Inspired by the photography theme of last week’s class, I looked at the photos attached to the stories published on Connect2Mason.com with a whole new perspective. This gallery includes three particularly impressive photos from various stories published on the website. Each one of them effectively captures a powerful photography technique.

The picture on the left is a snapshot of Mason’s Sherrod Wright leaping for a bucket in Mason’s win over William and Mary’s tribe. Through both angle of the shot and the body language of all the players, the photographer created a fantastic sense of motion in the still frame.

The middle shot is from a story about Mason baseball’s first home series of games, and the 2013 season in general. I admire the emphasis the photographer placed on the scoreboard in this photograph. This emphasis is accentuated by the two blurred baseball players that are dwarfed by the scoreboard.

The last photograph in the gallery is of the capital building in Washington D.C., but it honestly doesn’t seem like a legitimate photograph to me. The gorgeous, mildly cloudy, and deeply blue sky in the background makes the photo seem more like a painting. That sense of surrealism gives it awe.

Professor Miller devoted last week’s Online Journalism class to learning more about the specific roles in each group. He delivered his lecture through a brief-but-effective PowerPoint presentation that he titled “Collaborative Journalism”. The PowerPoint presentation includes helpful descriptions of each distinct role in the groups.

I am a member of the Fairfax Transportation group (aka The Transporters), and I am acting as the data journalist for our first story. This means that “I want to tell the truth behind the facts,” according to Miller’s lecture. Miller included useful tips in his PowerPoint for discovering that truth, including this handy flowchart.

Paul Bradshaw, onlinejournalismblog.com

I’m going to treat Miller’s “Collaborative Journalism” PowerPoint as the Rosetta stone for understanding each individual role this semester. For this story I’m a data journalist, but for the next story I could be a network journalist, multimedia journalist, editor, or community manager. The PowerPoint helps make that transition easier.

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The first thing you’ll notice about this media pyramid is that it’s not actually a pyramid. This was by design. I try to keep my media consumption balanced, and I thought that a hierarchical pyramid shape wouldn’t convey that. So I instead decided to construct my assignment as a collage.

courtesy of www.elca.org

As I am writing this, It’s coming up on 1 o’clock in the morning. Which means this is the perfect time to think about the next few weeks of Comm 361.

I’m going into my third class this Tuesday afternoon, and my group is still needs a blog page. That blog page is the first of several goals that I will be trying to accomplish starting tomorrow.

The second step will be to coordinate a schedule for meetings with my group. This part has always been the most difficult step in my past project groups. Everyone has a different schedule of classes, homework, and part time jobs, and finding synchronicity between each group member is almost inevitably a nightmare.

But I must admit that I am optimistic about planning with my group members tomorrow. Each of us were in Steve Klein’s New’s Writing and Reporting class last semester, so there is a sense of confidence about each person’s group participation. It eases my paranoia about any of my group members slacking on their end.

After we agree on a schedule, we will have to decide on the blog’s theme.

I narrowed down the list of options to my three personal favorites: Job Hunting in Fairfax, Hidden Fairfax, and Neighborhood Renaissance program. I think that each of these options have great story potential, and I would enjoy investigating any of them over the semester.

Furthermore, I think that my flexibility with the final choice for the theme will make the final group decision much easier. I’d prefer a cooperative group over my personal theme pick.

Blog site, group schedule, and blog theme. Those are my goals for the next few weeks of this class. I am curious to see how they pan out.