In Pictures: WSU and Owens students learn about motion, depth of field

Owens Community College students  learn how to properly hold a camera. (Photo by Hanssel Martinez-Guerra)

Talking about the relationship between shutter speed and motion. (Photo by Hanssel Martinez-Guerra)

Wayne State University students learn about shooting for shallow and wide depth of field during class.

The Wayne State University Digital Photojournalism class of Fall 2017.  

The Golden Camera: A symbol of achievement, hard work & true grit

Kyle Benner: First recipient for Visual Storytelling class

   I came upon a small yard sale while walking down a Columbus, Ohio side street this summer, and stopped purely out of curiosity.
   It is significant to note I am not a yard saler. I don't bargain hunt, clip coupons or window shop. But for some reason I stopped at this one.

    I noticed a collection of vintage camera stuff, so I, of course, did a quick scan of what was being pawned off as other people's treasures. And there, amongst the junk, was the Golden Camera.

    The hollow camera is a gold-plated monstrosity of a thing, and I had to have it! So I bartered, like I hear you're supposed to do at yard sales, and successfully shaved off a few bucks. I borrowed the $3 sale price from my spouse and walked away feeling like I had just bought something pretty special.

    It didn't take long before I realized what to do with it. It would be perfect as an incentive and reward for students in my Owens Community College Visual Storytelling and Wayne State University Digital Photojournalism classes.

    The camera is now presented during class to those who go above and beyond. Each recipient will get their photo taken with it, and it will be posted on Instagram. They then get to keep it for a week.
    So far, two students have had the esteemed honor of being presented with the Golden Camera: Kyle Benner, of Owens, and Wayne State's Ryan Miller.

    This is just one way of giving back to students who work hard to show up to class, follow assignment instructions, turn in their homework on time, and try their best. It is important to mention that the Golden Camera is not about being perfect or flawless, just getting the job done with enthusiasm, and for demonstrating true grit for getting out of their comfort zones.

    So, this is the story behind the Golden Camera. May it be in the hands of many, many, many students for the unforseeable future. 

    It is my little treasure, and I'm happy to share it.

Ryan Miller: Second recipient for Wayne State Digital Photojournalism class

Welcome back visual storyteller and photojournalism students!

   Welcome back!
   I'm looking forward to this semester for several reasons:

   Owens Community College

   The Introduction to Photojournalism course at Owens has been changed. It is now Visual Storytelling. This means less emphasis on journalism, and more on multimedia.
   The name change puts this course more in line with the Commercial Photography and Commercial Art Technology degrees. It also takes away the scary 'journalism' part, considering the students aren't journalism majors. No, there is no journalism major at Owens. This class is as close as it gets.
   Because it's the first semester for this new course, I'll be experimenting with assignment ideas.  The first major tweak is eliminating the sports assignment, and adding podcasting. Don't let the 'visual' part of the course title fool you; storytelling comes in all platforms, even the use of audio.
   The textbook has also changed. We'll be using Multimedia Journalism, by Andy Bull. This book helps "build proficiency and professional standards in multimedia journalism." It features lessons on social media, Wordpress, smartphone apps and building a personal brand.
  Another tweak is to change from Blogger to Wordpress. Wordpress blogs are more universally accepted in the journalism world, and I forced myself to learn and use it this summer. As my own test subject, I developed Visuals & Voices of Toledo, and am quite satisfied with the results. You, as Toledo-area students, will also be submitting your work, particularly your podcasts, to that platform, too.
   I strongly believe that learning is doing, so you will have ample opportunity to learn as you create real and published visual and audio stories.
   We, as a class, will also be meeting once a week in the Owens Outlook student newspaper office. That means one class period will be in the classroom, and the other class period will be in the newspaper office located in the SHAC. I'm hoping this will help get you into the spirit of the newspaper, considering you all will be staff members.
   And the best news of all - all six students have been invited to join me at the College Media Association Fall Convention in Atlanta the end of October. As the Outlook adviser, I will bring back with fresh ideas to keep this student newspaper running for as long as I am with Owens.
   So, students, bear with me as we go forth into the exciting unknown.

Wayne State University

   There are no dramatic changes in this course. 

   However, after reading the instructor evaluations, there will be more group sessions, particularly while going through the photo selection and editing process. In fact, I've added an assignment specifically geared for that process.

   As with the Owens course, you will also change from Blogger to Wordpress. This will go well with the website class many of you have taken, or will take, here at Wayne State.

   For inspiration and to get you into the spirit of storytelling, please view this PBS special on photojournalist and war photographer Lynsey Addario:

   

How we built an online photo magazine from scratch using PS, Word

A rough draft of page designation on the white board during early stages of our planning.

   Sometimes you just have to work with the tools you’ve got, and make what’s old new again.

   That’s what my Introduction to Photojournalism students at Owens Community College did when we created a 24-page magazine from scratch.

   It was seriously daunting for all of us. I haven’t designed a publication since I was the editor of the 180th Fighter Wing’s newspaper, The Stinger, and I did that using Adobe Pagemaker. Who uses that anymore? InDesign would have been preferable, but it wasn’t available, and it’s too big of a learning curve to teach the students at the tail end of the semester, anyway. I was actually trained on InDesign by one of the best in the business, the great Jon Wile, the senior news designer for the Washington Post when I took his class at Kent State University. He was responsible for designing the A1 page.

   All we had in the classroom was Photoshop and Word. The students had limited Photoshop skills, and didn’t know a thing about magazine layout and design, but we needed a change, and they needed a challenge.

   Traditionally, this class used Soundslides to showcase their final team photo project, but the audio slideshow software is outdated. I wanted a modern publishing platform that would showcase a good body of work, and require critical thinking and teamwork.

    As the adviser to the Owens Outlook online student newspaper, the staff and I have been toying with the idea of creating an online magazine. So, why not make an assignment out of it?
   I have fond memories of my days when I was as a military newspaper editor of several publications, both tabloid and broadsheet. There is nothing more satisfying and thrilling than filling empty pages with content.  Since we would make the content, I figured we’d build the magazine as we went, considering a magazine has lots of pieces and parts.

   The students, mostly commercial photography majors, thought I was nuts. And maybe I was, but they needed a challenge that was completely different than what they were used to, which was primarily blogging and sharing their photography via social media. I wanted them to boldly showcase their work in a way that would make them feel accomplished, proud and shareable.

   I confess that I tried the online magazine format in the previous class three semesters ago, but I made a few tactical mistakes that prevented the publication from getting completed and published.

1.     Last time, we shot the community story on Bittersweet Farms too late. We didn’t have enough time to complete the magazine. It was about 95 percent done, then the semester ended. 

- This time, we shot the project a month before the semester was over.

2.     Last time, only one student was tasked to design the entire publication using InDesign on his personal computer. That meant the others were sitting around watching. I tried to emulate a real newsroom, but it didn’t work. This prevented the others from designing their own pages and being ultimately responsible for their own design.

- This time, they were all responsible for their own assigned pages.

   In this blog post I’m going to share how they successfully accomplished their 24-page creation.

STEP 1:  Choose a subject that would lend itself to magazine-type coverage.

In the past, this class has covered Bittersweet Farms, Cherry Street Mission, Wood Lane School in Bowling Green, and even the problem of arson in urban Toledo.

   This semester we visited Sunshine Communities, a residential home and outreach center for people with developmental disabilities.

   We only spend 90 minutes there, but each of the six students had their jobs to do:

•       Nate wrote the main story and a sidebar, and shot the art studio in Maumee, Ohio
•     Caleb shot and produced the video
•     Kyle covered the barn
•     Chris shot the greenhouse, and Georgette’s in Downtown Maumee
•     Courtney and Jackie documented the vocational services and art room                   

STEP 2:  Choose a magazine format.

I chose Issuu, a free electronic publishing platform. The key word here is publishing, meaning that the magazine has to first be designed and saved in PDF format before uploading it to Issuu.

   Then we had to select a design software. Since all we had was Photoshop and Word, that made the decision easy. We also had a video we wanted to embed in the publication, and Word allows you to do that.
   The problem using this platform is that we exceeded, by A LOT, the size of the issue. The free basic package only allows you 100MB. We were over 500! So, I have to find another way to get this magazine published. However, all 24 pages on now posted on this blog.    

STEP 3: Iron out the small details:

·      Size and page count of the publication

·      Front cover photo and flag

·      Font and font sizes for stories, captions and headlines

·      What’s on each page, and who has what pages

·      Page numbers

·      How to do double-trucks, since Issuu only accepts two-page spreads as a single PDF. Alas, we did it wrong. I'll update this post when I get it right...

STEP 4:  Get the final product into Issuu:

This was a little tricky, considering there aren’t quality instructional videos or guides for the entire process. We had to learn as we went. When we got to a roadblock, we Googled how to get over it.

   One of the big hurdles was how Issuu accepts the PDF files. We had to merge the PDF pages into one using Acrobat. At first I was a little concerned about the PDF conversion, but that made it easier when using more than one design software.

   Once the students were done with their pages, we saved them as PDFs, collected them into a single folder, merged them, and attempted to upload it to Issuu. But, as you now know, our file size was too big.

   We studied quite a few Issuu magazines to get ideas, and I think the overall design worked! 

   Yes, there are mistakes. Yes, there will be people who will point out those mistakes.  But a great benefit of this project is that students need to learn you don’t have to really know what you’re doing to try it. If you have an idea, take a risk and just do it! Fear shouldn't stop the learning process or the attempt! I hope this is one of the lessons learned.

Intro 2 PJ class goes on field trip for their final project: Team Photo Story

   Documenting the student team! My photos of a great bunch of students who were up for the challenge.
   After you open the story, click on the arrow to the right of the image to advance the story.
Thank you for viewing!
(Photos by Lori King)

Perspective and patience pays off with a front page Toledo Blade photo

Placement of this photo is front page,  top of the fold of the Toledo Blade.  Hydrant 3. (Photos by Lori King/© Toledo Blade)

Taken holding the camera over my head. Hydrant 2.

   Perspective. It is a compositional tool both my Owens Digital Pho 1 and Wayne State Digital Photojournalism classes are currently learning about.
   Perspective is one of many tools in a photographer's compositional toolbox, and I pulled it out for the above photo of a Toledo city worker digging out fire hydrants. Perspective is allowing the viewer to see a scene in a different way; from up high, down low, etc.

Taken from normal perspective. Hydrant 1.

   There's a lot going on in the published photo, so I'm going to break it down.
   This series was shot on a frigid, clear day in a neighborhood east of Broadway Ave. I was instructed to find a "rover," which is our slang for roving around town in hopes of finding a decent feature photo that would fill an empty space in the newspaper.
   I like to troll through the neighborhoods that are on the outskirts of downtown Toledo because people are more out and about, compared to suburbs. So I turned off Broadway and eventually found Ron kneeling by a fire hydrant. I got out of my car and asked if he would mind if I took a few photos of him doing his job. He was a little hesitant, as many people are when a Blade photographer approaches them, but with a little sweet talking he agreed.

   He told me was clearing snow away from 20 hydrants, so I decided I would follow him to his next hydrant because I wanted the shoveling shot.
   Patience is another tool in the toolbox that is often overlooked, and it paid off here.  I had decent shots on the first two hydrants (seen above), but I envisioned him knee-deep in snow so I followed him to three hydrants. On the third one I had a plenty of blue sky in the background, so I set a narrow aperture on a wide lens, put the camera to the ground, waited for him to shovel near the hydrant, and shot blindly away.
   It's a little crooked because I couldn't see through the viewfinder. I initially straightened the horizons in Photoshop, but my boss Dave Zapotosky suggested I leave a little room around the photo. This made sense because when the layout people crop the photo, we didn't want them to crop the top of his head or any of the snow at the top or right side.
   There is also nothing I could do about the wire going through his back. It's an accepted fact that in photojournalism there are imperfections. We are bound by the NPPA code of ethics to not manipulate our photos in any way, so the line and the street lamp remained.
   I was rewarded for getting out of my warm car and spending time with my subject with a front page rover photo today!

Screen grab of the series of photos from a low perspective.

Intro to PJ students diligently work on their blogs

   The Intro to Photojournalism students are currently updating and completing their blogs during the last day of class for this semester. They would really appreciate it if you gave their blogs a quick glance to see what they've been up to:

http://parthspjblog.blogspot.com

http://damiontree.blogspot.com

http://tjtripod.blogspot.com

http://nicolegreen4.blogspot.com

http://yustakyusaocc.blogspot.com

   I couldn't be prouder! 

   We will get a new batch of Intro 2 PJ students Fall 2014. Till then, keep it real!

   

Intro to PJ students complete final team photo story

This is the final team photo story for the Intro to Photojournalism students, which was just completed today! The story is on the workers and residents of Wood Lane Industries in Bowling Green. The students shot the photos, captured the audio and produced the Soundslides project themselves. I'm very proud of them!

New PHO245 beat system inspires critical thinking and fear

   In education we hear a lot about the term ‘critical thinking.’

   What does it really mean?  I know we journalism educators are expected to inspire students to be critical thinkers, but there isn’t a manual for that, is there? This expectation is always in the back of my mind. How do I get students to be critical thinkers in a class packed with so much dogmatic information, like learning camera controls and caption writing?

   Well, I think I’ve found an answer.  It’s called the beat system, and it’s a powerful way for photojournalism students to become critical thinkers.   

   The beat system is a common way for journalists to cover particular topics on a long-term basis. Popular newspaper beats are cops, health and fitness, politics, local school systems, etc. The main intent is for journalists assigned to beats to become familiar with the people of those beats.

   For the past several years I’ve been struggling on how to get the Intro to PJ students to care about what they are shooting. Typically, I’ll teach them what feature or portrait photography is about and then send them out into the wild blue yonder of Northwest Ohio to stumble upon something interesting. It was frustrating for them and for me. There was little focus or allegiance. I struggled with how to make it better.

   Then late this summer it occurred to me to use the beat system. I talked to a dean in the technology school, a professor in the culinary school, and an adjunct in the Emergency Management School. I asked them what they thought about students covering their schools for the semester. They loved the idea, and so did I.

   I finally introduced the beat system to the students yesterday. I supplied them with an explanation letter to share with their contacts, and told them to go to their assigned beats and make initial contact. You would have thought I told them to go jump off the big O on top of the Health Technologies Hall building! Many of them seemed fearful to make that first step on their own. Approaching deans and instructors can be pretty intimidating to students, but that's the point. It's time to shed those shells!

  Each photojournalist was assigned a beat they were interested in.

   This is where the critical thinking comes in: I told them their beats are their responsibilities. They should be the ones to introduce themselves to the deans, instructors and students, and then dig for interesting visual stories within their own beats.  

   This strategy forces them to step out of the comfort zone of Classroom 206. They will have to be critical of whom they meet and what they find. Will they settle with the first opportunity that comes their way? Will they know when to say yes and no when offered a good or bad idea? How aggressive will they be to find a good story? Can they get past their panic attacks? Will a budding photojournalist or two discover that this career is actually meant for them?

   This is a pilot program I'm anxious to see grow through time, and one I hope they appreciate it some day.