Final team photo story on Wood Lane Industries

Our photojournalism class did our final team photo story on Wood Lane Industries in Bowling Green Ohio. People with developmental disabilities are given job opportunities, and they reside there as well. Overall, I feel that this photo story gave me a chance to experience real life job scenario of a photojournalist.

The process and challenges behind a photo story

Bill Fox, 62, makes a sandwich at his place of residence Wood Lane. (PHO245 photos by Parth Pitroda)

Elaine Johnston, 69, does the laundry. (PHO245 photos by Parth Pitroda)

Elaine Johnston bowls with an iPad.

   Photo stories can be tough to photograph and document. This is true because there are several things that you have to take into account beforehand. To tell a story you must present a substantial amount of images while making sure they have some sort of continuity to them. Furthermore, it’s important to cover the necessary information in the caption such as who, what, when, where, why, and how.

   Documenting the scene on site is a tricky process. Preparing for reporting is also helpful. Sometimes improvising is necessary once at the scene. The first step you should take upon arriving at a destination is to introduce yourself to the main person in charge. Then, kindly ask them to sit in a quiet place so you can document them using an audio recorder for live coverage. This whole process was overwhelming to me at first.

   I prepared for this photo story by looking at the organization’s website and doing some research. This gave me a general idea of what to expect at Wood Lane, an organization that helps people with disabilities, which was the focus of my story. Shooting some of the tenants while they were in action was difficult to do. The lighting conditions inside one of the homes limited my camera controls. Small room sizes also narrowed the amount of angles which were available to use for the camera. This was challenging for me, but proved to be a good learning experience. After the Wood Lane photo shoot was over, nervousness broke onto me, it went too fast. Overall, I feel this photo story assignment has given me good photojournalism experience. Although it was nothing like anything I had worked with before, I was able to learn a lot and am eager to continue learning through experiences like this.

The art and rules used in sports photography

Owens' Paige Wright drives to the basket in front of Mercyhurst's Aeriyelle Perrin during the Owens Express Tip Off Classic at Owens Community College. (PHO245   photos by Parth Pitroda)

   Sports photography is an art not everyone can do. It requires lot of patience and practice. When covering sports, you need to await the right moment to fire the camera, otherwise a live action shot could be missed. It is also important to know the rules and scoring method of the sport you are photographing, so you can catch the busy most crucial moments in that particular sport.     

   My experience photographing sports is nominal. Although there is a lot that can be learned in sports photography I found no interest in it. The highest useable ISO was 1600 which limited shutter speed to a maximum of 1/250sec. For this reason sports is harder than I expected it to be. There are many challenges which I faced, one of which includes focusing the camera on a fast moving subject.  Another is finding an interesting yet appropriate vantage point like capturing the coaches at a unique angle and getting a decent feature fan shot which still showed all the important content.  Nothing was enjoyable in this assignment because, I was not familiar with it. Overall, I feel sports photography is horrifying but it was a wonderful learning experience.

Fans watch the game.

Owens Women's Basketball Coach, Michael Llanas (10th year). No. 9 Owens Community College Express Owens Express Tip Off Classic Women's Basketball. 

  

The unique qualities of portrait photography and my experiences with it as a photojournalist

   Aj Coulson, auto tech, Sylvania OH, 21, hands out tools to all the automotive and

   cat students in the transportation technologies because classes need tools to work on

   equipment in the Transportation Technology Building at Owens Community College.

    

    Portrait photography, defined by the technique required and type of environment used, is best when you are in control of the light that is falling on your subject. It is important to be relatively quick and efficient when shooting portraits. People tend to lose patience if you take your time adjusting your camera controls. A good portrait photographer will get his light equipment, camera gear, set up well before it is time to photograph the subject.

   Most people think of portrait photography as a studio type atmosphere. The photographer would shoot indoors and use external lighting to illuminate the person being photographed. Backgrounds of different styles are used by the photographer for aesthetic appeal. Studio photographers have the public come to them to be photographed.

   Photojournalists also shoot portraits along with their news photography. Unlike portraits taken in the studio, a photojournalist shoots environmental portraiture. The people stay in their natural habitat while being photographed. The environment is used as a prop that relates to the person. Environmental portraits can be shot candid as well as posed as opposed to studio pictures which are generally posed.

Aj Coulson, photos by Parth Pitroda

   I found shooting portraits quite interesting and fun, however it was different than expected. My perception of portraiture was to go find someone interesting and just photograph them. Instead, I found myself constantly moving to get the correct lighting to fall on my subject. Once that was achieved, I could then take the shot. Capturing portraits was definitely harder than I expected. Photographing people is getting easier for me but there are a few spots in which I could improve. For example, the composition of the head shot was most challenging to me. Overall, I feel photographing portraits is fun and exhilarating.

Getting to know feature photography

John Deere technician students remove a CCS seed hose on a tractor.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by Parth Pitroda 

 Feature photography is fun and tricky at the same time. Feature photography is the lighter, more entertaining side of news.

    Photographing features can be fun because you get to meet new people doing odd and out of the ordinary things. 
   The kind of thing you may find in feature photography is people doing interesting activities that are of human interest. Some of these activities, for example, could be a man running with one fake,  metal leg; a blind person dancing on the stage; a dare devil jumping off a cliff. The more the photographer looks around, the more feature photography he or she may find.

Auto body tech student Chandler Boyer feels for Imperfections on a car panel.

  Feature photography can also be tricky. The trickiness occurs when looking for it. The photojournalist has to be alert while shooting an assignment, and even after, because you never know when there is a feature photography opportunity. Features also give the photojournalist a change from plain old hard news.

   Hunting for feature photography has been quite a journey for me.  I had to deal with poor indoor lighting. Camera controls were limited because of the lighting situation, which meant shallow depth of field and a slower shutter speed. 
   The search for feature finding was harder than I expected because the School of Technology, which was my beat had very little going on this week. I had to go there spend all day waiting for something interesting to photograph. Photographing people has always been a challenge for me as opposed to tangible objects and still is so no, I am not getting used to people photography.     Composing the photographs in a tight spot with very little room to move around is what was challenging in this assignment. The type of lens I was using also limited my widest aperture to f3.5, with only an 18mm lens being widest which challenged my camera skills. I feel that feature photography is fun and can be challenging in some ways.

Design, composition and camera settings

Lata Sangtani, 2nd from right, serves at the Hindu Temple of Toledo in Sylvania, Ohio. (PHO245 photos by Parth Pitroda)

Sherry Clark reads a magazine

   The most important thing I learned from this assignment are the design elements form the NewsU tutorial. 
   The elements were the rule of thirds, different perspectives, and Sense of Place. The Sense of Place element was the most interesting and new to me. There were some other ones that were confusing. The Emotion Element, Mood, Surprise were all confusing elements.

   Image composition was old news to me. Practicing the rule of thirds is routine to me. There is one new composition technique, juxtaposition which was quite interesting. This composition style demonstrates togetherness in an image guiding the viewer to the subject.  

Ric Wolkins paints a pottery building.

    Most of the camera operations are quite fond of me. Camera settings can be confusing to some photographers at first. The reason they can be confusing is when the ISO is maxed out, the photographer has to compensate using either f-stop or shutter speed. The photographer then needs to give up depth or use a slow shutter speed this is when it gets tricky. A sports scene for example would be hard to use slow shutter speed because, slow shutter speed blur action. I can name many camera settings that come into play to make proper reciprocity but to name a few are: white balance (color balance), aperture (depth), shutter speed (motion). I feel that this assignment motivated me to be better at using my camera to make outstanding yet strong in design photographs.

How to be an efficient caption writer for PJ

    Captions are important to mount with you picture in photojournalism because, they identify and explain facts that aren’t perceived by the audience viewing them. The captions are needed to let people know of the missing elements in a photo. These are some thing that I  learned:

• Caption shouldn’t exceed more than two sentences 
• The importance of having the peoples’ names in the photo going from left to right and also letting your readers know that is in your captions  
• What is going on in the picture or the action
• Never  include past and present tenses in a caption otherwise the reader will get confused

   The AP Stylebook is a guide used by amateur and pro photojournalists to ensure correct grammar is acquired in their writing and style.   I feel  more confident about writing and getting the proper information for my captions after doing this assignment from the AP Stylebook.