Fascinating to attend a “news” event as a citizen journalist. But what was more interesting to me was portraying the event with an editorial slant — or not. Yes, I was sympathetic to the “cause,” and yes, I was interested in making sure that the little protest got some publicity. However, I immediately went into photojournalist mode once I arrived. I had no interest in carrying a sign or chanting, or engaging passerby. I calmly photographed and watched for an interesting juxtaposition or compelling face, or as so often the case — a confrontation. No drama here — just a group of 20 or 30 concerned citizens making their voices heard on a topic of importance to them (and me). From a professional point of view I was OK with the five pictures I posted to my “publications,” Facebook, Instagram and Twitter — nothing extraordinary — but sans CJ there would be no coverage.
~John
Archive for the ‘Events’ Category
The event in Dover this summer. Don’t miss the premier of this exciting show. See some of the featured images @ instagram.com/existential_tourist
~Paul
The Ai Weiwei exhibition at London’s Royal Academy fills eight large galleries with artworks. The largest work is “Straight”, 90 tons of steel reinforcing rods which Weiwei and his assistants secretly collected from the rubble of buildings which collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008. A large percentage of the collapsed buildings were schools, many of which failed while nearby buildings survived. On the walls of the gallery are written 5250 names of children who died during the earthquake as a result of substandard buildings. The work is a silent indictment of China’s construction industry and the government’s failure to enforce standards. On exhibit through December 13.
~Paul
Not sure this ever made the newspaper — I was a budding journalism student at the University of Missouri in the early 1970s and seemed like change was in the air… Forty years later and we are still facing the same struggles.
~John
Event Save ala VR
Posted: February 17, 2015 in Cameras, Events, Lenses, Photo equipment, PhotographyTags: D610
Part of photographing an event is capturing the speaker at the podium. In the film days this would require some patience and a roll of grainy high-speed film using a fast telephoto lens. Now with the evolution of lenses and cameras it is still a challenge, but it is more manageable. In these examples from the recent MOSEIA annual conference, I was able to sit in the middle of the auditorium (not pestering the speakers too much) and with my Nikkor 70-300 VR zoom get nice animated snaps of the esteemed speakers. VR is an interesting technology — the lens whirs at some crazy high rpm with little gyros that stabilize the lens movement (or maybe there are little squirrels that race around a circular cage inside the lens barrel). I can take advantage of the 300 mm focal length, I don’t have to have a heavy, expensive f2.8 lens and I can keep my distance. This, combined with a moderately high ISO in my Nikon D610, gets me the shot. You can see though that you are limited to stabilizing the lens, not freezing the subject — I am shooting at 1/60 second at f5.6 — too slow for stop-action.
