Day 40: Wednesday, August 3 | It’s all about your workflow.
(Margaret Distler | The Salt Lake Tribune) Midvale Elementary School students help turn the dirt at the groundbreaking at the site of their new school at 7852 S. Pioneer Street on Wednesday, August 3, 2011. The new 85,000 square foot school building is scheduled to open in fall 2012.
Today was fairly uneventful since I only had one assignment—photographing the groundbreaking ceremony of the new Midvale Elementary School at 9am. Since I dropped my camera off for repairs (it had trouble focusing), I am using Rick’s old Canon Mark II SLR. It’s a pretty sweet camera, but it’s a lot more complicated than mine is. Unfortunately, its battery is larger than the one my camera uses, so I had no means of charging the battery prior to the event. Thus, I had to try to squeeze as much of the battery as I could by waiting to photograph only when I thought a shot was really worth it. In this case, the big thing to photograph was the current Midvale Elementary students helping turn the dirt. Unsure of how my images were turning out, I just kept shooting, hoping that at least one would turn out.
Back in the newsroom when I was going through my photos with Jeremy, he pointed out that events like these are “pseudo-news” since they’re pretty much staged for the media. I was able to get a few usable shots, which was nice, but listening to him definitely made me realize that I should probably start looking for more opportunities to tell a compelling story through “Photojournalism” (note the capital P). While the groundbreaking was nice and everything, it’s only REALLY meaningful to those who were there. As a result, there’s not much for the photos to tell.
By the way, I was able to charge my battery in the newsroom—I’m back in business! Before leaving, I sat down and talked with Trent about how he manages all of his blogs and websites… he has a ton! (http://www.trenthead.com/, http://www.onestarloser.com/, http://utahphotojournalism.com/, http://www.tribblogs.com/tribphoto/ and a few others…) He stressed the importance of good workflow, but he also suggested a few tools like MarsEdit to make blogging easier and more efficient. While I’m not sure I’m going to pay $40 right now for the software, talking to him motivated me to get back on track a little more with this blog. I think my problem is that I write too much…
