Multimedia Reporting

https://medium.com/@chantalgreen03/practice-assignment-1-multimedia-reporting-d2ecdec59d66

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.

“Re-Entering a New World: Middle Schoolers’ Journey through the Pandemic”

Highlight local laundromat: specifically the cafe workers of the cafe connected to the laundromat, that are undocumented workers and how their immigration status and lack of English fluency has not affected finding a job and getting on their feet as the owners pay them under the book. I would love to see how them being able to work in a neighborhood that is predominately hispanic has helped them assimilate to life in a new country. Since the owners are Ecuadorian, the food and beverages served are family recipes and Ecuadorian brands, I would love to highlight the cuisine as well and hopefully interview the owners as well.

I plan to do my photo essay on female skateboarders in New York. I used to skateboard so it’s an activity I know and love. I am going to photograph a day at the skatepark with, hopefully, two different female skaters. One will be a woman (who’s been apart of the community for years) and the other will be a young girl (who’s well integrated but still new). I want to focus on both the similarities and differences of their histories. What has it been like for them to participate in such a male-dominated sport? And how they have carved and continue to carve out spaces for themselves? 

As for the pictures, there are many things I could potentially photograph over the course of the day. From experience I know I could take pictures of them park hopping (it’s super common to visit 2-3 parks), learning tricks from other skaters or teaching other skaters, leaving for snacks, trying to find the nearest bathroom, or sitting to watch people practice when they’re too tired to continue or have hurt themselves one to many times.

Flatbush Cats: This is a local organization near me that addresses the NYC stray cats problem by running a trap-neuter-return program and organizing a network of foster homes for cats that would benefit from indoor life. I want to get an understanding of the work Flatbush Cats does and share a sense of urgency with viewers. I haven’t reached out yet, but I’m hoping to follow a volunteer caring for a cat colony. This will let me get some wide shots of people interracting with strays and hopefully some pictures of the sheer number of loose cats in Brooklyn. I also know a friend-of-a-friend who is currently fostering, so I’ll reach out to them for a more intimate look at fostering.

Gotham HEMA: This is a German sword fighting club in Manhattan. I know a couple members, and they tell me that the club is open to coverage. I’m very impressed at how inclusive this club is, especially of queer members, so I’d like to capture the way these queer members have built themselves a community in an unexpected place. I could easily attend some classes to take pictures of drills and spars. I also intend on asking a friend-of-a-friend to allow me a more personal look at her experience. I’m hoping for some pictures of her sword collection, commute, and participation. The club also has a parade coming up, which might be an oppurtunity for some interesting photos.