Final Project Idea

Final Project Idea

Last semester for Fundamentals of Photoj, I did a project on a captain for the Columbia Fire Department. I had a lot of fun with that project and got to do some pretty neat things that your average person doesn’t get to do or see. The person I did the project on suggested I do something with the police department. I thought about it but I knew I would be severely restricted in the photos I would be able to take. So I thought of an idea that still has to do with the police department but that would not be as restricted as following an officer on calls.

I thought it would make a neat project to do something on the K9 dog and officer that the MUPD has. I feel like a story on the dog and the officer would yield many different opportunities to take photos and gain audio. I could do something on the relationship of the owner and dog because that is very important and could get some good audio from that. I also think it would be important to show how the dog is trained and the tasks the dog performs.

I have to contact the MUPD (I plan to do that today). If I run into any problems then I will have to choose something different but I don’t foresee any problems.

Media Organization Critique

For my EPJ class, we have to critique a media organization's Web site. I chose NBC news.

ABC News

I looked at the ABC news Web site for my critique on a media organization. As with all news Web sites, it has a lot going on. As a reader, it is sometimes hard to figure out where to start if you don’t have something to grab your attention right away. I did like that they had a big picture to the left of the site that went through three major stories of that day. That is something that will grab the readers attention. I also liked how at the top on a little bar they had ‘must reads.’ For the reader that is in a rush and just wants to see major headlines without searching through the whole Web site to find them, this is a nice thing to have. I also find it useful to have a toolbar at the top that lists all the different sections so you can click and it will directly go to it on the page. This is something we discussed in class and might be helpful on my Web site.

The content is very much updated and understandable. The links are easy to find but I hate how you have to click the back button. I wish things would open in a new page and I could just x out of them instead of hitting the back button. I feel the site is as organized as a news Web site can be. There is a lot of information and stories to read but with a media organization this big, it’s hard to just cut things out. The colors seem to go together well. There are no funky or odd colors. The colors are soothing to the eyes.

Portrait Assigment

For our next assignment in Advanced Techniques we had to find a portrait of someone that reveals something about their character. I found this portrait from photographer Michael Mueller. I think it is of Joaquin Phoenix (sorry if I spelt it wrong or it is the wrong person but that is who it looks like to me. The name of the person isn't listed.) It just looks like he has something deeper going on that we don't know about.

I couldn't copy the picture to post on here so I will post the link. It is the fifth picture from the left.

http://www.mullerphoto.com/portfolio/13506/

Tungsten and daylight settings

In doing this assignment, I noticed that it had been about three weeks since I had actually used my camera for an assignment.  When I first started shooting, I didn’t think to check my ISO.  I realized when my photos weren’t really turning out how they should that I didn’t change my ISO from the meter calibration that I did in the studio.  I did go back and shoot again some of the pictures with a different ISO setting and it seemed to work better.   I haven’t extensively used my camera for an assignment since I got done with my internship a few weeks back and I wish I would have used it between these times because I seemed to forget to change settings, etc. on my camera.  It was only after I took the photo, I realized to change settings.  I just think I need to get back into photography mode of shooting.

            I shot the beginning of some of my shoot with 100 ISO.  This was because I hadn’t changed the setting and I had a low f-stop setting.  After a few shots, I changed my ISO to 400 and worked around an f-stops of 8-11 depending on how the light was.  In shadowed places, I used a lower f-stop and if it was really bright I used higher but most of my photos were in that 8-11 range.  My shutter speed stayed around 1/125.  For the first photos I took it was slower around a 1/30 but that was slower than I wanted.

            When I did the meter calibration, I did it the way we were supposed to but didn’t get the results I thought I should have.  I had my ISO setting at 100 and the tungsten setting on but my camera wouldn’t go below f 5.6.  When we did the demonstration in class, the demonstrator’s camera went below that.  My photos just showed up darker that I thought they should be.

            I learned of course to check your camera settings all the time before each photo which I knew before but for some unknown reason forgot in the beginning of this assignment. I thought the tungsten setting created a different effect on some of my photos that I liked better than when I took them on the daylight setting.  I hadn’t used tungsten before so that was something new I learned.