Aaron Paul Vogel

Better Writing Through Radio Pt. I This is a very interesting article that has some terrific technique tips that apply not only to radio reporters but reporters in general. Her first four points are speaking to me particularly loudly right now. They are, in brief:

• Over-report
• Save your emails
• Save earlier drafts / make an "OUTS" page
• Make lists

"I always reach a point, in reporting a story, where I feel like I'm finished. I feel this finished-ness very strongly, and it makes me want to stop interviewing immediately and go home."

"Don't worry about it. Thinks always seem to work out for you anyway." That's what I heard from two people in the last 24 hours when I groaned about how poorly my stories were developing and how I haven't been able to get anything shot for one reason or another. At first I was indignant about my friends' lack of sympathy for my troubles, but in the end they were proven right: everything worked out. First, the troubles:

To begin with I've been on-again off-again with the first story I had proposed for my "Person Who Makes a Difference in the Community" assignment. Then I've been having serious trouble (see My Weakness) finding a good story for "Person of Journalistic Interest" - our final project. On top of that I found out that my "PWMD", Tim Goodrich, who I'm now on-again with shooting, was going to a boots display this Saturday - the day that I had promised the guy I shoot youth soccer tournaments for I would work on. That presented me with a moral dilemma because the guy is pretty much a jerk and I don't know if I'll be working for him much longer, and the boots display pictures would be great for my story. What to do.That last one was stressing me out the most. So much so that I ended up going to school to talk to my teacher and advisor for NPPA, Greg Cooper. In the end he told me to flip a coin because either way I came out behind.

That said let me tell you how things worked out. To start off the on-again off-again story is now for sure on, and I think it's going to be great. That made me happy this morning. Then I had some success getting out and getting a few errands done. I updated a few things on the NPPA website and added to some of the questions I'd thought up for our upcoming multimedia roundtable. Then the job/school conundrum reared it's head and I headed for school to talk to Greg. Well, after speaking with Greg I was ready to tell my boss that I felt really bad about it, but I simply couldn't pass up the opportunity to get this photo that would mean the difference between an A and a B. A thought occurred to me though, "maybe I should double check that there are no other protests for me to get the shot I need." Well it's a good thing I called! Tim told me that he was just informed the protest was rescheduled to another date. So there isn't going to be a chance for me to get that protest picture, but that means I get to keep my job, work this weekend and get some dough! That pretty much put me over the edge and I was a little giddy for about 2 hours.

I was on my way down to Santa Monica to try shooting some "Coastal Living" (my current flop of an assignment) on the pier there. They have a small amusement park there and I thought that might make some good pictures that I could make fit a "Coastal Living" theme. That didn't happen. It's Wednesday, so no one was out at the park. I did however get to see a crane truck that had tipped over on the pier that morning. Apparently they're doing some restoration on the pier and the truck was unloading some wood when it passed it tip point and... tipped. It had taken all day for a larger crane to get there so they were just preparing the rescue effort as I got there. The pier shots were a bust, but I got one or two good spot news shots, so it wasn't a total waste of gas. On top of that there was a very helpful public relations person from the pier there and she gave me some good information about characters that worked at the pier; information I'll probably use for future stories, perhaps even my "Journalistically Interesting" assignment.

So in the end, things did in deed work out for me. I'm not sure why it is that they do. Maybe I'm just blessed with excellent timing and a bit luck. Maybe it's because I don't often stress about things, and even when I do I always try and think logically. Maybe it's because I never rush into action. I'm not sure. For now I'll just be happy with my new mantra:

Well, it seems that for the moment some suspisions of mine are true: GarageBand 3.0 will in fact record on multiple tracks at once. Unlike Soundtrack Pro, Audacity, or a number of other programs I've checked out in the last few months, the latest version of GarageBand allows for recording things like in-studio interviews so that each individual has a track. This negates the need for an expensive mixer and allows for audio adjustment on individuals rather than the track as a whole. This would be one of those REALLY annoying "gosh, it would have been nice to know that 2 months ago" or "yesterdays technology is obsolete today" situations for me since I just 2 months ago purchased Soundtrack Pro. Of course at the time I wasn't even thinking of multitrack recording, but even if I was I don't believe there were any hints about this from Apple about this feature. Now that I know more about what I need and want out of software and hardware I'm thanking heaven for student pricing. At $80 for the regular version and $60 for the student price, I think it might just be worth eating the $180 or so I paid for Soundtrack Pro - which still has some terrific waveform editing features that I'll probably utilize in the future, so it's not a total loss.

To add to that, they've incorporated a sweet feature that integrates with iChat and iSight to record audio or video chats. I smell a podcast coming on, don't you Joe?

Well I have to say that this is about the most excited I've been yet over something I've learned to do with multimedia. I'll start from the beginning. This evening I had a little IM chat with Joe Hollak, as we're doing more and more often now. Somehow the topic came around to a discovery that Joe had made regarding recording telephone conversations. He'd discovered a program called Skype which enables anyone on a computer to call anyone on any other phone - land line, or cell - or another computer user. This is all done over the internet for a ridiculously cheap price. For $10 you can buy about 9 hours worth of outgoing calling. For an additional fee you can add an in-bout number and voicemail which effectively eliminates the need for a regular phone. The per-minute charge is for a number of international locations and a slightly larger fee is assessed to anyone calling outside of the regular service area. This is all well and good, but I have a cell phone that I use for all my calling needs, and at this point I've gotten into thinking that a home phone is redundant.

I stumbled on this wonderful site done by the Magnum photo agency as I was looking through Slate.com's Today's Pictures section - which is another great find in it's own right. Today's Pictures is a daily set of images taken by Magnum photographers. In addition, new photo essays from Magnum In Motion are posted as well. Both sites are worth visiting, but if you're particularly interested in the interactive essays take a look at Magnum In Motion first. There's an incredible back log of work there. Also, take a look at the Previous Days drop down menu on the left-hand side of Today's Pictures Dec. 1st, 2005 and Dec. 2nd, 2005 kicked off the new section with some classic photographs from Magnum's history - the very first on Dec. 1st being my personal favorite by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Photo Stories / Essays

This is a new way I'm testing out for exhibiting my photo galleries. Since I'll most likely be closing my Livejournal blog and thus my extended galleries when my yearly subscription is up, I need to find a new way to show my work with a clean, simple interface. The pop-up you'll see was created with the help of SlideShowPro, a component made for Flash. It requires the latest version of the Flash plug-in for your browser, but I think it'll be worth it for you to download.

A few notes about the player:

• There are multiple galleries within the player. You can access the other galleries by clicking on the square icon in the lower right-hand corner.
• Captions slide down from the top, over the photograph, when you put your mouse over the image. Take the mouse off the image and the caption will go away.

Let me know what you think. I'm not yet decided on whether or not this is the best way to add my galleries to the blog, but it seems like it'll work well for my purposes. I'll probably be weighing the pros and cons of the other options I'm looking at in a later post. But for now I'm liking the SSP solution