Blog Forum Post 1

About Me:

My name is Bowen Orcutt. My current major is Engineering, but my primary reason for taking this class is because I'm considering switching to writing, and it seemed like the best way to explore my options. I'd say I have a decent amount of experience with photojournalism and photography, having taken a couple of photo classes in High School as well as working on the yearbook during my senior year. Though all things considered I'd say I got more experience with editing photos than with taking them, even if it was with an INCREDIBLY outdated version of photoshop. So if you have a lot of photos that need cleaned up in a short timeframe, I'm your man.

Class Goals

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

On this week's assignment

I was unsurprisingly nervous about the prospect of going up to random strangers and asking to interview them, but all things considered I'd say it went better than I expected. I really enjoyed the meeting new people around the campus, and hearing what they have to say. Though funnily enough, I'd say what I enjoyed most about conducting these interviews was when me and the person I was talking to would occasionally start briefly chatting about other subjects unrelated to the interview, particularly after asking questions on what they like about the campus or living in Oregon. In terms of things I'd have done differently, first and foremost on my mind is that I'd had set my phone facing THE WRONG WAY while it was recording audio, which I didn't realize until after I'd done BOTH of my interviews. This unfortunately meant that I had to listen to the recordings at a fairly high volume in order to hear the questions and answers over the ambient noise from the part of the room the sound receiver WAS facing towards. Other than that, though, I'd say that seeing what the final product's supposed to look like has given me a better idea of what questions to ask.