Baby, You Can Buy My Car!

HEY EVERYBODY!! COME AND BUY SOME CARS!!!
Um, it is a nice color . . .
DO YOU WANNA BUY IT??!
Well, the economy is not exactly. . .
LISTEN, BUDDY! IF YOU DON'T BUY IT TODAY . . .
. . . I won't be here tomorrow . . .

My New Font - It's Fontastic!

Because, see, like I bet nobody ever thought of that for a font name, huh? So, this was my first crack at creating a new font in FontStruct. It was hard because of the limited shapes, but I thought I did OK. Some of the elements of this font that relate to my approach to things: I did it in sans serif, because I tend to be a straight-ahead, no-frills kind of a guy. I added the little rounded caps and curves on the corners because I prefer to smooth things out rather than let the sharp edges poke at you. Given its rather digital, pixillated appearance, again with a sans serif approach, this typeface would definitely fall into the Modern classification.

Design Evaluation Assignment

For your consideration: a site that I feel is too cluttered with no real contrast or ability to attract your attention. Maybe the entire world financial crisis really started here. They just needed better web design!

Based on a design that lacks focus and tries to throw everything at you at once, it seems that Citi is trying to recruit every known human being to get some sort of card from them. Not a bad goal, but if you focus on everyone, you tend to captivate no one.

Also, the page lacks negative space and has very little white space. The vectors are all basically horizontal. Colors aren't bad, but also don't really pop out at the viewer. It all fades to a kind of pale blue. All in all, the page hearkens back to earlier days of the internet where the goal was to just get a lot of information out on the web, no matter how cluttered it looked.

Here's a site with what I feel is a better page layout.



There is much more negative space, allowing the eye to focus on the important parts of the ad. The asymmetrical balance of the picture of the car allows for a compensating balance of the copy on the left of the page. The vectors of the wall and the car also bring the eye to the copy. But probably my favorite part of the ad concept is the interactivity of the ad. It allows the viewer to design a route to anywhere in the world and test drive it inside the vehicle - a virtual test drive, if you will.

Finally, I leave you with a fun demonstration of what happens if you over-design your packaging. Here's what would happen if you let Microsoft package an Apple product.

A Question of Balance

Looking at the Epson site http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/printers.do, I'd say it's a good example of asymmetrical balance. The rotating scenes depicting slice-of-life uses of Epson products are all on the right hand side of the page. The scene appears first, creating a bit of asymmetrical tension. Then the text appears on the left side of the screen, balancing out the picture.
I loved the pretty loaded site http://prettyloaded.com/. Because these animated scenarios are meant to run while a page is loading, I'm assuming they didn't want to risk being too far to one side of the screen or the other, so they are all very symmetrically balanced - right in the middle of the screen. Many of them are radially balanced, originating in the center and then spreading out from there.

Get the Glass

Here's a pretty fun little board game on the net: http://www.gettheglass.com/.
The artwork is amazing, the sound is great, the challenges are . . . challenging. The site is sponsored by the California Milk Processor Board, and it's quickly obvious that there is the underlying agenda to get players racking their brains to come up with all the reasons why it's vital to drink enough milk. It would be much more fun if they brought up the latest studies that showed that humans aren't genetically built to absorb lactose from milk past about age two, and those throughout the world who aren't naturally lactose intolerant have inherited a genetic mutation called "lactose persistence." And even then, the idea of ingesting another mammal's lactose secretions is . . ., well, I guess I'll get off my soap, er, milk box. Long live rice milk.
It's also a little disturbing that the protagonists we are charged with helping are criminals, and the dastardly enemies we are running from are law enforcement authorities. But that's another blog.

Final Exam

1. Should newspapers show us violent images from Iraq?

Our textbook found that more journalists and editors favored showing graphic, tell-it-like-it-is, hard and gritty realistic photos from the front lines.
The same research found that the viewing public, as a whole, preferred the soft, fuzzy, feel-good human interest stories, sparing us the gory details.
I think we can have some of both. I think newspapers should definitely show us the reality - that is, show us what is really going on with as little spin as possible. Where it's called for, I'm in favor of the publication posting pictures that are hard for us to look at - but I think there is a call for good judgment. I relate that to the suspense one can get from an Alfred Hitchcock thriller that actually shows very little blood and gore, versus today's spate of spurting-blood slasher movies. I think a lot can be told in a picture that captures the drama without the gratuitous, almost voyeuristic show of carnage.

2. Should the photographer and the editor be two separate people?

I think so, yes. I believe, as photojournalists, we can become to attached to our "babies" - our photos and subjects that we worked so hard to cultivate and bring to light.
Having another, qualified voice in the review process can help to achieve that balance of realism and art that I referred to in the previous question.

3. Given the power and contrast of black and white images, what argument is made that readers prefer color?

According to research quoted in the textbook, readers prefer color because they feel color pictures are more realistic. They also remember color better, specifically referring to color in print advertisements. An interesting side note to that fact is that readers actually remembered more details about black-and-white ads, and they remembered them longer. Overall, readers' attention is grabbed more and for a longer period of time by color as opposed to black-and-white.

4. Discuss the photojournalistic ethics of honesty, decency and relevance.

There are four questions - what we call "The Four Way Test" - in the Rotary Club, a service club I've been a member of for a number of years. The questions are:
- Is it the truth?
- Is it fair to all concerned?
- Will it build good will and better friendships?
- Will it be beneficial to all concerned?
These questions are used as a template to help guide decisions and actions in business. I feel they apply as well to the duties of a photojournalist.
There's a fundamental commitment to being truthful. But it is tempered by the kindness that comes from being fair, beneficial, and with an eye toward building positive human relationships.
It is a bit lofty, but I believe it can be applied in the field and can help build understanding between both sides of many issues we, as photojournalists face.

And now, the nominations!

For my own photos, I still really like the picture I took of Li Lei, the dance professor at Dixie State College. I liked the shallow depth of field that focused on her, and blurred out the beautiful, yet possibly distracting background at Snow Canyon.
I like the moment I caught, where she was looking back over her shoulder. She was so intent most of the time, and focused on her dancers, that a brief moment of reflection was rare. But there's even a hint of a sort of "Mona Lisa" smile crossing her face. And I like the allowance of a bit of lead room to the right of the picture. Also, the rich color of her purple coat adds interest.

To choose a favorite photo from a class member is so much harder! I love the "frozen rain" in the umbrella shot. The suspended gymnast, the tragic-comic "po' folks" residences in LaVerkin, the jubilant swimmers - they're all so good! But my vote for Best of the Semester would have to go to Bree's shot of her subject - Doug Gubler. There's a whole story captured in his eyes. The light that highlights a bit of a brighter outlook, but then the shadow on the left of the face that has an almost opposite, foreboding look. The cropping that shows the arm bands, with the hands behind the head, either restful, or in the position of being arrested. But the picture still comes back to the eyes. Bree has managed to capture the sadness and the pain that seems to have been part of this man's life for a long time.

Thank you, Eric. It has been a fun ride. Keep shooting.

The Road to Redemption

Jesus Mavis was a career criminal. He says he can’t remember living any other kind of life. After relocating to Utah from Phoenix, he ended up in prison again and decided he’d had enough of his old life.
I met Jesus at the D.I. where he talked about his past, showed me his tattoos and described the hell he'd been through - and had put others through.
But his eyes lit up as he talked about the future: his school classes, his part-time job as a mechanic, his new friends from his church, his elderly neighbors - he pulls weeds for them, they secretly leave home baked meals on his doorstep.
Jesus is up for parole this summer. This time, he says, he’s up for life.

Behind the Scenes: Enter the Sacred

Artistic vs. Technical: Enter the Scared

Dancing on Red Rocks

7 am on a beautiful, cold Saturday morning in March - a film shoot for a music video. We arrive at the Snow Canyon overlook, with actual snow on the ground. A rare moment when the canyon's name fits. The dance troupe from Dixie State arrives, led by Li Lei, a Chinese physicist-turned-dance-instructor who runs them through their routines faithfully, over and over, so we can get all the shots we want. In between takes, as we set up new dolly tracks and camera angles, the dancers do their best to keep warm, even sneaking a quick nap on the sun-warmed rocks. The shadows lengthen and we continue shooting - from soft sand dunes to petrified sand dunes to Cougar Cliffs, not stopping until the last ray of sun slips behind the red horizon.

And now, a word from our sponsor . . .

A Tight Red Storm

And then it grew and went to the Gardner Center.

Mascot Storm

As Dixie State College is undergoing a change of mascots, and as it is not a very popular change, and as I am a student of Photojournalism, I, along with the rest of my class, thought it an opportune time to practice my Photojournalism elite skills on the protest against the new mascot. I thought it was just going to be a few students, but it turned into a major protest, complete with "city fathers" and others from the community, all protesting the change from "Rebels" to "Red Storm." It was nice of them to show up for this "Shoot Tight" assignment.
I was shooting with 400 ASA film (no convenience of digital on this one). I had some trouble freezing the action with that film speed, so some movement was blurred, but actually, that worked. I mean, Mayor McArthur's hand really does blur when he leads a rousing chorus of "Are You From Dixie?"
Also, because of the change from outdoor to indoor lighting when we went to the bigger Gardner Center, shooting without flash caused a yellowish hue, which I tried to correct in post-editing.
In shooting tight, I was able to transcend the mass of the crowd and capture a few private moments, which I thought was a nice way to show more individual impact. And zooming in from across campus still helped set the context of what was happening.
My take on the mascot argument? Being a photojournalist, you know that I am perfectly impartial. But I think the Red Storm is going the way of New Coke, and someday we'll see the return of "Rebel Classic."