The Nomadic Frog Blog

AMotD (Awesome Moment of the Day)	Re-assembling a lab iMac and it didn’t go “bloop!” and let off a small cloud of smoke.
Current main project:	One Minute of Video and FASHION: glamour

Had a mild panic attack during class Wednesday as yet another assignment was handed out and I realized I’m fairly well screwed for time. The next 3 weeks are going to be interesting. Fortunately nobody noticed the micro breakdown, including Jonathan sitting next to me, so I must have (re-)covered well.

The week started off great – good grades on a Publication Design project (The Resume) and a typography quiz, and very pleasant grades on my Audio Slideshow project (see an earlier post on Gary, the dulcimer maker) and a few smaller A/V class assignments. I want to incorporate feedback and make both projects better, but it was good to do well the first time around. Then there was the Fashion assignment… some of the worst grades I’ve gotten since that honors computer science class sophomore year of undergrad. This put a damper on my week. (Here are the photos in question.)

Tuesday night I was in the lab until 3:30 trying to print out my Publication Design and Fashion assignments. Wednesday night my roommate Bryan and I drove to Circleville for the Pumpkin Show, and back, and I miraculously didn’t fall asleep, which was good since I was driving.

While I was there I picked up a copy of the Advertiser’s special Pumpkin Show edition. A few weeks ago one of their editors called me and wanted to use one of my photos as the cover for the 23,000 copy issue. I was flattered, of course, although I would have been more flattered if they had paid me for it. Anyhow, she did do a very nice job of writing up my bio on the inside, with contact info and all, so that was very cool.

I cringed when saw the cover image, though. The print quality was not great, quite aside from the interesting cropping they had done. I wondered if they had applied some Photoshop filter (like “watercolor”) since I had sent a high-res file for their use. It should have printed much better than that. When I got home I checked my email to her, and I’ll be damned but if I didn’t send a tiny 85KB file! Yahoo Mail has recently “improved” their interface, and while in general it is pretty cool, this one feature screwed me: it now automatically re-sized image attachments to be smaller. So while I attached a 5MB large image, it resized it to something that might have printed nicely on the head of a pin.

So that was my mistake, and fairly unprofessional, but why didn’t they say anything?! I would think a publisher would know that wasn’t an acceptable image to print, and would have asked – especially after I said “I have attached a large high-res copy suitable for printing” in the accompanying email. So that was another downer.

The Fashion assignment for this week was “The Storyline” – our photos had to tell a story of some kind, not just be a literal “this is a purse” photo. Here’s what I came up with: “the model is a photographer who has just gotten negative feedback from an unsatisfied client (an Art Director at a Fashion magazine). Her photos are in the garbage and she is looking through a magazine for new ideas. A Helmut Newton photo hangs in her office.” I wonder if my story is too subtle?

The Helmut Newton photo I chose was one that my professor showed me as an example of a conceptual “storyline” fashion photo. The model is wearing (only) high-heeled shoes and this counts as “fashion”, so I’m a little confused how my model in the previous assignment, wearing an expensive designer shirt, brand-name jeans and sneakers, and a large bright orange watch, is not identifiable as fashion.

In one of Helmut Newton’s photos he put his own photos in the garbage – I think my prof said they were polaroids from the shoot itself – so I put all of my photos from previous shoots – all the bad grades I’ve been getting – in the garbage can in my image. Bottom line: even if you don’t know my story, there is obviously something going on in the photo. And really, how often do you actually understand trendy fashion photos anyhow?! I have a model wearing large bold patent leather shiny boots, and if there isn’t fashion visible I have Helmut’s photo hanging in the background to back me up. If high heels count… of course my model isn’t naked, so maybe I didn’t accomplish what Helmut did. (More photos from the shoot.)

Two notes about those photos: Thanks to classmate Midori for being my last-minute model. My roommate/classmate Jonathan volunteered to go down to the studio and be my assistant. He was amazing with the lighting, and really helped me to learn a few key concepts about studio lighting in general.

Oh, and I thought I made a hilarious joke in the audio/video class Thursday. We were learning about filters in our audio editing software, and one of them was “Echo”. Apply it to your audio track and it makes it echo. Simple as that. So I asked what would happen if you dropped the filter onto the sound of a duck quacking? Nobody laughed. Nobody knew what I was talking about. Really? Mythbusters even busted the urban legend that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo. There are Snopes articles and about.com entries and all sorts of stuff. Whatever. I enjoyed my little joke.

More photos >>

AMotD (Awesome Moment of the Day)	Today was as good as yesterday was cruddy – tough to pick.
Current main project:	Publication Design, Fashion shoot, and picking final project ideas.

Had a pretty great evening. Started off after work by helping one of the other students get some photos for her web design project. Actually the shoot was terrible – all of a sudden I was the world’s worst photographer – but maybe from the 200 frames I got the 15-20 she needs. Treated myself to dinner at a pub (Broney’s) afterwards: food was good enough, service very friendly, which helps the mood. Coffee from Perk’s (love the simplicity, cost, and quality of the $1 regular coffee) on the way to a speech by Dave LaBelle, a well-known photographer.

He was pretty damn cool. One part of his talk that struck a chord with me was that he tries to focus on the positive things in life, or the positive side even of tragedies. He’s content to let other people show the grief and misery and unhappiness – he tries to find the light.

To show people doing good things does good.
-David LaBelle

I feel like he/we want to lead by positive example… an experiment in living positively. What would happen if we knew we weren’t going to finish the daily paper being depressed and despondent? He isn’t trying to say there aren’t bad things, that there aren’t problems we need to solve. Just… approach them differently, put positive energy into it rather than only negative. Of course as a friend/colleague pointed out, this is obviously putting a spin on your journalism – not necessarily good – but again this is why I’m not a journalist I guess.

From there we headed up to Jackie O’s for the first relaxed beer of the week (a house-made brew fermented with local maple syrup and honey for me) and some great discussion about the business and the craft. I’ve got some really cool classmates – sharp men and women with real skills, experience, and interest in the world they are working in. It’s great to listen to.

Funny, too. We were discussing a bit of a tiff one student had gotten into with a famous photographer, and (I think, I was in a different conversation) how people tend to put these photographers on pedestals, as if they are somehow godlike:

Everybody poops, man, look it up. There’s even a book on it!
-Brad, one of my fellow grad students

On the way to the next bar I got a little sidetracked. First there was Rick, the street musician. He plays piano… not the most typical (or practical) street instrument, so this gets my attention. He says he sometimes misses the uppermost and lowest octaves – sacrificed for size and portability – but he sure seems to make do without them.

Photos above are my classmate Scott’s latest tattoo sessions.

Rick asked me what kind of music I liked and, as I’m getting accustomed to, I didn’t have a good answer readily available. Academics don’t really value “Uh, I kinda like uh everything.” so I mumbled something about “well, everything from Chopin to Joplin”. Was the best I could do at some sort of assonance. “Chopin, eh? Let me play you something I wrote!” and he proceded to play his own composition. I’m no expert, and I wouldn’t know if he had copied Chopin wholesale, but it sounded good. I have no reason to doubt the guy, and in my usual fashion I trust him, so the bottom line is, I got an early screening of an original piece that sounded awesome to my ears. “I think you’re only the third person to hear that.” I dropped a few bucks in his bucket for the privilege – what a bargain.

I didn’t get far down the street before running into some other classmates, so we had fun shooting the breeze for a bit. Then there was the fraternity selling grilled cheese sandwiches – on the street – to raise money for charity (I hope), so I had one of those. Ran into yet more colleagues – these with a lightstand, strobe, umbrella, and reflector, shooting people passing by wearing high heels – and talked with them for a bit before finally catching up with folks at Tony’s.

I walked home from there, which is about a 30-minute hike with a hill at the end that I don’t always relish. About 1/3 of the way up an SUV pulled over next to me. I figured it was my roommate Bryan, and went to get in. Was a little confused since there was a passenger in the front. After I squeezed into the back with my backpack and camera bag and umbrella I heard the driver say “Hello my friend! I am Omar!” as he drove me up to the top of the hill. So now I’ve met my Saudi Arabian neighbor and his Qatari friend Fatima.

At every attempt today to get from one place to another I ran into interesting people, and when I’d get to where I was going there was fascinating conversation to listen to.

More photos >>

AMotD (Awesome Moment of the Day)	Umm… still waiting for it.
Current main project:	First video shoot, publication design project

Aside from the ad Yahoo served up this morning with my email (see below), today got off to a decent start. Managed to get to the printer in time to run off some not-terrible prints for class, and celebrated stuff with a lemon cheese croissant and a coffee on the way to class. Things went downhill from there.

This is the ad Yahoo served up this morning. How humorous.

I’m having a hard time hitting the right note with Fashion photography. I don’t want to do the simple “THIS IS A LOUIS VUITTON HANDBAG! LOOK AT ME!” obvious product shots. I’m actually trying to put effort into creating a story to the photos, with more interesting concepts and setups. Plus I don’t have a Louis Vuitton handbag.

Despite me drawing inspiration from this style of ads I’ve seen in Vogue, Rolling Stone, W, and some other publications, my professor doesn’t feel I’m “getting the fashion”, and based on the ones he selects as the “best in class” each week, I can see why he feels that way. I just think I disagree. But I’m a first year grad, so who am I to say? Anyhow, got a crappy grade on the latest assignment, and since the one I turned in today is in the same style, I can hardly wait to see its grade next week.

I actually managed to crank out a few items for the next Publication Design class, somewhat ahead of schedule and one piece more than required. The assignment is “self-promotion”, and gives us a chance to create business cards, portfolio CD covers, etc. I’m starting with business cards, letterhead, and a new website front page, all of which will use the new-ish elements from the resume project to maintain a consistent house style. I still need to tweak them, as always.

People keep trying to get me to put a tagline on my name. “Photographer”, “Visual Journalist”, etc. Is that me? Do I fit into those categories (or any others, for that matter?) I don’t want to label/pigeonhole myself. I’m 36 years old (yeah, yeah) I think if I was going to (be able to) specialize in something I would have done so by now. At this point I need to accept that and figure out how to ameliorate the consequences. Anyhow, puts me in a funk, reminding my what I’m not, what I haven’t done, won’t be.

Picture Editing class turned into a discussion on Race and Diversity in the newsroom, with people telling me “race is out there, you need to realize that and be conscious of it.” Really? Wow, I’m learning all sorts of new stuff here at grad school!

I just think that rather than putting attention on trying to somehow (artificially) introduce diversity into the news reporting how about just reporting on the news? If you do a competent job of reporting on what is happening – the entire breadth of what is happening – then diversity will take care of itself, will fall into place naturally. By focusing on “diversity” instead of “the news” you are influencing what you report on, hence the objectiveness of what you choose to report, and, I would think, even the content of the reporting itself.

Reminded me of a West Wing episode where a female character was against the ERA and her liberal colleagues were aghast. “How could you not want equal rights for women?” Her point was she already had equal rights as a human – why do we need to specify further? Why do we need to artificially maintain diversity – we can’t possibly hope to manually balance it accurately anyhow – when if we are reporting the reality adequately diversity would automatically be accurately represented.

Hire a diverse workforce because the population is diverse, not because you want/need a diverse workforce. Cover blacks and hispanics because they are the people in the story about whatever your story is about, not because they are black or hispanic. (Unless, of course, the story is about being black or hispanic, but I’m talking about a level above this.)

By focusing on race like this – making it an issue in and of itself (in this context) it just perpetuates the divide. A classmate mentioned an article about a successful rich CEO or something that never once mentioned the fact that he was black – it was irrelevant to the subject of the piece. If we can operate on that level – rise above a situation that we have to manually create diversity – the conflicts will eventually (slowly, granted) resolve.

I realize that’s all idealistic naive garbage, but hey, we’re students, isn’t that what we do? [This sentence here just to avoid having a widow word on a line by itself.][Yes I realize "a widow word on a line by itself" is redundant, but maybe not everyone knows what a "widow" is in this context. I didn't until I got points off my first Publication Design assignment because I had widows all over the place. Whoopsie.]

On a different note, I did a time-lapse series of me setting up and striking camp last weekend. The audio/video virus has now officially infected my out-of-class life.

Anyhow, I need to go take a picture of a Luis Vuitton bag. Ciao.

As usual it’s late and I’m not done and I want to get to bed, but the software is crunching the numbers to render my file, so I might as well get something posted here.

My project was to do a story on Gary Sager, a luthier (one who builds and repairs stringed instruments) and music shop owner in Waverly, Ohio. I have to present a short audio slideshow (still photos with an audio track), and as usual it’s not exactly short. Still, I kept the main body of the content to 5 minutes – after painfully cutting out tons of fun and interesting stuff. Anyhow, without further ado, let’s see if I can get it to embed the file here on my journal page:

I think you’re going to need Quicktime. I’ll work on optimizing all of this sometime other than 4am.

I also had the next Fashion shoot due, on “accessories”. While I was staring despondently at my shoes, having come to the realization that my Plans A through about G had been dismal failures and my studio time was rapidly running out, my model (Amy) told an anecdote about how she and her girlfriends got together after all of their divorces were finalized, and were noticing the blank spot on their left ring fingers where their wedding rings had been. Amy, aware of the topic of my shoot, made the comment that now “freedom is my accessory”, and I thought that sounded like a damn good tag line to work on.

Then she also mentioned that her boyfriend is a drag racer, and that they frequently run their nighttime races by using a woman dropping her bra as the start signal. For laughs we did a series of about a zillion photos trying to capture the motion of the dropping bra. I need to work on my studio skills.

Finally, we had to re-vamp our resumes for Publication Design class, so here’s my effort (PDF). I’m going to tweak it a bit still.

HALLMARK ATHENS STUDENT HOUSING, LLC, PLAINTIFF: I’ve been served with an eviction notice for failure to pay rent. I don’t have time to fully explain how pissed off I am, but here’s a summary: rent is due on the 1st of the month (and not “before”, either). I handed a check to one of the landlord’s employees in the landlord’s office on September 30th (i.e., a day early). The check cleared my account on the 2nd (i.e., they already cashed it three days or more ago). The notice – taped to my door for all to see – is dated today. I have until the 8th to “prevent any legal measure being taken”.

My roommate Bryan told me about the note while I was in the computer lab working on one of the many projects I have due. I figured he was joking. It would be a good prank to photoshop an eviction notice – they already know I’m a tad highstrung at times. He assured me it was real. I figured it was one of these deals: “Hey, your rent is due, just a reminder. If your check is already in the mail please disregard this”.

Nope. See it for yourself:

DEFENDANT: I called. Spoke with the woman I handed the check to. “Do you remember?! I handed it to you!” She remembered, but she couldn’t do anything, it was somebody else’s area. Of course that person wasn’t available. Left a message. She called while I was in class. Returned her call at 17:15: gone, won’t be back until the 7th (I have until the 8th to “prevent legal action”).

Woman I spoke with couldn’t do anything other than repeat “that’s our policy” and “if you have proof, bring it to the office”. (Idiotically enough they will accept a printout from my bank as “proof”.)

Now, the office isn’t open until 10, and I have to leave for class/work by 9 and don’t get back until, well, 12:30 at night today. It will be an hour round-trip to come back here and deal with this tomorrow.

This is the final straw. Our apartment complex, The Summit at Coates Run, has been extremely unprofessional at several steps along the way. At one point they thought nothing of having me and my roommates split up living with total strangers because our apartment hadn’t passed city inspection yet. I will detail it more later, but if you’re finding this in a Google search looking for an apartment in Athens, talk to me, I’ll fill you in. I have other things I need to be doing right now rather than dignify this crap with more verbiage than I already have.

I have made excuses for them because my initial contact with a salesperson was good and I gave them the benefit of the doubt several times subsequently, but I’m done. These people need to get their act together – by their own admission (“yes, in the transition to new ownership some systems are having problems”) – and stop treating us like criminals/children. It’s galling to be treated this way when I have been professional and they have been the culpable party all along.

In other news, I got back to the apartment tonight at 12:30 to find all of my neighbors outside screaming and yelling about something. Turns out there is a raccoon curled up in a terrified ball outside a neighbor’s door (because several neighbors have left bags of garbage outside!) I tried to shoo it away (nobody else was doing anything) with a broom and by spraying water, but it would not budge. I gave up and went inside to read my eviction notice. And eat dinner. At 1am.