Earth Hour Sequences

Boston.com's Big Picture blog has collected a series of time-lapse photos from Earth Hour. Most of these come from Reuters, and I have to give them credit for coordinating this idea - very thoughtful. (Some of the images came from other places, too.)

Click on each image to watch it fade, click again to watch it come back.

Grimm Infographics

It's not a typo - it's Little Red Riding Hood done as a Flash infographic.

Building Your Web Site

Over on the Photopreneur site is a post on "How to Catch a Photo Editor's Eye." While not aimed at the journalism realm, there is a lot of good info in there - particularly on letting the images shine, not the web site. 

Personally, I think Flash is a fantastic tool for interactive design. But it can also be slow to load and often the designers using it try to wrestle too much control away from the site's viewers. Don't do that. Let your pictures carry the page.

Juggling on Assignment

Adam Westbrook, a reporter for a British radio station, talks about balancing the needs of audio, stills and video while on assignment. (Thanks to Koci at Multimedia Shooter for the link.)

Flash Day in DocPhoto

Pictures with Purpose Workshop

FYI ...

The 2nd annual Pictures with Purpose workshop will be held again in

Oak View, California, about 70 miles north of LosAngeles, 30 miles
south of Santa Barbara.

This year's workshop will begin Sunday, July 12, at 2 p.m. and run
through Sunday, July 18th. We cut the days in half and lowered the
price.

This year we will be focusing even tighter on advocacy and
intervention photography.

Tuition $795.00

A $200.00 deposit is required to hold a spot

Workshop is limited ot 12 students
8 spots left as of March 18

David LaBelle

For more info write to:

labelledave@gmail.com

On Audio Slide Shows ...

I love audio slide shows. They are wonderful journalistic creations, able to mix the depth of still images with the power of a subject's voice. I teach all my students how to do them - and they do them well.

The wire services have started to push them out, as well, which is fantastic. There are so many stories that can be told so well this way.

But ... and you knew there was a but ... not all of them succeed. It is not enough to just do one anymore because they are easy to build with programs like SoundSlides. They have to be crafted, they have to be shot for this reason and they need to have a story.

Take, for instance, Brian Synder's foreclosure auction piece on the Reuters site. Snyder, who I've known for 15 years, is an amazing photographer - and the images here prove that. Good variety, strong technical skills and great moments.

But the audio - of one auction, start to finish - doesn't tell us a story and it doesn't match with the photos very well. During our workshop last week, one of our editors was showing me a few audio slide shows his staff had done. Thirty seconds into one of them - one which was beautifully shot - I stopped the player and said I couldn't watch anymore. There was no connection between the photos and the audio. There was no sense of synchronization, there were really good photos AND really good audio, but they weren't working together. The timing of the transitions didn't make any sense. Even the types of transitions didn't make any sense.

It's time we stop playing with audio slide shows and start telling stories with them. It's not enough to say, "Gee whiz, that's cool!" when one finishes watching. You need to have a deeper understanding of the story.

And I feel the same way about video ... when did we decide to abdicate storytelling and just play with technology?

Gear Guides

We're getting close to that time of the year, the time when many of my students will start fretting about graduating. And it's not so much the Becoming a Real Person Dilemma as it is what do I need to buy?

I say it often - we do a great thing here at UGA in providing gear to our students. It completely eliminates an economic barrier to taking the classes and finding your passion. But it also means the students don't have to buy anything or start building their kits. So when their last class ends and they have to hand back the kit, they go into a bit of withdrawal. Or, more accurately, they go into shock over what it costs to build their own.

David McIntyre over at Black Star Rising has a short post on the basic gear a freelancer needs and it's a great starting point for a discussion that will go on for a few weeks here.

UGA PJ Alumni on Verve Photo

Kendrick Brinson, a 2005 UGA PJ alumni, is the current featured photographer on Verve Photo's New Breed of Documentary Photographers project.

Networking to Survive

Over on BlogHer, Kim Pearson has a piece up on, "Survival Tips for Journalists in the New News Economy." Two of her main ideas - that everyone is now a potential entrepreneur and that networking matters - are things students can easily latch on to and do something about.

"Sex, Lies and Photoshop"

Jesse Epstein has an opinion piece - done as a video - on the New York Times site about, "Sex, Lies and Photoshop." It comes from a proposed law in France that would require magazines to delineate how much retouching has been done on the photos. Not overly deep, but worth five minutes of your day.

Hey Dave, How's the Workshop Going?

Administrivia

File this under ego ... today marks the second anniversary of the UGA PJ blog. While there was one experimental post in February, on March 5, 2007, the first two real posts went online - a look at the Faces of Rochester and another on low angle sports photography.

There won't be a cake, but a simple nod to surviving for two years would be appropriate.

Weekend Workshop Round Table Talks

As part of this year’s Photojournalism Weekend Workshop, we’re going to have a few informal round-table discussions on issues the editors and our students are wrestling with. The schedule is below and all of these will be held in the Photojournalism Lab (room 130 of Grady College).

If you’re around and want to sit in, you’re more than welcome to join us. Each of these will run about 30 minutes.

If you’re coming to the Saturday or Sunday talks, I’ll be at the first floor, south west corner door about 10 minutes prior to the start to let folks in. (That’s the door closest to Tate Center with the automatic opener on it.)

Friday, 1 p.m. - Using "Social Media" to Build Communities - How do sites like Facebook affect our readership? How can we take advantage of those communities? Do we need to draw readers to our sites or do we go to where the readers are?

Friday, 4 p.m. - Communities Without Borders - How do you make coverage decisions when geography isn't as strong of a defining value? Do we need to redefine "community journalism?"

Saturday, 1 p.m. - Back Pack Journalism - It’s spreading, does it work? Can it work? Do concerns about quality and depth trump the immediacy of it?

Saturday, 4 p.m. - The Role of Video - How important is this? Do we use it because we have it or do we use it when it works best?

Sunday, 10 a.m. - How to Survive - It has been a brutal year in the journalism realm, so how do students keep hope alive? Or should they?