Photographic Expedition

The long-delayed adventure into photographing people has begun.

I've been taking landscape and macro photographs with my digital camera for a couple of years now, but I've never seriously taken photographs of people before.

The first time I really got the urge to photograph people was in China. I went out alone on several occasions to take photos of Beijing; I walked down streets crowded with vendors and ventured into Hutongs, the classic one story living quarters that divide parts of central Beijing in to small alleys.

The people that I ran into along the way fascinated me: vendors, the elderly and children playing. However, I only took pictures from a distance and avoided being seen doing so. My mandarin is good enough to ask someone if I can take their picture - but it's not good enough to give a greater explanation why I would want to. So, because I lacked the ability to communicate my intent, and I didn't want to come off as some stupid, lost tourist, I didn't take all the photographs I might have liked to.

I regret it to a degree now, as I did then - but, I promised myself that when I got back home to the United States, where no language barrier would exist, that I would start to take photographs of people.

This assignment forced me to finally take the plunge.

Asking people if I could photograph them felt uncomfortable, but it wasn't nearly as bad as the first time I interviewed a stranger. I took photographs in a few places: outside of Holloway Commons, in Hamilton Smith's foyer, the lawn in front of Thompson Hall, and the courtyard in front of the Library.

The photographs I took in Hamilton Smith and in front of HoCo were not really intended to be of any certain student. I sort of just set-up and started shooting. I wanted the photographs to capture the hurried and crowded feelings associated with student life.

I took the photograph in Hamilton Smith in between classes when I knew a huge number of students would be funneling through the main doors. I set up on the balcony two flights up and took shots looking down into the foyer. I set my exposure for 1 second so the students hurriedly rushing in and out the doors would be blurry - showing motion.

Thankfully, when I ventured out onto the lawn to take photographs of specific people the first person I ran into was a friend (he's the one seen sitting on the cement wall that wraps around the flag pole). He was reviewing for a test with two of his friends and was more than willing to let me take pictures while they were talking. So, that was sort of a nice way to ease myself into asking people to take their pictures.

Finally, I found the Organic Farming Club's food-stand, and a couple playing with their dog. The couple was nice and obliged, but the dog got tired after three Frisbee throws and lied down in the shade.

I'm happy with the photographs I took. There were some potentially great ones that I botched, like this one:












But, overall, I'm just happy to have simply started taking photographs of people at all.

Portraits

Last class, Sandy (our professor) dispensed point-and-shoot digital cameras and instructed us to begin taking amazing portraits of one another. This photo of Megan is the fruit of my several-minutes labor.

We didn't have very much time so I had Megan run up the stairs in Hamilton Smith and pose behind the railing while I took shots from the landing below. I like stair railings, and objects like them, which offer repetitive geometric shapes that form a pattern. I think these geometric patterns make a nice contrast to the very organic human subject, and I feel that the classic design of the stair railing gives the portrait an academic feeling.

'Saving the Stone Church'

The multimedia story I have begun working on is the selling of the music club known as "The Stone Church." Located in Newmarket, New Hampshire, The Stone Church has been a premier small music venue in the area since it opened in the late 1960s. However, as a result of the worsening economy and a substantial debt incurred during renovations in 2004, The Stone Church's former owners, Chris Hislop, John Pasquale and Paul Nessel, we're forced to sell the building at auction on September 12, 2008.

The new owners, Adam Schroadter, Art Murphy and Scott Orlosk, bid on the property with the intention of keeping the facility a music venue. Murphy, who has been in the music industry for a number of years with a production company called Thumbprint Productions, told me the news that The Stone Church was being sold at auction was "like a call to arms" to save the venue.

Orlosk also told SeacoastOnline.com that "saving the music was the mission."

As for the name of the venue it looks as if Orlosk and his partners intend to keep it the same, but the details haven't been finalized yet.

This story absolutely lends itself to multimedia reporting - it's about a music club after all. I intend to craft the story around the reopening; this event being the hard-news story that justifies the larger multimedia component.

My vision for the project looks like this: there's a standard news story about the reopening (in my blog) posted the morning after the first show. Attached to this story is the multimedia component. This is a picture slide show of The Stone Church's 40-plus-year history, recent difficult times, the exchanging of owners, and reopening. The slide show will feature audio including: music, interviews and pertinent noises (ie: construction or background noises for images of renovation, moving, etc.).

As of right now I've only spoken with Murphy and he's asked that I keep in touch with him over the next few weeks as he and his partners finalize the purchase and begin the reopening. That said, I do not know a tentative reopening date yet (nor do the owners).

This is a bit of a mixed blessing. On one hand, it means I'll have plenty of time to contact the old owners, conduct interviews, and search for old pictures and audio. On the other hand, it may mean that I will need to identify more immediate stories, or that I will not be able to do the story at all (if the reopening doesn't happen before the end of the semester).

Exploring Multimedia

A week after beginning multimedia class I've done my fair share of exploring on the internet and what I've encountered from various multimedia websites has been nothing short of breathtaking. For a medium that is, relatively speaking, still in its infancy there certainly seems to be a sizable community of writers and artists creating impressive and moving pieces of media.

Today, 9/11, is a particularly interesting day to explore and think about multimedia. There's a small scandal occurring today in the newspaper industry. While most major papers around the country feature at least one 9/11 story on their front page; The New York Times, the most renowned and recognizable paper from the city, has nothing more than a teaser on its front cover.

However, The New York Times has not done its readers or the New York community a disservice - its website (nytimes.com) features several new pieces on the anniversary, an archive of stories, and a substantial assortment of fresh multimedia.

Perhaps it was still not the best decision to print the paper sans a front cover 9/11 story, however, the multimedia features on nytimes.com pay tribute to the event in ways that story after story over the past seven years can't.

The following are three interesting multimedia features from nytimes.com:

This is a screen shot of an interactive feature on nytimes.com. It's a 360-degree view of a warehouse where pieces of the World Trade Center are being stored for exhibits and other purposes. By clicking and dragging you can look in any direction in the warehouse while an audio recording explains the warehouse's purpose.














This is screen shot is a collage of different windows from a single article on nytimes.com. The article discusses the three images, each is composed of two still images taken from the same vantage point at different times - the obvious different being the lack of the World Trade Center's twin towers in the more recent photographs. This could have been a print article, however, I think it works best as an online feature where the images can be manipulated by the user.

This final screen shot is taken from an animated slideshow featuring pictures of a 9/11 survivor. While the slideshow progresses an audio interview with the survivor plays in the background














So, while The New York Times didn't put a 9/11 story on their cover today they certainly did an admirable job providing resources on their website. While I'm sure their are still 9/11 stories to be told in print, many have been already. Nytimes.com does a great job using a new medium to tell stories about an event we're all familiar with.

Anyways... while this post about my exploration of multimedia was taken over to a large degree by nytimes.com, my final conclusion about my this adventure is this: multimedia is an awesome new tool for reporters to use. It allows old stories to be told in new ways, and new stories that require more than plain text, or plain video to be told for the first time.

I can't wait to start creating.

My Multimedia Experience

Non-existent?

Generally, I don't spend much time on my computer. Of course, there's email and facebook but beyond that being on a computer typically means working and being indoors - two things I actively try to avoid.

I suppose another reason I've never really explored multimedia is my outdated (?) love of traditional mediums: newspapers and books. My freshman year I began my news habit, reading the Boston Globe daily. Over time, I switched to the New York Times but continue to sit each and every day with a paper and read as much as possible.

I love the news. I admire both its power and importance to our way of life, and I've always seen newspapers as the vanguards of the industry. I believe newspapers deliver articles that feature the best writing and most thorough research - plus, I just like carrying the news around with me and reading from a printed page.

However, the time to let go is nearing.

The same stories that appear in the New York Times printed copy are available online; updated and download-ready twenty-four hours a day. News on the internet is convenient, often free, has much greater flexibility (multimedia) than print or television journalism, and every day more and more people turn to it instead of picking up a newspaper.

So, if my love and admiration for the news is to continue and turn into a career my stubbornness can't continue any longer. The three years of resisting ditching my paper for my laptop is over - it's time for me to embrace multimedia.