Santiam Hall Remodel, Nov. 13th - Dec. 2nd

Over the course of the last term, construction crews have been working to install shear walls to the Santiam Hall and Industrial Arts A buildings in anticipation of an earthquake. The purpose of the shear walls is to absorb shock waves from said earthquake and redirect them down towards a building's foundation. The process of installing these walls is a lengthy one, documented with the photos below, taken over a period of 3 weeks.

The work begins by digging up parts of the concrete walkway adjacent to a building's walls, in order to get access to the walls' supports. Once the right depth has been reached, crews will begin drilling holes into the supports, as well as the walls themselves, to prepare for the next step. This process of drilling produces a large amount of concrete dust, which must be periodically cleaned up with an industrial vacuum, as seen above.

Once the trench has been completed, the real work begins. Rebar supports are stuck into
the holes dug into the walls, and kept in place with a special kind of construction-grade epoxy.

After the support rebar is put in place, additional rebar is attached to it in a grid pattern in order to extend the wall supports. Longer bars of rebar are also attached, which will be used to extend the grid upwards along the wall. Note the layers of holes lining the top of the wall; additional bars of rebar will be added into these as well to provide a strong foundation for the shear wall mounting.

Once all the rebar that needs to be directly attached to the building's foundation has been installed, the trench is then refilled with concrete. Several weeks later, one can hardly tell that the concrete was ever dug up in the first place.

Another grid of rebar is installed along the wall, using the supports added to the top and bottom. For the initial bars used to set up the grid, most of the installation work is done with a mobile lift. However, sometimes parts of it need to be adjusted, requiring a more direct approach. 

Once the initial grid has been set up all that remains is to add in additional bars of rebar to reinforce it. This more extensive work calls for the addition of a large array of scaffolding along the front of the building. Once the work is done the crews will shift their attention to doing the same in another area of the building.

Forum Post Week 1 Response

Class Goals

1. Firstly, as mentioned I'm hoping the class will give me a good idea of what to expect from a career in Journalism. 

2. I'm also hoping to relearn some of the finer points of photography that I've forgotten in the last few years since my last photography class. 

3. Lastly, I suppose a more personal goal would simply be to enjoy myself while working on class projects. It's been a while since I've had a mindset in a class other than, "This is due at the end of the week, need to get to work asap." Which I can honestly say that I've succeeded at so far.



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1. The class has definitely provided the perspective I'd hoped it would. Not only do I now have a clear idea of how journalism works as an industry, but the variety of assignments meant I also have a clearer idea of what kind of journalism I'm interested in engaging in. The assignments I feel I did best at entailed obeserving the interactions of others and capturing the interesting moments that came up.

2. Well, I spent weeks trying to remember what all the settings do, before giving up and just going with the default settings. The quality of my photos improved, but I still feel like I was leaving all the important parts of the work to the camera.

3. I did succeed at this goal in that I had a great time taking photos, and I enjoyed seeing my work get printed in the Commuter as much as anyone else. Still, I have to wince slightly at the mention of avoiding needing to rush to get assignments in on time.

Week 10 Forum: "Best Photojournalism"

Poetry Club member Daniel Glenn gives his thoughts on the poetry book the club
members are reading from, while fellow club member Gordon Jiroux looks on.
Thursday, October 17th, Albany DAC Center

I think this photo stood out from my other work because of the natural emotion it shows. I feel it captures my personal approach to photography, that being trying to capture distinct moments in time.
While working on the assignment this picture came from, I was constantly tweaking my camera's settings trying to get the best results in terms of lighting and composition. This was actually the first assignment I'd done with an actual camera, and as such I was kind of learning as I went along. I also initially struggled with timing a shot right. As such, a great many pictures I took ended up too blurry to use; nowadays I've corrected both issues by just using the P setting and making tweaks in post, and by switching to "Sports" mode when a person's about to make a movement or gesture I want to capture. Fortunately I gradually got better at both over the course of the assignment, with this photo being one of my first successes in it. Along with those two factors I also regret not figuring out how to set my camera to a higher quality setting. At the original size the photo's quality looks fine, but if it's enlarged it gets pretty blurry, as seen below:

Book Report: "It's What I Do" by Lynsay Addario

There are three parts of Lynsay Addario’s book that stood out to me: Both halves of her account in Libya, and her settling down for a while with her newborn son. The first part of her Libya account, told in the prologue, set the tone for the rest of the book perfectly: A candid and visceral first-hand account of what it’s like being a civilian trying to work within war zones and other high risk areas. The other half of Libya towards the end of the book stood out for a different reason: All throughout her accounts of working and even living in areas of the middle east that were occupied by various terrorist groups, I was frequently surprised at how civilly she was treated by them. It was in complete contrast with how I had always believed members of such groups felt towards Americans. Hell, there was a part where she was interviewing women who actively praised the 9/11 attacks, and she was still treated civilly by them. Even during her first experience with kidnapping in Fallujah, her captors didn’t treat her and the others excessively bad aside from not letting them leave and searching their belongings. Yes, Addario frequently mentioned how she was hiding several details from her captors so they wouldn’t think they had a reason to act with hostility towards them, and I’m not downplaying the fact that all their lives were in danger throughout the whole ordeal; but in terms of how her and the other prisoners were treated, it was nothing compared to Libya. After a whole book of seeing people with sympathies to groups like the Taliban turn out to at the very least be able to be reasoned with, I saw soldiers working under a supposedly legitimate government act unnecessarily hostile and abusive towards a group of journalists simply because they could. I did not expect the soldiers of Libya to turn out to be worse with their prisoners than insurgents in the Middle East. After her son was born, her investing first-hand account becomes about how her life adjusted to the change it brought on. I felt a different kind of emotional investment reading about the changes she made, and I especially think that how she learned to balance her work and home lives is a good lesson to remember.

As a photojournalist, Lynsay Addario had many different yet related motivations. She was driven in part by several humanitarian desires, like showing a straightforward and honest perspective on groups like the people of the middle east, who are frequently subject to stereotyping here in the west, or to share with the rest of the world stories of people enduring suffering in impoverished or war-torn regions. More personally, she was driven by an instinctive desire to be present whenever and wherever a major story was developing. Tying into this, in her book she frequently discussed how journalism is a competitive business, and as a result she felt she couldn’t afford to take too much time without an assignment. This was especially prevalent whenever the possibility of her getting pregnant was brought up. As it turned out towards the end of the book, though, her editor at the Times was willing to be fully supportive of her taking time off to have her baby, and reassured her that there would be work available for her when she was ready to come back. So, it would seem that her concerns were at least somewhat unfounded where maternity leave was concerned; however, Addario did make a valid point that she had set a precedent of being a consistent and reliable journalist throughout her career, and that may have been part of why her editor was willing to be so supportive.

As for me, I think that in some situations the risks she took were honestly in somewhat poor sense. Her decision to go to Somalia to take pictures of drought victims more or less sums up my opinion concerning her thought processes. On the one hand, it seems to me that her decision was largely motivated by personal reasons; she had identified a place she needed to go to get the full story on the issue she was covering, like she had many times throughout her career, and she didn’t want to let her pregnancy get in the way of it. While I understand her concerns with getting sidelined (Journalism really DOES seem to be a highly competitive business), I feel that her need to go there personally was primarily motivated by pride. Of course, it is worth noting that she spent an entire paragraph going into why going to Somalia was a bad idea, so it’s fairly likely she’s aware of it in hindsight. At the end of the day, I suppose my final word on the matter would be that I understand her reasoning behind certain personal decisions she made in the book, even if they’re not the call I’d have made.

Conversely, Lynsay Addario’s decision to work in Somalia also highlights her strengths as a journalist. She has a very take charge attitude towards her work, which helped her establish herself as a journalist in her early career. While I saw it as a personality flaw, her instinctive urge to go wherever a story was developing, no matter what, is more than likely the primary reason why her career got as far as it did. Her stubbornness as a journalist got her ahead more times than it got her into trouble, mainly because she had a good sense for how to avoid danger once she was IN a dangerous area, regardless of the advisability of being there in the first place.

While I previously stated that a large part of her reason for wanting to go to Somalia was pride, Lynsay Addario’s approach to photographing the drought victims there more than showed she was never solely motivated by personal reasons. There, as well as throughout the entire rest of her book, she always used her photography to show her intended audience the story of what was happening in an area, and especially the story of the people there. Every one of her photos provided in the book capture a distinct moment in time, framed so that one can immediately understand a general idea of what’s happening without the need for a caption.  

The most basic lesson I learned from Addario’s book was from the first chapter, that being the importance of being persistent. When I hit a roadblock on any of my assignments this term, her persistence inspired me to either try again or find a different approach. Furthermore, you should be willing to take risks to get ahead. Your work won’t stand out nearly as much as it needs to if you only play it safe and take pictures where and when it’s convenient for you. I’d say the main thing I took away from the book as a whole was a sort of, “Just do it!” mentality with assignments I’m nervous about. First and foremost, the one lesson I’ll be sure to remember when I go to start making my own career was advice from her time in Argentina, from her then-boyfriend Miguel: “Make all your professional mistakes in Argentina, because if you make one mistake in New York no one will give you another chance.” I’m glad for the chance to work MINE out before I even get my first writing job!

I did also learn some more personal lessons as well. For starters, a story isn’t more important than someone’s life. There’s a grey area when a story could potentially lead to more lives being saved in the long run, but if you have enough pictures to get the point across I don’t think it’s worth the risk to stay and take more if you and your cohorts are currently in immediate danger. Furthermore, always listen to your native guides: drivers, translators, etc. They’ve lived in the region AND therefore are probably more aware of the dangers therein than you are, so if they’re telling you an area’s getting hot and you’re out of time, you should listen to them.

It's the subtle touches that stand out most to me. Without being able to see the face of the man in the frame, you can immediately tell what he's feeling at that moment. And the horrifying line of crudely interred bodies which serve as a macabre leading line to him ensure that those viewing it will both sympathize with him and share said feelings.

Photographer of the Week: Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was one of the best known photographers of the early 20th century, as well as one of the best known advocates for environmental conservation. Throughout his life, he had a deep love of nature, and an abiding passion for photography as a medium, which was reflected in his work throughout his life. 

Born in 1902, Ansel Adams read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in his youth. Reading their works gave him his long-standing love of the wilderness, which was one of many factors that led him to become such a strong advocate of environmental issues. The transcendentalist views discussed in their writings had a strong influence on his later photographic work. 

Adams first visited Yosemite National Park in 1915, and visited the area countless times throughout his life. He joined the Sierra Club, an organization of photographers and environmentalists dedicated to conservation efforts in the Sierra Nevada range, in 1916. Later, he joined their board of directors in 1934. In later life, he received the Conservation Service Award in 1968, and the Medal of Freedom in 1980, both for his conservation efforts.

One of the many things Ansel Adams was known for was his "visualization" method for taking photos. Before he even took the photo, he would carefully envision what he wanted its final composition to look like. He then created what he'd visualized using various lenses, filters, and editing techniques. Chief among these editing techniques was the "Zone System," a process which calculated the exposure & development of film to very precise shades of grey. Each part of a frame was separated into zones, and each one was assigned a number between 0 (pure white) and 9 (pure black). The end result was a photo that showed details in highly sharp clarity.  In using these methods, Adams sought to not simply capture what he saw when he took a photograph, but to convey how what he saw made him feel.

Like many renowned artists, Ansel Adams often struggled to make ends meet. Despite this, his work still proved to be immensely popular throughout his life, being shown in many publications and galleries. His first "big break" was having some of his photographs published in the Sierra Club's newsletter. Years later, he opened his own creative photography center in his home town of San Francisco, and founded the California School of Fine Arts' Department of Photography. 

Despite his fame, Adams did still struggle financially from month to month. To balance this out, he often took several commercial photography jobs. Naturally these jobs often entailed taking photos for the National Park Service, which used them to encourage tourism, but also included work for many notable publications like Life, Fortune, and Arizona Highways magazines. Adams disliked his commercial work only because it often took time away from his artistic pursuits. Aside from that, he didn't have much of a problem with doing it. He saw it as a necessity to get by, and looked down on the idea of photographers who saw commercial work as "selling out."

One bit of commercial work Adams never had any problems with doing was his prolific work for Polaroid, indisputably his favorite camera manufacturers. From 1948 until his death in 1984, he worked for them as a consultant. In that capacity, he tested all of their new cameras that they put out in that time, as well as any new  types of film. He also helped train many of their staff photographers.

Ansel Adams had a somewhat unique approach to the issue of environmental conservation. Instead of taking photographs specifically meant to argue the point of protecting the wilderness, he preferred to show people the ones he had taken of the unspoiled beauty of nature, and let those be enough to inspire people. 

Even though he was perfectly fine with the National Park Service using his photos to advertise tourism to the Yosemite area, Adams grew increasingly concerned about the effects increased tourism would have on the park in the future. A concern that is still relevant today. 

In 1935, the Sierra Club asked Adams to go to Congress and argue in favor of a bill to create the Kings River National Park. He used many of his own photographs to literally illustrate the points he was making to the members of the committee discussing the matter. When the bill to create the park was reintroduced in 1937, Adams mailed a copy of his new book, "The Sierra Nevadas and the John Muir Trail," to the director of the National Park Service. The director later showed the book to President Franlin Delano Roosevelt, himself a staunch environmentalist.

In a rare divergence from his regular work, Ansel Adams decided to collaborate with Dorothea Lange to document the Japanese Americans who had been relocated to internment camps during World War 2. In his own words, Adams considered their relocation a "forced exodus." Being inexperienced with journalistic photography, Adams instead took a similar approach as with his landscape photography. He took shots that showed the internees going about their daily lives, and ones that showed them in an idealized light (literally), both meant to convey the idea that despite the injustices they had suffered, they had held onto their dignity and had managed to make the most out of their situation. 

However, the reception of his work was mixed. Some members of the general populace saw his work as "subversive" and "unamerican." Some even went so far as to organize burnings of the book he later published on the subject. Critics, meanwhile, had more rational and balanced things to say about his work. Some felt that his photos lacked depth, seemed too stylized to feel realistic, and failed to properly convey the plight of those detained. 

Ansel Adams was an advocate of "straight photography," which means authentically taking and presenting photos "as is," without any alterations made to change the photograph's meaning. His work used light and dark shading to draw the viewer’s eye to certain details in a picture. Reflecting his past career in music, he would often make analogies between it and photography; in these, the film negative was the score, and a print made from it was the performance. Adams was fascinated by the potential new technologies represented. Taking the music analogy a step further, he considered making new prints of his work with these new technologies to be like a modern reimagining of a classical piece. A very apropos analogy, considering modern digital enhancement techniques.

When Ansel Adams died in 1984, he was honored with a 100,000-acre wilderness preserve in Yosemite that was named after him, as well as an 11,000 foot peak in Yosemite a year later.

GALLERY 

“Mt. McKinley, Wonder Lake,” 1947

"Monolith, the Face at Half Dome," 1927

"Ruins of Old Church," c. 1929

SOURCES

"Master of Light" by Therese Lichtenstein, publised 1997 by Todtri Productions LTD.

https://slate.com/culture/2015/09/ansel-adams-photographs-manzanar-war-relocation-center-in-the-exhibition-manzanar-the-wartime-photographs-of-ansel-adams-at-the-skirball-cultural-center.html

Japanese camp pics and information

http://anseladams.com/the-artists-of-manzanar/

Additional Japanese camp info

All other photos copied from the gallery at http://anseladams.com 

http://anseladams.com/ansel-adams-bio/

Additional biographical information

Free Shot Week: Pyburn and Daughter Gallery

Anne Margratten (right) greets Barbara and Gail Pyburn (bottom and top left, respectively) before the reception for their art gallery, "Pyburn and Daughter" in the North Santiam Hall, on Wednesday Nov. 6th, 2019

James-Harley Barr, pictured left, originally conceived of the gallery as a way of shedding light on the works of local female artists. Anne Margratten, visual arts instructor and gallery coordinator, helped him with organizing it. Wednesday, Nov. 6th 2019.

During the reception, Barbara and Gail Pyburn talked about a myriad of topics. Gail talked about how she got into photography, the history behind some of her more notable works, and how she began the work of compiling her gallery. Her mother Barbara talked about her sources of inspiration as a painter, as well as which among her works displayed in the North Santiam Hall was her personal favorite. Wednesday, Nov. 6th 2019.

My Hometown

A store location closing then reopening under a different name/company is nothing new in this "rapidly changing" economy. However, this building on the corner of Main and Airport in Lebanon stands out because it's easily changed hands more than any other commercial building in town. At least half a dozen times in the decade+ years I've lived in Lebanon, this location has been changed to a different name while the interior of the store remained the largely the same. For the longest time it just seemed like it was the same grocery store each time it "closed," to the point that I and many others would just keep calling it by its previous name for months after the change. However, the most recent time it's closed and reopened, it was changed to a furniture store, as seen above.

One of the most successful businesses in Lebanon's downtown area is thrift stores selling second-hand items. Here, an elderly couple loads some recently purchased furniture into a trailer bed hitched to their truck. 

Kristen Craven, pictured above, works as a receptionist at MBVA, a co-op set up in a recently renovated office building in downtown Lebanon. The co-op contains a wide variety of businesses ranging from a coffee shop to a hypnotherapy clinic.

Action Shots Assignment

CLOSE UP:

A member of LBCC's baseball team runs laps around the campus'
baseball diamond during the team's afternoon practice

GROUP SHOT:

The LBCC baseball team runs a backwards lap around the
campus baseball diamond while warming up before practice.

MEDIUM SHOT:

Members of the LBCC baseball team practice
pitching and catching in the outfield

Forum Post - Week 5: Lynsay Addario Response

My impressions of the book is still more or less the same as when I read the prologue and first chapter. I still appreciate how Lynsey Addario’s writing manages to convey what it's like being in the regions she’s worked in. I also feel that in a broad sense, her journey through life as a photojournalist provides a lot of insight as to the do’s and don’t of breaking into the field. One practical lesson in particular stands out in hindsight: At first, I was confused as to why she kept talking about carrying several cameras at once. It just seemed impractical to me at the time. But, several of my recent photo projects have called for switching between different lenses as quickly as possible, and eventually I realized that being able to just switch to a second camera with a different lens would probably save a lot of time.

One other thing I’ve admired was her efforts to humanize the people living in Pakistan and Afghanistan. I agreed wholeheartedly with her desire to try and dispel the stereotyping common to news media. That part of the book did also give me a slight point of contention, however. On page 72, she wrote, “In Pakistan I learned quickly to tuck away my own political beliefs while I worked and to act as a messenger and conduit of ideas for the people I photographed.” Now, while I do understand where she’s coming from there, and I do agree to a point, that line was only a few paragraphs after the part where she wrote about Pakistani women openly praising the 9/11 attacks. I believe my reaction was, “Basic human decency is not a political belief.” That whole part of the book left me questioning my ability to be objective as a journalist; Innocent people getting hurt because of someone’s personal beliefs is kind of a big moral hot button for me; Hearing someone PRAISE said innocent people being killed, doubly so.

Another reason why I don’t think I’m cut out for the kind of journalism she works is the toll it took on her social life. I always thought being a journalist would be a great chance to see the world, learn about other people and cultures, and all that. Did not stop and consider the difficulty it would cause when it comes to maintaining relationships with people. Though, I’ve never had a particularly robust social life. Not to mention that staying in touch with people is a lot easier nowadays thanks to Facebook and Skype. Still, her difficulties with personal intimacy DO seem like something to keep in mind. I’ll be looking out for any ways she figures out to find a balance with her work and personal lives later in the book.

Looking over the photos provided in the book, I think that they were as effective as Addario’s writing at conveying what it was like being at the time and place each was taken. Shots of refugees, of women going about their daily lives, people celebrating; each one conveyed its intended point without feeling fake or artificial. I think the one that left the biggest impact with me would be the shot of a man leaning against a wall while looking over bodies exhumed from a mass grave. The shot subtly conveys his emotional reaction without even needing to show his face. Like most of her pictures, I can immediately tell what’s going on in it without needing a caption.

Forum Post - Week 6: Action Photos Topic

For this assignment, I'm going to go out to the field where the sports teams practice. If I go in the afternoon I should have a good chance of finding a group of people to take pictures of. An alternative option would be the dance club. They meet on Thursdays, and it seems like they'd be a good opportunity to try something different.

The main difficulty I anticipate having would be variety. Since it's just going to be members of our local team practicing with each other, it's going to be pictures of the same people doing the same general activities. This should be offset by taking shots from different angles and locations, though there are only so many places one can go without getting in the team's way. Which leads me to the other difficulty: proximity. The long lens should work to get good pictures of people from a, let's go with "discrete" distance, but if you want to take a wider shot that would require the smaller lens you could likely miss your photo opportunity in the time it takes to switch them.