Update and TR story

I went back down to the train station tonight while it was still light and had a pretty cool idea. I stood about three feet away from the edge of the platform and videoed the train while it was coming in. It was pretty scary because I was watching the train through the screen but could see it out of the corner of my eye, but not well enough to know exactly where it was. It was wicked loud and windy and I was afraid that I would lose my balance or something and fall into it and die haha. I took some pictures of people getting on and off the train (I was actually brave enough to ask if I they would mind, yay me!!). I haven't looked at them yet, so I don't know how they came out. I videoed the train leaving in the same way. So what I'm going to do, I hope, is start with the train coming in, have a slide show and some of the speeches that turned out okay, and then have the train leave. Kinda fun.

I also went to the horse barn tonight to watch Catie (Catherine) and Brian ride and meet their mom, Joyce. I learned a bit more about Catie and Brian, chatted with Joyce a bit and took some still pictures and videos. I was also talking to Becky, one of the volunteers while I watched Catie groom her horse, Paige. Becky started talking about how much she enjoyed helping with that class because the kids were better riders, and she could see the progress they made through each week and the different things they had learned. I took some pictures, but they all came out really bad. It was really dark in the arena and I didn't want to use my flash. I would feel really bad if it scared one of the horses and one of the kids got hurt. They were also really blurry. Maybe by next week I'll have figured a way to fix that...

Atleast I got a free coffee...

When I read our assignment for the week, I was at home, about 140 miles from UNH. As we all know there are lots of things going on here over the weekend that have the potential to be turned into some multimedia story. Knowing that I wouldn't be back to campus until Sunday afternoon, and then having to work until 10pm, I found myself in a little mini-panic about what I was going to do for a story. Sunday night I was flipping through TNH while I waited for a ride home from work. I didn't want to walk back to my apartment in the dark, much less in the pouring rain. So anyway (I tend to make my stories really long) I found a story in TNH about the construction of the new train station and that they were having their ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday morning, today. I thought that might be kind of cool, maybe a video of the train coming in, people getting on and off, speeches, and the best part: The big ribbon and a giant pair of scissors!!!! Did I get what I wanted?? NO!!!!!
Before I start talking about everything that was wrong, I will say that I got a few pictures of some nice looking people waiting for the train. Perhaps they were going home for Rosh Hashanah, but maybe not. Whatever. So I was going to photograph the train coming in. I missed it, as I had my back turned and my camera off. Good timing on my part, right? I did get a picture of it leaving... Ohhhhh goody. Fun..... As I was videoing President Huddleston's very nice speech, a rather large man stepped in front of me. Fantastic. I guess it's not really a big deal though, the whole thing was pretty boring.
So I didn't get my video of the train coming in, a clear video of President Huddleston's speech. Since things always come in threes (or if your me, fours, fives, or sixes...), did I get an actual ribbon cutting? No, BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE A RIBBON AT THEIR RIBBON CUTTING! I suppose I have until noon tomorrow to find some way to salvage this...

On the plus side, I did learn that my camera has an undo-delete feature. Wicked awesome. And I got a free coffee.

Landscapes, Portaits, Campus and others....

I spent a few hours Monday afternoon walking the Harbor Trail in Portsmouth, which is where I took all of the landscape pictures. I liked most of them, but there were a few that I felt were very busy with no focus at all. If any of you know about Art in the Park (I believe thats what they call it), I saw the giant red ant, which was pretty cool. I wanted to go see the other things they had around town, but I didn't feel like walking that far. Instead I had a coffee at Breaking New Grounds, yum :-)
I felt really self conscious about taking pictures of people around campus though. I felt like a bit of a creeper. I just noticed when looking at the few pictures I took, they're all of peoples backs... I suppose that was me unconsciously being self conscious.



I had to add this, everybody loves
a cute groundhog :-)

Portraits

For the most part I enjoyed the video we watched in class, but after a while it started to get a little redundant. This is one of the five or so pictures that I took of Christina on 9/18. The lighting isn't the greatest, it's a little dark, but I think it makes her look a little mysterious. I didn't edit it too much, except for cropping it a little. The one little branch on the left side is making me nuts though. If I cropped that out, it would take off a piece of her elbow, then the picture would be off center, which I think would be worse.

Beginning my story...

Today I went down to the Equine Center to talk to Cindy Burke, the director of the TRP, about some of her riders that I could use for my story, what she thought would be appropriate for me to cover and how I could do it. We decided that I would profile the family (potentially) of a nine year old girl named Catherine and her older brother Brian. Catherine was misdiagnosed with Autism when she was young, has had her diagnoses changed several times and is not deemed to have ADHD. Cindy told me a little bit about Brian, who also has ADHD, I believe. I've worked with Catherine in her riding lessons two years ago, so I am a little more familiar with her.
The reason that Cindy and I thought that this family would be good for me to profile is that Catherine's story is pretty dramatic. She didn't speak until she was at least three years old and went through a lot of different forms of therapy until she began riding horses. She actually said her first word while she was riding.
I'm going to the barn this Tuesday to meet Joyce and watch Brian and Catherine ride. I'm pretty excited :-)

First story

I've been thinking since Thursday about what I wanted to do for my first multimedia story. I generally put a lot of pressure on myself to come up with an idea thats out-of-this-world amazing. Unfortunately, when it doesn't work out that way, it's pretty disappointing. Anyone want to help me out with that one??
I used to be an Animal Science major with a concentration in Equine Sciences. I didn't have my horse Dovey here when I was a freshman and was pretty bummed that I wasn't riding, so for something to do I volunteered for the Therapeutic Riding program here. A lot of the kids were wicked fun. There were two girls that I usually worked with, I think one of them was Autistic and the other had ADHD. Generally, the riders in the program have cerebral palsy, stoke, MD, learning/developmental/emotional disabilities etc.
I haven't decided yet exactly how I'm going to approach this. Most likely I'll pick one student to profile and interview them, their parents, and possibly their instructors. Obviously I will take some videos and still-photos of them riding and the types of things they do around the barn. That's basically all I've got for right now, but I'll write more as it comes :-)

Making things personal.

I spent a good part of this beautiful rainy afternoon browsing Sandy's list of websites that he wanted us to look at. I got pretty side tracked though and ended up picking the pieces of dog and horse hair out from between the keys of my laptop. I have a white Brittany Spaniel and a white Thoroughbred, interestingly, I can tell which is the dog hair and which is the horse hair. It very quickly became some sort of addiction.
By now, after cleaning my keyboard, I've looked at most of the websites. My favorite one so far has been Mediastorm.org, where I watched Marlboro Marine, and a few other videos. Last year I took Intro to Creative Non-fiction, with Janet Schofield. I really enjoyed it, but I always struggled with finding a way to make other people understand and relate to things I went through in my stories. It was very frustrating. In Marlboro Marine, Luis Sinco, a photojournalist from the Los Angeles Times profiled LCpl James Blake Miller in his personal struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It is something, I think, that everyone knows about, but doesn't ever want to talk about, for obvious reasons. About 12-20% of soldiers returning from Iraq will develop PTSD. You read about it in the paper or hear about it on TV, but unless you know someone who is dealing with it, it seems so generalized and you can kind of shrug it off and say "Yeah, okay... Whatev's".
Sixteen minutes of pictures, some voice clips and some good music got rid of the generalization and turned PTSD into something that can be personal to everybody. Sinco's story, for me, gave PTSD a voice, a face, a wife, friends, a house in Kentucky, and a sweet Harley.
Today, nearly everyone has a friend, a family member, or a lover on deployment. My ex-boyfriend came home from Iraq in May. I had heard things about his Company on the news sometimes, so I knew a little bit about what was going on, in regards to attacks and such. I didn't ever realize how little they showed on TV until I knew someone who had actually been there. There was a Marine in my ex-boyfriend's Company that hanged himself within a few weeks after arriving in Iraq. The guys had to cut him out of the rafters. Though my ex did not develop PTSD, the same thing applies. Things don't become personal until they're a little closer to home. Even though I don't personally know LCpl. Miller, I feel now like I do.
On a much lighter note, the Virtual Grocery Store at Interactivenerratives.org was pretty cool Next time I go grocery shopping, I'll pay attention to the prices at eye level versus the prices closer to the floor :-)

So...

I feel really awkward doing this... This class (Engl. 721) seems like it'll be pretty cool, I'm stoked that we don't have to buy a book, as I've had to buy books for four other classes and I'm flat broke. I have absolutely no experience with multimedia stuff, except I made a sale-video once for a friend that was selling her horse.
I took photography as a high school senior, which I really enjoyed.
As far as journalism goes, I took Newswriting last semester. It really wasn't my cup of tea, but I was also working +40 hours a week on top of being a full-time student, so I didn't always have the energy to run around and interview people for stories. I thought I'd give it another shot and see what happens, so, here goes...