"This Is My Photo Story From Israel: Final Edits" by Jared Polin

This is a way different approach to multimedia photo stories. This guy, Jared Polin, not only explains into detail his photos but shows you exactly what he is talking about. Polin even tells you how he went about taking the picture and why he edited it the way he did. In the bottom left side you can see him talking with the microphone right in front of his face. That's literally the only sound there is.
I chose this because it's different. There's a lot to learn from how he went about taking the images.
From a photo story point of view, it's not very story like. From a technical point of view it's definitely helpful.
His photographs are powerful and well composed and I enjoyed them, but I wish it was more like the other video I watched instead. This is great for future reference for my own photography though.

Bongo Fever by: Chien-Chi Chang

I chose this multimedia photo story mostly on a whim. Since Chien-Chi Chang was presented yesterday in class, I came across this photo story and decided to give it a try. I liked what I learned in class about Chang in class. When I stumbled across this by chance (found it on the Magnum in Motion website) I decided that I was going to do it on this. The title was the first thing that pulled me in because I didn't read the description.
From a young age, in school we are taught that drugs are bad. I've always found stories about drug users very intriguing. I've read far too many books about drug users and talked to a few drug users too. Their stories are all interesting to me, because I've never done any drugs (not that I ever plan on it since I know there's no turning back once you do).
I think Chien-Chi Chang did a wonderful job on this. He captured the sights and sounds perfectly. If you are on the squeamish side, then this will definitely bring that out in you because of the photos of syringes being used. It's very... not brutal (well, I guess in a way it is), but more audacious than anything.
The sounds make you feel as if you are there. It starts of with sounds of city-ish life. You can hear people huffing & puffing out of various drugs, along with heavy breathing. Three lines stood out to me most: "Everyone wants to stop, but no one can." "Your addiction is every day." and "Trust your friends." The last quote was talking about having to trust your friends when you use the same syringe as them, and basically hope for the best that they're not infected with HIV.
Something that caught my eye in this photo story is the use of photos that make it look more like a stop motion (so continuous shots). There were also videos put in and that was good, because it wasn't over done either. There was some text, but mostly used as subtitles so you can understand when a person was speaking and what they were saying.
The photo story starts off with a scene of people outside during the night. Then dives directly into images of people using syringes, and it just now occurred to me (after watching it for a third time) that this video is just as much about HIV as it is about drugs, since in this case they go hand in hand. At the very end, it shows you how the syringes are just everywhere on the ground and there are slugs crawling (for lack of a better word) over and under the syringes.

We Connect! Workshop (Book Assignment)

We Connect! is basically to get people to get to know each other if they will be doing some sort of collaboration in the future. In this case, it was a group of students of various majors that are literally working on some sort of rocket-ship science for Nasa. They did would choose cards and then introduce themselves and talk about whatever the question on the card asked. After asking and answering the questions, they had to do the exercise that was on the back of that card. Regardless of there being 3 GoPros and 2 dSLRs being pointed at them, they didn't seem to notice them.

My biggest problems were that it was artificial lighting (this took place at about 6pm back in January), and they were moving too quickly for me to be able to focus on them. There were also too many people to try and capture while focusing on a pair. I needed as many pictures as possible so that I'd have a few good ones, especially since I did this for an actual person, and not just for myself.

Understanding Comics by: Scott McCloud (Response)

When I first started to read Chapter 3, my first thought was, "Hey! I used to think the same way as a child! I'm glad I am not the only one!"

As I went further into reading it, it made me realize how little we think about closure. It's something so natural to us, that we don't dive further into thinking about it. The only time we think about closure is if we are creating something: a story, a photograph, a painting.
In photography we use closure when we are trying to convey a story... It's easier to show a story in more than one image and create closure and help guide your viewer into what direction you want them to see the story.

The example above is brilliant, because everyone definitely interprets things differently. Personally, from the comic above, I interpreted as if the guy screaming, "NO! NO!" is trying to save a kitten from the crazy ax man. Someone else might interpret it as the guy being murdered for stealing the crazy ax man's teddy bear. Everyone may interpret things differently.

This is excellent to look at because it helps thinking about positioning my own photography together to show a story. It shows the effect two images has next to one another.

I've noticed that whenever I position images together I tend to do this. If I were to do this, I'd need to actually write captions along with my images. However, if the audience is creative enough, they can very easily fill in the gaps with their own experience and knowledge and it is a whole new experience.

This made me think of this past summer when I went to a photography class my cousin was taking. The guy who was teaching the class was telling us about how there is never a single moment in a photograph if it's like the one above. Each person tells a separate moment and/or story. We should keep that in mind when taking photos of people and focus on a single thing that is going on, not the full moment. It's too much to take in for a single person, I think. They might also not think too much about what's actually going on, and you want them to think about it.

To me this is routine. Routine can be in every day life, but also life in general. This sort of thing happens to multiple people. People every where can relate to this. It shows time passing by in a very interesting way.
Overall, I found both chapters very interesting and insightful to read. There is so much potential in each photograph that has ever been photographed to be turned into a massive story (which I think would be super awesome to see done). Everything depends on the content of the image and the way they are put together.








(Now I have many ideas for different projects. Reading is one of many great ways to get inspired.)