Critic the soundslide

First of all, I should say that the soundslide “Sabor Latino: Dance Team of the Hispanic Student Association at the University of Florida” Sonia did is quite like mine, which is about a student join an activity on campus.

I would say that though it’s not a quite interesting story, but there is a story here, which describes the life of that girl who joins the Spanish Dance Association, and how is the dancing life goes with her teammates. The story shows the characteristics of campus life. But the story is a little bit plain, I cannot find the climax, though I know it’s difficult to tell an interesting story about the daily life of a student in 90 seconds.

The story draws my attention when I heard the natural sound at the very beginning which makes me want to figure out what the story is about. But I cannot really tell that it has an ending that feels like a firm conclusion. When I heard the person say in the end that the people in her team are really nice, I am just waiting to know how nice these people are.

This story is definitely 100% about the campus life, about the dance association. It shows us how people practice and perform, how people encourage each other. The speak person only introduce herself at the very beginning, which is necessary.

I should say, if the soundslide need any improvement, I would say that make the volume of the natural sound a little bit low. And as the person says that the people make music themselves, why not add some music as the natural sound. I can hear some music in the middle, but the volume is very low, which is covered by noises. And I want to know more about how the girl feel like this campus life. I just want to more emotionally involved. And I can tell that some of the photos have been cropped too much.

I really love some of the photos in the soundslide, which are full of action and power. It’s really difficult for people to catch the movement by simple automatic digital camera . I love the pictures that dancers performing on the stage most. I love the pictures show people sweating, show how exhausted these people are after practice, which match very well with the audio. And the audio mentions about the people making costumes themselves, and the picture just show to match the interview.

Soundslide 1–Band interview

I am so happy that I finished the soundslide assignment. I love my soundslide, because I didn’t think that I could do it at the very beginning when I chose this course. It’s amazing to me that I can do this now. but I like to hear the opinion from you.

My first soundslide is called “Live with Umoja“. The story is about the band named Umoja, which is told from the perspective of one of its members, whose name is Sebastian Lopez. He tells me that most of the members met in college two years ago, but through music, they get to know each other well and become best friends. Now, they play music together, hang out together, take courses together and some of them even live together. The band and the members is now playing a really important role in their campus lives.

too rapport, a problem?

I didn’t know the band before I decided to do the story on them. But as the article ” Sound in the Story”suggests, I met the band members many times in my spare time to get familiar with them, as well as to build a rapport with my interview subjects.

I did my interview on Tuesday and before I went, I listed several questions I thought would be important to my story. But the feeling of the interview was a little bit weird. Because we are friends now, so the interviewee might not take the interview seriously. And for me, wearing a headphone, holding a microphone and interviewing a friend is a weird experience. And when I asked him some questions about the band, he would make the answers begin with “you know”, because he knew that I had known the information already. Of course, I can cut out the “you know” later, but I just doubt, if we have to interview a friend, how to deal with the personal relationship properly to avoid the weird feeling?

supplement for photo 1 assignment

When I was editing my photos, I found that most of my photos were taken in medium shot, only a few were in detail shot, but none of them were in overview shot. So I went out to take some pictures to supplement my photos, to make them more diverse. The band which I am doing my story on is called Umoja orchestra. They played for the HMM 2007 Presents last Friday. In order to get an overview shot, I got a seat on upstairs.

I used zoom in function when I took pictures. I don’t know if it will affect the quality of the pictures.

photo 1 assignment

When I was doing my photo 1 assignment, I found that because of my poor photo shooting skills, many of my intentions couldn’t be expressed exactly by my photos. Basically, my photos did not turn out to be the stunning images I had imagined. After I submitted my 20 photos for the first photo assignment, I still went out many times to see if I can get better pictures. Till now, I have taken more than 1000 pictures, but I know that I still have a long way to go before I am really satisfied with a photo.

Although, I am still happy with some of my photos for the first assignment. I worked on a student band story, but there was no formal performance for them before the deadline of the assignment, so instead, I went to their house to shoot their small practice.

I took this picture lying on the floor. In fact, the room is very small and crowded with different musical instruments making it difficult for me to lie down on the floor. Dealing with the contents of the photo, I particularly like the expression on their faces, an expression of enjoyment for the creation of music. I also like the lighting from the upper left corner of this picture. However, it is a fairly blurry because at the time, I didn’t know how to change my camera’s ISO. I took this picture in ISO 100, but it would have been better if I changed the ISO to 400. It took me a long time to find out how to adjust the ISO.

I like this photo as well. After I knew that these guys usually hang out to have lunch together in front of Library West, I decided that I should take some pictures about this to make the story more substantial. I like the way they get along with each other. I focus on the band members but still can see school buidings, trees, bicycles, students in the background. I particularly like the light and shadow on Michael’s face (the person in black T-shirt). I like the picture because it shows a typical American campus life, which is very different from Chinese campus life.

Honestly, when I attempted to pick out 20 best pictures out of more than 500 shots, it was really a painful process, even more difficult than taking pictures. In order to avoid being redundant and repetitive, I have to make sure that the photos were shot from different angles. Also, I had to be careful not to use too many medium shots. As what we saw in class that the best pictures chosen by editors are so different from those chosen by readers,  I was afaid that my taste may not be agreed by others. When I was choosing the photos, I couldn’t  help asking myself that whether the photos I chose  were really good or not.

Natural Sound, So Amazing

I never knew natural sound could have so many funs. It just happen everyday arround me, but I never noticed that it could become very great sounds in an audio. From last week’s reading, especially the article, Natural Sound Stories: A How- to Guide, tells me why we need natural sound and how can we get them. So I chose my first soundslide topic on a school band, just because I think that people playing music can be really great natural sound if I record it and add it to my audio. When I was taking photos, I was just thinking about what kind of story I want and what kind of natural sound I need to tell the story better.

Besides, I really like the soundslide “the Art of Listening” . I love the photos and the different kinds of natural sound in the soundslide. It’s really amazing that all the natural sound, even the garbage can can make such a nice sound if we put it in the right place in an audio. Sound can be created as art if we listen with our heart. Usually, we are so familiar with one thing or one place that we just ignore the beauty of the natural sound it can make. But sometimes, an audio can be entirely different just because of a great natural sound.

As a journalist, I think that I should not only be keen when I go out for an interview, I should be keen all the time by listening and observing the surroundings carefully.

Photojournalism Ethics

What is the photojournalism ethics? Isn’t it easy that the photojournalist only need to go to the scene, frame and focus the shot? At least, I saw most of the photojournalist in the beat of entertainment do this in the past year. I know there should be more there. I can never forget the photo I saw when I was an undergraduate student, in which a Vietnam girl was running with her back on fire. Was it right that the photojournalist just shot the picture in calm in this situation?

The Kobre’s book says that photojournalists choose between how they might act as individual citizens and how they feel they should act as visual journalists when they get an assignment. I never had such kind of feeling until a tragedy happened just beside me. A student died last month at Lake Wauberg when he was playing football with his friends. In fact, I was there, in the same activity. I might even talked with him that day before his death. After people realized he was drown, they began to pray for him with tears. Though I knew nothing about this person, I was deeply moved by these people that I cannot help praying for him. Later, I just asked myself, if at that moment, I am a photojournalist, I joined the activity and I knew this would be a good news picture, but as the person’s friend, shall I take the picture? What is the guideline to judge whether a photojournalist should take the picture or not? Though the book gives us ethical framework to guide our decision, it seems still to abstract that may not fit every assignment, especially when the photojournalist is emotionally involved.

my FZ30 camera

I bought Panasonic FZ30 about one year ago in China, for the purpose of taking celebrities’ pictures, for I am a movie reporter in China. I chose this camera because it has a new “extended optical zoom” function which can zoom in for 19.1 in maxium and an “unlimited continuous shots” function which is good for sports shot.

However, I never carefully read the introduction of the camera. So, when I did my first photo assignment on a UF student’s campus life, it’s quite like the first time I try to explore the different functions of my camera, to see which mode I should use when I am in a specific location.

Still, I have many questions. I cannot keep stable though my camera has the “remain stable” function. I cannot deal with the corelation between aperture and shutter. As FZ30 is an automatic digital camera, I can only choose ” aperture priority” or “shutter priority”, but it’s hard for me to make the choice when I am facing a specific situation. For example, I went to the band performance in downtown Gainesville last Friday. But the light is not bright enough that the picture seems blurry, because my hands were a little bit shaking. Then I chose the “shutter priority”, the pictures turns out to be clear, but they seemed to be underexposure. It’s really difficult to be familiar with all the functions of my camera and make a quick and correct dicision when I want to take a picture.

Following are the pictures I took last Friday on the band’s performance in downtown Gainesville. Please express your opinions if you think there’s any thing I can do to make the photos better.