My first attempt at Soundslides

I’ve done it!  Well, I’ve tried to anyway.

I’ve created my first Sounslides presentation, a brief story about group fitness classes at the University of Florida.  Amateur? Yes.  Good?  Hardly.  But gosh-darn-it, did I try!  After sifting through more than 700 photos, editing over 45 minutes of nat sot (or background noise for the audio rookies likes me), and chopping down a 12-minute interview, I’ve got something that seems passable.   I wished I picked a more sedentary topic, but with all the kickboxing and cycling going on, I had trouble getting close-ups and detail shots.  My new personal goal for Soundslides 2 (due in two weeks in my journalism multimedia class, Journalist’s Toolkit 1) is to create a Soundslide ripe with detail shots and emotive facial close-ups.

But back to these Soundslides.  The interview is with Nicole Orr, a fitness instructor at UF, and the photos are of three of her different fitness classes - kickboxing, cycling and strength training.   The photographed her classes two different times, taking the audio and conducting the interview during the second go-round.  As a writer, I found it unsettling and way more fun to report this kind of story in this medium.  I felt like I got to capture the experience, instead of my interpretation through words.

Photojournalism – the Web v. the creative

In Kenneth Kobre’s book, he quotes Larry Dailey, a picture editor with MSNBC’s online edition: “A good picture for MSNBC is like an icon,” he said. “It makes you click through, but it is not necessarily a good piece of photojournalism.” (p. 253)

I understand that the fine-tuned technique of creativity and lighting in photography don’t necessarily work on the Web, where quality is lower.  But I find it hard to believe that images like those taken in a “A place unseen,” (p. 140) – where you have black-and-white images with small, important details — wouldn’t be beneficial to a reader on the Web.  Although the very fact that they are in black-and-white works against them in our color-savvy world.

  For instance, the sky in the “Cotton choppers in Sherard, Mississippi, 1992″, the photo in the upper left hand corner, tells such a story.  The clouds, the tones, the texture all give it a rumbling, pent-up, serious quality.  Would that be picked up on the Web?

Sound slides, or large photo stories, might be the solution to this “click-thru” mentality of Web photos.  Take a look at the winner of the National Press Photographer’s Association picture story winner.  The shadows in the sewers and the children’s habitats give those photos their sadness.  I think the Web looks pretty good here.  The raw emotion of the drug-addicted children carries through, almost beyond the medium.  But it’s a photo story, and it’s primary design isn’t to be a Web image.

So what becomes of stories like Annie Wells diary of her breast cancer treatment?  Or the story about “Glimpsing the goths?”  Will those kinds of images, which weren’t originally shot for Web, vanish into obscurity as we shoot images that people are meant to “click through?”  My concern is that Web photography overtake good photojournalism. 

Not to get all passionate about Soundslides, but after taking a quick perusal around some online Web pages, prompted by Kobre’, I realize that the photo story, set to audio or photo-solo, might be the Web’s last hope for quality photojournalism.  The smaller, still images set next to stories are boring or posed. You could easily click through them.  Gone is the appreciation for time-of-day, quality lighting, as mentioned by Kobre’ on page 243.  The lighting – whether it’s soft morning tones or golden late afternoon rays – isn’t as important for the click-able image, at least to my eye, as the image doesn’t have to be as high resolution and quality.  The color balance will therefore be less intense. Which, not to harp on simplicity, but controlling the lighting really makes a photo.  Take a peek at page 246 in Kobre’, where the girl is jump roping against the golden-lit wall, complete with her crisp silhouette.

So I guess I’m left wondering if we’ve got to have a separation between Web and photojournalism?  Newsroom budgets sure aren’t going to allow for it.  I worry that the real cream-of-the-crop photos won’t make their way online, as photojournalists could run them in print and pick their second-rate “click-throughs” as the Web image.  And if the low-quality image really does impede us, then we’re going to need to use more Soundslides to get the visual across.

Nat Sot and all its trappings

When recording natural, background sounds and noise for multimedia productions, it makes sense to record rain drops on a tin roof — the same tin roof, pelted with rain,  you’ll also be capturing with photos or video, as Hal Robertson says in Sound Advice: The Natural Approach. 

The authenticity and credibility it lends a journalist is irreplaceable, for sure.  It also helps a viewer understand the story better.  Short of giving them a taste and whiff of Swiss chocolate, the best way to tell a story of a historical Swiss cocoa factory is to give them decadent pictures, intermingled with the sounds of Swiss workers and machines running.  You’ve got to hit them with as many sensory experiences as possible to tell a complete, interesting story.  To me, a prime example of this is NPR’s tag-along version of a koala-seeking expedition.  The noise is so good and authentic that its eerie.  As others in my Journalist’s Toolkit lab have mentioned, the birds in the clip seem almost pre-recorded — too perfect if you will.  But that’s for a different blog discussion.  I will say this, though.  They sure enhance and help tell the story for the audience.

After reading up on the gathering of natural sound, I listened to a conglomeration by  Chicago audio artist Jesse Seay and was struck by two things.  One: the quality of sound was amazing. (I’d love to know which kind of microphone she used.  Looks like a handheld in the photos of her.)   Two: I wasn’t sure all the sound worked with all the photos.  In the middle of the slides, there are images of wolves, accompanied by what I’m assuming are wolf sounds.

I say “assuming” because I’m not entirely sure.  Granted, I’m not wolf expert.  I haven’t hung around with a local den of them recently.  But that wasn’t what I imagined them sounding like, even though I’m pretty sure its accurate reporting.  The noise didn’t mesh with the images I saw, and I was left confused and skeptical.  I no longer fell into Jesse’s images and story.  It interrupted by experience.

Anyways, my wolf confusion leads me to ask the question: If audio might be confusing, disturbing or unbelievable (even if it is true) for our audience, is it a good idea to use it in a multimedia presentation?  On the one side, I understand we must educate our audience, with the use absolute truth.   But if discordant information, as true as it is, doesn’t fit their schema?  Is it still a good idea to use it?  Or should it get tossed out on the editing floor with other audio and visuals?

The ethics of cropping photographs

My experiences in Photoshop earlier today made me turn back to the Kobre’ textbook and his chapter on editing.  I also haven’t blogged on this yet, so its about time, I suppose.

I guess I’m just struggling with the concept that cropping a photograph is wholly ethical.  We can’t erase things or add them into images, because that’s a misrepresentation of reality — the exact opposite of what we’re supposed to do as journalists. So at what point in our cropping are we not misrepresenting the reality in the image we’re editing?

 I understand the logistics, explained succintly by Kobre’ on  page 209.  Newspapers fit together like a “jigsaw puzzle” so cropping is necessary to get all text, ads, images and graphics into the daily.  I also understand that photographs crop images before even snapping the shot, by simply focusing or holding their camera a certain way.  However, Kobre says that if the main focus of your story doesn’t fill the page, you can crop the photo so the subject is more prominent. This is where it gets a little iffy for me.  And this time, I’m not talking about pixel-y images blown up and out of control.

Kobre’ also says to “…eliminate extraneous material that gives little meaning.” But wait, I thought we couldn’t remove things, like soda bottles or bracelets,  from an image?  If the item really isn’t telling about the subject of the photo, could it be telling about the environment?  How does that play a role in the story?  And if we’re supposed to ”preserve the mood” of the image, per Kobre’s instructions on page 210?  What if those details do tell the story?  Should we really be cropping “ruthlessly?” (p. 210) 

I just can’t help seeing Photoshop’s cropping tool as changing reality.  Perhaps you’re dealing with more subjectivity when you pick up a camera, as your eye and the viewfinder do frame the story and how you think the image should correspond.  To me, Kobre’ also seems confused about this concept as well.  His information contradicts itself.  He cautions you to use care when editing, because of the inherent subjectivity, but then he turns around and recommends “ruthless” cropping. 

This is tough stuff for a girl who can barely frame and crop things with a viewfinder yet.

A beginner’s photographs

I spent my morning off, sorting through, literally, 500 and something odd pictures of people exercising.  I ended up with  105 images I wasn’t horrified to show people. However, I then had to narrow it down to 20 images for my first photo assignment for my Journalist’s Toolkit class. Couple things I noticed during this arduous review process:

1.  I take a fairly decent, overall shot, but I could really use a good close-up.  I might have picked a tough topic (group exercise classes) to photograph and end up with close-ups.  I usd my zoom feature, but to get close enough to people’s faces, I got heavily pixelated images.  So I was literally left with only two halfway decent close-ups.  I’m simply going to have to butt in a little more, I think, and get in people’s faces, so to speak, to get a close-up shot.  Here’s one I chose:

2.  Keeping a clean background is tough in the real world.  There was always the stray water bottle or gym towel lying around.  I was also shooting in a room in which three of the four walls were covered in mirrors.  It was tough to work with. I also had a hard time not taking photos of myself taking photos.  You can see what I mean in this image:

3.  Movement is also tough.  I finally cut my own movement down.  Luckily, I can now actually hold my camera still.  But with my subject moving so much, I really had to anticipate what they were going to do to get the desired shot.  Like here:

In this one, I decided I actually liked the blurred movement itself:

While I photographed a variety of fitness classes,  I’ve decided I definitely need different backgrounds before I compile these images in soundslides.  (All the classes were held in the same room.) I’ll need to find different environments to photograph these gym fiends.  The wood floor and mirrors lose their interest after you see them as the background in image after image.

I’m also a little concerned about my Photoshop skills.  My editing was minimalistic at best.  I adjusted levels, slightly, and cropped some of the images, but not drastically.  I’m curious how much work others do to each individual photograph in Photoshop.  I’m not even I sure I know what to look for when I open up an image in Photoshop.  Any tips for the twenty images I selected?

Accidental story-telling: A writer practices photojournalism

I feel very comfortable in the world of words, so when you hand me a digital camera, and a big, floppy book called Photojournalism: The Professionals’ Approach by Kenneth Kobre’, I’m more than a little bit out of my element.

The idea of photography is amazing to me.  The fact that a journalist can set out and take hundreds of thousands of pictures, each telling their own story, with their own emotion and their own character. (Kobre’, p. 10)  On the surface, it could seem so simple: one shot and your done, while writers still slave away over piles of notes, sources and unreturned phone calls.  If only…

But, while the actual shot by photojournalist is singular (that’s often all that makes it into the paper), the effort is monumental, even just the practicality of it.  Your elbows have to be tight into your sides, so your hands don’t shake and deliver a blurry picture.  You have to sprint, drop down, hit the floor, roll over and shimmy underneath someone to get the right shot.  I finally appreciate the photographer, amateur or otherwise, who avoids the 5-foot-7-inch syndrome, where all shots are taken at the same angle: upper torso and head meets camera. ( Kobre’, p. 16)  In my case, all photos I’ve taken until last week are at my eye own level and horizontal.  It never occurs to me to even flip the camera 90 degrees.

 But the whole anticipation of photojournalism still grabs me.  What if you’re not there to catch the right moment?  What if you are there, but your memory card is full?  What if you drop your camera in a puddle of mud while covering a natural disaster?  Writing seems too easy all of a sudden.  I have to have some basic photographic abilities to embrace the multimedia form of journalism we’re all being pushed into, like it or not.

 After taking a couple of quick shots last Thursday of Curt, my super-reassuring classmate, I realize how exciting and personal photojournalism can truly be.  Keeping personal touches and viewpoints out of your writing is exhausting, but the very nature of photojournalism allows you to convey your viewpoint and personal approach.  In fact, you have to in order to tell the story and do your job.  I know my viewpoint isn’t exciting yet.  The best pictures I took involved me peeking around a wall and snapping a shot of poor Curt reading a newspaper.  But I’m waiting for my chance.  Like the ever-ready photographers Kobre describes, I’ve taken to toting my camera with me everywhere, because I, too, want to grab a shot that tells a story.  Oh, and one that isn’t blurry would be nice, too.

What I want to get from multimedia training

When I signed up for Journalist’s Toolkit 1 at the University of Florida, I took a deep sigh of a relief and then steeled myself for what was to come.   Journalism changed while I was studying the field as an undergraduate, and now, as a graduate student, I’ve been given the opportunity to prep myself for the changes I’ll face once I step out of the classroom and into the newsroom again.

I can no longer let my printed word stand alone.  As a writer, I’ve got to be able to report a story with several elements.  Yes, the printed word is one of them, but it’s accompanied by the visual (videos and photographs), the interactive online elements (blogs and news Web sites) and the audio (noise and voice recordings.)  By taking Journalist’s Toolkit 1, I want to be able to pitch a health story to an editor with written features, sound slides, photographs and other audiovisual components.  

 As newsrooms cut back and change, writers like myself have to change, too, adding more skills to our repertoires.  I hope to be a more flexible asset to the newsroom, reporting stories in a variety of formats, even if I’m the only journalist on the story.  I need to be able to take pictures, record audio and take notes if necessary.

 I will most likely take the follow-up class next semester, Journalist’s Toolkit 2, and by the end of all of it, I hope to be able record sound, noise and music, take photos, create audiovisual soundslides that have several different layers of sound and storytelling, and run a professional blog that can be used as a job-hunting tool and a medium for possible reporting.