At the Council Meeting

WhatSheSaw · January 5, 2010

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

It was a long one.

rutt · January 5, 2010

These are very nice. I've spent some time shooting the Parks & Rec commission in Newton MA. Right now it's too dark in the evenings to get good shots there, but soon it won't be.

This is a very nice series. There are some cases where it works to intersperse the photos with a little description. In B.D.'s class, the final project is just this, a series of images with a little verbal story. In this case, perhaps the gist of the meeting would work. Or maybe it was too boring?

In Newton, there is one very controversial issue that hasn't been resolved: whether to allow dogs off leash in a particular park. It really gets people going, which makes it fun to shoot the meetings where it's discussed.

bdcolen · January 5, 2010

WhatSheSaw wrote:

#1

Very nice group of images - but watch your point of focus.

I'd also suggest that if you're telling a story, you need some sort of scene-setting image, a wide shot showing us where we are, and perhaps a couple others that give us a sense of people interacting, and a gathering.

But you've done a good job here of showing us individual reactions to whatever was going on.

WhatSheSaw · January 6, 2010

Thanks, rutt!

It was a Thanksgiving Eve special meeting that drew a standing room only crowd. The meeting was called with one day's notice. One new council member was sworn in and a new Deputy Mayor was elected by the council members in attendance. The controversial topic was a discussion of the installation of artificial turf on the town's sports field. The new council member swung the balance from 4-3 in favor of turf to 4-3 against. And some of the opponents had stated that sports fields was not the "highest and best use" of the property, so there was suspicion among proponents that they would cancel the project to develop the fields as more downtown shopping. Fun times!

Thanks, B.D.! I'll see if I can find some scene setting images and add a bit of text. Regarding focus, I am getting new glasses soon. Hopefully that will help.

bdcolen · January 6, 2010

WhatSheSaw wrote:

Thanks, rutt!

It was a Thanksgiving Eve special meeting that drew a standing room only crowd. The meeting was called with one day's notice. One new council member was sworn in and a new Deputy Mayor was elected by the council members in attendance. The controversial topic was a discussion of the installation of artificial turf on the town's sports field. The new council member swung the balance from 4-3 in favor of turf to 4-3 against. And some of the opponents had stated that sports fields was not the "highest and best use" of the property, so there was suspicion among proponents that they would cancel the project to develop the fields as more downtown shopping. Fun times!

Thanks, B.D.! I'll see if I can find some scene setting images and add a bit of text. Regarding focus, I am getting new glasses soon. Hopefully that will help.

Having just gotten new glasses myself, I can feel your blurriness.

If I were you, for this purpose, I wouldn't worry about text, but rather would think about what, say, three or four images you could add that would make it possible for a viewer to know the basic story without text.

In my full-semester classes, students have to tell a story in 20 photos - which is allot of photos given how few are usually used in newspapers or magazines. And they also have to write about 1,500 words of text. And here's the challege: both the text and the photos have to stand on their own. That is, I have to be able to read the text, without seeing the photos, and understand the story, and I have to be able to look at the photos - without any text - and know the story.

At the Council Meeting

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