• Photo Package Link: “Photo Gallery: Pentatonix Plays at Tulsa’s BOK Center” by Tulsa World, a newspaper based in Tulsa, Oklahoma
• Why I Chose It: I love Pentatonix, the hottest group in a cappella music today. (They got their start by winning Season 3 of the NBC series The Sing-Off and have gone on to achieve many accolades, including platinum-selling albums, YouTube videos with billions of views, and two GRAMMY awards.) I’m a visual person, so I always enjoy seeing pictures of my favorite musical group! Since this is a journalism class, however, I wanted to stick to a journalistic source.
• What I Like About It:
  1. The photos are crisp, pristine, and of excellent quality, with clear images and nice bokeh.
  2. There is a mixture of single-person and group shots.
  3. The photographer did well at getting different positions of the singers when doing group shots: some with their heights staggered, some linear.
• What I Think Could Have Been Stronger:
  1. I would have liked to see the singers interacting more with the audience and the venue (the BOK Center is a multipurpose arena and indoor-sports arena in Tulsa). Basically, I’d like to see the newspaper putting Tulsa’s unique thumbprint on a Pentatonix concert.
  2. I would like to have seen more personality in each photo. As it is, they’re great shots of great singers, but that’s all they are. I’d like to look at a picture or two and say, “Wow, he really captured the essence of Avi there.” Nothing really stood out as saying “This is Pentatonix” from “This is a rock band.” There was also no emphasis on the characteristic that makes them unique: that they are a band with no instruments.
  3. I can tell the photographer was either close to the stage or had an excellent zoom lens, but I would have liked to see more mid-range or wide-angle shots. (As a nature photographer, I’m normally all in for tight shots, but with people I want to get a sense of story that’s better told with a mix of all three distances.) They do so a bit (once they showed most of the stage and part of the monitors and lights above it; I just would like to have seen more.)
  4. Captions on all of the slides mentioning singer Mitch Grassi misspelled his name as Mitch Grass. This is bad, because the story linked to the photo package spelled it correctly. Miscommunication between journalist and photojournalist, and a bad error not caught by the editor.
  5. The phrase a cappella should have been italicized since it is Latin.

New York Times article

Ever hear of the dirty kids “movement”?  Perhaps some of you have, given that its origins are in the millennial generation.  I had not.  But still … the lifestyle it represents is almost timeless.  Perhaps it was just called train hopping in days past, those we called hobos traveling the rails.

I have been privy to stories about these travelers from my husband, who grew up in an isolated spot next to the amazingly beautiful Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York, just yards from the Hudson rail line.  He tells stories of seeing hobos walk the rails and camp around the bend from his house, of smelling their campfires and of polite but weird encounters with these travelers, sometimes in broad daylight and many times in the dark of night.  The contrasts these stories bring up are incredible.  The majestic Hudson, with its soothing sounds of water lapping onto the rocks contrasted to the deafening roar of trains approaching and receding; the image of fast-moving freights, carrying the latest in consumer goods, passing by bums who meander along in no particular hurry, hoping for scraps to cook on their campfires.  And so, this story captured my attention.

The dirty kids have been called a movement, although that may suggest something on a grander scale than is probably the case.  Nevertheless, they are mostly young people who have decided to live a traveling life on the rails, occasionally staying in a cheap motel along the way or hitchhiking on a highway.  They may occasionally work at a stop-over point but more often rely on money from panhandling.  They are vagabonds who scoff at a traditional lifestyle and form bonds with their comrades on the rails.

This New York Times article, published on March 8, 2016, is about the dirty kids.  It includes a slideshow which tells the story even more powerfully than does the text.  I believe it contains a good assortment of images, well done photographically (although I’m probably not well qualified to judge), with fair to good captions.  There is just one picture in the slideshow that I think is weak – #16, showing hands and partial arms reaching up toward sky.  The intent may have been to show exhilaration but it probably could have been cropped differently – to show less sky and more of the arms in addition to hands.  Captions are placed to the side and do not cover the photographs at all, which is good.  Words are white against a dark background and are readable.  One somewhat negative comment I have is that some of the individuals named in the captions could be described beyond just their first names – even something simple like, “Tiffany joined the group in Alabama” would give some context.  Despite those minor critiques, I think it’s a good slideshow that complements the article.

The photo package I chose is about a village of left behind children in China shot by a Chinese photographer Liu Feiyue. Growing up in a happy family, when I first knew the story of left-behind children, I was shocked. I couldn’t image what I would be if my parents were not accompany with me. When I saw the crying face of Lingling, my feelings are hard to express. I understand their parents’ choices, but I also feel sad for the left-behind children. I think this series photo is really powerful. The touching children’s faces can help to raise social awareness of the left-behind issue, and probably help the solve the issue.

I think the caption help a lot for people who are not familiar with the topic to understand the story. What I admired is that the photographer only described the situation with plain words. Since the story itself is maudlin enough, no extra words needed.

I really like this kind of photo which reflects serious social issues. It can help to improve the society to be a better one.

I examined a photo series by Texan photographer Allison Hess documenting the struggles of individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I first discovered her work via an article on CNN showcasing her work with one particular couple, but when I followed the link to her personal site at the bottom of the page, I found that the photos highlighted on CNN were in fact part of a larger series entitled A Light in the Dark, which highlights patients at Country House Residences, a memory-care facility in Lincoln, Nebraska.

I was initially drawn to the images showcased on CNN because they had been shot in black and white. I am not a high-end professional photographer by any means, but when I do photography work or am looking at the work of others, I often feel that capturing images in black and white removes distractions while capturing the essence and feeling of what it is you are shooting. You find yourself looking at people’s eyes more, and at backgrounds less. I felt black and white was especially appropriate in these images because it captured something of the haunting quality of Alzheimer’s. It is a disease that robs patients of their memories and their identities, and I have often thought that hard as it is for one’s grandmother or grandfather to no longer recognize you, it must be even harder to live in that constant state of confusion and fear. I feel that these images capture some of that fear. When I examined the larger series on Hess’s personal site, I found that not all had been shot in black and white, but even those shot in color have a quiet, muted, and vaguely melancholy feel that fits well with the images in monochrome.

The captions included on CNN are purely informative in nature, though the slideshow is accompanied by an article on Hess and the inspiration behind her work. The series is arranged much differently on her site–one scrolls from left to right across the page to view the images. Informative captions are found underneath each image or cluster of images, and brief blurbs describing Alzheimer’s or Hess’s inspirations link different sections. I noticed some grammatical/structural errors in Hess’s captions which were vaguely distracting, and I personally was not fond of the layout on her site. However, I felt the quality of her photography to be excellent, its subject evergreen, and the series overall a perfect demonstration of all that can be said with very few words.

The photo package that I chose was called “What you didn’t see on TV: Behind the scenes of the Democratic debate” from Politico.com. I first found this photo package last semester when I did a project on the presidential election, and it was the first one that came to mind when I read this assignment. I love that the photo package was used to give a “behind the scenes” opportunity for readers. Politico does a great job of posting photo packages that tell stories of an entire event. Throughout the entire photo package, the story of the Democratic Debate was told from start to finish. From starting with a “calm before the storm” photo, then continuing on with the arrival of campaign supporters and candidates, I felt like I saw an accurate series of events in order. It would have been a great addition to include a photo of the candidates “in action” instead of them just waving at the end of the debate. Besides that, the photo package did a great job at telling the complete story of the day.