While this no longer comes as a huge surprise, especially after stopping their production of black and white paper, changing their logo, and introducing a digital camera with two lenses, it is still a bit strange knowing that sales of Kodak's digital equipment exceeded that of film during 2005.

At the end of the Fall 2005 semester the photo staff gave each other various gag gifts. I received a cardboard cutout of myself, whose purpose was to sit in on all of the classes that I was missing to go take photos (I did manage to reasonably salvage the semester).

Not knowing what to actually do with the cutout, I started to use it for class assignments such as this magazine cover for my picture editing class:





With the semester over I wanted new uses for the cutout. After being given suggestions ranging from taking photos in various locations ala travelling gnome to using it to ride in the carpool lane, it was decided that I would photograph the cutout being destroyed in as many ways as possible, with the culmination involving a paper shredder or wood chipper.

So far, two down, ∞ to go:

I had been trying to find a better way to display my work on the blog. While I love Flickr, I did not want to hassle readers with having to keep clicking back and forth between this blog and my flickr page if I wanted to display multiple images. Luckily, fellow SJSU photojournalism student and blogger Shaminder Dulai pointed me over to Lightbox JS, a script that overlays images onto the window when someone clicks on their thumbnails. While the site says that the script works on all modern browsers, I have been having some trouble with IE and Safari. I hope to get all the kinks out soon and begin posting work.

In trying to add some form of category system to the blog I have killed two birds with one stone. After browsing over the various ways one can add a category system to Blogger, I decided upon a method which (I think) relies on tagging posts through del.icio.us and then pointing to my del.icio.us page. I apologize for I am probably wrong in my explanation. However, adding this little aspect to the blog did force me to register with del.icio.us, and I hope to become more familiar with it and use it to mark the sites I visit most as well as view the links of others to find interesting and relevant material.

While I do have the random strip of pictures from my Flickr account running across the top of the page, I felt I should post a quick and easy link to my portfolio. Thanks to this handy guide, I was able to do so, and the resulting flash presentation is now linked on the sidebar under Personal Links.

Two weeks into my internship at the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers and all is well. I have shot nine assignments and find the hardest part (aside from portraits) is remembering which of the six papers I am shooting for at the time.

It has been great to get back to shooting often again following a short winter break. To be honest, after shooting nearly every day for a whole semester while on the Spartan Daily it felt a bit weird to be at home with the camera on the desk. While not every assignment is glorious, and not every picture is an award winner (okay, none are) starting my internship at SVCN has done nothing but solidify my resolve to become a photojournalist. I have met friendly and interesting people, not to mention I spend my days taking photographs.

As far as my photography goes...I still get nervous and self-conscious when photographing people at events and when directing subjects while taking a portrait. I have been trying to work on my composition, adding elements that would make for better storytelling while subtracting those that do not contribute. It is still, and always will be, a work in progress.

Lisa Martinez grooms the plants around the Almaden Winery Park in San Jose, Calif. on Thursday, January 12, 2006. Ground crews have had to cut their visits to neighborhood parks by two days a week due to city budget cuts.

Photography is an expensive hobby/profession. This blatantly obvious statement is especially true for students who already have to contend with rent, tuition, living expenses, etc, and may or may not have a full-time or part-time job.

As a photojournalism student, there are certain tools that I know I will need. A sturdy DSLR (20D, D70, 1D Mark II, D2X, etc.), a nice wide angle (16-35mm f/2.8), and a telephoto zoom (70-200mm f/2.8). That does not even take into account batteries, equipment to carry your gear, other primes and zooms you may be considering, and so on.

How then, is one supposed to afford to experiment with the other aspects of photography? After completing my pj set-up, I simply don't have the money for macro-photography, studio lighting, and panoramic equipment. Instead, you can check out Haje Jan Kamps' photocritic.org which he calls the "Home of DIY budget photography projects." I hope to get started on the macro photo pringles can and will post resulting pictures as soon as it is complete.

On a related note, Slashdot has a link to Michael Golembewski's Scanner Photography Project, in which he combines flatbed scanners with anything from cardboard tubes, large format cameras, box cameras, and projectors to produce very interesting images.

In October of last year the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers were purchased by Knight Ridder, which also owns the San Jose Mercury News. Upon purchasing SVCN, the Mercury News discontinued its publication of "The Guide," an insert focused on local communities. Knight Ridder Senior Vice President Hilary Schneider explained the purchase in the following way:

We believe strongly in the importance of community journalism, which we know is highly valued by readers. This group of tightly zoned weeklies will help us extend our coverage of micro-communities in the Bay Area. They serve a series of neighborhoods that are also highly desirable to advertisers.

From this purchase, Knight Ridder acquired a profitable group of newspapers to help off-set losses in other areas, the communities kept a crucial resource for local news...but how was this purchase affected the photographers and writers at these newspapers?

Recently, the Mercury News ran a small news piece by a Knight Ridder writer. In actuality, the writer is employed by the Cupertino Courier, which is one of the aforementioned papers that makes up SVCN. The writer's original article was published just days before being picked up by its bigger brother the Mercury News.

The question is then, does the resulting clip from the Mercury News with a Knight Ridder (as opposed to Cupertino Courier) byline help or hurt a writer? On the negative side, one should not be expecting employment from the Mercury News anytime soon. Why would the Merc hire and then pay someone when they have already cut "The Guide" and can simply fill their local news with timely articles from SVCN? On the positive, the writer does have a clip with a Knight Ridder byline if ever s/he was seeking work outside of the Knight Ridder sphere of influence.

I am obviously not an expert on the business/employment side of these things and would love to hear from others about their opinion on the matter. One thing is fairly certain, the SVCN purchase represents a decrease in competition, as well as the number of differing voices/opinions/biases that the public can hear.

As many photographers are aware, Adobe has responded to Apple's Aperture program with their own application, dubbed Lightroom, which, according to this article in Macworld, is to be released in beta form this Monday at the Macworld Expo.

While Aperture has won many over with its sexy styling and intuitive controls, many photojournalists, especially students, do not have a machine powerful enough to handle Aperture's system requirements nor the money to upgrade. As AppleInsider points out,

Aperture was designed to run on computers such as the 1.25GHz 15- or 17-inch PowerBook G4, Apple on its Web site recommends that software be used on a computer with at least two (dual) 2GHz PowerPC G5 processors and 2GB of RAM for optimal performance.

According to sources, Adobe developed Lightroom to run on a slew of Macs not supported by Aperture. The company hopes that Lightroom's more lenient set of system requirements will be one its greatest benefits and selling points.

You can read Macworld's first look at Adobe Lightroom here or download the Lightroom beta from Adobe and start experimenting with it yourself (note: reqs OS X 10.4.3 or greater, Windows version currently not available).

I have begun an internship with the Silicon Valley Community Newspapers, shooting for six of the eight papers under their watch. While I doubt I will be as prolific in my blogging or my photography as Joyce Lin was while taking a photo an hour and recording her experience for The Digital Journalist, I hope to be more thorough in recording my experiences than I was during my time at the Rafu Shimpo.

Recently purchased by Knight Ridder, SVCN consists of the Almaden Resident, Campbell Reporter, Cupertino Courier, Los Gatos Weekly-Times, Rose Garden Resident, Saratoga News, Sunnyvale Sun, and Willow Glen Resident. As the name suggests, the papers cover a good deal of community news, at a deeper level than that of the Knight Ridder owned San Jose Mercury News.

As far as the work involved, I will be shooting three days out of the week, allowing me to maintain my full-time status at San Jose State and continue with page layout for the Spartan Daily. My assignments will consist of the usual sports, news, features, with a large emphasis on portraits. This should prove helpful as portrait photography is by far my weakest area.