Mario

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Photo Scavenger Hunt

We had to do a photo scavenger hunt for my photojournalism class.  Here’s what I came up with.

This is my entry for fashion faux pas. My wife makes Hayden wear this stupid hat when we go outdoors.

This is my entry for Mmmmm... yummy. Hayden loves cupcakes and is very serious for some reason.

Books: Isac does a little bit of reading.

Life in Spring is Beautiful

Hard Work

Power: Isac shows his muscles to his little brother.

Light: Playing with a flashlight under the blankets.

Too funny

Missouri State’s Public Affairs Conference

The latest assignment for my photojournalism class was to go to the Public Affairs Conference and take some pictures.  I went to the session titled “Globabl Assesment of Vulnerability to Climate Change” with the speaker Alex de Sherbinin, who is a senior research associate at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network. de Sherbinin’s session was about different variables that make certain areas of the world more vulnerable to problems that arise from climate change.  He spoke about many interesting things including the links between poverty, war, and draught.  He also had some pretty scary slides that portrayed the effects of the sea level rising just 3 or 4 meters.  The world would lose 10% of its population.  The coasts of China and Vietnam would be a complete disaster as well as a bunch of island countries.  I wish that de Sherbinin had more time because he had to speed through a bunch of his later slides.  Anyway, here was my attempt at making an interesting photo assignment out of the event.

Alex de Sherbinin, a senior research associate at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, spoke Thursday about vulnerability to climate change at the 2009 Missouri State University Public Affairs Conference.

 

Zach Ebers takes notes for a class during the Global Assessment of Vulnerability to Climate Change session at the Public Affairs Conference.I think this was the hardest picture. I took a bunch of crowd pictures, but they all ended up looking like I was just taking big pictures of the crowd. I couldn't single out a moment.Alex de Sherbinin discussed the effects of climate change over the next century during his session on "global vurnablitlity" at the Public Affairs Conference.

Alex de Sherbinin discussed the effects of climate change over the next century during his session on "global vurnablitlity" at the Public Affairs Conference.

I really wanted to get a great shot out of this.  My idea was to geat a picture of the world in future disaster behind de Sherbinin.  Out of all the shots I took of different slides, I think this one was the best.  I would say its much better than just the profile picture even if the background isn’t very bright.

 

Alex de Sherbinin spoke at one of the many sessions at Missouri State's Public Affairs Conference.

 

I kept trying different angles to try and make the principles in this piece look more interesting.  I think this one works because I cropped it to where there is space to the corner of the picture.  It creates an invisible diagonal line.

Sports Pictures

I took a sort of different approach to the sports pictures assignment.  I decided to use some pictures from a youth rodeo we went to.  Every year the Long Lane Lion’s Club puts on two different youth rodeos, one in the Fall and one in the Spring.  I took some pictures of my son, Isac, getting involved in the Chicken Race.  Basically, they gather up a bunch of little kids in the middle of the arena and let a bunch of chickens loose.  If the kid catches a chicken they get to keep it.  It really doesn’t take much to entertain children.

Isac Lindsey finds his Doritos more interesting than the rodeo.

 

Children gather under the announcer's stand to get a peak at their soon to be prey.

After the chickens are let loose, the arena becomes a chaos of screaming children.

Isac Lindsey tries to find a chicken amongst a throng of other children.

Isac Lindsey stands in the middle of the arena disapointed for having not caught a chicken durring the event.

Technology and Media

In my media ethics class we were given a couple of chapters from the new edition of the book to review.  While I’m glad the book is being updated, our edition is several years old, I’m not glad that now my book is worth nothing when I take it back to the bookstore.  Lame.  Anyway, I found this chapter to be quite interesting, and kept thinking to myself that the ethics of media and technology could make for a whole book.  I’m about to go into an industry that has been drasticly changed by technology.  Is that good or bad?

A lot of people believe technology is bad.  We want to balk up against change.  People are creatures of habit and change scares the shit out us.  Last week at work, I was getting out of my car when this old man, who was leaving work, stopped me.  For some reason he liked the curves of the body of my beat up Ford Taurus, which is obvioulsy no speed demon.  He went on to talk about how cars weren’t like they used to be, weren’t as fast, had too much drag resistance, and so on.  From there the conversation took a weird turn.  First he moved on to carburetors and fuel injection.  Somehow by switching to fuel injection, the auto industry was making us dependant on gasoline.  Then the conversation turned to companies putting OnStar in all new cars.  The OnStar thing frightened the hell out of the man.  He thought it was the first step of many towards the road to a “1984″ world.  He said, and I quote, “It’s going to get to where a fella can’t even take a shit without being on camera.”  Now after that he went on to talk about movies like “Terminator” and how we just won’t listen to movies.  We keep playing with artificial intelligence and one day they will take over.  One day James Cameron will be sitting in his house one day shaking his head and sadly saying “I told you so…I told you so.”  That was definately a conversation that I was trying to get away from, but there was no real exit.  I sat there for 15 minutes while this man ranted about technology.  There are people like him that want to go all Emilio Esteves on technology, see embeded video, or there are people like me that say “When in Rome.”  Lets embrace technology.

In my opinion, technology is changing and we need to change with it.  If journalism doesn’t pick up the cue it will die.  Newspapers need to figure out a good way to advertise on the net so they can survive a time when readership is way down.  We need to teach people that blogs and websites aren’t always the best place to get your information.  All the time I hear people say, I read about so and so on the internet, so its true.  Journalism can serve as a sort of cyber watchdog with its old role evolving with technology.  We can provide a good place for information that people can trust on the internet and make the internet a little more worthwhile.  There is more than social networking and porn out there or at least there should be.

Telling a Story Through Pictures

 

Recently my wife and I have discovered a new hobby: geocaching.  Although geocaching is a worldwide activity, I’ve not found many people that know anything about it at all.  Basically, geocaching is a game played with a GPS device.  People post a description, coordinates, and clues on www.geocaching.com and from that you are supposed to find what they have hidden.  It is sort of like a treasure hunt but there are rarely any treasures.  When you find one of the hidden items, it can be anything from a film canister wrapped in camo tape to a huge ammo can, you sign a log inside saying you found it, and get the pride of solving the puzzle.  It is actually quite a fun activity and has given my family great motivation to visit many outdoor locals that we may not have ever found.  These pictures are taken on a trip that we took to St. Louis to go see Blue October at the Pagent.  We visited quite a few parks that I had never even heard of.  Some were from the Lumiere Sculpture Park, which I completely recommend, and the others are from Simpson Park.  The Sculpture Park was unlike any I had visited before.  There are giant abstract sculptures all over the place, really worth the trip.  Both of the parks are just on the outside of St Louis, and right off of I-44. 

Geocaching: hidden treasures around the world

Casi Massey searches for a geocache at Simpson Park outside of St. Louis.

 

Casi Massey checks the clues for the geocache she is searching for. There are many geocahces hidden in parks around the St. Louis area.

 

Casi Massey finds a microcache, which can be anything from a tiny magnetic holder to a camo tube, in the trunk of a tree.

 

 

After finding a geocache, Casi Massey signs the log. The point of geocaching is finding the object not in getting a prize.

 

 

 

 

Casi Massey finds a cache located at the edge of a soccer field. You could be passing geocaches everyday and not every know it.

Culture, Race, and Gender in the Mass Media

“Controversies in Media Ethics” offers up two sides to the issues of culture, race, and gender.  Gordon believes that mass media must make special efforts to deal with concerns about race, gender, culture, and ethnicity.  Kittross believes that no special efforts should be made.  To be honest I’m very torn on this issue.  I completely understand how important this issue in media is to society, but I’m not entirely sure how it can best be handled.

On one hand, you have the dangers of stereotypes.  Our society has shown over and over how horrible stereotypes are and what they can do to people.  America has used stereotypes to fuel bigotry and racism for years.  The point of stereotypes is to dehumanize and put down a group of people.  In fact if you check out American propoganda from World War II, you can see how we tried to make Japanese people look like monsters.  If you’re interested in the powerful use of stereotypes, I recommend the documentary Faces of the Enemy, you can order the movie at http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0174&s=faces%20of%20the%20enemy. 

On the other hand, I don’t want the media to be manipulated just for the sake of diversity.  If they do something wrong towards a group of people, I can see the outrage, but I don’t understand getting mad because your group is not repersented in a work.  This especially doesn’t work for me in the field of entertainment.  I don’t see any reason to change a story or character just to include more diverse people.  It makes me think that there is some executive somewhere reading scripts saying “Ummm lets make this character (insert group here).”  I think original works should be treated as such.  A writer wrote those characters for a reason.  I think by trying to make things diverse it takes away from the creative effort.  

There are some instances where I would differ from that opinion.  There are some works that are based on true events or history that show groups in a misrepresenative way.  One example is the recent film “21.”  The film, for those of you that haven’t seen it, is about a group of MIT students who run a card counting organization.  Though the book the movie is based on, “Bringing Down the House,” is riddled with false information, it does contain some facts.  The real group was made up of Asian-American students.  In the film there are only two Asian-Americans and they are just side characters to the plot.  I can see how this could cause some outrage.  There are plenty of great Asian actors.  It makes one think that the story was changed to appeal to a broader audience, i.e. white teens.  It takes away the Asian people and supplants them with a blonde bombshell, a white teen heart throb, and Kevin Spacey.  If you would like more information on the conflict check out an interview with the man the book and movie are based on (he has a different view than I)   http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/27/DDQEVM8MQ.DTL.