Forum Post - Week 7: Photo Story Ideas

My first idea for the photo story assignment is to take pictures of the construction work being done around the LBCC campus. The current plan is to take pictures of each work area every day from monday to friday, and trying to get said pictures from the same angle each time. Then, I'll take the pictures of each site and set them up in sequential order with appropriate captions.

My second idea is to go to a restaurant somewhere and do something to convey the idea of an entire day passing. The current method of doing so would be to do a series of time-lapse photos at various times of the day. Morning, afternoon, evening, etc. I'd probably want to do it at a fast-food restaurant, because the smaller eating area should make getting shots of the whole area easier.

Forum Post - Week 7: My Hometown

The subject I'm planning on doing is my good ol' hometown of Lebanon. I don't exaggerate when I say I know EVERY good place within the city limits that'd make for a good photo. Not only that, but I also know what angles and areas are good to take photos FROM. For an event, I have several ideas: The most obvious one would be the farmer's market on Thursday, though since that's literally the day before the due date I think I should definitely shoot an event earlier in the week just in case. On that note I figure I can either do the High School football game's practices or even maybe an actual game. If one's willing to stretch the definition of an "event," I was thinking of some sort of mosaic shot of a park, where I take shots from the same place and angle at different times, then superimpose all the shots together.

Landmarks're easy, and I've got two ideas off the top of my head. The Kuhn theater is our local cinema, and there's a lot I can say about AND some of its more recent history. Right across the street from it is a plaza, which was recently built over an empty lot that had 3 large, beautiful murals on the outside walls of the adjacent buildings. I think this is the more interesting topic, because it's a newer landmark that was built in place of an old one. I can discuss both at length, and I even have some photos of the old murals sitting in an old folder or flash drive somewhere.

I don't have a lot of ideas for a portrait shot. The easy solution would be to shoot someone at the farmer's market, or one of the other events I might end up doing. I also thought I might get ambitious and see if I can get in touch with anyone at city hall. Barring that, figured I'd just do a shot of someone that works at one of the shops downtown.

Environmental Portrait Assignment

Josh Green is a Culinary Arts instructor at Albany LBCC. He started off as a dishwasher before going on to study culinary arts in Portland. He decided to become a teacher so he could pass along the ideals he learned there, like sustainability, creating relationships with local farmers and artisans, and sourcing local ingredients.

"My favorite thing to cook is anything new. I like to try recipes that I have never done before and don't have the most experience with. That way I continue to learn and broaden my palate."

Photos from the "Street Photography" Artist Reception

A crowd of people gather in the South Santiam Hall Art Gallery to hear a group of guest speakers talk about their work in street photography.

Guest speaker Gary Gumanow gives an anecdote about one of his photographic works, seen at right. The work in question, entitled, "Escaping Portland," was inspired by a single-panel cartoon strip from his childhood called, "Houdini Escaping New Jersey."

Gary Gumanow gives another anecdote about his work, while two students look on. This aecdote is about the first time he used a camera’s flash at night, which startled two passersby.

Environmental Portrait Subjects

I don't have any SPECIFIC people in mind for this assignment; rather, I'm planning on getting in touch with a group of people who all do the same occupation and seeing who all is able and willing to take part in a photo shoot. I'm opting to do the assignment this way because I figure it'll allow for greater flexibility with scheduling.

My primary subject in mind will be to photograph one of the drivers for the Linn Shuttle buses. The plan I've come up with to go about doing this is to either get in touch with the Shuttle's management and see if they can help me get in touch with one of their drivers that'd be willing to do it, or simply ask the drivers themselves if anyone'd be interested the next time I'm taking the bus. Either way, I'm planning on doing the photos at the building the buses get parked at, and take photos of my subject from different angles both in front of the bus and in its driver seat.

My second option would be to cover one of the librarians working in the campus library. I figure I'll take pictures of whoever ends up agreeing to help me from in front of the stacks, at their desk, or from the library's front desk with the stacks visible in the background.

Now clearly, I haven't set any specific details in stone yet. Depending on how things go when I start getting in touch with people, I might end up opting to make the library idea my plan A instead.

Photojournalism Self-Critique

Best Picture:

I would consider most of the photos I've taken so far to be at more or less the same level of quality, with the obvious exception of the ones that are more overtly bad (see below). I also haven't done much work with posing subjects for photos, especially with the assignment this particular one came from. In fact, for the assignment in question, to photograph a meeting of the Albany LBCC's Poetry Club, I mainly preferred to stick to the background and let the group go about their business. I figured this approach would make for more organic posing for pictures, and I think this particular photo is a good example of that.





Worst Picture:
I actually have 2 picks for my worst picture, representing 2 different ways a photo can be bad:

 Most of the photos I've taken that turned out bad were either ones with sub-standard composition from when I was still figuring out the settings of my camera, ones with a few bad details like a person blinking or moving their hand, or both. Point is, most of them were either salvageable in photoshop or were ones I took a similar but better photo I could use instead. But this? I don't know how or if one could make this usable,  nor do I even know how the heck it happened...

This photo on the other hand I wanted to use as an example of a photo that's "almost good," or rather one that could have been good if a little more effort had been put into taking it. I was actually about to use this one for a close-up shot in another blog post assignment, until I noticed the pillow covering the subject's ear. There wasn't any way to crop it out without taking off half his head, and ALL the other pictures I took of him from that angle had the same problem. A problem that could have been avoided entirely if I'd just MOVED A FEW INCHES TO THE RIGHT!





Skill Assessment:
I would say my two biggest areas of weakness are that I desperately need to learn how to use my camera properly, and that I need to get better at interacting with subjects while doing photo shoots. Fortunately these are both things I should be able to get better at over time, with practice.

Photos from the 10/17 meeting of the LBCC Poetry Club

Members of the LBCC Poetry Club gather in the DAC Center to discuss the
schedule for their meeting, Thursday, October 17th. Meanwhile, Daniel Glenn (Far right) works on his own poem.

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

Poetry Club member Kel O'Callaghan reads a poem from the same book.
Thursday, October 17th, Albany DAC Center