"Ma muze est presque au désespoir, car certainement hier soir, au lieu de songer à la rime, je jouais si tard à la prime; que je dors encore debout, et je ne sais par quel bout je dois commencer ma copie..." Jean Loret.
For my photojournalism class, I had to shoot a process and create an audio slideshow. I always tend to go for the complicated stuff even when the teachers tells us to take it easy, which was the case for that assignement.
On Wednesday I was in Times Square, on my way to take the Roosevelt Island tram and shoot the journey. As I was walking on 42nd/7th avenue, I heard music and laughter. I stopped to watch four street performers called "The Positive Brothers" do acrobatics and make people laugh (they were really funny), all of these while wearing spandex costumes and dancing on Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" (the video is ridiculous). I forgot my plans to go to Roosevelt Island, I followed these guys around for about an hour. Here is my audio slideshow:
It is certainly not the most imaginative idea I ever had for a photo assignment, but I had very little time to make this happen so I chose a safe bet: freegans. I had attended several times last August and September various freegan dinners, I like what they are trying to do, so I chose to follow a group on a "trash tour" last week.
I was surprised to see how diverse the crowd was. We were about 20: from the PhD student to the young mother to the 50- something hippy teacher to the Chinese girl who walks everywhere...
Some people didn't want to be photographed. I am always kind of pissed off when that happens. I tell them I am a student and that the pictures won't be published, but they don't care, they just don't want to. It would be okay had they expressed genuine concern for their job (what if somebody at work sees in the paper that a colleague goes dumpster-diving at night). But they are not going to be published! Oh well...I suspect some people do that just for fun and piss me off :-)
Then the following night was the "feast": a 3-hour cooking process, at one of the volunteer's apartment, using all the food that was picked up the night before. Everybody comes at 5 or 6pm and helps decide what recipe to do, peel the vegetables and cook the different dishes. We got to eat vegetable soup, chili, baked aubergines, a giant salade, freshly-squeezed fruit juice, fruit salad, and bread...It was really good.
Pretty much the same crowd showed up as the day before, including the young mother with her boyfriend. They brought their adorable little girl. And while the mother was busy eating and chatting, the father was shamelessly flirting with me. Ah!
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:
Visual storytelling (photojournalisme), business and economics reporting, China seminar (un cours sur comment couvrir la Chine, avec Howard French) et video profiles : ce sont mes cours du second semestre. J'ai déjà beaucoup (trop) de boulot et suis déjà en manque cruel de sommeil, mais je ne m'en rend qu'à peine compte tellement j'adore mes cours! Beaucou de terrain et de reportage en perspective...
Voici les premières photos que j'ai prises pour mon cours de DM photo:
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!
Voici mon 1er audio slideshow réalisé à New York.
Résultat plus que modeste... (Ceux réalisés à Shanghai sont visibles sur ma page Viméo):
The last 15 minutes from Hélène Franchineau on Vimeo.
Every morning, Johnny Votta Jr. takes care of the NYU students around Washington Square Park. He makes sure no one gets run over by a cab and yells the time remaining before class. His morning hobby has earned him some sort of celebrity status.
Samedi 17 Novembre, aux environs de 19h30. C'est tout ce que j'ai pu prendre, étant en Vélib'... Et puis les flics barraient le passage. J'aime bien les incendies, c'est un incident bien senti, comme dirait Paradis...
