Best Practice: Posting images to your social media accounts

   Congratulations! Many of you have recently created your first social media accounts, establishing yourselves as published visual storytellers.

   You will be required to regularly post on social media for three primary reasons: 

• Create a visual portfolio
• Build a following
• Earn a grade (I grade off of your SM posts) 

   Throughout the semester on this blog I’ll be posting Best Practices sheets, which are guidelines and tips to help you accomplish your assignments faster and easier. 

   However, I want to stress here that there are many ways to get things done, so my way isn’t necessarily the best way. Ultimately, do what works best for you.

   The first Best Practices tip is a series of steps to help guide you when posting a photo(s) to your Instagram and Twitter accounts:

1. Select your chosen photo in Photo Mechanic (Be picky! Quality over quantity, always)
2. Write the AP style caption in Photo Mechanic. Include #hashtags and photo credit
3. Edit the photo in Photoshop (simple crop and correction of color/exposure issues)
4. Post the photo to your blog. It will retain the caption
5. To post on Instagram and Twitter, follow these steps:

• Copy the caption and email the photo and caption to yourself
• Open email. Select all and copy.
• Save Image(s)
• Go to Instagram on your phone and click the + option
• Select the photo. You can choose a filter as long it doesn’t change the content of the image
• Paste the caption in the text area
• Add required and appropriate #hashtags
• Share to Twitter (and Facebook). This way you don’t have to go to Twitter and do it all over again

Prezi on social media tips

Welcome to a learning space maintained for my photojournalism students

Covering an Obama campaign rally.

   This blog is especially beneficial to my students in the Visual Storytelling (Owens Community College), Digital Photojournalism (Wayne State University) and Teaching Multimedia (Kent State University) classes.
   Because I am teaching all three courses this semester, there will be mixture of content. Some posts will be for all classes, and some will be class specific. I will indicate those posts that are specific, but it won't hurt to read all posts. After all, every lesson offers something you might want to learn!
   I strongly suggest thoroughly scrolling through this blog in the next few weeks to become familiar with the content posted in past semesters.
   There is also a search bar that's pretty handy when you want to look for something specific, like shutter speed and f/stop controls and social media tools. Another cool feature is the archive box in the upper right corner. When we get to a certain lesson, I change the featured archived story to coincide with that lesson, like my Camtasia Studio video tutorials I created just for the Teaching Multimedia students! This way I don't have to rewrite a blog post. Why reinvent the wheel?
   Please check out this website at least once a week. But don't worry, if I want you to read a current post that corresponds with a particular lesson, I'll provide the link in that assignment module.
   Thank you for caring about journalism, and read on!