MyStory Blog

Throughout the process of this course we have had to keep a blog. At first, I thought this would be a series of small written assignments that, ultimately, would have no real connection or purpose for being online. I could not have been more wrong. By keeping a blog throughout this course, I can see how I've progressed as a student by reflecting on and referencing previous work to improve.
This course was designed around a central blog. It was where are assignments were posted and how we could turn in our work. What we did not realize in the process what how useful this "archive" of work could be when we were completing the class and creating our MyStory.

Picturing "The Other"

A tourist dives off a dock in Key West, Fla. during sunset in August 2010.

That same tourist then joined his friends to watch the sunset.

I took these photos while I was on vacation in Key West, Fla. celebrating the end on my internship with The Miami Herald. I chose to "work" while on vacation because it had been a long time since I had taken photos for myself and not on assignment.
My background as a multimedia journalist helped me compose these photographs and use them to tell a short story. It is very clear that the tourists were jumping off the dock to watch the sunset.
I decided to make the subjects silhouetted so I could properly expose the background. If I tried to keep the subjects lit, I would have needed a flash or to overexpose the background, losing the colors of the Key West sunset.

These same people might take a photograph of me on the dock, because I had multiple cameras with me and a tripod. I did not look like a tourist - I looked like I was working. When taking these pictures, multiple tourists, artists and other photographers approached me to talk about the pictures I was making.
"The Other" would definitely make the assumption that I was working. Their caption would most likely read, "Photographer takes photographs of sunset in Key West, Fla."

I think it is important to take in account the perception of your subject while taking photographs of them - even on vacation. Though I do this on a daily basis for work. It is best to "shoot first, ask questions later." The assumption must be taken into consideration when framing the photograph. I could have just taken a shot of tourists in the water without the sunset and they would not have nearly the purpose, or interest, than if I included the sunset.
A different way of representing "The Others" in this setting would be to ask them to pose for a photograph and let them choose how they wish to be perceived by letting them pose. This is not journalistic, but in this setting, it was not an assignment.

Altering an Image

Altering an image can be extremely detrimental to both a newspaper's reputation and a photographer's career. Many do this to make there image better, but others alter a photograph to make it suitable for publication.
For example: if a photograph had a profane word in it, the editor could simply photoshop it out. I am going to use a photo from the Dove World Outreach Center as an example. This photograph does not have profanity, but it does have some writing in the background that could be offensive to some. The trailer in the back says "International Burn a Koran Day 9/11/2010 6PM-9PM."

Pastor Terry Jones walks out of the Dove World Outreach Center to address the media.

There was a major issue in reporting this story because of the unnecessary attention Pastor Terry Jones was getting. An editor might argue they do not want to advertise the time and place of the Koran burning - so they take out this information in the photograph.

This is the same photograph without the information on the Koran burning in the background. (DO NOT PUBLISH)

As you can see, by taking out the information on the Koran burning it alters the photo significantly. While the Pastor is still walking from his church and addressing the media, the lack of information on the trailer doesn't give the reader an immediate sense of what is going on, where the subject is and why he is in the news.
This is a horrible practice in the news media and has been done many times.
Here is another example of photoshopping an image to improve the look of the image for publication.

The Economist removed certain people from this photograph to give a cleaner look to their cover photo.

This has been an issue since the start of newspaper photo publication. A complete history of altered images can be found at this website: http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

Forest Gump at the Terry Jones Press Conference

I think if Forest Gump made his way into the mayhem that was the Terry Jones' Qur'an burning it would offer some simplistic insight into how ridiculous the events that surrounded the week before Sept. 11, 2010 really were.

Terry Jones met with a number of religious leaders and had his fare share of fights with news reporters over the week of international coverage. If Forest Gump was able to meet with Terry Jones and explain some of this mother's logic to him, it would be interesting to see the reaction from the crazy pastor.

The media had interviewed hundreds of different people from all over the world before Sept. 11, 2010 to get their insight into the Qur'an burning. If Forest Gump was interviewed, I would have changed the events by having him influence the decisions of other extremists into calming down their actions. In the movie, he tends to use his over simplification as a solution to many problems, and he also creates many ideas such as the "Shit Happens" slogan and the smiley-face T shirt.

Terry Jones obviously thought he was right and did not want to listen to any other solution to his mission. If Forest Gump were to meet with him and hold a press conference, I think it would prove to be a comedic and simple outcome. If the movie taught any lesson it was that some of the worlds major issues, such as racism and segregation, are non-existant in the minds of people like Forest Gump who were raised to respect everyone.

There have been many complex events to happen around the world since the release of Forest Gump and the timeframe the movie has been based upon. It shows there are some incredibly simple solutions to the world's problems which a character like Forest Gump would solve.

Forest's reactions would be of disgust, and it would be shocking to him. I think if it were a part of the movie there would definitely be a flashback to some of the values his mother taught him.

Icon of Journalism

The New York Times logo is the iconic image of the journalism industry. It is internationally recognized and symbolized as "great journalism." Once you have been published in the times, you have made it as a journalist. The word "times" stands as a metonym for the publication and a status symbol in the industry.
For example:
Someone might say, "He works for the Times." Meaning, he works for The New York Times, not meaning a date or time. It surpasses other publications with the word "Times" in their nameplate.
The nameplate style has not changed since its original publication in 1851. Though the name from "New-York Daily Times," to "New-York Times," to the current "The New York Times" has changed, the font and style created has stayed consistent for over 150 years. Forever symbolizing great journalism with the recognizable logo.
Other industries may have a generic logo, such as "RX" for Pharmacy, but journalism is one of the few industries where a flagship corporation leads the standard for excellence in its respective field.

"The New York Times" nameplate was first used in December of 1896, and has stayed consistent since. 

Additional letters have been added to font since the introduction of the NYT Magazine and The International Herald Tribune, but the style stays the same.
The font has also been adapted to a single "T," for copyright purposes and for logo. This recognizable "T" proves that the font has been so ingrained into our minds that only a fraction of the title can be shown, and the public will immediately recognize the reference.

The "T" logo has been used for The New York Times Magazine since 2004.

It takes millions of views and hundreds of years for a symbol like the "T" of "The New York Times" to be as recognized as it is today, but it also shows how impressionable the public is toward design and advertising. The tropes that are associated with logos, designs and advertising are not always easily recognizable, but they are after inferred without us even knowing it.

If you pick up a publication with the nameplate of The New York Times you expect to get a quality product. This is also why many other news organizations have tried to mimic The New York Times' nameplate.

The Washington Post was founded in 1877 and has a similar nameplate as The New York Times.

This "old english" font has become recognizable as a newspaper heading since before The New York Times was a great newspaper. It is only in the recent decades that The New York Times has stood as the pillar of great journalism and recognized by the "T" logo.

An Indiviudal Responsibility

I feel that in today's society, the way we perceive images has changed due to overexposure of what used to be taboo topics. The judgement of an individual has been tainted by a lack of responsibility on their part when searching for such images.
Susan Sontag states in her book In Regarding the Pain of Others, “Transforming is what art does, but photography that bears witness to the calamitous and the reprehensible is much criticized if it seems ‘aesthetic;’ that is, too much like art” (76). She also goes on to day that war photography is "beautiful."
I agree with Sontag's statements on how culture chooses to judge photographs, but I also think it is the overexposure due to unlimited access via the Internet that has caused much of this chaotic storm over photos of dead soldiers or grouse scenes of war. War photographs are unique in the fact that they tell a story that few may ever experience and no two are alike. These should be preserved, not transformed into grouse examples for political gain. When these pictures show up outside of the privacy of our laptops there is an immediate reaction by others for viewing them. I think the "art" in war photography has been lost. It is an art form to take a great war photograph, just like it involves great skill and determination to make a great painting. This can be seen in Clint Eastwood's 2006 film Letters from Iwo Jima.
In Eastwood's film, the main characters are just that - characters. Similar to fictitious person in a painting, his work of art is the story. While it was based on real letters and factual knowledge of the battle on Iwo Jima - by personifying these people in character in a movie is creating art. Just like creating a good photograph in wartime. It is the response of the public which ultimately judges the images Eastwood has created. Decades ago, Eastwood's movie might have no even been showed because of its graphic nature. Because the public has been overexposed to the horrific images of war, they are not as likely to last out against a film like this one.
I feel like no image should ever be censored, but I also believe that the general population has a moral responsibility to judge for themselves what is good and bad in a war photograph. It is not up to Eastwood to censor his work, just as it is not up to the news organization to dictate what images should be seen. The overexposure is a problem with the individual not the public as a whole. An individual should educate themselves on a topic like Iwo Jima before believing or judging any photograph they see. It is also important for captions to carefully explain exactly what is going on to prevent any false judgements.

A Bipolar Facebook

My Facebook persona is really two persons in one. I have used my facebook page to promote my work as a multimedia journalists and to stay in touch with friends and family.

My professional facebook page.

I think the amount of friends I have one facebook does reflect on my persona. While I do not personally know 1,332 people by name, I think the fact that I have had some sort of contact with these people reflects the kind of person I am - outgoing an willing to talk to complete strangers. This also can be applied to photos that I am tagged in. I have taken down pictures in the past that have reflected poorly on my online persona. While I do not drink often, I do go to house parties where there are large amounts of alcohol, and photos of me in that setting could be detrimental to the persona I am trying to keep online.

The ESPN facebook page.

There are some aspects of my life that I choose to leave out entirely on Facebook. These include: relationship status, religious affiliation, political affiliation, sexual preference and the year of my birthday. I do this for more professional reason than personal reasons, but if you really want to know these things, just have a conversation with me and stop stalking my Facebook page. Items like these can be detrimental to someone if they are friends with coworkers, bosses or potential employers on Facebook that could disagree with your political views or religious affiliation. While this is illegal, it is still commonly practiced in the professional world.

Even my personal facebook page includes photos of me working and promotes my freelance multimedia work.

My Facebook is drastically different than the family photo album, home videos or journal. Because anyone can post to my page and add to my persona, there are aspects of my life, photos or information, that I would have forgotten to add to a journal or never said in a home video. The pictures on my Facebook page are not all posed Christmas-family photos. There are candid shots of me working taken by other photographers that are some of my favorite photos, because I did not know they were being taken.
I value my online persona greatly, and because I'm in the communications industry, I know the importance of keeping a clean online persona.

The Tackle Heard Around the World.

Slideshow

Image Analysis

When I pieced these imaged together, I wanted to create a narrative of the events that happened on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009. This was a moment in Gator football history that would not be forgotten. It was also a wakeup call to quarterbacks around the country.

The images used express how powerful a football game really is. Not just physically, but emotionally.

The beginning shots of head coach Urban Meyer watching his players enter the locker room and hugging Tim Tebow show that this is his extended family and he would do anything to protect them. This would also show that when one of his family members gets injured, he takes it personally. 

The music plays a significant role in the slideshow. A Gator football game is usually a very happy occasion, but as you can in the series of pictures, it turn somber very quickly and even at the next game - tensions are still there and doubts rise about the teams ability to live up to their national-championship caliber.

In the end, football comes down to emotion. The emotion of the fans fuels the players which fuels the team which wins football game. Any swing of emotion, like losing a key player, can throw off a teams drive and cause months of preparation to crumble under their feet.

Pictures to a fantastic job at conveying emotion. In my opinion they tell a story much better than words or video. 

With a picture you can freeze the world. You can stop one moment in time that will never happen again. That is your moment that you caught and no one will ever get that exact moment that you have.

This does wonders when telling a story.

Even if you took out the photos of Tebow laying on the ground, you would know that something is wrong at that football game. The players look upset, the coach looks miserable and even at the next game, things don’t look 100% right.

Pictures have that ability to show exactly how someone is feeling at that moment in time that words can often mislead and video can often overlook.

The Story

Commonwealth Stadium was sold out on Saturday, Sept. 26, 2009. With over 67,000 fans of both the Kentucky Wildcats and the Florida Gators staring silently at one man wearing the number 15 jersey laying on the 15 yard line.

It took over 15 minutes for the play to be completed. From impact to dead silence to a slow clap, no one would come out victorious in this competition.

The day started off like many days in central Kentucky - cloudy and raining. I parked my car in a grass lot near Commonwealth stadium and began to organize my equipment, checking and double checking, to make sure the day would run smoothly. 

Unfortunately, I cannot control what I see through my lens, and this particular Saturday would prove to test my abilities to push a simple shutter.

When you join a university, you join a lifetime of commitment to your school. Be it loyalty to the football team, school colors or singing the alma mater - In this case, once your a Gator everyone else is Gator bait.

The game was going as planned while the Gators were crushing the Kentucky Wilcats. The Gators were up 31-7 coming into the second half and many though this was a time to give quarterback Tim Tebow a break and see what second-string quarterback John Brantley could do. Head coach Urban Meyer left Tebow in the game, but would soon regret this decision and change the course of the season.

On a quarterback carry, Tebow suffered a severe concussion which eventually sent him to the hospital and questioned his playability for the rest of the season.

Tebow sat on the sidelines, dazed and confused, for the remainder of the third quarter until he began to vomit, resulting in a quick escort off the field and to the hospital.

As photographers focused on backup quarterback John Brantley’s performance, I kept my eyes on Tebow documenting one of the most trying times in Gator Football.

Is Urban Meyer to blame for this? Many people asked. Will Tebow ever plan again?

A serious concussion, no matter what helmet protection you have, can change your life.

These were all questions and concerns that would take weeks to answer and some would never get answers to just how severe the concussion was.

The Gator Nation was stunned without their leader on the field and fans, teammates and coaches alike would be in a state of confusion for the next two weeks until the Gators traveled the Louisiana to play one of their biggest rival, Louisiana State University.

It was a questionable start for Meyer; if Tebow was to get injured again, the coach’s credibility could be shattered. He had already been criticized immensely for leaving Tebow in the game after the Gators were up 31-7 at the half. He defended his decisions and assured the media he was doing his job correctly.

Meyer was huddled in the tunnel where the team was to enter - one can only imagine the thoughts running through his mind. 

Coaching at the University of Florida is one of the most stressful jobs in the world. You have an impatient fan base, pressure from the Alumni to win and an expectation of a perfect season which has yet to be accomplished.

The stadium was deafening, the bands were playing, and there was an uneasy tension throughout the day. ESPN’s GameDay was there to provide commentary on all day before the 8 p.m. game and there was no second of that play that caused Tebow’s departure untouched. Will Tim Tebow play?

He warmed up with the team and the fans were supportive, but no one knew exactly who was going to come on the field for the first offensive play of the game.

He did and he won.

In a close 13-3 game, the Gators came out victorious, and the entire Gator Nation let out a sigh of relief knowing that their quarterback, their leader, their Tebow was back in action.

Clip Analysis from The Sixth Sense

The scene begins with a flare igniting showing the scene of a car/bike accident and then moving down a line of parked cars in the middle of the street while a voice is heard over the scene. *ACT - The action of the flare shows a visual representation of a scene starting. The flare ignites and the scene begins. **HER - there is an enigma of moving the narrative forward as the camera pans past all of the parked cars. "I'm ready to communicate with you now. Tell you my secrets," says the boy in the car, whose voice you've been hearing narrate so far. **The voice overheard is creating suspense, and as the scene moves into the car with the enigma grows as the boy explains to his mother that he want's to communicate his secrets.
*Once the action of the camera moving inside the car establishes the remainder of the scene the **enigma must be answered.
"Someone got hurt. A lady. She died," said the boy to his mother. She asks if he can see the accident. The boy answers, "She's standing next to my window." ***SEM - the symbolic code during this dialogue represents the ghosts that only the boy can see. He later proves this point by referencing a vivid memory of his mother that only she could recall.
"They want me to do things for them," said the boy. ****SYM - this symbolic meaning of the ghosts asking the boy to help them is something only he knows the answer to at the time and is not explained until later in the movie.
Once the boy explains to this mother about the dance recital and her mother *****REF - which is a cultural reference, because some time periods or cultures would not recognize a dance recital as something young women would participate in - he shares with her an answer that only she would know the question being asked. "Everyday," the boy says, to which the question was "Do I make her proud."
This scene does an excellent job setting up what is to be a suspenseful movie. *Clearly, the first camera movements help set up the momentum of the plot beginning while the first **enigma is the dramatic pauses in the boys statements and questions to his mother. ****The ghosts that the viewer is informed of are selectively shown and not fully explained leaving room for the plot to grow.
These elements are what make The Sixth Sense a traditional suspenseful film and use the right tools to keep an audience engaged.

Telling The Story

When you’re in the middle of a war zone or environmental disaster or even a sporting event – it is your job as a photographer to tell the story.

General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon. (Eddie Adams - 1968 Associated Press)

It is not an easy job, or for the light hearted.
This often means publishing a series of images to narrate a story, enlarging them to emphasize the meaning behind the picture and even the way the photo is taken adds a perspective that the reader can relate to.
In addition to making a picture, you must caption it. This is the definitive way you can get your message to the reader.
While a caption is needed to fully understand what is taking place in an image – sometimes, a series of images can explain the event that you captured.
Nothing fits this example as well as Eddie Adams’ “Street Execution,” taken in Saigon in 1968. This was at the height of the Vietnam War, and American were being exposed, for the first time, to timely war images on the evening news.
The original caption that Adams wrote in 1968 for The Associated Press said, “General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon.”
Later, he told TIME Magazine, “The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. ... What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?”
Adams struggled with this photograph for the rest of his life – eventually apologizing to General Nguyen Ngoc Loan and his family for the damages he caused with his photograph.
This picture won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for spot news photography.
Here is how a series of images can better tell this story.

A series of images can better tell a story of exactly what happened. (Eddie Adams - 1968 Associated Press)

Adams’ series of photographs better narrates the story. While the emphasis is on the prisoner, Adams’ makes sure to frame his photograph to tell the entire story.
While there are endless aspects to fine-art photography, Adams’ job was to tell stories, and that is exactly what he did. Through the series of photographs and captions, you, the reader, can tell exactly what is going on in the streets of Saigon in 1968.

"Hello World"

There are many first in the world of technology that we take ada\vantage of every day. Who would know that the simple phrase "Hello World" started it all.
Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, first typed these famous words when launching what is now the largest online resource back in 2000.
The phrase was also used back in the 1970's to teach students how to use programmable code on th first computers.
Today, I use the phrase, "Hello World" to begin my educational-blogging career at the University of Florida. This is not my first blog, and it will certainly not be my last, but this class represents a fundamental change in how the academic system is teaching the English language.
Throughout this course, ENG1131, I will blog on topics discussed, debated and dissected in our lectures. These topics will range from now we perceive text and pictures to multimedia techniques used to tell stories.
I am a journalist - thus, I tell stories.
All I have known is storytelling: It was my first job at The Orlando Sentinel in high school, and I guarantee you it will be my only job, storytelling.

This photo was taken just after we landed in Houma, La. with the US Coast Guard after flying over the spill site of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Leslie Clark)

This doesn't mean I will spend my life studying how the newspaper industry fell under its own weight; nor does it mean I will only be a photographer, or writer or videographer. My job changes just as quickly as its surroundings.