Spring Break at Home

So for Spring Break I just came home to spend some time with my family in St. Louis. It's been very relaxing. The other day I was up early and the light was pretty so I took a few photos of the view from my front porch.

Beginning Stages of Food Project

So for my portion of the food documentary I've been attempting to do a photo essay on food allergies, specifically gluten. So far it's been moving pretty slowly with few contacts. I have been able to photograph a girl who is a sophomore at MU and she lives in a sorority house on campus. I went to photograph her eating dinner at her house. I also hope to photograph the kinds of groceries she buys and her meal being prepared at the house. The chef makes a point to make sure there are gluten and dairy free options for her. In addition to photographing Kelsey, I hope to try to photograph different places around Columbia that offer gluten free choices for others like Kelsey.
The meal I was there for was pasta so Kelsey had her own heaping plate of gluten free pasta and a bowl of meatballs and sauce that had been prepared separately.
Here is what I have so far.

Quidditch on the Quad

So as I was about to leave campus today I walked by the quad and saw people playing quidditch (fictional sport in Harry Potter books for those who weren't sure). I decided why not take some pictures. I wish I had had a longer lens on me, but enjoyed myself regardless. Also, I think it would have been nicer had the light been better.

Portraits

I did a favor for my friend and took some portraits of him at KOMU for his resume. Portraits can be tough, I think the key is getting the person to act like him/herself and not focus so much on the camera. The issue is how to do this, sometimes I feel it's easier than others. It's not only about making your subject comfortable, but also feeling comfortable and confident in your own abilities. This was a good experience for me, because even though I'm friends with him, it was still an environment that I wasn't necessarily comfortable in and I still had to make him feel comfortable with the camera in order to get the pictures. I found it best when I had him doing things in his environment instead of just posing for me. Technically, the light was annoying, and I wish I had brought my flash to play around with.
So here is James Jobes 

Magic House

Over the weekend I went to the Magic House in St. Louis for my friend's daughter's 1st birthday party. I figured it would be a good opportunity to take some pictures since I hadn't had the chance in awhile. It was a lot of fun and I think I got some nice shots!

Presentations

Over the last few days I've gotten the opportunity to hear two great photojournalists give presentations - Lauren Greenfield and Brian Storm.

What I took away from both is the amount of time spent on the most successful projects. Storm talked about how photojournalists had worked for 5 to 10 and even up to 16 years on one project. Greenfield also spent significant amounts of time working on her documentary projects.

Greenfield talked about how she got the inspiration for her projects partly from her own teenage years. This made me think about where I get my inspiration from. I had a hard time figuring out the answer to this question, which I think is a problem. I feel like I get most of my story ideas from friends -  I listen to issues they feel strongly about or think are important and I then take on an interest. I think this is good in a sense that I'm learning from other people and using others to brainstorm ideas with me, but I need to find my own passion and what I want to cover. I think the reason it's hard for me to imagine spending so much time on a project is because I've never experienced a passion to do so.

I'm not quite sure how to remedy this. A reading we did in capstone last week was very interesting and I think it will greatly help me in the search for stories. It was about coming up with ideas, and since this is the hardest part of photojournalism for me, I found it very interesting and informative. I hope I am able to start using these tips to help advance my photojournalism.