Alleged Photographer Learns Valuable Lesson

When I set up my Twitter and Instagram accounts for the Teaching Multimedia class, I had the nerve to use the word photographer in my profile to describe myself.  Deluded would have been a more accurate term.  And now I have to describe what I’ve learned in only 500 words.  Impossible! 

I ventured out to Columbia’s Main Street on a bitterly cold (to a Southerner, anyway) Sunday morning to collect photos for this assignment, armed with camera and tripod and clutching in my gloved hand the list of ten tasks and the notes I’d taken from this class and the Teaching Photojournalism class last semester.

You see, even though I fancy myself a photographer and have my friends and family fooled into thinking I am (although I quickly and demurely add the word amateur when people say I’m a photographer), most of my photography successes can be attributed to dumb luck and the auto function on the camera.  I’ve always thought composition is my strength, but I have very poor technical skills.  Even after the photojournalism class, I told myself I’d experiment with what I’d learned over the holidays, but that didn’t happen with all of the other things to be done (mainly recuperating from school, cleaning house, and sipping eggnog).

So what have I learned this past week?  Not quite everything…but so much!

Finally the triumvirate of ISO, shutter speed, and aperture are starting to make better sense.  I started out consulting my notes (and I still glance back at them when needed), but now I have a better grasp of what to adjust and what those adjustments mean and can do.  At times, I began taking test shots at the extreme end of things: ISO 1600, shutter speed really fast, aperture wide open…or vice versa…then I would begin making adjustments: If the photo was too bright (in some cases, I got a 4x6 white block instead of an image), I knew to lower the ISO.  Or close down the aperture.  Or both if one or the other didn’t work.  It was like working through proofs in geometry class: If the photo is too dark, then I need to dial up the ISO.  If, then.  If, then.  Dial up.  Dial down.  How professional I now sound in my interior monologues!     

I also watched a Lynda lesson that included instructions on how to make light trails from moving light sources, such as car headlights.  I was able to achieve this by slowing down the shutter speed.  This lesson also showed me an app called Slow Shutter, which I immediately downloaded.  It does the job, but I found I need an adapter to attach the iPhone to the tripod to keep it steady, so I ultimately got better results with the camera.

The biggest thing I learned is that I have a lot more to learn, and to do that, I need to keep practicing.  Just not on a windy, freezing street in the middle of February…

Know-it-all Makes Startling Educational Discovery

Not to be a know-it-all, but…

That’s a line only a true know-it-all would open with.

Heritage Classroom.  Massie Heritage Center.  Savannah, Georgia.  National Register of 

Historic Places (April 13, 1977).  Photographed by Stephen Milligan (September 26, 
2015).

Not to be a know-it-all, but the first module for the Teaching Multimedia course was pretty much a review for me.  I’ve been advising my school’s newspaper since 2003, so I know it all.

Protecting sources?  Know it.  Maintaining objectivity?  Know it.  Cutline?  Know it.

I thought this was a multimedia course, not an introduction to journalism!  I had visions of immersing myself in technology that would help me help my newspaper students class up our little online paper with interactive elements and slideshows and video—video taken by my Broadcast Journalism I class on our fancy new audio and video equipment (if we can ever cut the purchase order from the confines of district red tape).  And I would be able to use all of these new audio and video editing skills I had hoped to acquire in this course with the broadcasting students, too.  Our first broadcast would be so professional that people at school would think they had mistakenly tuned in to CNN, not WWJK News.       

So far, we’re learning journalism basics.  Easy.  This course must be for journalistic greenhorns, not a know-it-all like me! 

Then I got to Task 4: View these live links.

The very first link took me to a list entitled “Multimedia Tools.”  I was dazed as I examined the list—I’d only heard of a few of these resources (and that few includes Google Maps).  But weren’t these the very same resources I’d hoped to be exposed to during this course?

My smugness at being familiar with basic journalism concepts continued to fade as I delved into “Tutorial: Multimedia Storytelling: Learn the Secrets from Experts,” the next link.  This is where I learned how complex putting together a multimedia story package can be.  Shells and storyboards and fieldwork!  Oh, my!

But the kicker came when I investigated the “Best Online High School Newspapers” link.  What incredible journalism these high school students are engaging in!  The sites showcased here are so professional looking—with movement, photography, Twitter feeds, scrolling updates on sports scores…even live broadcasts.  But isn’t this, too, what I wanted to learn?  The tools and training to help my student staff build a snazzy journalism program—nay, a media empire—are before me in this course, the very course in which I had, only days before, thought I had known it all!

Now, I realize I am just one of the greenhorns.  This course is exactly what I need as a teacher to help my students bring our online newspaper to a higher level of quality, to start this broadcasting program off in an innovative fashion, to entice the introductory journalism students to continue in the program, and to engage our audience with newsworthy content delivered in a fresh, exciting way.

But before that happens, this know-it-all has a lot to learn.

From Blah to Blog

In the article “The creator of Godwin’s Law on the inevitability of online Nazi analogies and the ‘right to be forgotten,’” these lines leapt out at me:

“This is the first time in human history where individuals, in this number, have had the agency to be heard around the world on a really large scale…now, everyone is in the position of essentially being a publisher, an autobiographer, a poet” (2).

Underwood Standard Typewriter.  Margarita European Inn.  Evanston, Illinois.  
Photographed by Stephen Milligan (July 13, 2014).

I have to admit at the beginning of the Social Role of the Mass Media course, I was less than thrilled when I read the requirement that we would have to maintain a weekly blog.  I saw it as one more requirement.  And I’ve always been resistant to the idea of blogging. 

Who would really care to sit down and read my thoughts on any given topic at any given time?  Who am I?  A little nobody from South Carolina who isn’t qualified to offer an opinion on much of anything. 

Full Disclosure: I did once win a judging contest held by my cousin’s twin girls (then in elementary school) after their parents and I judged some of their artwork.  Or an impromptu performance.  Or something.  I can’t really remember, but they judged me the best judge of them…I know—I was confused, too, but I did win.  I even got a handmade certificate for my excellent judging abilities.

Anyway…I have friends and colleagues who blog.  One keeps a poetry blog.  One maintains a blog on her experiences as a teacher.  Another blogs about her fledgling wine-making adventures.  The teacher blogger has suggested that I start a blog as well, but I’ve always brushed her off.

Who has time for such pursuits?  In particular, who has time for such pursuits in the middle of the school year while taking a course and trying to keep up with the innumerable deadlines and demands of the journalism program, along with those of “normal” teachers and trying to keep up with all of the yard work and the housework, not the least of which is vacuuming up after two Persian cats?

Unless it’s required.

So I grudgingly wrote the first blog and set up the site, merely using the same hosting site the poetry blogger uses because I had his site bookmarked on the computer.  I customized the blog site with a theme and my own photos…I would never just use the defaults—how pedestrian!

Soon I began to look forward to the weekly blog because it gave me a chance to be creative, not creative for school but personally creative (or at least that’s the way I took the assignment).  I had been putting so much time into school and these classes and photography that I’d gotten away from writing for the past few years.  But now this blog gave me the chance to do a little writing—and get a grade for it!  The blog became a little treat amongst all of the serious work of analyzing the social role of the mass media.

So now I have the agency to be heard around the world…now, I am a publisher, an autobiographer, a poet.

I even have fantasies of maintaining this blog after the course ends—of my own free will!

Until I’m buried again…in the middle of the school year…under the next course…and the journalism deadlines…and the teaching duties…and the yard work…and the housework…and a mountain of cat hair…

Reference
Scola, Nancy.  "The creator of Godwin's Law on the inevitability of online Nazi analogies and the 'right to be forgotten.'"  Washington Post.  11     Aug.  2014.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/11/the-creator-of-godwins-law-on-the-inevitability-of-online-           nazi-analogies-and-the-right-to-be-forgotten/

All the News That’s Fit to Broadcast

This has been a pretty good week at school.  Miraculously I have had some time during my planning periods the past few weeks to get the Journalism Work Room and Dark Room (really a storage room since we don’t work with film photography) mostly straightened and cleaned up after months—nay, years—of neglect…including organizing the cabinets and drawers.  Now, as of this week, I have just a couple of drawers and four cabinets to work through before it’s done!  I’m not sure where all of this spare time is coming from, though.  Probably Monday I’ll walk in to an e-mail message reminding me the Japanese translation of War and Peace I should have been working on for the past month is due by 3:15.  Oops!

But that’s not the only good news on the school journalism front.  I also found out one of my best writers from Journalism I, whom I also taught in English I Honors a couple of years ago, will be on next year’s staff.  She skipped a year somehow (probably scheduling), but she’ll be back next year.  And this young lady has already engaged in a partnership with a local media outlet (which I totally forgot to mention in this week’s discussion board question about partnerships).  This past year, she has been an intern with the Columbia Star, a local, independent, weekly newspaper.  I’ll definitely be picking her brain to see if we can take further advantage of the door she’s already opened.

Detail.  Gymnasium wall.  W.J. Keenan High School.  Columbia, South Carolina.  2007.  
Photographed by Stephen Milligan (September 30, 2007).

But wait—there’s more!

Another current journalism student (second year) asked me this week what Journalism III Honors was—she said when she was called in by her counselor to make her schedule for next year, that’s the journalism class she was put into.

And, yes, I am at a school where teachers aren’t given their teaching schedules for the following year much in advance or even have much say in it.  Some years I’ve surmised my schedule based on students telling me they were going to be with me the next year for journalism or English.  But it’s better than it was—the first few years I was there, we received our teaching schedules in the mail along with our welcome-back letters.  In August.  With hardly any time to plan.

But I digress.  And this gets even better.

When I went in to see my principal for my final Goal-Based Evaluation conference for the year, he talked about building up the journalism program.  He pulled out a draft copy of the master schedule and told me there was room for another journalism course, which would being me up to three; in fact, he said I currently have only two English II sections, so this could mean I may…possibly…perhaps…conceivably…perchance have four journalism courses next year.  The most I’ve ever had is three, and that was only one year.

Then the other shoe dropped—he would really like to see a broadcasting component in place.

Beggars can’t be choosers, so I guess I’ll have to take that Kent State broadcasting elective after all.

But imagine what I can do with three or four journalism courses!  Imagine having the time to teach all of the concepts we’ve been learning about and produce the publications!

How exciting!  And how frightening!

Let’s just hope I’m not getting in over my head…      

Down the Photoshop Road

Included in this week’s readings for the Social Role of the Mass Media class was a piece called “Detecting the Truth in Photos,” which detailed the ever increasing ease with which one can manipulate photos.  Not only is Photoshop and its ilk widely available and periodically updated, providing more opportunity for image manipulation, but the rapid nature of social media posting makes the spread of such images more rampant and, I would say, so frequent that only the most dedicated among us has time to do the legwork to investigate whether an image has been altered.

And as a dedicated journalism teacher, I looked down on Photoshop use, even by my best friend Paul, who likes to add filters and effects to photos using the program.

Chicago, Illinois.  Looking northeast from the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower).  
Photographed by Stephen Milligan (June 14, 2012). 

I looked down on Photoshop, that is, until the summer of 2012.

That summer I found myself on an architectural pilgrimage to the Midwest to visit and photograph as many Frank Lloyd Wright properties as I could in Wisconsin.  The icing on the cake was the fact that the Wright Plus housewalk in Wright’s Oak Park, Illinois, neighborhood coincided with the first leg of my trip, so, of course, I took advantage of this opportunity!

Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with Photoshop.

When I returned to South Carolina and began pulling the photos off of the memory card to categorize and edit them, I was horrified to see an indistinct gray blob in the top left corner of the last several sets of photos.  Somehow, at the end of the Wisconsin portion of my trip and all the way through my second stop in Chicago (and, yes, there would have been a third stop in Chicago if there had been any way possible), some dust or debris had found its way into the camera and lodged itself on the lens, creating this blob on each photo.  And since I couldn’t see it in the viewfinder, I never even knew it was there. 

My immediate concern was getting the camera repaired before I took any other photos.  Unfortunately, there’s a dearth of camera stores these days, especially around here, so the best and closest one I could find was Biggs Camera in Charlotte, North Carolina, about an hour north of me.  This was in no way a hardship, though, because of the Cheesecake Factory in SouthPark Mall, just minutes from the camera store!

Of course, my next concern was what to do about the spot in the photos.  In some photos, the blob was indistinguishable, obscured by trees or dark colors or patterns, but all shots with sky or light colors at the top left were ruined.  Creative cropping only helped in a few cases.  I certainly couldn’t go back and recreate my trip (although I would have loved to), and I certainly couldn’t discard all of those photos of Frank Lloyd Wright properties, a few county courthouses, and that stunning Chicago skyline. 

So I broke down and bought Photoshop.

I can’t say I did it all perfectly, but I managed to get rid of that gray blob in each photo.  Was I manipulating reality?  Not really, I suppose, because the blob really wasn’t in the sky or on the building or floating above a daylily blossom.  And keep in mind, these photos were not being used to illustrate news—I justify this to myself by thinking of these as artistic photos rather than journalistic photos.

“Detecting the Truth in Photos” tells us the latest versions of Photoshop are so advanced that some changes are practically undetectable.

I needn’t worry about that—the work of my steady hand could be spotted all the way from Chicago…

Let There Be Light!

Citizen journalism.  We have come back around to this topic.  Or have we ever really left it?

Because of the pervasiveness of social media, the citizen journalist has been our bedfellow…our partner in crime…our conjoined twin practically since the beginning of this class.

Grant Wood Studio.  Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1890s).  Remodeled by Grant Wood (1920s).  
National Register of Historic Places (1982-1984).  Photographed by Stephen Milligan 
(July 6, 2013). 

Do y’all remember Gina?  Before she absconded from the class, carrying away her opinions on citizen journalism like a cat burglar in the night, she wrote a blog post for Week 2 entitled “A Case for a Well-Place Period: Citizen.  Journalist.”

Thankfully, Gina exited so rapidly (perhaps more like a smash and grab at a jewelry store than a cat burglar), she didn’t delete her blog, so I was able to look back at it after this week to see how I felt.

This was also the week I had a conversation with Bart at Eye Associates of Cayce, in which I came to a realization.

Now in Week 12, I’m presented with the paper “Can This Marriage Be Saved?  The Love-Hate Relationship between Traditional Media and Citizen Journalism.”

I have to admit I’m still torn on the topic, and while the lightbulb did come on, it’s still in the brightening stage—I’m working on adjusting the dimmer to a comfortable level of understanding and acceptance.

I’m afraid I have no choice—if I don’t get with the program, all of those citizen journalists on social media are going to overload the circuit, and I’m going to be knocked flat by the shock…and find myself with a perm to boot!

Reading the paper helped—in two ways. 

It felt good to have my opinion validated by some of the professional journalists who were interviewed, those who believe in the tradition of journalism as a profession with professional standards of conduct and procedures.

But it also was helpful for me to see other professional journalists who are embracing and working with the citizen journalists to help them be better and provide them guidance concerning professional standards.

This can only be a win-win situation, one that will ultimately benefit the audience: The professional journalists will gain the reach of the citizen journalists in the trenches, while the citizen journalists will profit from the expertise of the professional journalists.

The room just got a little brighter.

The Chicken or the Egg?

The reading this week in the Social Role of the Mass Media class included an article headlined “Cultural production of ignorance provides rich field for study.”

My mind immediately leapt to Facebook and how people use it to propagate such ignorance.

Field.  Boone County, Arkansas.  Photographed by Stephen Milligan (June 25, 2014).

A glance at recent activity on Facebook provides a sampling of the material people fertilize that field with to make it even richer:

“‘Fire of God’ Is Coming!—Warning Signs in America 2015”

“Christians Look to Torah Portion to Prove Solar Eclipse Is the ‘Shadow of God’”

“Obama Hasn’t Congratulated PM Netanyahu—but He Congratulated Erdogan, Sisi, Rouhani…and Putin!”

“Obama refuses to renew 40-year-oldemergency oil supply pact with Israel”

“Russian companies prepare employees fornuclear war”

How can people actually believe this stuff?

It didn’t take much time to find out more about the sites posting this material: one admits to publishing straight news along with conspiracy theory and prophesy; one claims to have neither a conservative or liberal perspective but a Biblical one; one promises to tell the truth about Israel and Judaism; one has a definite conservative republican slant (this one actually appears to be the most believable of the bunch); and one proclaims a Christian, conservative, orthodox worldview.   

How can people actually believe this stuff?  Oh, wait…I’ve already asked that question.  Trying to find any common sense here is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Now, there may be some kernel of truth hidden somewhere in these stories (it’s always good to start with a little truth for that realistic touch), but there’s an obvious pattern to their subject matter.  Of course, I admit I knew exactly where to look for these stories—some Facebook friends share them with such frequency and in such quantity, it doesn’t take long to figure out their political or religious feelings. 

Interestingly, more than one of these websites proudly proclaims to be publishing the truth that the mainstream media doesn’t.  If only people would examine these stories and sites more carefully before posting—if your source publishes hard news and conspiracy theory, perhaps it’s not the most credible place for gathering information.  That’s a horse of a different color, though—one I’m afraid many people aren’t willing to ride.

Instead, they’re going to go for the pig in a poke: They’re going to read what they want to read, believe what they want to believe, and post what they want to post.  Journalism of Affirmation appears to have a hand in the cultural production of ignorance…or is it the other way around…?