EPJ: Project Update

Tom Nagel

April 8, 2011

Electronic Photojournalism

Project Update

For my final project I’ve proposed to cover city meetings and the active participants who create policy. I’m still working on this story, yet for my final project in Flash I’ve been inspired to go in a new direction.

As far as the original story goes, I’m scheduled to meet with a subject whom I met at a neighborhood leaders meeting. Saturday, April 9, I’ll be observing him as he participates in Clean Up Columbia. Which encourages volunteers to pick up letter in their neighborhoods.

For the new direction, I’d like make an interactive piece out of something I call the Big Stack Tour 2010. The Big Stack is basically about 100 prints from my 35mm camera of socializing from October to December 2010. It’s a popular coffee table fixture. Being prints, it’s innately interactive. My cohorts and I enjoy flipping through and looking at sequences as well as making arrangements of collages and juxtapositions.

Having viewed former work by EPJ students such as “This One Hundred,” I’m confident that Flash is fully capable of bringing this interactivity to the mass audience via web publication. Moreover, I have about 8 more rolls of the same nature, which I’ll be developing soon.

Audio will accompany the stack as I’ve been recording gatherings, with permission from peers, at my home and while out and about.

What is the Big Stack? The story is of three month of debauchery and socializing. It is a study of how we play and how we interact. “We” being this much talked about very unique group called “millennials”.

The same time as this material was created, MU undergraduates we’re encouraged to read the book Generation Me. Mizzou Weekly wrote on June, 10, 2010. “’This book allows for a wide range of discussion topics and should spark a lively debate between faculty, staff and students,’ says David Rielley, director of new student programs at MU. ‘Even though you may not fall into that generation stereotype, it helps you understand their perspectives.’”

The Big Stack is an honest, fascinating, and embedded look at our generation.

EPJ Mulitmedia Critique II

Tom Nagel

April 8, 2011

Electronic Photojournalism

Individual Photojournalist Multimedia Critique

Benjamin Krain is a staff photographer at Arkansas Democrat­-Gazette, and his name is on the short list of a Google search for photojournalist. His website, www.benjaminkrain.com, is much like what my classmates and I are creating in EPJ class. That is a means to present our portfolio and be contacted for work or otherwise.

Being that the website is a presentation of himself and his work, he has created an interesting way via Flash, I believe, of including audio with his images to make a multimedia piece.

His website includes well arragned and content driven galleries. His portrait series called “who” focus on the many walks of life in Afghanistan from child laborers, to soldiers, to opium addicts. This gallery is an interesting contrast to his photo essay “Reconstructing Afghanistan”, which tells the story of that war-torn country.

Yet, back to his presentation of self in a portfolio website, I’ve been considering what could be called a cover letter to a resume or personal statement. As far as I’ve imagined, it’s important to compose honest and effective words and find a proper section to put it under along with “contact” and “about me”Making light of the fact that photojournalist is a humanist who must self promote for a paycheck, he’s called this resume section “hype”. The multimedia is where he’s presented a personal statement as a four part audio interview of himself. A voice is asks him questions and we hear Krain, who has a charming voice, respond to and describe why he is photographer, how he works, and his opinion on things like deadlines and good advice.

Humorously, the background to the interview is a photo of what might be a toy shelf in the third world or perhaps a carnival shooting gallery. In the photo, an image of Scooby Doo is repeatedly painted on wood blocks that line four shelves. I think shooting gallery because some of these block have been knocked over.

I imagine that Krain, who expresses excellent ideas in his interview, is commenting on the job interview process from the perspective of the interviewer. What stands out from all the possible candidates, or in the case of a Google search, is Krain’s responses to questions and his ability to articulate thoughts more profoundly than 100 Scooby Doos.

EPJ: Multimedia critique I

Tom Nagel

April 8, 2011

Electronic Photojournalism

News Multimedia Critique

The Washington Post’s series and digital presentation “Top Secret America” is one of the most interesting, significant and complex pieces of journalism I’ve seen. Moreover, speaking on multimedia, this piece has it all. It’s presented, I believe in Flash or something similar, and combines interactive info graphics, pictures, video, articles, maps, and links.

In casual words, I find it overwhelming. Yet, I’ll argue that this is a positive criticism because its format is a reflection of an overwhelmingly complex issue. Thus, being complex, it would be disservice to over look and over simplify an issue of such importance.

Interacting with the “Top Secret America”, however, reveals that overwhelming issues can be appropriately presented via skillful and effective organization. The video intro presents a nut graph summary of the piece, and a user is allowed to research his or her relevant interests.

There is a couple of interesting ways to understand and use the piece. I use these words because “to understand” the piece as simple as reading the article and viewing the photo gallery. “To use” the piece is best illustrated in an interactive Google map where by one can compare the number of agencies to know, for example, how many top secret agencies work in Columbia, MO — zero — as opposed to St. Louis, MO — 14 — and New York, NY — 67. In J2100 News Writing we’re taught how to localize an issue, and the Washington Post has localized the issue for anyone with a zip code.

Yet on a larger and more significant scale, I enjoyed the section called “Explore Connections.” Which describes the top down connections between different agencies handling intelligence work. The agencies are color coded by type or work done in graphic form, while a text menu also can guide the user to the same information via the users choice in navigational comfort.

“Top Secret America” is about as all encompassing as a journalism piece can be. Yet, there are some lessons beyond the impact of overwhelming amounts of information. The piece, being complex, offers a plethora of examples for students. That is information can be presented in a variety of ways. Exploring those ways as a user, allows me to plan how I’d like to present based my preferences to certain formats for certain contents.

EPJ: Project Report

For my EPJ final project I've proposed to bring photojournalism to government reporting. The gist is that civic meetings and those who contribute are crucially important to policy yet are often unseen by the citizens affected.

To tell this story, I've proposed to cover civic meetings and individuals who participate. The Office of Neighborhood Citizens offers an annual class for citizens who want to organize their communities and engage more effectively with local government. Here's a rough example of a video from that program's graduation. Next, I'll be working on editing photos and audio to create concise version of meetings.


Of course individuals make meetings. On April 9th, I'll be visiting two people I met at the meeting above as they participate in Clean Up Columbia. According to one citizen, his neighborhood northeast of Paris Rd. and I70 is one of the most littered areas in the city. Yet the area has been improving since Socket, the telecom company, moved in and started cleaning up the neighborhood. Moreover, one of the managers at the store attended the neighborhood leaders workshop. With my camera, I'll look at how the two are working to improve their neighborhood.

Website Critique II EPJ

Tom Nagel

March 7, 2011

Electronic Photojournalism

Web Site Critique II

For this critique of photographers’ portfolio websites, I looked at two very different sites in terms of content and design. Maurice Krijtenberg is a skilled fashion and travel photographer. Joao Silva is a renowned photojournalist who covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The main difference between their website portfolio is design. Where as Silva’s site is very basic, Krijtenberg’s work is presented in some very creative and interactive ways. For example, I found his site on a designer’s blog that listed exceptionally designed photographer’s site. Silva, on the other hand, I searched for out of my own curiosity.

Both websites seem to reflect their photographer’s service or niche. If you’re familiar with the work of Silva, you know his photojournalism covers serious issues. New York Times readers followed his pictures of war, and he was even injured by a landmine while on assignment. It is fitting that his pictures don’t need design gimmicks to highlight the content of the work. From Silva’s homepage, categories link to simple slide shows. Within those slide shows, “Shi’a Uprising” is one example, thumbnails on the bottom of the screen can be scrolled through left to right, and clicking shows an enlarged image in the middle of the screen. The work is content driven, and captions are displayed for the selected image. Here, simplicity is a luxury that the photographer can afford because the images speak for themselves in newsworthiness and visual impact.

Krijtenberg’s portfolio site is more built up design wise. The site’s interactivity is fun to use, which reflects the more lighted hearted nature of the images. The homepage is an image of a table with notes cards behind which a man sits wearing a suit and tie. We are taken to sections called “contact”, “services”, and “portfolio” by clicking the cards on the table. In the “portfolio” section the photographer uses two interesting gimmicks. For fashion pictures, images change by clicking them, and thay appear in a frame held by the suit and tie man from the homepage. This reflects the fashion sense of the photographer. Portraits a placed in frames, as they would be in one’s home, and a well dressed man displays each image. It’s a nifty concept.

In the travel photography section, images are lined up left to right in long sequences, the viewer finds his or her browser’s horizontal scroll bar becomes very large. As the scroll bar travels to the right, the viewer travels along the simple side-by-side layout. So, stationary images become interactive by layout, and the viewer travels or moves as opposed to the still images. It’s a creative way of putting the viewer into the vacation, while also allowing the photographer to display images in a large format.

The lesson from this critique is that a website’s style ought to reflect the content of its photographs. It’d be odd making war photos gimmicky, and, by the same coin, boring to see fashion photography in a boring way. I’m most intriqued by the horizontal lay out of Krijtenberg that makes interactivity in a browser instead of building it via html. It’s very clever.

Sources:

http://www.krijtenberg.nl/index.php

http://www.joaosilva.co.za/archive_index.html

Ten of Thirty

An original intaglio print of an oil refinery in Roxana Ill. - etching and marbleization. This one will be sent as a postcard to a good friend studying in Budapest, Hungary.

The Meaning Multiplies

The Meanings Multiply from Tom Nagel on Vimeo.

The 2011 Undergraduate Juried Art Excellence Exhibition, or undergrad art show, is the collective effort of students creating, framing, and presenting their original work, as well as the faculty who assist them. Professor Jim Van Dyke, of MU's art history department, juried this year's show. Five finalist were recognized for their work and received cash prizes. Sidney Pursel won this year's best in show for her two video pieces titled "Hair" and "Indian Dance",which discuss Native American identity. 106 pieces are featured at MU's Caleb Bingham Gallery. The show runs from February 14 to February 24.