The Great Feature Hunt.

Jim Irwin (left) talking to special guest Gregory Howell (right).

Jim Irwin (right) and Gergory Howell (left) sit and talk while waiting for the webcast to begin shooting.

Jim Irwin on set of this webcast, Remember the Legendaries.

I recently attended a live shooting of an online web series hosted by Jim Irwin, a Wayne State University Alumni. The show called “Remembering the Legendaries” hosts special guest that talk about the Legendaries of Wayne State. Legendaries as in those people who have had an impact on the University and the lives of many.

On my search for an event, this fell into my lap. I thought this was a great opportunity to shoot at a live broadcast. It was extremely interesting to be on the set, a part of a live audience and see how shows are produced. Before finding this event, I was going to shoot a sporting event, which is pretty common and I am happy I didn’t. I think this was a much better experience with both photography and using the camera, as well as into the broadcast field which is my preferred career path.

This feature hunt experience went extremely well for me. The only small difficulty I experienced was the lighting in the room. The lights on a broadcast are centered on the subjects, Irwin and the special guest and not on the remainder of the room. So the audience and everything behind the camera is pretty dark. It was extremely hard getting good lighting but I am confident with the work I produced through that difficulty.

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Shooting first shoot.

Subject: Antonio White – extreme lighting

Subject: Antonio White – wide depth of field

Subject: Antonio White – perspective: up, own, leading lines

Subject: Antonio White – stopped action

Subject: Antonio White – blurred action

Subject: Antonio White – blurred action

Subject: Antonio White

Subject: Antonio White – rule of thirds

Subject: Antonio White – perspective: up, down, leading lines

Subject: Ducks – element of choice

So the major thing I learned with this Camera Controls assignment is that you NEED to be familiar with your camera. Before going out to shoot, knowing where all the controls are and how to properly function them is so important. You will waste so much time while out on location, when you’re trying to understand how to set the f-stop and ISO settings, etc. I speak on this from experience. The day I went to shoot these photos, I had just gotten the camera I took these photos on and the settings were a little different than those of the previous camera I had been using. Had I taken a look at the camera, played around with it and found all the manual functions, I would have saved about 30 – 45 minutes of me and my subject standing around trying to figure out how to adjust the f-stop.

Another thing that I learned is that you have to take multiple photos. Although I only needed to produce 10 for the sake of this assignment, I shot way more. At first, yes I did think I would go out and shoot about 10-20 photos and chose 10, but in all actuality I shot a total of 43 photographs. It amazed me because even after shooting those 43 photographs, I still had a hard time selecting which ones looked great, which angles were good and which photos matched the shot list… because at one point, I was out there just shooting whatever looked nice through my viewfinder.

I think the hardest thing about this assignment for me were trying to understand all the shots and how they are supposed to look. I found myself looking up on google how to shoot stopped action or panned photos. Being that this assignment was kind of my first real experience behind the camera as far as photography, I think I did an okay job. I know that there will very many improvements in my photography skills in time to come.

The main thing I grasped from this assignment is that photojournalism is not just going out and taking pictures. Well, it is but it isn’t. There is structure to photojournalism and one of the more important this is being prepared!

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