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.