Blogging Photography, Journalism, and Harry Quin

Early on in my coursework as a journalism minor, I learned 2 powerful lessons.

The first dealt with writing the lead of any good story.

The key facts, the important information, are all front loaded so that it sort of tumbles out and reaches a calm end.

This makes for one of those impressive run-on sentences that tells you the whole story- right up front.

Some would say the purpose for this is to accurately inform the reader as quickly as you can because chances are, they are not going to read to the end.

What a shame.

(Please keep reading!)

In any event, I love writing leads.

They are what I like to call dice throwing sentences.

The second journalistic experience I had that was life changing was Harry Quin’s photography class, my senior year in college.

Mr. Quinn required us to complete a photo essay for our semester project, and we had to develop our own film, from a 35mm camera, in a darkroom.

I was terrified and exhilarated all at the same time.

There was something so down to earth, so demanding and exacting about Harry Quin, I didn’t want to disappoint him.

It occurs to me as I write this that his personality modeled what is the best of journalism-

the down to earth-the demand for high standards-and the unadorned.

Several years later I realized the magical mystery tour God had me on when I visited a church that would later become my church home, and lo and behold, there was Harry Quin and his wife Betsy.

In describing them, Pillars of the Church does not suffice.

Pillars of the Earth does.

And so , back to my current world of photography and blogging.

The photo above ( that you saw earlier this past week) is the top of this.

This ability, regardless of how simplistic, is so much fun for me.

I have a Canon Xsi and 3 lenses:

Canon 18-55 mm lens

(the stock lens that came with the camera)

Canon 55-250 mm lens

(that I purchased during my nephew’s basketball season- I should have purchased Scott Kelby’s book on photography first, and I would have realized my folly in trying to shoot live sports shots in a gym- I did however learn one important tip-

if you know where the athlete is headed- ie. the basket- aim there and wait)

and a

Sigma 17-70 mm lens

(that Kat from Low Tide High Style recommended to me)

I would also like to recommend the following as something new bloggers might want to try.

You DO NOT have to have a huge camera.

Just post larger sizes of your photos and

crop.

Larger photos make the viewing experience so much easier for the reading glasses ‘set’.

I use Windows Live Writer instead of Blogger,

and I use Picasa as my photo editing program.

All of these are free.

I never use flash, and I get as close as I can.

Every blogger handles their photos differently.

Right now my focus is on clean, accurate photos,sharp images (nowhere near tack sharp yet),

and clear color- all without too much editing or accessorizing.

It’s a blast!

Oh- and I ask other

blogger/photographers a lot of questions.