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photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
23
Sep 20

Hey wait a minute

More and more of these signs are popping up around here. Which, I suppose, makes sense as the big date grows closer. Yard signs are all about name recognition so, obviously, people running this would want you to have them top-of-mind.

And, yet …

That seems like that might not be legal.

Have some television. These were shows the news team produced last night. There’s a nice little feature interview in this one:

Breaking news, weather and sports … really, if we had traffic and could do some side-by-side banter it’d be a complete show.

The news team has two episodes under their belts, now, and things are going pretty well. I look forward to seeing how they challenge themselves now that they’re back in their groove.

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
22
Sep 20

‘Technically perfect’

Here are a few more Saturday photos, because Saturday was technically perfect. Also, because they are memories and good photos and sometimes bad photos and sometimes those bad photos are the best memories. The best memories for me, anyway, he told himself, because that little blur is evocative of how memories can get sometime.

Not that Saturday is blurry, but one day it will be. Well, not last Saturday, because it was wonderful and unique and technically perfect. But, in general, some memories turn out a bit like this around the edges:

Cell phones are useful like that. They fit in my jersey pocket and you can take a picture riding down the road with the flick of a finger and the squeeze of a thumb, all while you carefully watch the area in front of you. But they don’t give you the best picture all of the time. I can’t imagine, of course, doing all the things required to get that picture — blurry or clear! — with a DSLR. So it’s useful, much like a bokeh lens. Inferior quality glass became art after it moved from Eastern Europe to the west.

I have a bokeh lens. I should break that out soon. So watch for those.

They teach you, in photography class, about how lines are good. They direct the eye. They mark action and movement. And, of course, I like repetition in photos. (I don’t know if anyone else has noticed that, but I picked up on it some years ago. I’m bemused that I only really see it in the finished photos, but I’m not nearly so aware of my tastes for that when I’m composing the picture.)

So, anyway, here are some lines in a photo, directing the eye, implying movement, in this case, we’re going deeper into the photo. In my case, I was, on my bicycle.

I took a selfie. Because they’ll also tell you, in photography class, that things like signs are boring. But if there’s some activity, some person or people, that helps.

If it’s a tunnel, it’s photographically perfect. OK, it’s not photographically perfect. I wasn’t thinking about the Fibonacci spiral, which you might also learn about in a photography class, when I took that picture. So there’s that. Without thinking about it, I technically filled the negative space, which is technically imperfect. Which is, technically, perfect.

cycling / Monday / photo / podcast — Comments Off
14
Sep 20

Interviewing my wife

We had a nice bike ride over the weekend. I took it easy, nursing an old guy’s bike. (I have come to appreciate the wisdom of listening to my some of my aches and a few of my pains.)

The Yankee did hill repeats:

I did sprint repeats. She might have still been faster, though.

If you go down this hill, all the way down it, you can make it to the lake. And then you’ll wonder if you should regret that decision because theres only the one way back up and you’re on a bicycle. The bottom of the ascent starts out at 12-14 degrees, but averages out for a nice 4-degree climb.

We saw some nice roadside flowers, too.

Also, I interviewed her Friday. When you have a distinguished and renowned sports media scholar who has a home office just around the corner from your own, you book the interview. The premise is “We had the usual amount of sports, and then no sports, and now we have every sport imaginable!”

On Topic with IU · On Topic with IU — Talking about the return of sports with Dr. Lauren Smith

For the record, it was no easier to get her booked, but it was more fun talk to her and easier to edit. Which balanced out the difficulty of trying to write questions about things she talks about all the time. This is an issue for all of these experts: Come, please, talk about your understanding of your life’s work in a basic way. The difference being I’ve heard her talk about it for years, and, with these other people, I send them a cold call email, interview them, thank them for their time and later send them an email link.

If I got one wrong here, or, worse, left one out …

Every now and then I try to encourage her to do any number of shows of her own. One day I’ll find the right idea. Then I’ll get to edit some more of that brilliance.

IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
10
Sep 20

Just a teevee thing

Back in the studio this evening. The sports gang had another two shows to shoot. The highlight show is a little thin just now, IU sports aren’t back yet, but any day now it would seem. The talk show is operating at 100 percent, however. This is how it will look when it is released later this week:

Haley is telling the guys how it is at the beginning of the NFL season. She’s taking Kansas City to repeat. She and Jevan are filling the role of football beat reporters this year. They’re going to do a great job if they get the chance. It’s an open question if Big Ten football will start (it will) when it begins (next month sometime) and how the media will get to work (total mystery).

Jevan is the one on the right. Drew is the host of this show. This is his second year running The Toss Up. Last year there were four chairs on that set. The three-chair arrangement is a concession to social distancing, but I think it is going to wind up creating more interesting camera shots. Drew already thinks it might be better in terms of working in his guests.

Drew came to IUSTV three or four years ago. He learned how the audio booth worked and locked down the A1 role. One night he showed up in a coat and tie, monologue in hand. We had some extra time and he delivered his script. Over time, he used those occasional spare minutes to improve his writing and his presentation.

He got stronger and stronger and those bits became social media extras and then regular features. Two years ago we graduated the last absolute star. (He’s working on the Gulf Coast these days, making me jealous all of the time.) And that meant auditions. Drew got the job and, today, he’s hosting this show, learning about producing and is a co-sports director.

Haley has been an almost-natural from day one, and she’s creating mountains of great clips for her reel. Jevan started out enthusiastic and a little nervous, but each time he’s on camera, you can see him growing more and more comfortable every time the lights come on.

My favorite thing about student media is that it’s so experiential, which is absolutely critical for students studying this stuff. The most important part of it is how easy it is to take advantage of the opportunity. The neatest part is watching students do it.

IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
8
Sep 20

Cluck cluck, tree, cluck cluck

Maples. Rubbing it in. “We’re going away!” Right in front of me, literally, the tree under which I parked today.

Which is the real story here. I went into the office a bit late today because I knew I’d be on campus until about 7:30 — which wound up being actually 8 or so. And even despite rolling onto campus in the middle of the day I parked right next to the building.

You can’t legally park any closer to our building than I did today, just before noon. That’s how many people aren’t on campus right now.

Our building has classes, but only the smaller ones. Anything over 50 students is automatically online. Faculty were able to decided, in a dizzying and disjointed system, whether they would teach in-person or online. One week, faculty could decide. The next, they couldn’t. It was all a part of a summer spent finding our sea legs. There was also a hybridized model, with rotating students on various days of the week and that seemed like it would have too many moving parts for anyone to keep straight. Ultimately, though, whatever got decided at an individual level, or got decided for them from above, has led to a quiet building so far.

With most classes apparently taking place on line, that means few students and very, very few faculty in the building. About 90 percent of the staff is working from home. And that means that, because I have to go in, I can get a parking spot right up front.

Just means I didn’t have to walk too far to my car at the end of the evening after a practice session in the television studio.

Except, after watching some practice shows get produced in anticipation of next week’s season premier episodes from the new news team, I walked to the parking deck. I hadn’t parked in the deck, but right beside that maple tree. It took me a block to realize it, and a block to walk back.

Which, for a Tuesday, isn’t the worst setback.

I’m more disappointed in the maple tree. If you see me out there sometime later this week, staring it down with a look of disappointment on my face, you’ll know why.