EPJ Final Update

I wasn't aware of needing to do these updates. So, I'll catch you up. Audio is gathered; Photos are gathered. I'm toning and cutting now. Later this week, I'm arranging a sit-down for the video piece, which I'm excited about. I'll be cutting all of that and sticking it into my project.

Latin Dance

So this time, we did an assignment with multiple flashes in a group assignment. This was a really fun take. You can probably figure out that we were emulating the club lighting with a colored gel as rim light. We were in a group of three, so two of us held up the flashes while the third shot. I got my husband to hold up another fill flash. Here's the picture:

Joel Hernandez leads Maritza Huerta through a turn during the Latin Dance Night at the Underground, a coffee shop in Columbia, Mo., on Wednesday November 12, 2009. "It's very nice to dance here. It [the space] is not too big but it's perfect for us who want to dance," Hernandez said.

And the lighting diagram:

Fill and Balancing

This week for Advanced Techniques we learned fill and balancing. Our eyes can perceive details in a scene for a wider range of light than a camera sensor. So, we had to shoot in day light and use our flash to fill in the shadows in either situation so that the camera sensor can see the details in both the light and dark areas. It was tough to get the light to look believable using a flash on a cord. Here's my select:

Blair Bopp (left) and Ataley Boulicault (right) refine their t-shirt design for the MU Horticulture Club at Acme Hot & Fresh T-shirts on Ninth St. in Columbia, Mo. on Nov. 09, 2009. While neither MU student majors in horticulture, they participate in the club to support one of their friends who is an officer.

And here's the lighting diagram. As you can see, this was done at +3 bouncing off of the ceiling. The poor flash had such a hard time since I was kneeling and the ceiling was relatively high.

Psst.. wanna see a cool multimedia project?

Here's one that's really well executed, though I might argue that it's a bit long before you hear voices. It's Fireline Afghanistan by Balazs Gardi. The gun shots and intense spans of silence/plane drones really puts the user into the field. The images match the tone of the subject matter and environment, harsh, high contrast and grainy. For those interested, I think they used final cut for this. It's also found here: http://www.viiphoto.com/video.php.

Super awesome museum flash!

Ok. So this doesn't really count toward any class (I don't think...?), but seriously. I'm not really an OMG type of person, but this flash makes me want to permit the use of the phrase (word?). You know all those books about pirating, dragonology, etc. that they're making now that have the cool little flaps and documents? This is the flash version of those. I think it was made by the Philadelphia enquirer as an alternative reporting method. No really, check it out.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/special/30621649.html

Mandala Sand Painting

So this week, we were sent out to do color correction. So we went out into an artificial lighting situation and tried to match our strobes to the color of the lighting. I chose to correct the color temperature in camera by changing the white balance to the correct preset. In the case of my final select, that would be tungsten. From there, we could tweak the color in Photoshop. Also, we had to make a print, which wasn't half as bad as last semester now that the monitor and the printer are calibrated.I knew immediately that for one of the shoots I wanted to photograph the mandala sand painting going on here at MU. It's such an interesting and highly symb

olic tradition. I'll let the caption tell the rest. Here's the photo:

Tibetian monk Yeshe of the Drepung Loseling Monestary forms lotus petals on a mandala in the middle of Ellis Library located on the University of Missouri campus on Oct. 28, 2009. Tibetan Buddhist monks have practiced this tradition for centuries. Working in a team to draw the mandala with colored sand, the monk uses a specialized funnel, or chak-pur, with notches that, when rubbed with a stick, cause vibrations that cause the sand to flow smoothly out of the funnel. All mandalas have a spiritual significance; this particular one signifies the monastery’s mission of compassion. During the closing ceremony, the mandala is destroyed to represent the impermanence of the material world.

And the horribly illustrated lighting diagram:

This was a cool subject to shoot, but it was hard to get a clean background in the library. Also, I think I spent an extra hour there waiting for the monks to take a break so I could get their names and some caption info. I'm pretty happy over all, though I could have used a slightly higher shutter speed for this shoot.

Great photos, but the Flash needs work

I looked at Kadir van Lohuizen's “Katrina Diaspora” project at Noor, a small photo agency out of the Netherlands. This is an important topic and, so, is appropriate subject matter. Even though Katrina is thought of as over by many of us who were untouched by the hurricane, many still have to live with the consequences. The photos, black and whites, are clear and show a variety of content and angles. That said, it seems like almost everything else could use work.

First, I think that this project could have greatly benefited from audio. Hearing the voices of the subjects would help the viewer to sympathize with their plight. Also, hearing the sounds of the apartment complex and the places the characters go would add another dimension of reality to the situation.

Noor seems to have a flash template which all projects follow. This isn’t a bad thing so long as the template is well designed. Unfortunately, theirs leaves much to be desired. The photograph is displayed largely, but the caption, which appear upon rolling over the photo, manifests as a large black box that blocks most of the photo. It seems that narrow horizontal caption boxes would be far less distracting and would detract less from the photography. The play/stop button floats awkwardly on the right, unaligned with anything. If the photos are treated as a slideshow, each photo takes a second loading. While the photo roll at the top is an interesting feature for navigation, it is distracting when it moves as the photo changes.

It's nice that the user has a choice between scrolling though the photos using the arrow keys or clicking through the photo roll, the photo roll has a few issues with navigation. It’s difficult to tell which photo is currently on the screen. It appears that the designer tried darkening the unselected photos, but it would be better if the current photo were greater highlighted, perhaps by using a white outline or further lightening the picture. Also, if the user clicks on a photo to select, the roll pushes that photo past the back arrow and the next photo is only half visible on the far left. This is a major problem as it impedes the user’s navigation. Finally, the “View All” page could stand improvement. All of the photographs are lined up in four rows, but none of them take the user to that photograph enlarged.

Greater attention needs to be paid to the user’s experience in the project.While the photos are well executed, the over all project could be implemented better.