Okay, technically it is a child theme of the popular TwentyTen theme, but, as you can see from the before and after above, they bear little resemblance to each other. Creating a photoblog here at The News Journal has been on the to-do list for myself, the assistant new media editor Andre Smith and our photo editor Suchat Pederson for some time now, but it wasn’t until the new iPhone initiative came through that Andre and Ashley Barnas brainstormed the format as seen above (previous iterations all took the form of a more traditional photoblog, similar to The Big Picture).

While a typical photoblog would have been nice, because we lack a traditional photo editor (Suchat does far more shooting than photo editing, and would not have the time to scour the wire to put together photo packages) and with the increasing focus on breaking news and sending images from the field, we decided to create a frontpage that displayed the latest photographs from all of our photographers. To make things easier, each photographers is his/her own category, and thumbnails are automatically created from images inserted into a post, for use on the frontpage, archives and category pages. While most photographers will update their images once they are done with a shoot and back in the office, the blog is set up in a way that it can receive images via email from a smartphone (that they will all now have) or pull in from Flickr directly to the appropriate category (the first, thanks to Postie, and the latter thanks to ifttt).

In keeping with the focus on social media, photographers will all have a Twitter follow button next to their name. On posts and category pages, custom sidebars feature content for each photographer … a headshot, short bio, set of thumbnails (currently set to random, but possible latest), latest tweets, etc. Some of this content is hard-coded to “photographer proof” it, but below the hard-coded area is a widgetized sidebar that each photograph can personalize. Also, because we have a strong focus on video, if the most recent post in a category is a YouTube video, it will be playable on the front. When it moves from that latest post spot to the recent post on the front (there are three smaller thumbnails below each main image) it reverts to a thumbnail. Initially, I had that playable as well, but it just seemed too small to be worthwhile. If the embedded video isn’t from YouTube, it will still create a thumbnail for use in both the main and secondary slots on the frontpage.

Plugins used:

• Auto Post Thumbnail
• Custom sidebars
• Featured-video
• Postie
• Twitter Widget
• Video Thumbnails

As with anything I’ve done on my own time, from my first Vuvox timeline of Drake basketball to the small jQuery project I worked on in November, I have no idea where this will end up. If anything, it was good practice and gave me a better understanding of what makes up a WordPress theme and how to manipulate it. What do you think? Not bad for a first effort? What features would you look for in a newspaper photoblog?

Live demo

Rhythmic Motion Typography

My friend Shaminder is convinced that this is overdone, but I still enjoy the effect. You’ve seen it in everything from Ford commercials to the initial Cee Lo Green F*ck You music video (not to be confused with Skee-lo).

Animated homage to Bruce Lee

An extension of the previous tutorial, this one includes additional animation and camera moves along with the kinetic typography.

Cinematic opening title

This tutorial shows you how to utilize scripts in After Effects to pair an effect with some external file or database to create an interesting 3D fly-through effect. It could be paired with something as mundane as text from a speech, or perhaps graduating seniors and their senior quotes, or something as serious as a list of casualties from Iraq. Koci used it to great effect in his Interrupted Lives piece on Iran (the effect is just about 1:00 in).

Dynamic Bar Graphs

This one seems straightforward enough … You could use it to add a little interest/graphics to an issue story filled with numbers.

Map your destination

This tutorial has arrows jumping from point to point as you move along in your travels. I’m not sure just what I would use it for yet, but hopefully you have a story that it would be useful in. Similar to this is the Trim paths tutorial, that features an animated red dashed line instead of arrows.

Motion tracking your golf swing

I doubt you are going to be filming a golf video anytime soon, but motion tracking comes in handy for a number of things, from effects like this (if you were profiling an athlete for an all-state prep sports feature) to using it for image stabilization.

Twixtor faux-slow motion tutorial

Twixtor (a $300 plugin for After Effects) takes video shot at 60fps and slows it down to 1000 or even 2000 fps. The tutorial gives some guidelines on how best to shoot prior to importing into After Effects, and then what settings are recommended once you are using the plugin. There also exists a built-in plugin called Time Warp, though I read that its algorithms are not as sophisticated and result in more artifacting when video is slowed down.

Endlessly zoom into your own Droste Effect

This one just seems fun.

Bend flash video in After Effects

This tutorial shows you how to take a flash video and bend it around the geometry of an object that you have in a background photo. I could imagine using something like this if I was trying to build out a landing page and had some sort of looping intro video that I wanted to appear integrated into the scene.

Virtual 3D Photos

This tutorial reminds me of the sort of movements seen in the RJD2 music video for 1976 on MediaStorm … or perhaps of those NBA Where Amazing Happens commercials. It involves cutting up a still image into different layers and having them move at different speeds in relation to each other.

Below, you will find a map I created on mapalist.com, which I have since linked to a spreadsheet. It is set to update automatically, though I do not know how often it refreshes. Currently, the balloons on the map vary depending upon the date. I only wish you had the option of turning various dates on or off while browsing the map. It ain’t pretty, but it’s a start.

You can add points to my map by filling out the form associated with the spreadsheet linked to the map.

Audio by Yowei Shaw

Yesterday, I decided to take a step forward in one of those areas, html/css, and build my first web site. While it is true that I have maintained this blog since 2005, I have always relied on templates built by designers far more talented than I who were generous enough to contribute to the wordpress community. Aside from the javascript, all of the code on my new main page at www.danielsato.com was written by me, with inspiration of course from the WPESP Portfolio theme and the Androida theme. I will still have to build pages for my portfolio, contact form, and hopefully at some point, a wordpress theme in order to have the same look and feel throughout.

During my journalism education, I found that some of my most helpful and interesting classes were taken outside of the journalism building. For that reason, I have included some links to opencourseware classes related to photography and media. They may not teach you a new skill (some may, as with the Flash classes), but might help you to become a better, more informed journalist. There are, of course, some pros and cons to taking an open courseware class. Often you will not have access to a lecture (though some provide video) and you do not always have access to full course materials.

• Introduction to Photography and Related Media, Fall 2007 (MIT)
• Photography and Truth, Spring 2005 (MIT)
• Introduction to Media Studies, Fall 2005 (MIT)
• Sensing Place: Photography as Inquiry, Spring 2006 (MIT)
• History of Media and Technology, Spring 2005 (MIT)
• Media in Cultural Context, Spring 2007 (MIT)
• Producing Films for Social Change, Fall 2005 (Tufts)
• Understanding Online Interaction (Utah State)
• Interactive Multimedia Production (Utah State)
• Modern Art and Mass Culture Spring 2004 (MIT)
• Digital Anthropology, Spring 2003 (MIT)
• Power: Interpersonal, Organizational and Global Dimensions, Fall 2005 (MIT)
• American Dream: Exploring Class in the U.S., Spring 2007 (MIT)

You can search for more classes from the 200+ OCW members at the OpenCourseWare Consortium.

According to the trip blog, “The goal for these journalism, advertising and public relations students — to walk back through time and learn at these historic sites how the blood, sweat and tears of the 1950s and 60s equal rights pioneers paved the way for all people of color, women, gays and lesbians, the disabled and religious cultural groups in America to be recognized, appreciated, and valued in our society, and to have equal opportunity to live the American dream.”

Already, the students have been featured in the pages of the San Jose Mercury News, their iReport clips have aired on CNN, and their coverage has been featured on the KTVU web site.

You can follow along with their coverage by viewing their blog, and can help them cover trip expenses by donating.

The following piece was put together by SJSU alumni Diana Diroy.

Recently at the Register, it appears someone has felt that we have had the opposite problem. Apparently there have been too many minorities featured in some of our prom galleries. Too many? I would argue that minorities are not featured as much as they should be in our paper. I can only think of a couple Black History Month stories in February (I’ll have to check and see just how many there were, I imagine there were more). As such, I don’t think that a few minorities in a photo gallery is really going to hurt anyone.

The galleries in question I believe are the Scavo Prom and the Hoover Prom. In the Scavo gallery, there are 23 images. Ten of those images have a minority in them. However, four of them feature either the king and/or the queen, who were both minorities. Not photographing them and including them in galleries would be like not including multiples of David Beckham because this is America damn it, and he is English! Hoover, as far as I can tell from all of those school information sites, is 60% white. In the 17 image gallery, there are ten images with a minority in them, and four of the ten feature both white and non-white. I should also mention that the slogan on Hoover’s web site is “Many Nations One School.” Ironic? Hoover is also featured in a window advertisement for the Register in the skywalk about coverage of diversity (I am pretty sure it’s Hoover, but it could be North… I don’t go in the office much).

Did the photographer go too far in misrepresenting the demographics of the school? How often do galleries actually represent the demographics of their subjects, be it school or city to a T anyways? Do I have to worry more about who I am photographing and not what I am photographing?

I thought I would start simple, by learning how to create a chaptered soundslides presentation. I probably should have tried while there was still a tutorial readily available on Multimediashooter, because it was not as simple as I thought, and the documentation I sought wasn’t as readily available as I would have hoped. But, after digging out my Flash Journalism book and peeking into some examples that Joe Weiss has available to download, I was able to work it out.

Now, on to learning how to create eye-pleasing shells for projects…

There were- and are- a host of wonderful workshops out there; however, after looking around for some time, we came to the conclusion that there were a) few for people from developing nations and b) few that a photojournalism student from Europe or the US (officially a student or informally, we don’t care) could realistically afford. We also felt that, while attending a workshop for $4000 with one or two great photographers was wonderful, it could be more beneficial to create a workshop where many more instructors came, creating an impromptu community of sorts. A workshop where getting into the field, producing real reportage, getting honest, real feedback, and making new friends and developing contacts were first and foremost.

Tuition for the workshop is $500 ($400 if you and a friend both sign up), but does not include travel, accommodation or personal expenses.  Instructors listed on the web site include among many other people: Ron Haviv, Brian Storm, Stanley Greene and Amy Vitale.