hipsteria and the river

not a whole lot of documentary shooting going on lately. life has been full of programming, editing, papers, statistics, nietzsche, etc, etc... who would have thought that my last semester of college would be so busy?

anyhow, all that to say that when i shoot, its especially for me. sometimes i prefer nothing more than playing dress up with fellow photographers and having a fashion shoot in the woods. so on saturday, that's exactly what we did. luckily, roxanne, kate and zach are all fantastic models.






...zach does look a bit amish.



then sunday i did a shoot with "real" models at a place called hipsteria in downtown raleigh. clothes were provided by revolver, a consignment shop just up the street. oh so hipster. if you need a definition of hipster, watch this.

good clothes, good color, good light, good times. my camera got quite a few actuations this weekend.

favorites

pics so far: 

victor and rashim help hetal, goalie for india's first special olympics women's floor hockey team, suit up. 

smita waits for game time on the bleachers. 

little tiny afghan players versus big giant austrians. this is the story we worked on today, i'm super attached now. they are the sweetest kids in the world and i have to visit afghanistan now. they are the youngest delegation at the special olympics, as the youngest player is only 8. because of this, there are no other teams their age and they have to play adults. they play with so much spirit though. love them, and their coach abdul. 

coach abdul with the kids in the locker room (apparantly i wasn't supposed to be here and i got rudely ousted shortly after this. but not before i cried a little while taking these pictures). 

abdul with suliman. six months ago, suliman couldn't feed himself or go to the bathroom unassisted. now he is one of the most passionate players on the team, and had to be called out of the game today because he was so aggressive (playing incredible offense even though he was on defense). cried when i heard this story too. 

check out the site at live.specialolympics.org. lots of videos and pictures. i think i might still have the homepage picture up. 

love to all. 

special olympics live

do you need a passport to get to idaho? i don't think so, but it is so very far. 

last time i posted, it was from frigid washington d.c. now it's from surprisingly warm idaho. 

we're covering the special olympics winter world games, which start today and run through feb 13. we'll go back home on the 15. 

our group is broken into a few big teams, and then smaller teams within those. i'm on the documentary team, asia pacific. this includes countries like india, bangladesh, thailand, vietnam and the philippines, but also australia, new zealand, pakistan, and afghanistan (?). how afghanistan fits into asia pacific beats me.  also given the fact that there is just an ASIA team, but they are only covering china and we are covering everything else. 

we'll be finding interesting stories about athletes, families, coaches, rivalries, etc. one story is about a champion figure skater from new zealand who has a rivalry with an american figure skater and is also an eagle scout. not sure what else yet. 

we are contracted by media outlets around the world who didn't send news teams here. so not only are we producing for the special olympics organization, but also mainstream news outlets like al jazeera or cnn. 

i'm also helping to shoot the opening ceremonies, which is lots of dignitaries and celebrities (maria schriver, arnold schwarzenegger, kenny g, hootie & the blowfish, sarah palin, kristi yamaguchi, etc). i listed to kenny g over and over and over yesterday as he practiced his new piece written specially for the ceremonies at the dress rehearsal. his hair has never changed in the decades my dad has listened to him. ha. 

it's really beautiful here! hope to ski too!

inauguration eve

we're on the brink of something big.

could there be a cooler place to spend the night before barack obama takes office than the washington post newsroom? i think not.

pretty stoked, but i'ts 11:15 and we have to be at our locations (mine is on the mall, roughly in front of the natural museum of american history) by 4am. because of blockades, the walk will probably take 40 minutes.

so i'm looking at approximately 3 hours of sleep tonight.

but i'm excited.
honored.
thrilled.
humbled.
freakin out.

reject technology: shoot film

there is something deeply gratifying about dropping off film to a lab and having no idea what will come back. it's a total surprise.

i have always liked surprises. i was never the kid that wen poking around in closets or shaking boxes before christmas hoping to find out ahead of time what i was getting. i much prefer suspense. it's much more rewarding.

so sometimes i feel the same way about photography. yes, i am old enough to "remember" film... it's what i first learned on. 35mm, of course, but two years ago i began shooting medium format on a holga that i got for christmas (which was a surprise — surprise!).

it's an on again, off again kind of thing. because yes, digital really is a lot more economical. but if i'm going on a big trip or just want to cut loose and not be a journalist for a bit, i use film.

and so in thailand, i shot a fair amount with my holga. then in the fall i had the privilege of borrowing a rolleiflex, which is a beautiful old medium format camera.

anyhow, though scanning negatives is a slow and arduous process, here's one of a batch i finished scanning the other day. for more, click here.

make new friends, but keep the old

tonight i was reviewing some multimedia pieces that i worked on earlier this year — namely, the one from my final photo class, documentary photojournalism. i took it in the spring, and each student in the class had a semester-long story to work on. no other assignments, just focusing on going in-depth.

i was so looking forward to it... the time to spend on just one story, not a lot of mini-assignments and then cramming the last 2 weeks to get a good 8-10 picture package for my final story (as the other classes in the major were).

but it didn't quite work out that way. my story was on quinceaneras, the 15th birthday party that many latin cultures go all out for and throw a party bigger than most weddings i've attended. though it took me all semester to get contacts and i ended up doing the story in essentially 2 days, looking back on it, i realized how much fun it was and how much i learned in the process.

my photos were good. i'm really proud of them. i spent 17 hours straight photographing and shooting video on the day of one of the quinces. probably 11 hours for the other. and lord knows how many hours editing. it was the first project i learned video on, first project using finalcut pro, and while i think my video skills have improved tremendously since then, i miss taking photos. looking for that ONE moment that will tell that prism of that story better than all the other moments prior. observing, waiting, moving, composing as i go. video is a totally different workflow, and i think my brain has been operating in that mode ever since the summer. i've loved it, but tonight, i remembered that my first love is photography and that some stories need to be told in a series of still images, rather than a rapid succession of moving ones.

its like that old song that my mom used to sing to me:
"make new friends, but keep the old
one is silver and the other is gold"

cheesy, but applicable. video is silver — new, fun, in demand. photos are gold. they aren't going anywhere and they are what have given me the visual and mental tools for creating so many other things in life. becoming a photographer has changed the way i think, the way i see the world, the way i organize and plan, the way i speak. everything. so all of that has translated to video. gold indeed.

lifting the weight, but still getting my dose

while in thailand, a friend introduced me to vimeo.

he said it was like youtube, only better because you could upload/watch videos in HD.

yes, but it's much more. people don't upload 30 second clips of bad kareoke or lipsynching to the numa numa song. cleanly edited projects, full pieces, real stories abound there.

so i've been watching for inspiration. and also for relief.

i've discovered that there's lots of time to be utilised while rendering (a process in final cut pro where you have to wait a lot. sort of like downloading... same waiting and waiting until you can watch/listen), so i should do something productive with it (social networking doesn't count).

and so i've spent lots of time watching stories like the ones i like to do, or even short documentaries.

the problem is that many of these from sites like washingtonpost.com, the new york times, and mediastorm are so heavy! and yes, these stories need to be told, but sometimes i have to escape them for mental health.

this is where vimeo comes in.

some journalism, lots of cool stories, and plenty of creativity. it gives me ideas, ideas, ideas. yes, i want to tell good stories. i want to communicate. but sometimes i want to create just to create. just to make something thats beautiful or matches what i feel or hear or want to be. when other people do the same thing, it makes me remember that just because i'm in journalism school doesn't mean i have to think like a journalist all the time. the boundaries can be forgotten occasionally.

the point is always to tell stories. sometimes non-fiction, sometimes fiction. it so happens that a lot of what i watch on vimeo are fiction.

here's some of the ones i like so far (+ here's one from mediastorm that's not so heavy, but makes me happy to watch):


LEAF - HD from Matthew on Vimeo.


Pete in NYC from Dispatch Foundation on Vimeo.


Oleg Chubykin - "The Tourist" ("The Tourist" , 2007). Part 1 of 10 from Chubykin on Vimeo.