Daniel Reichart gave two other DTHers and I a tour of the planetarium and a demonstration of UNC's involvement in a series of telescopes are changing the way people can accessdata from space.
I'm supposed to create a multimedia piece from my footage, but we'll see how well that goes. Not much happened. The most interesting part of the tour took place on a screen, which is not very interesting to a video camera. I know I have to get an interview piece because the tour narration alone will not thread the story together. Unfortuantely, that cannot happen until Wednesday.
I like these two photos, though, and this experience would have been better documented by photos alone, as can be seen in the accompanying photographer's resulting photos. How this turns out will be up in the air.
Kavita and I had not talked in about a month and a half, so we decided to finally catch each other about our summer lives over some drinks. In the meantime, she became the start of what I hope to continue forever: a photo diary. As simple as it may seem, the more you shoot, the better you are. I know my work is good but I just the experience to make it better and to find the Ryan Jones style the world of photojournalism just can't live without.
In the process, I hope to do portraits of people that mean the world to me. Most of my friends will disperse in the coming months due to graduating, and I want to have great images to honor their pressences in my life. I love them all dearly and hope the images do them all justice.
Photographing senior portraits isn't as easy as I thought. Alena, my friend and first paying customer, wanted my style of photography, which isn't typically difficult to provide, but she also wanted the standard graduation photos that everyone loves with it. Add a time crunch and you got an overwhelmed Ryan.
I really want to learn how to meet my style with customer's demands. Since most photographers have to be freelancers now, it will be territory I have to cross for most of working life. In this case, I think I did it moderately well. You get the mixture of the stereotypical landscapes for UNC grad photos, but all the emotions are true, and I feel each has a twist. I also placed Alena in swings and on a sloping hill for a variety of scenery one typically doesn't find. They were my favorites, especially the one with the gazebo background. Unfortunately, at the same time, I feel they could be quite typical still.
This summer, I decided to stay in Chapel Hill because I earned the opportunity to be the Independent Weekly's photo intern. My friend Jesus did me a great favor by allowing me to stay in her apartment for free since she would not be using it anyways and she knew I would not be able to afford a place on my own while doing an unpaid internship. I consider myself very blessed for having both opportunities.
My first and only assignment so far was enormous. Each year Indy has a Best of the Triangle competition in which readers can vote on their favorite establishments throughout Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. The very first day of working for them, I was given 29 of the winners to document in three weeks. While, compared to a daily newspaper, that isn't much, but I had to wait until I was paid for my work for being the Multimedia Editor for the DTH so I could afford all the traveling.
In the process, I met some great and irritating people. At one place I was turned around at the door because they did not have the owner's permission. When I finally reached the owner, he laughed at how ridiculous they behaved. Other places gave me free food and drinks and treated me very well. Some bars had ridiculously beautiful staff members (I think it's done on purpose) which made me drool a bit, but, luckily, I could keep my cool to perform my job.
My editors both praised me all my work, along with the higher ups. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, as well. My fave shoot out of all them had to be at Blue Flame, the tattoo parlor in Raleigh. One, I had never seen a tattoo placed on anyone before, and the process fascinated me. I found myself watching the art in progress as much I was documenting it. Two, the fact he chose a Blink 182 symbol after all these years of the band not having a hit made me a smile. Even Derek, one of my bosses, asked, "Now?!?" after I told him the design.
Since this finished, I've only had one assignment, which isn't a bad thing. I'm saving money by not having to drive only all over the place, but, at the same time, I could be working a paying job to help feed myself better. A diet of green beans, Cup of Noodles and Dr. Pepper does not provide much energy whatsoever (I'm working on it!). I will see what happens. The down time might become too much, needing me to fill it with a part time job, which will be so fun to find in this economy.
Oh, the other assignment was of course the Best of the Triangle Party, a celebration to honor the winners and give away samples of their free food to the people that voted for them. They will go on the website, and I will post the link on here.
