Soundslides Part 1: Instructions

The Soundslides assignment has four parts:

Shoot 30 photos for one story; submit them unedited.*
Different story: Shoot all the photos and gather all the audio for your slideshow. Submit 200 photos, unedited. Submit audio, unedited.
Edit the best 25 photos from the 200 and submit for grading.
Produce a finished Soundslides, including edited audio and a PROPER CAPTION FOR EVERY PHOTO.

* NOTE that these are NOT the photos or the story that will be used in your final Soundslides (Part 4).

Follow these instructions for shooting photos for Part 1 of this assignment:

Choose one journalistic story.
Shoot 30 photos for that one story.
The photos must show at least three (3) different subjects (more about this below).
IMPORTANT: Before you shoot, make sure the settings on your camera are for a high resolution. This is often a number such as 2345 x 1000. Check your camera's manual if you don't know how to check or set this.
Apply the principles of photo composition (from Module 6) to compose your shots while you are shooting.

Why two stories?

In this module, you'll shoot photos for a single story, using the principles of photo composition you have learned this week (Module 6). You will NOT use these photos OR this story after this assignment. For Soundslides 2, 3 and 4, you will need a different story.

Rationale: Most of you are trying out the principles of composition for the first time. Your photos might not be all that great. You will learn some new things while you are shooting and evaluating these photos. The next time you go out and shoot, your photos will be better because of what you have learned from your first attempt. If all goes well, the photos in your Soundslides will be MUCH better than the photos from Part 1.

If you understand the rationale, you should understand why it is important for you to go out now and shoot new pictures in which you try your best to apply the principles of photo composition.

It is NOT acceptable to use photos you shot in the past.

Make sure the TIME and DATE (including the YEAR) are set correctly on your camera before you shoot your photos for this assignment.

Choose a suitable story

Some stories have very little visual interest. For example: speeches, debates, panel discussions, press conferences. Very, very boring as far as photos are concerned.

Photos should show people doing things (and not only talking).

Your photos will look best if they are shot outdoors. If you are indoors, DO NOT use flash! This is explained in Module 6, "Change Settings on Your Camera."

DO NOT choose a story that takes place in darkness (e.g., bars, music venues, performance halls or theaters, game arcades).

DO NOT shoot in a house, apartment or dorm. The light is almost always bad in these places, and you must not use flash.

In other words, select a story that will HELP YOU SUCCEED in this assignment. If it's not a story for Reporting, that is okay. However, it must be recognizable as a real story with some kind of news value. It must not be a collection of random photos. The STORY must be obvious.

Example of a bad grade

Once a student gave me 30 different photos of buildings on campus for this assignment. Just buildings. No people (except sometimes some small people in the distance). I gave the student a grade of 0. What was the story? There was no story.

The content of the 30 photos

Module 6 gives you a lot of advice about how to make good photos. One major tip is to make numerous shots of one thing -- the more shots you take of that single subject, the better chance you have of getting ONE GOOD SHOT.

What is meant by "different subjects"? One example: Your story is about a new restaurant that has opened. The day you go to the restaurant, there are one cook, one waiter, and two women eating lunch together. Three different photographic subjects are: (1) the cook working; (2) the waiter serving; and (3) the pair of customers ordering from the menu. Another example: Your story is about a dog-training school. When you visit the school, you interview a dog trainer and meet two unrelated dog owners and three dogs. Three different photographic subjects are: (1) the trainer working with any dog or dogs; (2) the dog owners getting into or out of cars with their dogs; (3) the dogs on their own, without any people (eating, playing, etc.).

For any one subject, shoot 10 pictures of that subject. This should ensure that you have at least one decent shot of that subject, that idea, that aspect of your story.

Change position. Get close. Then closer. Go low and shoot up. Go high and shoot down. Bring VARIETY into your shots by moving your body and moving the camera. Different angles AND different distances.

Thus the 30 photos for this assignment need not be vastly different from one another, but you do need three different subjects that ARE distinctly different and easily separated, such as: (1) photos of dogs; (2) photos of training; (3) photos of owners bringing their dogs or taking them home.

NOTE that other students in your class will be critiquing these 30 photos in a discussion exercise in Module 7.

Naming your files and folder

The photos must all have the camera filenames (usually some letters and then several numbers). Example: IMG_0458.JPG (your camera may have a different style; that's okay).

ALL PHOTO FILES MUST BE IN THE JPG FORMAT.

The folder name (on Dropbox) for this assignment must match this style:

Your last name, your first initial, an underscore, and soundslides1.

For example, if your name is Maria Jones, your folder name would be:

jonesm_soundslides1

PLEASE NOTE that it is VERY IMPORTANT in this course that you name files EXACTLY as instructed for every assignment. Failure to do so will result in zero points for assignments, because a misnamed file is a file that will be LOST.

Questions?

If you have questions about any part of this assignment, post them in the Course Questions discussion in Sakai.