The Nutcracker

After weeks of going to practices and even one performance on the road... one story done and multimedia to go along.

SOUNDSLIDES MULTIMEDIA

Ecuador - Imprisoned Innocence

This will soon be up on the Fly-Ins Web site but I really want to post it so here goes.

I did a story on children who live with their mothers in the Central Ibarra Penitentiary in Ibarra, Ecuador. I spent Monday through Friday documenting them and even spent Wednesday night in jail so I could spend late night and early morning with them.



Betty Padilla looks at her husband, Leo, who is an inmate at the men’s prison next door, after passing food to him through a heavy iron door.


Anna Zolano kisses her one-year-old daughter, Leslie, during roll-call at 7:30 a.m.


Guards wait for the women to return to their bunks before locking the doors to each section at 8 p.m.


Leonela Padilla, 2, peers over her mother’s shoulder as she washes clothes for money.


Toys like this abandoned baby doll are harsh reminders of the innocent children living behind bars.


Joselyn Diane Maigua, 6, receives food for her family.


Yolanda Brusil, 23, feeds her 9-month-old daughter, Valeria Alejandra.


After a fight with her brother, Leonela Padilla, 2, cries alone.


Anna Zolano hugs her one-year-old daughter, Leslie.


Children play in the courtyard at night under the empty watchtower.


Janette Portilla, 35, lights a candle to read her Bible as her daughter, Britney, 2, sleeps.

Count-down to graduation!

The past few weeks have been a whirl-wind. I don't remember much of them besides lots of Advanced Design homework, FlyIns homework (exhibit is Dec. 5), Art History homework, and work.
I've narrowed down my photos from Ecuador for my photo story and that should be published fairly soon online at www.internationaljournalism.com.
I've also got the internship figured out. I'll be interning at the Gainesville Sun for 6 months starting in January. I'll be switching over from Lab Tech to photographer. :) I'm already starting to look for the next internship after that though. So much to plan!
The Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar is also coming up. Next weekend to be exact... Dec. 1, 2. I'll be there along with my closest Gator photogs. :) Always a good time.

Last Weekend in Ocala

Yesterday was my last day working for Ocala. It was quite sad to walk out of there for the last time. As I have mentioned before, I really needed more time to focus on my life after graduation and get all my ducks in a row. I was working 6 days a week and the one day I had off, Thursday, I had class for 5 straight hours.
Now I have two whole days on the weekend to work on my portfolio and send out internship applications. No more excuses.

First some photos from last weekend that finally ran.
Art festival


Battle of the Bands @ the Library


Pee Wee Football



This weekend...
Former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder
-made fun of Bush by reading a Washington Post article


Literacy Festival
-a very small event where the highlight was when a group of kids found a dead snake


Retiring Judge
-banquet held on a horse farm, in the covered arena


Golf
-shortest time ever spent on golf, the leader was pretty happy by the end of the day when I got there, made it easier to get emotion from the golfers


Pow Wow
-my last BIG assignment, decided to do sound as well and make a soundslides show
-SLIDESHOW



I had a really good time at the Pow Wow, even though it was on the smaller side. It had more of a local feeling to it where all the participants knew each other. Even though it was open to the public not many people showed up. Most of the people that looked like tourists were actually friends or family of the participants. There is a larger Pow Wow coming up in the same vicinity (Fort McCoy) on Nov. 23-26, 2006.

I feel like this soundslides project was a little rushed but that is because they needed it on deadline since it was just a photo package running in the paper today. I decided to make it MUCH less shorter that the last and have the photo transition a little faster. I hope they are not too fast, but I feel the tempo of the music goes along well with the faster transitions.

Practicing low-light sports

So my boyfriend is part of the #1 ranked intramural flag football team here at UF. He wants to finally win the title with his team to get the winning intramural T-shirt. He's a sucker for any type of free T-shirt but this is the mother of them all. He may be set for a year if his team actually gets this one, atleast that's what I'm hoping for. So for moral support I've decided to attend as many of his games as I can and since they all start around 8 pm or later I've decided to also practice my low light sports actions shooting. The team really enjoys having their own personal photographer and I think it helps to pysch out the opposing team.
Below is my boyfriend's favorite photo thus far. Although he's no photographer, just dating one, I can understand why he likes it, even though I know it's not earth shattering enough to ever run anywhere, the composition is off slightly, the guy laying down has legs cropped off, the list goes on. But he likes it and so I thought it deserves just a little lime light because from his perspective it is, quote, "the perfect picture from the game." So here it is. His team member, center blue T-shirt man, has just scored the final touchdown in a 42-0 game and the referree in the background is still declaring it a touchdown as one member of the white T-shirt team has laid down on the field in defeat. All the pieces are there. That's why he likes it. Me? I'm just happy he likes it. :)



*I'll post my fav from the season at the end of the play-offs.

Post-Ecuador

Ecuador was quite an experience. I'll be posting photos from it as I have time but for now it's back to school work and working for the Sun and Star-Banner. Sadly I will be ending my weekend work in Ocala very soon because of the heavy demands of school work and looking for an internship to begin in January after graduation. Also with school I am right on the border of being able to graduate with high honors and I don't want that to slip by just because I'm working too much. I've always been very conscious of my grades. So soon it will be less weekly photo posts except those from my spare time self-assigned photos and past photos I've been wanting to put up but never found the time.

But on to some photos from the past weekend. A grand total of 7 assignments, including one feature I found.

Feature
Okay actually two, from the same playground, about 5 mins apart. I think the bottom one is more of a feature, while the top is more of a portrait.



Culture Festival
There were more but this is my favorite. I think I'm biased towards dance photos, always spend more time on them to get just the right moment.


Lake County Sheriff Killed
Sheriff Daniels was killed Saturday evening in an accident during a fund-raiser at the Samsula Racetrack, only 3 mins from my parents' house. It was during a School Bus Race charity event that I never saw but often heard (yes actually heard) from living so close to the track growing up. This is his brother-in-law and the PIO addressing the media about the accident and how the family and sheriff's office are coping.

NAACP and Trenton Duckett

Four assignments this weekend.
Here are two...

NAACP Day - ARTICLE



Search for Trenton Duckett in Ocala National Forest - ARTICLE

9/11 service

These photos ran as a photo package on page 8A, black and white.

Shows!

Patriotic Show on 9/11 in The Villages.
ARTICLE

My Favorite Year
ARTICLE

Plane Crash

Yesterday I had 3 short little assignments in the early afternoon. I got them done pretty fast, not because I was rushing but because they were very simple. So I finish my assignments and head home for the day. Home is 45 mins from the office and the city of Ocala.
At about 6:45 pm I get a call from one of the Ocala editors telling me there's been a plane crash and he can't get a hold of any other photographers. So I begin my mad dash back to Ocala. Turns out all the photographers were out of town and one was in church until 8 pm.
The 2-seated airplane crashed in a peanut field a little south of Ocala. Hiking across the peanut field was interesting. I was praying for no snakes. The plants were almost up to my knees.
The occupants of the plane died upon impact, an elderly man and woman. They couldn't be identified when I was on scene. The small plane was registered in Louisiana so the people were most likely not locals.
Here's the ARTICLE

UPDATE ARTICLE

Rodeo!

The rodeo was late Saturday night. Late night rodeos are a challenge for lighting as I learned. The arena was so dark and had a weird mix of lights, some looked to be flourescent and the others looked like tungsten and then I was throwing my flash into all of that. This time I did however take my flash off my camera and had Khuong hold it off to the side for me, attached still to the camera by the 2-foot-long Canon cord. It helped quite a bit.
I can't find the article online now, even though I read it yesterday...
But here are the 3 photos that were published. One of my favorites was left out. Again, I'll try to post it later.





Add-on:
One photo that wasn't published.

Gearing up for Ecuador! (and the rest of the semester)

I am part of the Florida Fly-Ins program, run by Prof. John Kaplan, this year at the University of Florida. Every year the Fly-Ins program goes to a South or Central American country to document a city and culture in words and pictures. This year is the first year traveling to Ecuador and I'm super excited because it's the northern neighbor to Peru, where I just was this summer.
We've only had one meeting at this point. But the class meets once a week to prepare and research the country and area before departing. After the trip, Sept. 29 - Oct. 7, the class will continue to meet once a week to wrap things up and prepare everything for the online magazine that is published every year and for the gallery showing that happens near the end of the Fall semester.
This year is also the first time photographers are going to be REQUIRED to do multimedia work. YAY! We haven't discussed it very much yet but I think this means we will just be creating a short soundslides project with our photos and narrating it ourselves. Hopefully we can incorporate some sound from Ecuador.
I'm not sure yet what story I'll be working on, but with the departure date about a month away, I'll have to know VERY soon. So for now I'm hitting the research books and I'll be trying to make connections for my story before we even arrive.

This is going to be one fun last semester for me.

I'm also piling on 3 other classes with the Fly-Ins class. Those include Advanced Design (dealing with newspaper design and photo editing), Advanced Ballet (my body is regretting that choice) and Renaissance Art in Northern Europe (my last Art History class for my minor).

Also I'm seriously starting to look for winter internships to follow my graduation. So on top of everything else, I'll be sending out applications for those this month!

Elephants Homecoming

Not real elephants. Statue elephants.
Yes I was slightly disappointed in learning that too. This past weekend the Appleton Museum of Art in Ocala celebrated the return of a elephant statue/water fountain. The fountain had to undergo restoration and apparently the community really missed it.
The museum had clowns, student jugglers (who were very good), and crafts for children. There were also some more grown up activities for the adults including a video on the restoration and a speaker from Silver Springs who spoke about wildlife conservation. All in all it was a nice little assignment and here are the three photos that ended up running as a package.

First multimedia piece!

Bluegrass in the Park.
This was part of an article on free things to do in Ocala. ARTICLE
Just scroll down the article and you'll see a link for the slideshow.
I sure learned a lot from this first project. Definately use some kind of mic to cut down on background noise and WIND! Darn wind. I used Audacity to edit the sound and Soundslides to create the slideshow. All in all it took me two days to do the project, that includes learning the two afore mentioned programs. I think the slideshow turned out a little long, but after losing the audio track halfway through creating it, I was just glad to be able to rebuild it quickly. From now on though slideshows will be 3 mins max. But anyways, I am excited about this multimedia stuff now and can't wait to do another project!

Feature and Hospice Thrift Store

I finally got IPN sent to my cell phone since I don't have access to a scanner as a stringer. It seems to works pretty well, I've only received one page so far so time will tell if it's worth it.

This weekend was semi-busy.
Saturday was short, but on Sunday I had 4 assignments.

Here is a feature from a park on Sunday.


Here is a man waiting as his wife shops during a block party sale at Hospice Thrift Store. She must have found some deals since he was left sitting there for about 15-20 mins.

Control Line planes

ARTICLE
I shot this assignment two or weeks ago. It was pretty fun. They didn't use my favorite photo so I'll try to put it up later.