Lizards, Walkabouts, and Photojournalism

Today, I experienced an aspect of journalism that I never had before: Photography. When I arrived at the infamous Room 115, I wasn't sure what to expect. My instructor started talking about lighting, the rule of thirds, and photoshopping. It was all interesting stuff that I had never heard before. Then he put a camera in my hands. At this point, I was a little nervous. I didn't have the courage to tell my teacher that the only camera I had ever owned was a little Kodak disposable given to me when I was eight. I took pictures of green lizards and grasshoppers mostly, while they were crawling through the grass. You couldn't really see the lizards or grasshoppers in the developed pictures, though. For that matter, you couldn't really see the grass. It looked more like a fuzzy picture of a fuzzy green carpet. Nevertheless, here I was in Room 115, holding a camera that probably cost the equivalent of my entire life savings, engaged in a conversation that went something like this: "Alright, now if you go to the menu, you'll see the tab here for the ISO settings." "Uh-huh." "Now, what I'm going to do is set it at about 1600." "Okay." "This will make it better for indoor shots, because the ISO controls how much light is let into the camera." "Sure." When he finished talking, I still didn't have a clue what an ISO could possibly be, or why you would need 1600 of them for indoor shots, but I knew better than to push the matter. After all, we only had two hours. I decided to take pictures of the group working in the newspaper room. The first shot I took was of the writers at their computers, with all of the awards previous students had won displayed overhead. I thought it was a pretty neat picture, so I took another one like it from a different angle. After that, I wasn't sure what to do next. I knew that I should probably get some face shots, but since all the students were at desks set against a wall, I didn't know how to get them. My instructor saw me just standing there and showed what he wanted me to do by clearing a space on top of one of the desks. Oh. I hopped up and sat back, uncomfortably close and in an awkward position, but with a very clear view of the typer's face. I proceeded to snap away. After I had only an hour left, and plenty of pictures of everyone's faces, I got bored and started what my instructor called a "walkabout." I walked all over USM's campus, waiting for the perfect shot to manifest itself. It never did. When I got back to Room 115 at 3 p.m., the rest of my group were already editing their photos. For newspapers, it's considered unethical to edit anything other than the size or the color of photographs, so the editing didn't take too long. After we picked two shots I had taken in the printing room, we cropped and brightened them a little, then saved them. I was done. It was definitely a learning experience, but a lot more learning will be required before I become an effective photojournalist.