate. Upload the exported WAV file to Soundcloud and add it to your blog post with the practice script. Due by class time on Thursday.

Reminder that your scripts for your actual radio assignment are due Nov. 2. Please sign up for a script editing session with me that day here.

Script Writing Exercise

Write a very brief practice script with only 2-3 sound bites taken from the short practice interview you did. Post your practice script to the class blog by the end of today’s class time, and record your narration by class time on Tuesday. You will need your raw interview, your script, and your narration for an audio editing exercise in class that day.

Here’s my example script based on a very short interview I did with another professor back in the spring. Note some of the different elements of script writing:

• Host intro serves essentially as your nut graf: gives the overall who/what/where/when/why of the story and puts it in a larger context
• First-person narration in the present tense
• Visual/descriptive, paint a picture to add context to the natural sounds
• Set up sound bites by introducing the person by their full name and often by paraphrasing or hinting at what they’re about to say.
• Avoid long, rambling, complicated sentences.
• End with a final line of narration that looks to the future in some way.

HOST INTRO: With CUNY schools transitioning to online learning this week amid the coronavirus outbreak, professors across New York City are getting creative. Emily Johnson spoke to one CUNY adjunct about what it’s like trying to teach during a pandemic.

AMBI: Nat sounds of tea kettle boiling (FADE DOWN AS TRACK BEGINS)

TRACK: I’m here with Anna Ficek in her Brooklyn apartment, watching her make tea while she works from home. She’s a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center and when she’s not working on her dissertation she teaches art history at Baruch College and Borough of Manhattan Community College, or BMCC.

ACT: ANNA: When I found out that everything was getting shut down and especially CUNY I felt extremely sad. Because CUNY is such a big part of my life, such a great community that it was hard to feel that kind of dissipating.

TRACK: She says teaching from home has been a real challenge because of the way she runs her classes.

ACT: ANNA: It’s been very difficult to adapt to teaching remotely just because I really value the discussion I have with my students.

TRACK: Still, she’s trying to see this as an opportunity.

ACT: ANNA: What I’m hoping to get out of this is more time to really focus on what’s important both in terms of teaching and my own dissertation and my own research and trying to figure out creative problem solving ways to deal with these new issues that are going to come around like libraries being closed and inaccessibility to archives and how myself as an academic and as a researcher can get around that. So challenges, but also good challenges!

TRACK: CUNY schools will continue with distance learning for at least the remainder of the spring semester. For Baruch College, I’m Emily Johnson.

Recording Narration

Finally, record the narration you wrote in your practice script. You don’t need to send this to me yet; just make sure it’s accessible to you on Tuesday because you will use it in a sound editing/mixing exercise that day.

You’ll need to record your narration in a quiet place with sound-absorbing surfaces. Some people use their closet as a makeshift studio; others just throw a blanket over their head. If your room is carpeted, has curtains and lots of plush surfaces, the sound quality should be decent.

It’s best not to drink or eat dairy products right before recording narration; it makes your voice sound thick.

Try not to speak from high up in your throat. Speak from lower in your belly.

Good posture is important.

Some people in the radio world warm up their voices by singing, stretching, and/or doing tongue twisters.

Upcoming Due Dates

Rough draft of script is due Thursday, Nov. 2. On this day, we won’t have class as normal; you will all sign up for a one-on-one editing session with me over Zoom. I’ll send out a sign-up sheet as it gets closer.

Final radio story is due Thursday, Nov. 7.

Practice Radio Assignment

There are several steps to producing a radio news story, so we’re going to do a short practice assignment to give you a feel for how it all comes together.

1. RECORD your interviews and other sound.
2. WRITE the script. (You can’t do this until you’ve completed the reporting, because you need to write around the scenes and sound bites you’ve gathered.)
3. TRACK. Once you have finalized your script with the help of your editor (in this case, me) you can move forward with tracking, or recording your narration.
4. MIX. Now that you have all the sound elements you need (sounds bites/acts, narration/track, and natural sound/ambi) you can go ahead and edit the radio story in Audacity and export the finished WAV audio file.
5. PUBLISH. You’ll upload the WAV file to Soundcloud and post a link to the class blog along with a good title and your final script.

By this Thursday’s class, you’ll need to have completed only the first step of the practice assignment. Record a five-minute interview. Could be with anyone: a family member, classmate, friend. I’ll send out a video tutorial for using the audio recorders.

Discussion: The Power of Voices and Speech Patterns

When we hear someone speak, what are the different things we pick up on? What are the things we assume about them?

“NPR Voice”

During a recent long car ride whose soundtrack was a medley of NPR podcasts, I noticed a verbal mannerism during scripted segments that appeared on just about every show. I’ve heard the same tic in countless speeches, TED talks and Moth StorySLAMS — anywhere that features semi-informal first-person narration.

If I could attempt to transcribe it, it sounds kind of like, y’know … this.

That is, in addition to looser language, the speaker generously employs pauses and, particularly at the end of sentences, emphatic inflection. (This is a separate issue from upspeak, the tendency to conclude statements with question marks?) A result is the suggestion of spontaneous speech and unadulterated emotion. The irony is that such presentations are highly rehearsed, with each caesura calculated and every syllable stressed in advance.

In literary circles, the practice of poets reciting verse in singsong registers and unnatural cadences is known, derogatorily, as “poet voice.” I propose calling this phenomenon “NPR voice” (which is distinct from the supple baritones we normally associate with radio voices).

Here’s an intro by Ira Glass: see what they mean?

Decoding identity on the air:

“He was hinting at the difficult balancing act reporters face in developing their on-air voice. It isn’t just a challenge of performance — and it’s not as simple as channeling some “authentic” voice into a microphone. It requires grappling with your identity and your writing process, along with history of your institution.”

Challenging the Whiteness of Public Radio

Does public radio sound too white? NPR itself tries to find out.

The reason the sound of your own voice makes you cringe

Why your voice IS a “podcast voice”

On accent bias in the industry, by Baruch’s own Gisele Regetao:

The Many Voices of Journalism

Podcast: Gisele Regatao on NPR’s accent bias

Common speech patterns in today’s world that everyone (men, too!) use all the time:

Upspeak

Vocal fry

“Like”

According to Ira Glass:

“…listeners have always complained about young women reporting on our show. They used to complain about reporters using the word “like” and about upspeak… But we don’t get many emails like that anymore. People who don’t like listening to young women on the radio have moved on to vocal fry.”

Why old men find young women’s voices so annoying

99% Invisible podcast responds to criticism about women’s voices

So all of this leads us to the question: How can we be intentional about how we use our voices to tell the best stories as effectively as possible?

Luckily, in radio/podcasting, speaking naturally is what we actually WANT. No one wants to listen to a robot, or someone who sounds like they’re reading.

How I learned to stop worrying and love my voice

Draft of script is due Nov. 2

Final edited radio story due Nov. 9

Discussion: Photo Editing and Caption Writing

We’ll look at your “scavenger hunt” photos together, watch a tutorial on editing photos in Lightroom, discuss caption writing, and talk a bit about best practices and the ethics of photo editing in photojournalism.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bN2jqsJgbBs%3Ffeature%3Do

Why Do Photo Contest Winners Look Like Movie Posters?

When it comes time to start assembling your photo essays, I recommend publishing them on Medium so that your photos display well and you aren’t limited by the compression/memory issues on our WordPress site.

Caption writing

Just because photojournalism is a visual medium, it doesn’t mean you get to be any less thorough when it comes to names, facts, dates, etc. You need to always make sure you get the names, locations, professions, ages (if relevant) to include in your captions. The Who/What/Where/When/Why.

Washington Post guidelines:

“A caption should briefly and clearly describe in a complete sentence what is happening in the picture, including an active verb (‘someone does something’). This will allow our internal systems to take sections of the sentence and automatically create keywords. In many cases, a single sentence will suffice. A second sentence is acceptable if it adds additional information, follows the required formula and does not editorialize.”

Caption example:

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – JANUARY 11: Actress Kate Winslet holds her award at the 66th Annual Golden Globe Awards on January 11, 2009 in Beverly Hills, California. Winslet won the Golden Globe for best supporting actress for her role in “The Reader,” as Hollywood set aside labor strife and a recession to honor the year’s best performances. (Photo by Rich Lipski for The Washington Post)

Notice how the first sentence is in present tense, describing what is literally happening in the photo, and the following sentence is in the past tense, giving background and context. 

In a photo essay, the captions play the additional role of shaping a broader narrative. So while wire photos and breaking news photos might all include similar captions because most likely they’ll only be used one at a time, your captions in a photo essay will need to follow a somewhat more narrative shape. Meaning, the first one will include a lot of the 5W’s stuff, while the additional captions might fill in the blanks some more.

For your photo essays for this class, you have a choice in how you want to structure them. You can have ALL the writing be in captions, or you can have a more traditional story with the photos interspersed, and much shorter, more literal captions. You can space the photos so they are fullscreen and appear one at a time, or you can group a few similar ones together that serve a similar narrative purpose.

In-Class Assignment:

Edit your photos from the scavenger hunt in Lightroom and publish them in a Medium post, with captions. Due by class time on Tuesday.

Quick Announcement: First Dollars & Sense meeting this Thursday at 1pm in the journalism department’s conference room:

Dear All,

Welcome (back) to a new semester at Baruch! My name is Caspar Gajewski, and I am a senior and the editor-in-chief of Dollars & Sense, the journalism department’s magazine. We are looking for new staff writers, editors and social media managers. While experience is beneficial, it is not required. We only ask that you come prepared to learn, publish and improve.

If you are pursuing a career in journalism, publishing matters. At Dollars & Sense, you will have the chance to explore voice, style and longer forms of writing. Alongside breaking news reporting, we publish features, profiles, reviews and longform Q&As. Original pitches are welcome, we encourage them, but all that classwork you’ve done? That can be submitted, too! Don’t let your hard work languish in a folder on your computer.

Our first meeting is this upcoming Thursday, the 14^th, from 1-2 p.m. in conference room 7-268, which is inside the journalism department on the 7^th floor of the vertical campus. We cannot wait to see you there. 

Sincerely,

Caspar Gajewski

Editor-in-Chief

Dollars & Sense

Pitch Workshop, Continued

If we didn’t get to your pitch last class, you’ll have an opportunity to pitch your photo essay today at the top of the class.

DSLR Camera Hands-On Workshop

We’ll take some time to play with the camera settings and get the hang of where all the controls on the camera are located.

In-Class Practice Assignment: Photo Scavenger Hunt

Go out and take 8-10 thoughtfully-composed images that capture some of the following elements of composition. Some of these will inevitably contain multiple elements, and that’s fine. You want to end up with a final edit of 8-10 images, which means you will need to take more photos than that and then decide which are your strongest.

Contrasting colors
Monochromatic colors
Symmetry
Pattern
Rule of thirds
Close-up detail shot
Shallow depth of field
Portrait
Dramatic/beautiful/interesting use of light
Slow shutter speed
Internal framing
Movement
Decisive moment
Layers telling a story
Dramatic perspective (shooting from high up or from low to the ground)

If you are happy with your photos by the end of class time, great; you can submit the photos to me and you won’t have any other homework. If you want to take a little more time with the photos, that’s fine; send them to me via WeTransfer.com by class time on Thursday. We will be using them in a photo editing workshop, so please make sure the photos are accessible to you on the Studio H computers that day (either send them to yourself or bring in your memory card.)

Your photo essays will be due on Thursday, October 5.

The first time you pick up a DSLR camera, the sheer number of settings and dials can be a little overwhelming. You may be tempted to stick with Auto when you start out — and that’s totally fine while you’re getting the hang of it.

But to make sure you are taking the best possible pictures, it helps to have control over a few key settings: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed, which collectively make up the three pillars of photography. Tweaking these settings will allow you to take different types of pictures, and all of them essentially come down to one thing: light.

The Bucket

It may be helpful to keep this analogy in mind.

Imagine you are using a garden hose to fill a bucket to the top. Next, imagine that our end goal — a bucket filled exactly to the brim, but without spilling — equals a perfectly exposed photograph .

A few things control how much water goes in the bucket and how long it takes to reach the brim: the width of the hose, the water pressure, and how long you let the water run. You can achieve your goal using endless combinations of these factors. A very narrow pipe running at a steady pressure for a long time will fill your bucket as surely as a very wide pipe running for only a few moments.

A camera works the same way to let in the correct amount of light. Imagine that the width of the hose is the aperture, the amount of time you run the tap is the shutter speed, and the water pressure is the ISO.

ISO

Basically, ISO refers to how sensitive your camera’s sensor is to light. The lower the number, the less sensitive it is and vice versa. The ISO range in the DSLR cameras we’ll be using usually goes from 100 to 6400, doubling as it goes (100 to 200 to 400 and so on until it gets up to 3200 and 6400).

It follows, then, that you will need to adjust the ISO for the available lighting conditions.

In broad daylight, there is plenty of light to work with, so a low ISO will be all you need. If you let in too much light, the image will be overexposed.

If you are shooting indoors in artificial light, you will need a much higher ISO — but be aware that you sacrifice image quality as you get up to the highest ISO settings, where you will start to notice a grainy quality.

So before you reach for the dial to crank the ISO up to 3200, try letting a bit more light into the camera using a wider (lower) aperture or slower shutter speed.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is probably the simplest setting to understand. It refers to how long the camera’s shutter stays open. The longer the shutter is open, the more light is able to come in, and vice versa.

Shutter speed typically ranges from about 1/1000th of a second (very fast) to a few seconds (very slow). Slow shutter speed allow for a longer exposure time, which allows the camera to capture more movement. This can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the image you want to make.

A faster shutter speed would have captured the teal-colored glove crisply. Using a slower shutter speed can create a sense of motion.

A long exposure can allow you to capture objects in motion in an artistically blurred fashion — or it can capture unwanted camera shake if you’re shooting without a tripod.

Sports photographers trying to capture crisp images, for example, are likely to rely on a fast shutter speed because their subjects are moving so quickly.

Aperture

Aperture refers to the opening in the lens. The wider it is, the more light it lets in. Somewhat confusingly, smaller numbers equate to wider aperture. Aperture is measured in “f-stops” and lenses can have different ranges. The wide-angle lenses that come with the journalism department’s DSLR cameras typically range from about f/3.5 (the widest) to f/22 (letting in the least amount of light).

A low aperture, in addition to helping you shoot in low-light conditions, allows you to capture a shallow depth of field. This refers to the effect where an object in the foreground is in focus but the background is blurred (or vice versa).

This also allows you to play with the bokeh effect, as we discussed a little earlier.

A high aperture, on the other hand, allows to retain detail at every layer of the image, which can be vital in terms of storytelling. If there are protest signs in the background, for instance, and your camera lens is focused on a police officer in the foreground, a shallow depth of field means we may not be able to tell what the signs say. In such a situation, you might want a flatter image, with a deeper depth of field.

Aperture Priority vs. Shutter Priority vs. Manual

As soon as you’re ready to leave the comfort of Auto behind, the next logical step is to experiment with Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority shooting modes (“Av” and “Tv” on your DSLR dial). These settings operate exactly the way their names suggest. You decide whether aperture or shutter speed is more important to the image you want to make and the camera will automatically adjust the other one for the correct exposure.

So if you’re shooting a soccer game, for instance, shutter speed is probably more important. There will be a lot of movement and you’ll want to capture the action crisply. But if you’re taking a portrait and you want to blur the background to allow your subject’s face to stand out, aperture priority is the obvious choice.

In both of these shooting modes, you still have to control for ISO, but they make your job a little bit easier than if you were to jump straight from Auto to Manual. Going back to our analogy, you only have to worry about two out of the three elements that fill the bucket. But once you’ve mastered Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority, you’ll be ready to take the final leap to Manual.

Screenshot. Credit: CameraSim

The best way to learn all of this is by doing it, so we’ll be getting our hands on the cameras during Wednesday’s class. Before that, there’s CameraSim, an online DSLR simulator. It allows you to play with camera settings, lighting conditions, distance from subject, and a few other factors that go into taking a picture, and to check your best guesses against the resulting image.

Photo Essays: An Introduction

A photo essay is a thoroughly reported story, told in well-composed and curated images and captions. Ideally, there should be a mix of images so that the eye is always looking at something new as the viewer clicks or scrolls through: close-up shots, wide shots, portraits, colorful shots, bright shots, dark shots, action shots, etc. Intimacy is a powerful tool in these sorts of projects.

https://time.com/3809851/dancehall-queens-of-brooklyn/

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/aug/20/they-call-us-bewitched-the-drc-performers-turning-trash-into-art-photo-essay

https://reemadoleh.exposure.co/gentrification-in-brooklyn

The Pandemic’s Wrath on a Family-Owned Pizzeria

Photo Essay

Assignment #1: Photo Essay 

Your first major assignment of the semester will be a photo essay. This could be a character-driven human interest story, or an event that is very visual in nature, or it could provide a local angle on an ongoing story. If stuck, ask yourself: What events are coming up that would make for cool photos? What are the big international, national or regional issues that have been making news of late?

Examples: Follow someone with an interesting/visual job for a “day in the life.” Document the work that a neighborhood mutual aid association is doing. Cover a protest or vigil. Photograph a food festival like the Queens Night Market.

A caveat: While intimacy generally makes for more powerful images, be safe and use your judgment. Some of us will have access to stories and moments that others might not, whether due to age or gender or race, and some of us might be at risk attempting to cover kinds of stories that others would have no issues with.