Environmental portrait

I met Grace and Sabrina last Sunday afternoon. I have searched a random event to shoot, to practise my photo skills, and I have stumbled upon this "cake pageant," happening in Chelsea. To raise funds for a art program for school girls in Queens, a small theather was organizing a cake competition. 15 contestants had registered, and 3 judges (including a journalist from NY1) had been summoned to taste the delicacies. Delicacies? Yes, but some of them looked a bit over-the-top and tasted nothing but sugar and cream.
I met Guadalupe, the youngest of the contestants (16 y/o), who had baked cupcakes and wanted to become a chef.
I met Grace and Sabrina too: they are setting up their venture called "Brown Butter Brooklyn," and they plan to sell cookies, cakes but also savory dishes to markets and parties. Grace's blood orange and ricotta cake won the competition. I went to Sabrina's house in Brooklyn last night to shoot them again. My assignment for the DM photo class this week was to shoot an "environmental portrait." I thought that it was overall a difficult exercise on several levels:
- you have to adapt in a completely environment, one that maybe is not ideal to set up a shoot (light, furniture etc);
- you have to create a relationship with your subject and be comfortable enough yourself to tell the person to move around, stand here and there, get closer, etc, but also make your subject forget that you are here;
- there is a time constraint: I felt that I could not ask them to put their lives on hold for 3 hours, although I would have needed that time to get a satisfying result. I stayed about 1h15mn, until 7.30pm. Sabrina's kid was hungry, it was time to go.
Below, what I'm going to submit to class tomorrow:

Lord of the Miracles, El Señor de Los Milagros

Here is one of the audio slideshows I produced for my RW1 class, it is also published on our website: "The New York World."

My picture on the Journalism school homepage

On Monday, I attended a meeting with the Current TV journalist Euna Lee, who got detained in North Korea for four months with fellow journalist Laura Ling in 2009.
The Journalism school published one of my pictures on the home page.
Next time I'll ask for another lens at the equipment room, because the default one is just too short: it's impossible to do a close-up unless I'm right under my subject's face!

- The Journalism School Columbia University via kwout

Courir après le temps

Meb Keflezighi, from the US, races toward the end. He won the marathon last year but finished 6th today

Aujourd'hui fut une journée marathon dans tous les sens du terme.
The ING New York City marathon was this morning. I'm writing an article on the economic impact of the NYC marathon on the city itself for the class website, so I had to attend anyway. On top of that, in my Digital Media Newsroom class my partner and I pitched a story for a 1 to 2mn-video: we follow around a father and his son from France before, during and after the marathon.
I got up at 3.45 am this morning to catch the subway and be on time to shoot them leaving the hotel Intercontinental near Times Square at 5.15 am. We stayed around the race the whole time, shooting and cheering at the elite runners (In a stunning development, Gebrselassie abandonned and is retiring! See results) and then recorded our last bit, when the son met the father after the race, then went home.

I was so sad not to be able to run the marathon this year. I had such a wonderful experience last year, but I rightfully decided not to apply this year because I knew that with the J-School, there was no way I could have trained seriously.  When will my next marathon be?

The New York World

On September, 25, I attended the NYC Dumpling festival, in Chinatown.

The key moment was the eating contest: how many dumplings can you shovel down your mouth in 2 minutes?

Turns out, 55 if you are a man called Joe Menchetti. He has won the contest for several years. And 38 if you are a tiny Hong-Konger called Floria Lee. I covered the event for my digital media newsroom class, and this is my favorite picture.

I also chose it for another reason: right now I feel a little bit like the girl in the picture. My life is so full, but I still want to grab every little crumb the Journalism school is willing to let me take. I love what I am doing, I would not be anywhere else in the world. But sometimes I remember the lecture Sig Gissler, the administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes and my digital media newsroom professor, gave us in August: "joyful entitlement". Yes, that's the right word. Now Hélène get back to work, pick up that phone and talk to your sources!

I wonder where I'd be had I not accepted to go to Columbia (answer: most probably in China).

Now that the semester is in full swing, our RW1 class finally set up a blog, reflecting the theme of the class ("New York, the international city"), where we will post our stories. Its (modest) name is "The New York World". "The New York World" was also a newspaper owned by Joseph Pulitzer, the founder of the school, from 1883 to 1911. Oh hasard, comme tu fais bien les choses.

But don't forget to check it out regularly, as we will update it every day.

Sorry for the lack of real logic and construction in this post, but after all it may be the last place where I am not forced to write a lede + nutgraf...

"Covering crisis" with Tom Kent from AP