Reflections on Photo and Video Projects

Because my struggle with both the photo and video projects was directly related, as are the perceived benefits of utilizing both media in a social-media-driven world, I decided to sum up my reflections about both projects together.

First of all, my challenge for these challenges was rooted in my equipment. I had an old phone. It worked, but not like I wanted it to. My increasing awareness of how much less quality was demonstrated in my photoaday shots of Bones submitted to the class photo blog as compared to some of my classmates’ was already indication enough that I needed an upgrade. Then the added responsibility of trying to shoot even decent video footage with that old phone made a phone upgrade a requirement. But allow me to now say that this phone upgrade was long overdue for more reasons than these assignments. (I feel like a new man armed with this new device. It has already made my life easier in so many ways.!)

PHOTO:

As I previously discussed in the Photoaday Challenge blog and pertaining to the photo assignment, the mere shortcomings of my phone weren’t the only hangup. There is only so much one can do creatively with a phone camera. But in this aspect, I am pretty proud of myself. I feel like I overcame the limited functionality of this basic type of camera and produced some creatively composed shots.

But I must say that trying to come up with ideas for photos that were pertaining to a blog about gay male stereotypes on television was no small hurdle.  I struggled with WHAT to even shoot for days.  I could think of gay-related image ideas, but how to tie them to television was tough.

 

In an attempt to find people or objects that might even be affiliated with homosexuality in general, I spent some time at the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center (MGLCC).  I snagged a decent photo or two during the two days I spent there, but more than that and as a sidebar, I gained some new friends and new affiliations within the Memphis gay community that I think will help me feel more at home here. (I even joined a softball league. lol)  But I still needed more photos for the assignment–and I was drawing blanks.

Because my photography attempt at the MGLCC didn’t really pan out where content for photos was concerned, I knew I needed to seek some further insight. Fortunately, I had made friends with University of Memphis staff photographer Rhonda Cosentino during my first visit to Memphis last summer. I turned to her for input, and her help was invaluable. She gets full credit for the concept of the two faceless men holding hands. (Thanks to Calvin Carter and Bret Weaver for posing for that shot!)  She also had some other great ideas that I would’ve needed some models for, but I just didn’t have the resources or the opportunities (or the willing participants) to pull those off. But I can say that her insight inspired me to come up with some other ideas of my own–namely, the image of the television remote control swaddled in a rainbow flag. That concept and the resultant image make me proud of my work.

I’m also proud of the personal headshot of myself wearing earrings. This was  gutsy move on my part, considering how I am perennially concerned about whom in the faceless internet audience might be seeing/reading imagery that I post.  But I felt the image and the message were poignant enough with this particular shot to make the risk worth it. I composed a total of 16 photos and successfully posted them to my own new Flickr page, highlighting my three favorites on my blog.

All in all, I feel like I overcame both content and equipment challenges to pull off the Photo Assignment and depicted some creative imagery that reflects the topic of my blog, who I am as a gay man, and awareness of human equality in general.

 VIDEO:

Composing a video relevant to my beat blog topic of gay male stereotypes on television was altogether a far more difficult endeavor.

My initial intent at how to compose this video was to draw on my professional experience as a television news reporter. It made sense to compose what would basically amount to a television news package, including interviews with members of the community including their opinions about the media’s treatment of gay men on television. With this in mind, I invested the two days at MGLCC, interviewing employees and volunteers for their opinions. I shot a good bit of B-roll footage at the center as well, trying to capture any images that may seem relevant to the topic.

That all might have been a good idea, except that literally almost none of the footage turned out at even decent quality on my old phone. Indeed, one of the most important segments of footage I shot turned out with NO audio AT ALL. (And I’m not altogether certain whether that was equipment or operator culpability.) Either way, when all was said and done after the two days’ excursion, I had no where near enough appropriate footage to compose a news package–and a volunteer who had grown weary of my presence and my needs.  And it’s probably just as well that I had to scrap the tv news package idea anyways. I had no idea where or how I was going to edit the package using 3-audio tracks.

So after some more hours of stress, I devised a simpler plan that would involve less complicated editing but with which I could still fall back on my old television news skills. Armed with my new phone, I decided to create a faux newscast ‘breaking the news’ of non-traditional gay male types appearing on television.

That seemed like a tremendous idea that might seem creatively related to my beat blog–until I had to actually make myself do it. I can’t lie. I had as much fear about whether any of my old anchor skills were still intact as I did about what I would do with any decent footage I shot in the process. It’s been 15 years since I sat on an anchor desk, after all. I wasn’t sure I still had it in me.

As it turned out, I not only discovered I could still ‘anchor’ a ‘newscast,’ but that I am actually better at it than I used to be. Perhaps it was from many years of live emceeing a nightly music show at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Station House, or perhaps it was out of general sense of having matured. Whatever the reason, not only did I find it easy to create the faux newscast, I had a blast doing it. All by myself, in the privacy of my home, I let myself be free on the field and to just explore my own capabilities. I’m pretty impressed with what I produced.  Never mind the two crazy characters I portrayed as a part of the newscast gave the actor inside a little opportunity to flourish as well.  After a number of costume changes and a little bit of memorization to be prepared to recite the script, I was able to shoot footage I was happy with in the course of only a couple of hours.

Then came the next dreadful step–tackling iMovie software for the first time ever.  But just as I fared with facing my fear of ‘anchoring’ again, I discovered that iMovie was far more user-friendly and easily navigable than I could’ve hoped.  After a few Google tutorials and some pure determination, I managed to produce the 3-minute ‘newscast’ of Gay News Now in less than five hours. Wow. I couldn’t believe it. And in spite of my concerns about some of the content, I couldn’t have been more proud of what I created.

For the final stages of the assignment, including uploading the video to YouTube and posting the video to my blog, I found no difficulty. I had never really attempted to upload or embed videos this way, so naturally I was concerned. But the endeavor came off without a hitch. (And my apologies once again for needing the video to be posted to Facebook by someone other than myself. Understanding is much obliged.)

As to insight I gained about using photographic and video tools within the social media realm, I gained plenty. Clearly, to produce quality is paramount. And the attempt to do so can be laden with challenges. This felt not unlike my experience when I worked as a television news reporter, as equipment and operator malfunction was common.  The incumbent responsibility, however, is to rise above any obstacles and strive to deliver quality product in a timely manner. I believe I managed to do just that and learned substantially about how to handle instances like the ones I dealt with in the future.

Further and more profoundly, it’s only the more obvious how utilizing photos and videos can amplify an online message and prompt further engagement in a noisy online world.  Internet consumers have myriad options online. Content producers must be cognizant, and create as much specialized programming and content in as many media forms and channels as possible in any attempt to prompt engagement in the online community.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo365-Day 67

#Bones is LOVING the weather in Memphis today–homework notwithstanding. #photoaday

Photo365-Day 66

#Bones is mad he wasn’t asked to participate in Burton’s video. 😉

Photo365-Day 65

With the professor who started it all. #Bones posin’ with educator of all things social media and instigator of the photoaday challenge, Dr. Carrie Brown. #photoaday

Photo365-Day 64

#Bones enjoys a research methods lecture from the eminent Dr. Rick Fischer

Photo365-Day 63

No, it was not PM. And still on campus. Gotta love grad school. #photoaday

Photo365-Day 62

#Bones made a new friend. And yes, he’s legal. Don’t judge. 😉

Photo365-Day 61

#Bones went hoodie shopping at campus bookstore.  On our budget, it’s a good thing we wear the same size. #photoaday

Weekly Reading Insights–Week 7

Assignment: Choose an article of interest (regarding location-based/geosocial services) to summarize as part of your journal blog reflections.

This week’s topic is as foreign yet as familiar to me as anything we’ve discussed so far.

The concept and functionality of geosocial services is probably one of the social media elements I am most familiar with.  I’ve long been a fan of ‘checking in’ on Facebook, to the point that many of my friends on there have a tendency to get a laugh out of it.  In my pre-grad school days and to some extent still now, I can be a pretty mobile guy when it comes to a night on the town or actually just in general daily routine. And unlike most (or maybe even ALL) of my Facebook counterparts, I have had a tendency to check in just about everywhere I go. This can result in three to five checkins in the three-or-four-hour course of a given evening. Because I guess many people on my friends list are a bit more sedentary and because the typical Facebook user has the site up on their computer for hours at a time, it’s easy to be distracted by that kind of activity on my part.  So I get the response “where is Barry gonna be in the next five minutes?” pretty often.

Alluding to what we discussed in class to some extent, I also like that social media (and checking in an as a record of activity) allow us to compose a veritable digital archive of our own history. It’s fun to look back and see where I was or what I was doing a year  or more ago, and the social media record makes that easy to do.  So in the personal aspect, location-based functionality has been a friend of mine.

Where geosocial functionality is foreign to me is in the realm of journalism. Quite honestly, when this consideration first presented itself, I couldn’t imagine how a reporter could capitalize on an app like Foursquare. Part of that confusion was because I wasn’t really familiar with that application, but further because it just didn’t configure how location-based technology and journalism could cohabitate. Obviously location matters when reporting news events, but because I didn’t have a command for how Foursquare even works, it just didn’t make sense.

Then I downloaded the app. Whoa.  This is like a match made in HEAVEN.  Now that I understand the features and benefits of an app like Foursquare, I can only guess how excited I would’ve been to have had this  kind of tool when I was a reporter.  “Going where the people are,” as Snow characterizes it, is a God-send for reporters. Gone are the days of my experience when a reporter might end up standing outside the Post Office for hours on end desperately trying to find someone willing to comment about a story on camera. Not only is the ‘man on the street’ more gregarious these days (probably largely because of social media), but he is also more easily located.  This is an easy function of crowd sourcing as well.

And the whole ‘tips‘ aspect tied in with geosocial services like Foursquare–now that’s cool.  I got a quick understanding about that with only my very first check-in (and my first visit) at Taziki’s after class last week, when I immediately read a tip from my colleague Elle Perry about what was good to eat there. Awesome.

But there are drawbacks.  A long-time user of the location-based “gay dating app” called Grindr, in many ways I’ve loved the capability to meet and talk to guys whom that app indicates are nearby. That has come in especially handy being new in Memphis.  And an article in the suggested list for summary indicates that app has made the move to Android in addition to iPhone-based access.  Growth is a good thing, because with any luck it indicates there are increasing numbers of other guys to talk to. 😉

Following a link on that article led me to another that had more compelling (and also somewhat disturbing) implications for location-based technology. Apparently Grindr has launched into the world of heterosexual interaction for its geosocial services.  As Nitasha Tiku writes, straight people can now enjoy the same convenience of meeting people via Grindr’s technology. This is not new, as other such location-based dating technologies exist. But what’s compelling in this particular article is how Tiku points out that the technology is particularly convenient for residents in dense metro areas like New York City, where there are actually too many people to meet.  This is opposite to my typical experience as a client of Grindr, where the opportunities to meet men in the areas I’ve typically lived in are too sparse and the app simply is a way of meeting someone at all.

But as Tiku points out, for some, the risk of exposure in heavily populated areas multiplies exponentially and negatively with this type of app.  It could be very likely to be looking at the profile of a person sitting right across from you on the subway.  Normally that might be okay–even a good thing.  But on the chance that the person owning that other profile is creepy or has underhanded intentions, this whole scenario just puts a face on the risk.  The antidote is as much as keeping your face off your profile, but eventually face pictures are swapped in online scenarios like these, so the risk pervades when someone can nearly pinpoint your exact location.

This article goes on to explain how Grindr’s new heterosexual version of its technology might best work as a type of Craigslist ‘missed connections’ function, where users can essentially more easily attempt to re-encounter someone they had previously seen in a public place when there might be no other means to try to reestablish that connection.  Craigslist for mobile users, as it were, I can see how useful that function would be, especially in very crowded urban areas where both chance and missed encounters are likely the frequent order of the day.

In either aspect, Grindr and other geosocial services like it that serve as interpersonal/dating sites have already shown tremendous success. In 2011 during the app’s pre-android existence, there were already 1.5 million male users via iOS and Blackberry  in 180 countries. Obviously there are a host of social media users who have already learned not to be afraid of location-based technology, which is largely due to everyday, more general-use apps like Foursquare.  The trend of comfortability with this type of self-exposure will likely only continue to grow.

 

Photo365-Day 60

Ahhhh…BLOOMS. #photoaday