I’m not sure if this link will work…if not, the video I meant to post is on the second page:
EPJ: Second Website Critique
I have a feeling a lot of the MPW people are going to be critiquing the websites of the MPW faculty, but I’m going to go ahead with Penny De Los Santos’ site anyway.
I’ve seen the Livebooks format before, but I think this particular portfolio does an exceptionally good job of presenting the images and tweaking the basic template to make it more personalized. The white background, I feel, has a lot to do with this; it sets off the bright colors of Penny’s photos (and the contrast of the black and white images) in a way that black backgrounds can’t. I tend to lean toward black backgrounds when presenting my own images, so this made me rethink my ways.
I liked that there was a variety of images to choose from in each of the galleries, and particularly that there were multiple ways of selecting a large photo to view–there is both a ‘back/next’ arrow bar and a scrolling stream of thumbnails. I am not sure that I would use this particular type of scroll, as it jumps too much for my liking (I’d rather it jump to the next image one at a time instead of skipping ahead several images), but I would like to find a way to give more viewing options.
Overall, the site is well-presented; however, I wish there had been more incorporation of caption material. Only two galleries of five had this information; when it did appear, it mentioned only the publication for whom Penny was working when she made the photo. I would have liked to see more details about the subjects themselves, or where the photo was taken (this detail did appear in the ‘travel/food’ portfolio, but I feel it applies to all of the categories except the lone ‘food’ one). Also with regard to caption material, the rollover text frustrated me because I kept forgetting not to move the cursor while I was reading, and the words would disappear before I could finish. Since it is optional to show the captions in the first place, it seems like they should remain onscreen; the viewer has already seen the corresponding image in full, and the words will not distract from a proper presentation.
Picture Story: One Day Story/5 POVs
Fielding a Community
Five nights a week, from mid-August to mid-October, the Rainbow Softball Center at Cosmopolitan Park in Columbia, Mo., fills with recreational adult softball teams. Most league divisions contain more than eight teams. Thursday night Men’s Church League softball is one of the few exceptions to this rule, with just five teams rotating through the designated field each night. Playing in the Church League “has advantages over other leagues,” says Nathan Thomas*, manager of the St. Andrews team, specifically because of “the common thread that we share a love for sports and Jesus Christ” and “the chance to enjoy fellowship with your brothers…this is a good way for different churches to come together and not get so immersed on each other’s beliefs [and] practices.” For the teams of the league, fellowship comes both on and off the field.
While most teams in the league sport jerseys with their respective church names on them (or simply shirts matching the team’s color), the Disciples opt for a more broad design. The self-described “hodgepodge” team no longer has a specific church affiliation; several players have switched congregations since the team’s original inception. Nevertheless, the men continue to play for the Disciples. “They’re just a great group of guys,” says manager Chris Peters.
Shortstop and third base coach Corey Harden claps for his teammate at bat as other Disciples watch gameplay from their dugout. After a slow start, the team scored fifteen runs en route to a win over Fairview Church of Christ.
Scott Riley, second baseman for the Disciples, receives a dugout visit from wife Ginger and 10-month-old son Aiden. Riley, like many other players, also competes in the Church League during the summer months.
Kayanna Smith, right, slips away from the crowd of Rocky Fork Fellowship players and fans after the team’s loss to Trinity Lutheran. Smith, accompanied by her mother Amber, comes to “watch” her father Kurt play for Rocky Fork every week. Rocky Fork, despite the apparent setback of being located half an hour away, in Hallsville, enjoys a large fan contingent for each of its games.
Danny Jung, temporarily playing for Fairview Church of Christ, pitches to Nathan Thomas, right, of St. Andrews as umpire Charlie Schuster and Fairview catcher Rob Kallenbach look on. Jung normally plays for Trinity Lutheran; due to a smaller-than-normal roster on the Fairview team, he pitched in not only his own game, but also Fairview’s two matchups. Says Thomas of the league, “It’s not cutthroat competition.”
Members of Rocky Fork Fellowship and Trinity Lutheran Church gather in a prayer circle following the teams’ September 17 matchup. “A lot of the same churches play every year,” says Peters, “and you get to know the guys that you’re playing with.”
*all quotations taken from e-mail correspondence.
EPJ: Final Project part one
For my Final Project, I plan to create a multimedia piece revolving around the teams of the Mens Church League division of the Columbia Rec Sports softball group. The five teams play on Thursday nights in the fall, although most also play for the Columbia summer softball leagues. Four of the teams are directly affiliated with a particular church, while one is composed of men who once attended the same church (several years ago), but have since switched congregations. They remain, however, on the same softball team. I have already taken photos for the story as part of my Picture Story class, and will be returning this week to gather audio and video, and make some more stills.
The story strikes me as one that will work well with multimedia because softball, like most sports, is active enough to necessitate both stills and video (which can be shot from a variety of angles), and offers the opportunity for interviews and for collecting good ambient sound while a game is being played. In addition to the noises of the players and umpires as they go through the procedures of play, the crowd watching the game also provides fodder for the ambient.
I am focusing on this story largely because I feel that the intersection of sports and faith remains a very relevant issue, and one that can be easily explored at a local level. There is a definite air of tradition about the softball leagues in Columbia–the St. Andrews team, for example, has been around for some thirty years–and I would like to tell the story of these five groups while keeping in mind the more broad features.
EPJ: Website critique
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/photos/
On the websites of many newspapers, photographs are treated as supplementary visual information to the meat of the article they accompany. While photography is allowed more of a stay in the spotlight due to the increased space allowed by online publications, there appears to be a tendency to underutilize the platform when it comes to running images.
The Boston Globe, however, is one of those outlets that does recognize and work with the potential offered by the web. The site is by no means perfect—when images run with news stories, the old patterns often still apply—but the “Photography” section of bostonglobe.com offers something entirely different. Special efforts are made to showcase the efforts of the Globe’s staff photographers, but other photo collections, composed of wire images, make up a considerable portion of the page. The site itself could be a little more streamlined—there are so many choices for photo viewing on one page that it’s a little overwhelming—but at the same time, the variety of collections available on one page for browsing minimizes the time viewers spend clicking around to find a slideshow.
The best part of the site, however, is the size at which the images in the collections are run. The default minimum width for the photos is 959 pixels, and viewers can also choose to employ the “full screen” option.
Links to the main Globe photo blogs are prominent and easy to find, but it was somewhat frustrating to visit the “Big Shot” sports photoblog only to discover that its host page was the Sports section, and that I had to click the back button in order to get back to the Photo area. This was not an issue with the other blogs, however.
Overall, the Boston Globe’s photo section does an excellent job of showcasing its visual information. While there are some navigation tweaks to be worked out, the site itself stands out as a good model of how online news outlets can work with the web.
Saint Louis Zoo
Much like its Houston counterpart, the Saint Louis Zoo is located right in the middle of the city’s major park (Hermann Park in Houston). Unlike its Houston counterpart, the Saint Louis Zoo is free. Considering these two factors, I was pretty surprised to realize that the zoo is actually a very good one. I’m a zoo nerd–I judge the parks I go to all the time on all kinds of random things (creativity of exhibit design, size of exhibits, handicap accessibility (since I tend to go to zoos with my grandfather, who can’t spend too much time walking around), etc etc). I still can’t figure out how St Louis does such a good job despite not charging admission, but it passed way more of my tests than Houston ever did.
A bush dog. I’d never heard of these before, but apparently they live in South America, eat rodents called “pacas,” and have webbed feet. They’re also very cute.
I’d also never seen Bactrian camels (the kind with two humps) in a zoo before. This one’s a baby….awwwww.
For all of its great exhibits, though, the zoo had a weirdly constraining way of feeding the animals. These are the reticulated giraffes, having feeding time in the Antelope House (which looked like it was something out of the 1800s, what with all the steel bars and small spaces).
On the plus side, it was pretty neat to get so close to the giraffes. I flashed this one with the on-camera flash of my little Canon Rebel. Made for an interesting effect.
Maybellene, why can't you be true?
We interrupt this slate of summer-happenings posts for yet another concert post. I actually don’t go to many concerts; I don’t think I’ve been to more than ten in my life. But tonight Chuck Berry, aka the King of Rock and Roll, the guy whose sound basically created the sound of the early Beatles, (especially) the early and middling Stones, and the Beach Boys (“Sweet Little Sixteen”/”Surfin’ USA”), among others, played a free concert in Columbia as part of the Summerfest series sponsored by the Blue Note.
I had heard that previous Summerfest concerts didn’t allow large cameras in to the blocked-off street area, so I left my Canon at home before heading down to Ninth St. I then realized this was a very stupid move, as there was in fact no restriction at all on cameras, and I should have been practicing the ‘better to ask forgiveness than permission’ principle of photo-j. Fortunately, I got to the venue three hours before Mr. Berry came on stage (thinking he would play one, not three hours after the gates opened), so I had plenty of time to zip back home and get my gear. This, by contrast, was a very good move. I would have been so frustrated to not have any of my own images of the show. But now I do!
And, wow, what a show. I mean, Chuck Berry is going to be 83 years old in October, and here he was playing guitar for a 45-minute outdoor set, singing his heart out, and duck walking during “Johnny B. Goode.” If I’m in half that shape when I’m 83, I’ll consider myself pretty lucky. He wasn’t perfect–some chords were off, he sang in odd keys for some songs, blah blah etc etc–but there’s something refreshing about the lack of polish. Rock isn’t supposed to be polished. I saw the Stones play a few years ago in Houston, and while it was great to see them live, the concert was part of an arena tour, more of a piece of choreography than anything else.
On a similar note, the show tonight was, as mentioned, free. There’s something wonderful, I think, about watching a performer sing and play purely for love of the game. The something wonderful becomes all the more “whoa”-inspiring when you stop to consider that the love of the game has been such a time-spanning affair. The affair looks like it’s going to continue for even longer–Berry’s son Charles Jr. plays guitar in the backup band. Aww.
The problem with bringing a camera to a concert, however, is that I’m just too darn short, and I have to Hail Mary all the time while trying to get decent images. It’s hard to Hail Mary with a telephoto lens, though, so I had to wait until the bodies in front of me kindofsortof moved out of the way–for a hair of a second–so I could get a frame in. BUT…all of the masses in front also provided instant negative space to work with, which ended up working better than I thought it would. Exhibit A:
There are a few more that follow- again, here I am stuck in one spot at the concert and unable to really vary the images (I think this point is much more clear if you look at the previous concert post and compare it to this one). Or is this just a by-product of concert photography? Either way, it’d probably be good to bring my flash next time I’m at a show (whenever that will be) and try to play around with that, for something new and exciting.
Vineyard Vacay, part three: Island Time
Some of my favorite- and least favorite (see image four) -things about Martha’s Vineyard. Plus, guest picture taken by my mom! and de-colorized by yours truly…because no island trip is complete without jumping off of Second Bridge (which, incidentally, is the bridge in Jaws that the shark swims under to get into the giant pond. Cue scary music).
Vineyard Vacay, part two: CrAshe Family Homestead
Texe
Charles
Seneca (well, mostly her shoes)
Lorna
Jeffrey
Coals, as shot at 1/2 of a second while handholding. It looks very Mordor-ish, I think.
Vineyard Vacay, part one: WMVY Concert
Haven’t posted in a while…oopsie. I was distracted by the end of Staff Photo (I still have to put up the photos from my Crazy Photo Saturday, during which I had five assignments), moving to a new apartment, and heading home to New England for a week and a half.
I’m back in classes now, starting my last fall semester ever–which is weird–and am going to try very hard to post everything else from this summer before Friday.
To start, here are a few photos from a concert I went to last Thursday- it was a benefit for a radio station on Martha’s Vineyard featuring kahoots and Willy Mason, both homegrown Vineyard acts, although Willy Mason is a little more well-known outside of the island. I couldn’t use my flash, so this turned out to be an epic exercise in handholding.
Disclaimer: I was being very lazy that night and didn’t feel like giving up my nice prime seating to manuever through a crowd to get different POVs…next time I’ll work the angles a bit more.