Story elements

 Photography  15 Responses »
Apr 142009
 


Springtime in Summerville, SC

I love to read fiction, especially good fiction. Also, if I happen to see a movie that contains all of the elements of good story telling, then I tend to remember that movie for some time.

The elements of storytelling are, in no particular order:

  • Setting: Where the story takes place, time, location
  • Point of view: Who’s telling the story
  • Plot: How the story is told. The steps, or sequence of events
  • Theme: The underlying message of what the story is about.
  • Character: The main participant
  • Conflict: some type of struggle, either internal or external

My wife’s all time favorite movie is Seven years in Tibet. This movie, may or may not appeal to you. It depends, I think, on where you are in your life.

The general theme of the movie is change, or perhaps self-discovery, or maybe even renewal. This movie had it all, well placed, and in great measure. It’s probably my favorite Brad Pitt movie. My favorite movie series was The Matrix. Wow! It was more than just a special effects orgy. The theme was about discovery, about discovering that we are one with the Universe. It was all about casting off masks, breaking out of the Matrix, discovering reality, etc. When I watched it the first few times, I didn’t connect; however, after a lot of Tao reading, etc. It began to make sense. I could say that perhaps that is not what the author intended, but the story had enough in it to make sense to me in that way. There is a lot of discussion about it around the web. People take different meanings from it.

As we approach the SoFoBoMo starting line, I’m trying to solidify a theme, a setting, and a plot. It might seem a lofty goal for a 30-day project, but I want to give it a go. Last year’s project was haphazard, but I liked it anyway. There was, however, one section that I particularly liked better than the others, that was the Yin/Yang section. It had a theme. Click the image to the right to see last year’s book.

This year, I might do something about the flow of life. I might just do it in the field across the street. After all, everything occurs there. Birth. Death. Struggle. Triumph. Failure. Competition. It’s all there. That could be my setting. My time line would, of course, be the SoFoBoMo month. The characters, whatever I find like plants, insects, etc. The point of view would be from my point of view could be omniscient limited point of view where I move from character to character and put in my thoughts or feelings about what I see. The plot is the interesting part. How do I put it together to be in line with the theme?

Well, it’s food for thought anyway.

 Posted by Paul at 5:09 pm  Tagged with: , , , ,

A SoFoBoMo practice book

 Photography, SoFoBoMo 09  8 Responses »
Apr 042009
 


OK, so I did a practice book (992 KB PDF). I thought: Why not? I need to get in touch with Scribus again and learn more about it this year. For this ‘book’, I did no post processing of the images, save for a small amount of color correction. For the real thing, I’ll have to do the color corrections, sharpening, and whatever other post processing that I’ll need to do. I’ve also not decided on color or black and white. It will depend on the final subject. For now, it’s about learning about the tool. I want to establish a workflow for the real thing. Here’s what I took away from this learning experience:


Format:
I still want to decide on a format. I shot a lot of vertical photos, but sometimes horizontal fits. It seems natural that a square book works best if I want to do both; however, I did my practice book in the vertical format just to see what it would look like.

Font
Last year I used Adobe Garamond Pro as my font of choice. I think that I’ll use it again. It is a very clean, easy to read font. It’s nothing fancy, but looks very professional.

Alignment
I need to learn how to align things in Scribus. That is, to make sure that text areas are aligned and that images are aligned, at least as much as I want them to be.

Convenience
Scribus encourages you to use separate text files and then import the text. This became very easy to do as I could write, rewrite, spell check, tag, and then import into Scribus. After I had decided my styles, such as header, footer, basic text, quote text, etc. all that I had to do was tag the first sentence of a paragraph with a tag that I decided, like \q to indicate a quotation, then import that text into my text frame and Scribus would apply the styles. Very easy. This is much more advanced than what I used last year.

Stability
The Mac version has not crashed on my yet! Last year the Windoze version crashed a bit more. The Mac layout, while basically the same, seems a little more user friendly, but Scribus does take some getting used to, but it is $699 less than Adobe Indesign. I guess that you could get a 30 day free trial and try to use it while doing your book, but no thanks! I need to know the software ahead of time. Trying to do both at the same time, like I did last year is a headache.

Deadlines
I need them! That’s why I gave myself until April 4th to finish this. I almost didn’t do it, but felt obligated to myself to do it.

Geekware
Lastly, another person, Billie, talks about her experience trying to learn Scribus. Basically, she said that she was not geeky enough to learn it and that attempting to learn it made it feel like her head was going to explode! :-) It’s not as bad as all that, but it does have a learning curve that you’ll have to climb. Better to start early!

This practice book was a great bit of learning and a nice distraction for the evening. The real deal starts for me in 27 days. I still have no real idea about what I’m going to do! :-)

 Posted by Paul at 10:44 pm  Tagged with: , , ,

Real Life

 Photography  3 Responses »
Mar 072008
 

pdl_20080224_3957.jpg
On the road again

If you’re interested in the various facets of the life of one of the worlds top shooters, pick up a copy of: The moment it clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world’s top shooters. By Joe McNally. Joe’s resume is quite impressive, having shot for Time, Life, National Geographic, etc. His most famous work is Faces of Ground Zero – Portraits of the heroes of September 11th.

This book is an easy read and is not exactly a how-to guide on photography. It has a few ‘secrets’, rather techniques, on lighting and how he got the shot. However, it’s really a great book detailing defining moments in his career. It’s filled with lots of anecdotes to get the point across. It’s a very interesting read.

The part of this book that grabbed me the most was a chapter entitled: Choosing is never easy. In this chapter, Joe talks about missing a lot of his children’s childhood. He speaks of his first big assignment with National Geographic, a 4 week trip to Africa. He speaks of saying goodbye to his daughter Caitlin, who was three years old at the time.

He says of his departing cab ride:

I slid down in the seat and began to weep. I wept for her, for me, but mostly because the siren call of my first big story with a yellow border around it was more powerful than the call of fatherhood.

I was floored. Sometimes I have pictures in my head, admittedly a romantic view, of what it would be like to be a globe-trotting-camera-toting-super-photographer, like Joe. However, the reality is not all that sexy, as you’ll find out if you read the book. Most of the time is spent away from home, on airplanes, in modest hotels, in lands far away. Also, most of his shots have very limited time budget, sometimes as short as 10 minutes when photographing the ‘stars’.

What really got me was the personal sacrifice of the photographer and of his/her family. I simply could not imagine missing so much of my family’s life. Perhaps that’s why I wouldn’t be a globe-trotting-camera-toting-super-photographer, like Joe. No judgment on him, certainly. He loves what he does. I just don’t think that I have heart, or perhaps have too much heart for my family, to leave so many times for so long.

So, if you get a chance, pick up the book. It’s a great read. I’m starting to read it for the second time.

 Posted by Paul at 8:52 am  Tagged with: , , ,

SoFoBoMo: Excitement building

 Photography, SoFoBoMo 08  5 Responses »
Mar 062008
 

sofobomo_cover-copy.jpg
An idea

Well, the clock is ticking and we are getting close to being able to start on our projects. I have solidified my theme, Around The House, and have even come up with a subtitle of “Dance of the shadows.”.

This morning, as I was getting ready to go to work, I noticed some beautiful shadow patterns underneath one of the chairs in the sunroom. I went to grab my camera, sat on the floor, and took a few pictures. Then, I came to my computer to create a cover for the book. Naturally, this will not be the cover, but is only a practice run. I just want to carve out a few ideas. I still need to tweak fonts, placement, colors, etc.

Some weeks ago, I had already decided on format. Oddly enough, I picked a square format. I shoot lots of verticals and a few horizontal images; however, the square format, you can see, offers no advantages to either and offers advantages to both. The challenge is in defining the borders to make things look nice. :-) Sometimes, the borders will be on the top and bottom, other times, at the sides.

I waffled a bit on my theme thinking that I may not find enough interesting pictures, but then I thought, interesting to whom? Everyday that I walk around the house in the evening or morning there are really cool shadows and patterns dancing about everywhere, so getting 35 shots should not prove to be a hardship, unless it’s cloudy for my entire 35 days, then I might have to switch themes! :-)

As for the font, I have decided to use Garamond. In the book about designing books, this font is suggested as one of the more pleasing and easy to read fonts, having not so formal a look as other fonts. It makes for easy reading and seems ideal for a coffee table book, a book that you’d like to sit, relax, and enjoy.

I guess that I’ll start, in earnest, sometime in April … perhaps after I file my taxes and get rid of that nastiness! It will give my mind a chance to clear!

 Posted by Paul at 8:49 am  Tagged with: , ,
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