A Week in Review: Photography, Editing, Readings and More!

This past week, I learned a great deal both in and out of class.  During our class lecture, we were taught the “rule of thirds” in photography.  I admit I had heard of this before, but never really understood it quite as well as when Mindy visually explained it to us using actual photographs and grids.  My classmate, Eisa, also did a nice job of recapping what we were taught in class on his blog using his own photographs.

 

For those of you who might not know about this rule, it states that when you divide a picture into thirds the most interesting thing in the picture should be in the middle box points.  Again, see Eisa’s blog for a good visual explanation.

 

Learning this rule came in very handy on Friday the 21st when I visited William H. Turner Technical Arts High School for my Master’s project in lieu of thesis which is to be a series of feature articles on education in Miami-Dade County.  Although I am not required to take photographs for my project, after a few weeks in this class, I realized my stories would probably be incomplete without a few good photographs to illustrate the articles and the individuals I spoke to.  After only a few weeks of reading Kobre’s Photojournalism The Professionals’ Approach, shooting a few pictures during our in-class assignment last week, and discussing some of these pictures, I found myself really paying attention to every shot I took.  I thought about angles, composition, light, and the rule of thirds every time I pressed the shutter.  It is amazing what a little training in photography can do for your thought process while shooting pictures.  Still a novice however, I am sure most of the pictures I took on Friday are not anything earth-shattering, but at least I feel confident that I took a few usable shots, many more than I would have had before my recent exposure to photography.  Tomorrow I get another chance to practice when I visit two other high schools.  I am excited!

In class on Thursday, we also learned how to save pictures for the Web and edit them in Photoshop. I was able to practice cropping and adjusting levels.  I also learned that the correct picture resolution for the Web should always be 72 ppi (pixels per inch) and the maximum height for a Web photograph should be 400 pixels while the maximum width should be 750 pixels.  These are easy to set in Photoshop under Image, Image Size.

 

As usual, the learning this week did not stop in the classroom.  I found our three reading assignments each to be quite interesting.  These included Sound Advice: The Natural Approach,  Natural Sound Stories: A How-To Guide and The Transom Mic Shootout Part 2: Handheld Mics .  I will summarize/highlight a few of the most appealing points for each (in my opinion) below.  Still, you should definitely check them out for yourself!

 

1. Sound Advice: The Natural Approach

• The idea of natural sound, which is sound that compliments the image you view on the screen.

•  The idea of an “audio picture” was particularly poetic to me.  We sometimes tend to think of things in very definite terms, but if you let your mind wander just a little bit you can realize that images are not only created with photographs or other visuals.  Sound can create an equally effective image of a particular story in an individual’s mind if collected carefully.

• The term “audio band-aids” used to describe how the author “fixed” gaps in his recording of a narrator for a recent project of his.  The term sort of jumped out of the page for me and reminded me of our ethics discussion last week.  Still, if I remember correctly from our discussion, I think this is OK as the sound to create these “band-aids” was collected from the same room where the narration took place and on the same day.  Right?

 

2. Natural Sound Stories: A How-To Guide

 

• The four steps to creating natural sound stories
  i. Knowing your story and planning ahead for it, including its structure.
  ii. Getting the sound, both subjects speaking and the natural sounds of the surroundings to help the story flow.
  iii. Interviewing differently by asking two-pronged questions, making observations instead of asking questions, getting more sound than you think you might need, and asking subjects to clarify when necessary.
  iv. Finally, putting it all together by creating an outline of your story and organizing your sound, listening to the story to make sure nothing important was left out, and lastly testing your story on a colleague to see how it fairs before air.

 

3. The Transom Mic Shootout Part 2: Handheld Mics

 

•  This one was not my favorite as I had a hard time pointing out the difference in sound between the various mics.  Maybe my headphones are not that great, who knows! 

• However I did notice a few small differences.  There seemed to be an echo coming from Mic D, a little handling noise from Mic E and finally an awkward whistle-type noise in the background from Mic G.

 

In addition to the above readings, we were asked to take a look at The Art of Listening.  As I watched and listened to this, I wrote down one note:  “Listen carefully.  There are more sounds to sound than you think.”  Hmmm…interesting…what do you think about that?

 

Lastly, I listened to Studying a Koala Mystery in Eastern Australia.  These are some of the things I noticed:

• The background sound was good but was a bit of a distraction from the speaker.

• The sounds of the researchers walking in the grass seemed more natural to me, less distracting and seemed to add more to the flow of the story.

• However, the above was much more effective when it was demonstrating action, less so during the speaker’s static talking.

• The sound did a great job of making me feel as if I were there.  The scene was easy to imagine without any images.

• The use of different voices also helped the flow of the story and helped to keep my interest.

• I felt that some of the most intense natural sounds were found towards the end.  To me, this was a good way to signal that the end of the story was coming.