Monday, January 23, 2012

A Photo That Stood Out To Me

Among The Seafaring Nomads Of Asia



Assignment Requirements

• From the images above, select one photo that stood out to you. Prepare to tell me in class why you chose the photo, how it fit in with the other images and how it added to the text.  

My Opinion:

The pictures of the seafaring nomads of Asia had the best captured photographs.

 The 5th photo with the child grabbing the shark and playing with it as if it was a normal pet stood out to me the most. It was just unusual to me because it added an explanation to part of the text where they said “They learn to swim before they walk, legend says.”

It clearly represents how they are in touch with the sea and how it is considered part of their normal life behaviors. It clearly shows how they can dive deeply into the sea so bravely and confident as if it was their second home. The child looks only 6 years old and he is so brave enough to dive down there and grab a shark that is larger than his size.

Really nice captured picture by James Morgan, and I really liked the strong visuals in the photos it attracted my attention a lot. Especially in this photo that told the story quiet clearly before reading the text under the photos about their lifestyle.
I wish I could be such a great photojournalist like him one day.
Source:


Wednesday, January 18, 2012

1st Video Assignment

"Barbers Tales" & "Linking Gaza To The Outside World

 
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/06/16/world/1194840995653/linking-gaza-to-the-outside-world.html?ref=egypt
http://www.monocle.com/sections/business/Web-Articles/Barbers-Tales/

 
As watching both of these videos I would like to talk about the differences among them based on :

 
Strength
Weaknesse
Voice
Perspective
Structure
 Tone
 Pacing

 
Both videos are unique in their own, but each serves a different purpose to tell a story. Making a video to tell a story has become such a successful way to describe different events or stories. I believe that having the ability to use such a medium has encouraged many journalists to be unique in their own ways.

 
Linking Gaza to the Outside World
This video has a special purpose that involves showing us life at Gaza and how people are able to survive after all these years. The video tells the story in a way that shows different scenes of the smugglers as they try to deal with the underground tunnels. In addition to the way it could be so hectic for the smugglers to have a job that requires helping thousands of people to survive, while exposing their lives to danger for only a low amount of remuneration in return.  The video also shows us how brave those smugglers could be to survive under such conditions.  It follows the structure of the inverted pyramid by presenting the most important information first then continuing to different examples. It gives us a view of the authorities’ opinion about the underground tunnel and their fear of weapons to be smuggled. This video follows a clear attitude that shows the situation Palestinians go through and how such tunnels have become a source of business for those smugglers and people importing those products through the tunnels by hiring different labor. This video has offered a clear story with many different sources, scenes, and examples of the life at Gaza. As for the weaknesses I cannot find any. I believe it is a well done video.

 
Barber's Tales
The barber’s tales video follows a different goal in telling the story. It takes us around 4 different cities that have offered great personal grooming services for their clients. Barbers and hairdressers that have excelled in their work. This video obviously serves as a different purpose than the last video because it is more centered on happy moments rather than the last video that shows scenes of how people in Gaza and smugglers suffer. This video takes us around 4 different cultures of hairdressers and barbers that offer unique services for their clients in their own way. The background music used in the video was a smart way to tell this story. It clearly isn’t arranged as an inverted pyramid because the story continues placing different examples of the same importance on the other cities.  It is a nice human interest story because it lets us experience all these 4 cities with the most famous hairdressers and barbers. The Sources interviewed are only the owners of the salons if they had included some outside sources of the clients experience at the salons it would have been great. For this video different reporters speak for the different cities, unlike the last video where there is only one reporter speaking for the whole video.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

About me

 Mary Joseph

As the first blog post for the COMM222 journal, I will introduce my self and point down the things I would like to accomplish when finishing this course.

My name is Mary, and I am 18 years old. I am Lebanese, but originally Armenian. I lived most of my life in Muscat and then my family decided to move to Dubai in 2004. I received a scholarship in 2010 to continue my education at this university. This was one of my great accomplishments. I am a kind of person that worries and stresses a lot when experiencing an overload of work assigned, but i still try to manage it. Throughout this course I would love my skills to improve in writing and experience the proper ways of using each and every medium to tell a story or report on issues in our local community. My ambitions are to maintain more professional skills after this course that could help me standout in the outside world even if i had an opportunity to work in this field before graduating.

This is a brief introduction about me. I hope my blog posts would be interesting enough for my colleagues to read and I am also looking forward to learn and see other blog posts my classmates are willing to post.