Advanced Techniques Final project

I worked with three other students in my class for this project; Chen, Christine, and Phoebe. Great teamwork leads to great outcomes, and we had exactly that.

THIS will take you to the project. It may take a bit to load, but be patient. Click on one of the three projects there to see our work.

The stories are focused on Hazel Kinder's Lighthouse Theater, a Branson style theater that whose goal is to display the talents of local performers. Check out the project to see, hear and learn what it is like inside. The theater's website can be found here: Hazel Kinder's Lighthouse Theater.
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I also have for you some selects. Some are in the show(s) but several are not. Enjoy and let me know what you think.


I'm proud of this one simply because I painted with light all by my lonesome. It was a 30 second exposure and I was sprinting the whole time with popping my flash to add some extra light. I'm sure I looked crazy while doing this.


This is Hazel Kinder. Saying she just runs the place is an understatement.

Multiple Flash Assignment

If at first you don't come anywhere near succeeding, go shoot something else.



Larisa Rudelson counts the years she has been salsa dancing by the age of her son: four and half years. Rudelson is one of many others that salsa at the Cherry Street Artisan on Wednesday nights. Dancers’ skill ranges from those just learning basic steps and those that have been dancing their whole life.

Audio Slideshows

Football in a minute by Max Gersh

http://videos.stltoday.com/p/video?id=2442593

Cousins galore!

Not only does Thanksgiving bring loads of food to the table, but all the little cousins out to play as well.
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OMG, flash balance in use! Who'd a thunk it?


And flash bounced off a wall.


Available light. Non-existent front teeth.


Some of the little ones have gotten in a habit of brushing their teeth after each meal. Apparently the top of the steps to the basement works just as well as in front of the bathroom sink.

Painting with light

These are the results of our painting with light assignment. My group consisted of myself, Val Mosley, Beth Suda, and Patrick Fallon. We traveled to Renz Correctional Center, an abandoned prison just outside of Jefferson City, MO. It was ruined as a result of the 1993 flood and sits today as a reminder of the devastation the flooding caused.

India Nite Slideshow

India Nite

After a long night of shooting, I can't go to bed without posting a little snippet of my evening. These are from India Nite in Jesse Hall. I'll most likely end up putting a quick slide show for this. Also be on the lookout for some fantastic painting with light pictures Val, Beth, Patrick and myself made tonight. At least one will creep you out for sure.

The night Obama came to campus

Getting out to make pictures simply to make pictures and have fun was a nice change of pace. About 90% of me went to make pictures, 5% to see a possible future president of the US/world celebrity and 5% to hear him speak (by this time, nothing new is coming out of any candidate's mouth). The crowd has been estimated at 40,000 by the Missourian, and after personally counting everyone I'd say that's accurate enough.

Going into this I knew I was going to be challenged due to size of the crowd, the poor sight lines and that whole height issue. I brought with me my tripod, camera body, flash and following lenses; 10-22, 24-70, 75-300 <-- I'm laughing too. Whatever though, make do with what you have.











It was a fun experience. I was also glad to see so many different types of people coexisting in such tight spaces. I guess that is what happens with a unifying aspect.

Color Correction Assignment

A little rushed and a lot stressed, these are the results. I turned the first one in as a select, but now I think the Joker would have been the better choice. This assignment required the use of a gelled flash to match the available light.



Nishant Jain and Prakash Jayabalan are two of the masters of cerimonies for India Night. They, as well as two others met in Memorial Union to discuss the script and the program itself. The event will take place Saturday Nov. 1st and features culturaldances, traditional music and skits.

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Sitting in the back of the room, Robbie Wood arrived just a bit too late. Had he been at Memorial Union a tad earlier, he would have particpated in the Comedy Wars Halloween costume contest. Wood said that this was a trial run for his costume, whos big night was merely 48 hours away.

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And just to make your mouth water a little bit, these are the fluorescent from Hot Box Cookies at 808 B Broadway. Thinking back, I don't know how I walked out of there not having tasted a cookie.





Bruce Levine has only been an employee at Hot Box Cookies for about a week, but that is only because it has only been open for just as long. The cookie shop is owned by three MU juniors, Corey Rimmel, Adam Hendin and David Melnick. Hot Box Cookies employs 26 people and sports a slogan reading "Custom Baked - Delivered Late."

Single flash assignment & studio/lab random pictures

Note - for some reason the photos are far cooler when they show up on the blog than they actually are.

Single flash assignment

First is the direct single flash:


Creaking wood floors, extremely tall ceilings and desktop computers on the fourth floor of Jesse Hall means one thing to Maria Totoraitis: it’s time to work. As a senior Convergence student, Totoraitis is currently working in the KBIA newsroom. “I was the anchor tonight for the newscast and now I’m working on the podcast.” Several computers and two sound booths occupy the space. Students can record high quality audio segments in the sound booths.

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Second up is the bounced single flash:


Climbing four flights of stairs in Jesse Hall might be a good work out for some. For others, like Paul Otto, the fourth floor is home to KBIA 91.3 FM. Otto, a retired lawyer, has been volunteering at the station since June of 2004. He is on the air every Wednesday night from 6-9 and also said he fills in shifts for coworkers or open weekend shifts. As to how he got started at KBIA, Otto said, “there was an email out asking for volunteers and I answered it.”

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Studio/lab random pictures

Heavy Metal: take 2

A bit of an Americana theme -



Do you prefer the above or the below?

Heavy Metal

This is result #1 for the metal and glass assignment:



Not perfect but I'll get there.

The select for the Classmate Portrait Assignment

Because I wasn't satisfied with the other results.

First up is Jakob (the J is pronounced as a Y) Berr. He hails from Abensberg, Germany, a small city to the north of Munich, and is 27. A traveler of the world, Jakob met his wife, Saba, in Bangladesh on April 19, 2004. His interest in photography is rooted in his deceased father's hobby. Jakob has studied photography for a total of six years and has wound up at the University of Missouri because "I knew a lot about photography but not about journalism." After his time here has finished, he will return to Germany as is part of the student exchange program.



Editor's note: hopefully I will be able to re-shoot Jakob after he returns from MPW. I was not 100% pleased with my results and hope to incorporate what I've learned since then into new portraits. Also, as soon as I post this I am going to get a proper sensor cleaning tool.

Second up is some chick I found on the street... not really though. In what I will call a practice session, my girlfriend Sarah was kind enough to further my learning by posing for some photos.





Constructive criticism is highly appreciated.

The first Advanced Techniques assignment:

Copy Stand and Meter Calibration

ABOVE: American Gothic by Gordon Parks

BELOW: Jackie Robinson Ralph Morse

Horse Show

My sister took part in a horse show over the weekend. Since it was in town, I was able to attend.

Opps, I forgot about PIG RACING! A nice 43 second video that will make you laugh for one reason or another, I guarantee it.

DEMOLITION DERBY VIDEO!!!!
Check it out. There were some technical difficulties that forced me to exclude some interviews, but overall I think it turned out nicely. I hate it when my vision is altered by limits of technology, grrr.

Fair weather

Clever title, right?

I was sent out to the fair grounds Tuesday morning to get some wet weather pictures. These are the results (the last one went online at the Missourian):





Puddles all around and water dripping everywhere, the overnight thunderstorm put a damper on Tuesday's fair activities.

A busy weekend

Multimedia #3



Multimedia #4 (first attempt at video)

I don't have Quicktime Pro on my laptop, so you'll have to follow the link I've provided below.

Cowboy Church Multimedia

Both of those were published at the Missourian. Unfortunately, direct links aren't available and navigating to them can be confusing for those not familiar with the site.

I figured out Avid Express Pro, kind of. It still does things that I nor the more experienced convergence student that helped me finalize it could understand.

To sum up my weekend, I'll just give a nice little time line...

Saturday
5 p.m - 9 p.m: at the dog show
9 p.m - 12:01 a.m.: in the Missourian newsroom editing
1:00 a.m.: to bed

Sunday 6:30 a.m.: wake up
7:30 a.m - 9:00 a.m: covering the Cowboy Church Service
9 a.m - 2 p.m.: figuring out Avid and editing
7 p.m. - 9:30 p.m.: called back into the newsroom because the video didn't work on the website. Why didn't it work? Because a vital step in the exporting process was unknown to me, and it wasn't something that
could just be "figured out."

Slideshow #1



Just published at the Missourian - 1:08 p.m. - July 18, 2008.

This is the result of a long and painful day trying to figure out Avid Express Pro, a video editing program. The learning curve for that program is extremely steep. Some may think Photoshop or InDesign is difficult to learn, but Avid takes the cake. If the ease of use of Soundsides Plus is like building a wooden box, Avid is like constructing the Eiffel Tower.

As you have noticed, the project above isn't a video project. I was working with a fellow reporter/photojournalism student, Angie, and at the end of 5.5 hours of trying to get something halfway decent, we scrapped it. We left frustrated with Avid and without a project, but did have a learning experience in both video editing and shooting.

The best thing about my Treasure Hunters Roadshow experience:

Multimedia project #2 

This is my second finished multimedia piece for the Missourian. I was brought onboard for this assignment early last week (a full length article by a different reporter will accompany it once it is published). In total, I made pictures and gathered audio with Nina twice, and her teacher once. I did all the editing today, most of which was sifting through audio, picking out the right sound bites, and then finding the appropriate place to put them.

Unfortunately, I feel the visual variety is somewhat forced. Nina is a great person, but I wasn't able to relay the fact that she didn't have to put on a show for me. On several occasions, she took me through her work tasks, and by my photojournalism ethics, I couldn't use those pictures. 

Why exactly couldn't I use them? Because I am meant to capture unstaged, un-suggested and unaltered scenes or scenarios. This did lead to the exclusion of many photos, but ultimately I'm glad that I have presented an ethically sound presentation.

What I learned:
1. Absolute silence can work
2. When creating text slides for Soundslides via Photoshop, create a "New" document and under "Preset" select "Photo." That way, you can safely save as a JPEG
3. Editing the audio to fit the photos creates a better finished project than editing the time length of photos to fit the audio
4. I love my new lens

Way back when I was in Fundamentals of Photojournalism (2 months ago), my final project for the class focused on the Mizzou club baseball team. Initially, I had thought this would be a good chance to dive into sports action photos, however, over time I took a different path.

Although the action photo is interesting in and of itself, I found out that trying to tell a story about a team via action photos wasn't going to work. With help of my teacher and TA, I changed my initial idea. This meant setting aside the long lens and breaking out the short ones.

Having been on a handful of baseball teams throughout my life, I told myself it was my duty to convey how it felt to be these guys on this particular team. A few select pictures are below, to view the full project, story and all, go here .



Tony Ounanian watches intently as a University of Kansas pitcher hurls another pitch.



Though not the most exciting task, Adam Doerr takes his turn in recording every action that takes place during the game. From the scorebook, Danny Mehigan then places stat information on the team’s website.