Something Different

and some Multimedia

I've learned a lot about how hard it is to be a picture editor this semester at the Missourian.

How hard is it? It's really hard.

Sometimes you have few advocates in the newsroom, and you have to fight to get good pictures in print. This fight is sometimes exhausting, even for someone as optimistic as I am. As a photographer, you just want to go out and shoot, but you recognize how important it is to have a good editor who really cares about visual journalism. It is possible that this lone voice at budget will be the only person who cares about pictures. This experience at the Missourian typifies part of the Missouri experience-- maddening, extremely difficult, and rewarding beyond measure.

For a break from the daily struggle with enterprising, thin requests and rabid desire for video, I tried to shake up our normal election coverage with a feature portrait shoot. Instead of focusing on the issues, which were covered in spades in print and graphics, we shot lit portraits and put together this slideshow, which may not be the most amazing multimedia in the world, but gives a little taste of Columbia and who votes. It was my day off, but I was happy to work with our photographer, Catalin, and one of our ADOPs, Alycia Lewis. It was harder than I expected to get people in and interview them. The turnout was pretty low. In any case, this is what we came up with. I also made this slideshow, as a kind of homage to Scott Strazzante, though it's a little on the slow side. That's an interesting part of daily, deadline work as an editor. You do the best you can and then at a certain time, it must be done.

I've also learned from editing other people's work about what I need to bring back as a shooter to make my editor happy. Or, to do the job right. And that's a lot more complicated than tight, medium and wide. As frustrating as the Missourian can be, I'm glad I have the experience.

I'll be out tomorrow, back to shooting the secret lives of children. I really miss hanging out with the Furlong families.