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Samford

iPhone / journalism / photo / Samford / site — Comments Off
23
Oct 12

Pictures, lots of pictures

Did a photojournalism presentation for my class today. I showed the Taylor Morris photo essay I mentioned yesterday. I handed out some notes. I showed off some audio/visual slide presentations, silly stuff really.

I talked about all of these photos for an awfully long time:

Photo samples from Kenny Smith

If you’ve been visiting the site — or lurking in the photo gallery section — over the years you’ve probably seen many of those.

Just remember, some of the shots in that slideshow are meant to be bad. Most of them are average, at best. I told the students today that I had one photojournalism class with a brilliant professor and another photography class with another talented teacher, but I’ve had photos sprinkled in newspapers and magazines and on websites and in books here and there over the years. Not because I’m a great photographer. Click through there, you’ll see.

I’m a serviceable photographer, I told the students. Being there, researching the subject matter, knowing how to tell a story visually, anticipating the action, knowing your equipment, understanding a handful of basic photographic techniques and having extra batteries … that counts.

Link bait from the school blog: What will the iPad mini mean for journalism? I wrote that on my phone. Technology is amazing.

friends / history / iPhone / photo / Samford / Thursday — Comments Off
18
Oct 12

That’s an expensive radio

I had lunch at Alabama Power today with my friend Ike Pigott. He was a local reporter on television for years, moved to the Red Cross and now is in PR and corporate and strategy communication at the power company. Nice guy. Very smart. He’s on our department’s advisory council at Samford. We’re trying to get him more involved.

We ate under the atrium of the Alabama Power headquarters building, seen in the banner on this page, if you’ve ever wondered. Inside they have a barber, a shoe shine repair and leather stretching shop, a post office, a congressional lobby bureau, pneumatic tubes to deliver the staff home at the end of the day and are tinkering with a transporter platform. The place is fancy.

They also have rows of classic radios on display from the Don Kresge Memorial Museum which is housed in the building. Fitting. The first radio station in the state belonged to the power company. They used it to communicate with their outlying folks and to do weather updates and that sort of thing. Eventually they gave the gear to Auburn University, then Alabama Polytechnic Institute, where it took the WAPI calls. Some time later it came back to Birmingham, where WAPI broadcasts today. I used to work on the oldest station in the state. Lots of fun and news and anguish and entertainment went over those airwaves over the years. Most of it during my time there!

But I do go on.

Here are some of the radios they have out for your examination. I skipped most of the oldest models, as Lileks called them the other day, the woody old cathedrals. Why look at those when you can stare at the beauty of the Crosley Bullseye. The 1951 model here came in eight colors. Beautiful bakelight and tubes build. And you thought the 50s were staid:

Here’s the Trav-ler T201, from 1959. How many teenaged girls had this in their room in the early 1960s?

Here is the Westinghouse H124, also called the refrigerator radio. It was in circulation after the war, from 1945 until 1948. It came in four colors, which is probably two more than you could get the fridge in. This radio came with the refrigerator purpose. I wonder if the companion model is available at the refrigerator museum. (There are a few of those, surprisingly.)

The Motorola 53H came in several colors when you ordered it in 1953. Someone in your family had this radio. They were the most boring person in your family. But the rockabilly sounded great:

The Airline 84 BR 1508, just about as beautiful as the genre could get. It has six buttons, so you could set up six pre-set stations across the manual dial. “No more fighting with sis!” the ads might have said. This radio was so important they made postcards about it:

OK, two from the wooden cabinets. Because this one is a globe: The Colonial “New World” picked up only the AM band and had a top vent for the five-tube configuration. This was in catalogs in 1933. Someone listed to Franklin Roosevelt for the first time on this radio:

This Superflex, this very model, was made in Birmingham at Radio Products Corporation in 1927. The engraving on the front panel, which doesn’t really come across in this one shot, is admirable. This Superflex is thought to be the only surviving example.

It was built right here:

Oh, that Crosley Bullseye? The sexy, red picture above? You can buy one of those on ebay for $1,840.

photo / Samford / site / Wednesday — Comments Off
17
Oct 12

“Would you mind if I take your picture?”

Woke up early. Went to sleep late. That probably explains the dozing off I did this evening.

But I had a nice workout this morning, moved some weight around, turned muscles this way and that. Rode the stationery bike for an hour or so to get a good sweat. I’m ready to ride my bike on roads again. I’m still trying to wait out my shoulder, though. This, he said for the 13th week in a row, is getting old.

Had a meeting with the boss. Did some work on our scholarship program. Had lunch. Critiqued two newspapers and challenged the editorial staff to make their work even bigger and better. Gave an interview to a freshman.

Ran around campus and took pictures. I wanted to take some shots to demonstrate what not to do. This is surprisingly easy for photographers like me. So here are a few of those. But look! The back of her head is in focus!

Ms. Debbie keeps our department running smoothly. She’s such a sweet lady. And now she’s pretending to do work with some of our students. The young lady you can’t say was a section editor at the Crimson last year. Her friend there is a student and a model. You should see the shots where he is mugging for the camera.

Too wide. Far too wide. No information, but it has some motion into the background!

Frisbee is a big part of the quad culture, so show it differently, I’ll say. I asked this guy and his friend if I could take a few shots. “We’re not very good,” they said. “Fine, I’ll just crouch in between you. Buzz me.”

You have to suffer for your art. Also, fill the frame. Motion, action, showing the face. No rule of thirds, though:

I can’t count all the things I did wrong with this picture. Now I have to point them out to my students:

Dogs! On campus! This can be exciting and cute. But not if you compose the shot like this:

Unusual and creative and illustrative compositions make for better photography. Dogs learn the world through their noses, so this one is slightly better:

I took that picture five years ago, in a different state. Looks like the same pooch, though.

So I walked all over campus looking for things to do right and wrong to show in class next week. Now I’m type the rest of the night away. Some kind of life I’m lucky to live.

journalism / links / Samford / things to read / Tuesday / Tumblr / Twitter — Comments Off
16
Oct 12

Tuesdays go so fast

An overcast, almost cool day. No wonder I saw cider at the store. We’re not there yet, but soon, I’m sure.

Saw this guy on the road this morning. Always nice to see them moving sedately down the interstate:

Saw this guy on a support column this evening. Always nice to see them wait for me to get the best shot I can, which is to say a blurry, fuzzy, nighttime snapshot off my iPhone:

In between I taught a class, arranged a big meeting with several publishers for next week, helped a student with a story, talked cutlines and all of the other rewarding things that go into a Tuesday. Life is pretty good, indeed.

Some things from the other blog:

A tweet to start your day

Preventing plagiarism

Looking for a new venue? Tumblr on over

What’s wrong with this video?

Clery Act data

More on Twitter, and something new on Tumblr tomorrow.

Auburn / journalism / links / Monday / Samford / things to read — Comments Off
15
Oct 12

“You are pretty strong … for a professor”

I spent a few moments loading up a queue with posts for my Samford blog. Here are two I wrote today, a morning tweet, which I think might become a new feature. There’s also a little post about reverse publishing.

Here are a few more things I wrote, last week, that I neglected to cross-post here:

The business of the business

Digital first, the only way?

On the big switch in local media

Also, I noticed that the particular them I’m using there allows for rotating banners. (Apparently I like them, no?) So I’m loading up on campus shots, which is probably the best part of that blog.

Spent some time in the library today. Spent some time writing letters.

I visited city hall. I learned that while there is the old saying “You can’t fight city hall” you can write a check there.

I had to visit the City Revenue Office, which looks more like a hospital’s information desk. There was a nice lady there who took my check. I needed little tags that would signal the garbage crew to pick up my dead appliances. Stick them on, roll the old washer and dryer out to the curb and, come morning, they’ll all be gone.

That doesn’t even give you time to be sentimental about it. “I had you, washer and dryer, for about 10 years, four homes and countless loads of laundry. Just think of all the dates you helped me get! I’m going to … I promised myself I wouldn’t … sniff … ” So it is good that the system moves so fast; that would just be silly.

So while I’m working on a small project for a guy this evening The Yankee says “Someone is taking our stuff.”

I walk outside and meet Mr. Lauderdale, one of our elderly neighbors who talks fast and thinks big. He’s a retired engineer, worked for AT&T for more than three decades and about half as many corporate names. One of his friendly spies in the neighborhood saw the old appliances and gave him a call. He drove his pickup down the road and there he was, trying to get this stuff in the bed by himself.

So I helped him. Turns out his son is an attorney, his daughter-in-law is a professor of some sort. I told him I was a professor too. And he said “You are pretty strong … for a professor.”

I was moving things one-handed, bad shoulder and all that.

Nice guy. He gave me tips for how to fix some things. Told me precisely what it would cost. Told me how much a telephone pole costs. Gave me a brief history of a river in northwest Alabama. Let me go back inside just in time for dinner.

And now I’ll copyedit a journal article into the early morning hours. Living the dream.