Month: September 2020

This workshop was held by Aundre Larrow, a Brooklyn-based photographer. During the workshop Larrow discussed the various aspects that make up a portrait, and gave the audience tips for taking good pictures.

The first thing Larrow went over was lighting. He explained that lighting was important because “photography is painting with light”. Larrow described different types of lights, and the role they play in photography.  He advised his listeners to ask themselves “where is the light coming from?” This would be helpful for the photographer to position themself to find the best way to capture their subject, and when studying other photographers.

The second thing Larrow spoke about what background, which he deemed a valuable tool when taking portraits. He suggested that we use the background to help the portrait, instead of drawing the attention away from the subject.

The third thing Larrow addressed was posing. He explained that peoples eyes tend to go to the brightest part of the image and encouraged us to use that to our advantage with posing. Larrow also emphasized the importance of eye contact and capturing the subject’s best angles.

Before finishing up Larrow gave the audience some pointers for taking portraits. He insisted that it was important to for photographers to take their time, in order to explore as many options as possible and to ensure that they got the shot. Larrow also told listeners to try their best to be authentic; whether that was through making the subject comfortable or by using their surroundings to enhance the picture.

Right before wrapping up Larrow did a quick demo of the Adobe Lightroom app, which he thought was the best photo app for iPhones. He showcased the app’s various features and demonstrated how helpful it was. Overall, the workshop was very informative and interesting.

Reminders

Your photo essays should include 12-20 images, plus informative captions that not only describe what is happening in the photo, but include reporting, quotes, and relevant background information (context,  statistics, numbers, timeline of events, etc.) Caption length can vary per photo, but altogether the captions should add up to at least 400 words.

The photo essay will be due by class time next class, on Friday, Oct. 2.

Pitches due for radio stories on Friday, October 9.

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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:

Freelance Image Metadata Fields

“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 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 that 5W’s stuff, while the additional captions might fill in the blanks some more.

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Constructing Your Photo Essays

Here are some examples of  past student photo essays:

https://acandelario.exposure.co/tough-breaks

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

Idogo: A City in Medical Need

Justice For George Sweeps NYC

In the past, I have recommended Exposure for students’ photo essays because it allows you to beautifully display photography, but they recently changed their free trial police from three free projects to two weeks, meaning that any projects you create will be locked from editing and no longer viewable after two weeks.

If you want your photo essay to display in a scrolling manner, I now recommend using this class blog. You’ll embed your photos by selecting “Add Media” and then “Upload File” and then  “Insert Into Post.” If you want to keep the present tense captions separate from the past-tense writing in the story, you can enter the caption text in the “Caption” field on the right before you click “Insert Into Post.”

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Intro to Radio Reporting

For your radio stories, you’ll be creating something called a wrap: a scripted feature with narration, natural sounds, and sound bites all woven together.

Sample wrap.

Sample radio script.

Here are some basics you’ll want to keep in mind as you set out to collect sound:

Choose your environment wisely. Be aware of your surroundings. If you interview someone under a subway track, your recording will be impossible to understand. Pick a relatively quiet space. A little background noise is fine and adds atmosphere – except for music. Music makes editing difficult, so avoid it if possible.

Cell phones off or on airplane mode. Yours and theirs. If you’re using your phone to record, make sure it’s set to silent.

Don’t forget your nats. Natural sound is a crucial element of any audio piece. Think about what sounds will most effectively place your listener in the scene. Footsteps, dishes clinking, phones ringing. Don’t be afraid to get in there and get close. Music is fine to use as a nat sound, but not as background to an interview. It will mess up your ability to edit.

Don’t forget your ambi. “Ambi” refers to ambient sound, also known as room tone. Basically, this is the background noise from wherever you happen to conduct your interviews. Even if you record in a very quiet place, nothing still usually sounds like something because of how the acoustics vary in different rooms. Before or after every interview, always record 90 seconds to two minutes of ambi. This will go under your narration to make the story feel seamless.

Ask open-ended questions. Yes or no questions won’t give you good long responses filled with usable quotes.

Get close, but not too close. Putting a mic right up against someone’s mouth can result in popping and crackling sounds on the recording. Make sure to test your equipment so you know roughly where to hold your recorder for optimal sound quality.

Ask your question, then shut up. Active listening is a fantastic skill for a journalist to have, but if you keep murmuring “Uh-huh,” “Yeah,” and “Sure,” while they’re answering your questions, you won’t be able to use the material. Stick with smiling and nodding.

Keep control of the mic. Always monitor your sound with headphones while recording, if possible. (This is not possible with the Voice Memos app, unfortunately.) Hold the mic 1-2 feet from the interviewee’s mouth. Never let the person you’re interviewing hold it. Try to keep handling noise to a minimum.

If recording an interview remotely, try to do a tape sync. A tape sync means recording both ends of a phone interview in person and then editing them together. This will allow the sound quality for both voices to be high-quality and clear. Typically, radio hosts hire freelancers who live in the same city as their interviewee to go out and record the tape syncs, but in the pandemic it’s become more common to ask the interviewee to do it themselves and then send it to you.

A couple more radio stories:

Example of a clever host intro:

Need to release stress? Scream into Iceland’s abyss.

Great example of a local NYC story:

At this Brooklyn restaurant, you can get Korean food with a side of Russian history

A story reported by a Baruch multimedia student after the lockdown started last semester:

Guidelines for radio pitches

Assignment #2 will be a 3 or 4-minute news radio feature (a “wrap”). A wrap is a scripted radio piece that weaves together natural sounds, interview clips (known as “actualities”), and reporter narration to tell a story.

These are the components you are required to submit for the final draft:

1. A good headline/title.
2. Your final 3-4  minute edited audio file, posted to Soundcloud and embedded on the blog or on Exposure.
3. At least one photo.
4. 21The final draft of your script.

 

The talk “Then, Now, Next” hosted by Isolde Brielmaier brought together two photographers, Arielle Bobb-Willis and Quil Lemons, to speak about their work, their inspiration, and the ways they have adapted during the COVID environment. Both Arielle and Quil began photographing at young ages when their interest in creating art through images piqued. Their photographs were displayed to highlight some of the themes that each artist focuses on.

Arielle Bobb-Willis’ images were quite unique, as I have never seen photographs as colorful and playful as hers. She went on to explain how photography has helped her through times of depression and anxiety, with color being a symbol of recovery for her. Arielle’s photographs are saturated with color, joy, and movement. The use of her subjects is very unique, as many of the models’ faces were intentionally covered. My favorite of her photographs included her models wearing clothing in a nontraditional manner, like wearing a sweater backward covering the model’s face. Her photographs are almost sculptural, with movement and awkwardness being a common theme. Arielle talked about the duality in her imagery, using the example of people simultaneously being healed and healing.

Quil Lemons is a very talented photographer, as he has done recent shots for Glossier. He spoke about the ways his artwork highlights vulnerability, both in terms of sexuality and gender expression. He talked about the ways he uses photography to release whatever is on his mind. Both Quil and Arielle were affected by COVID as shooting became more difficult. They both spoke about how important it is to be comfortable with adversity, especially as an artist. Listening to “Then, Now, Next” offered me great insight into the lives of two young photographers and helped me learn more about the importance of inspiration and joy within photography.

For my photo journal essay, I want to talk about one of my friends who cosplays to relief their stress and how COVID-19 has impacted them and how they are coping with the crisis. I was thinking of this topic since I’ve accompany a lot of my friends for their outdoor photoshoots and now, since it is unsafe, it would be interesting on how the photoshoot is still going on and how we have to plan and change the locations to accommodate the current issue and still get the desired backgrounds and atmosphere.

For my photo essay, I’d like to do a story on a Black-owned bar my friend told me about called Bunton’s World Famous. It opened up just last year and is already kind of popular in Bushwick. I’d ask the owner about what it’s like to run such an establishment in this social climate, and during a pandemic. I’d also like to talk to the employees and the locals about their experiences and relationships to the bar.

My other ideas include talking to my younger brother, and his friends who are going through their first year of college online. I can also talk to other people I know that are first generation college students and talk about how they’re dealing with the pandemic transforming their education experience.

I would like to show content generators/influencers and their creative processes. I got the idea as I would be on social media and notice a lot of the people I’m mutually following are makeup gurus, or for one shoots a gardening advice web show. Ideally, the photos would show their art and how they generate ideas and content.

Another idea is a farmer’s market and how people craft the food we like. I know some people who sell at the Sayville and Babylon farmer’s markets on Long Island, ranging from a mushroom forager to a small coffee roaster.

Discussion:

Pitch workshop

Asynchronous Assignment:

Watch the following Adobe Lightroom tutorial and use what you’ve learned to edit the photos you took during the “scavenger hunt” assignment:

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/how-to/basic-photography-editing-techniques.html

Submit the edited photos to me via WeTransfer.com by next class.

For my photo essay I would like to be able to showcase Zambian culture. I see this as an opportunity to showcase my country that I found many people do not know about. Ideally I plan to try to display the different types of clothing (casual and ceremonial), food (and include recipes), and maybe music that is rooted within Zambian culture. This would involve numerous interviews with some journalists and creatives that I know based in Zambia. My main intention is to 1)show the beauty of where I come from 2) be able to showcase a different Zambia than the one that is typically portrayed 3) make it eye catching but informative at the same time.

For my photo essay idea, I had a few ideas floating around my head. My main idea is to follow local artists in town as they’ve continued to create–or in fact, create more– during the pandemic. I want to highlight the local artists in my community who have also turned their creations into small online businesses. I think this would be interesting as it would show how the arts have become a method to help cope with the pandemic. This feels like the most feasible for me.

My other ideas include: first, following college freshman who are dealing with their first semester at home; second, following a local Thai restaurant that is very active on social media and the helps the local BLM protestors; and lastly, documenting the weekly Black Lives Matter protestors at the local courthouse. The final idea would seem like a good one considering the circumstances we are in, but I am not entirely sure about the logistics or in fact, safety, since they were met with backlash from anti-protestors two weeks ago.

 

 

For my photo pitch, I would like to compare and contrast New York City versus a rural environment. My boyfriend recently moved upstate to a 25 acre farm while I live in Williamsburg. These two environments are quite literally opposites and I feel like it would be very interesting to spot differences and similarities among the two. I would observe the landscape, the people and their body language, businesses, the social structure (ex: homelessness rate), and many other aspects.

During COVID, the city has clearly changed in many aspects such as population density, social activities, work places, etc. I am curious to see how rural upstate New York has been affected by these chaotic times and how it is being handled since properties are way more spread out than in the NYC. I have never been to a super rural area and I think it’ll be fascinating to visualize a completely different lifestyle than I am used to.