Recap of TOT workshop day 3

 

The day started by one of the participants (Kafusha) giving a recap of the previous days work.

 

The first session kicked off as the facilitator (Matthew) introduced the topic on Photo journalism and video. The objectives of this lesson were:

 

In the introductory notes a few points on citizen photojournalism guidelines were outlined such as choosing a subject, composition and captioning. These 3 elements needed to be considered in photojournalism because photography had always been an important part of journalism and with the coming of new technology citizen journalists had many opportunities to explore photojournalism.

 

It was recommended that any picture should have a subject and the composition of the photo was also extremely important, The subject matter of the photo would come across or highly dramatic depending on factors such as the framing of the shot, the angle from which the shot was taken, colour and contrast etc….

Captioning was also very important as it provided basic information about the image. A few snap shots of real photos that were taken were shown to the participants and were discussed at length.

 

Towards the end of the first session, it was emphasized that Plagiarism

(copying somebody else’s work without permission) was a forbidden act and that there was great need for the citizen journalists to always get permission from the owners in situations were they opted to use pictures or images from other websites.

On the other hand it was good to note that they were many websites which allowed people to upload their own photos on the internet by transferring photos from the camera on to a computer and then uploading them via the internet some examples of photo websites were: www.flickr.com and www.facebook.com .

 

On this note the facilitator (Matthew) elaborated more on the technical specifications regarding digital cameras, cell phone cameras and professional cameras although much focus was on the digital and cell phone cameras that were latest and would be used easily by citizen journalists.

 

To wind up this session participants were given a digital camera (one camera per organization) and were tasked to take newsworthy photos around the premises as part of the exercise in photojournalism.

After the photos were taken participants had another practical exercise were they transferred the pictures from the camera on to the computer using Picasa software which is mainly used as a photography editor. This was yet another exciting and interesting exercise for the participants.

 

The last session of the day involved video and recording of voices on to a recording machine. Video was also said to be a useful tool for the citizen journalist and participants were urged to do some experiments to produce short news worthy video clips that did not need editing. Once again snap shots of video clips were shown to the participants for them to understand how to go about the video shots.

 

To end the day participants were now introduced to the voice recording machine and after they were taught how to use it they were given voice recording machines ( one machine per organization) and tasked to conduct very short interviews .Thereafter, participants had to transfer the recorded voices on to their computers using voice editing  Software.

In conclusion participants were urged to practice using the voice recording machine so as to perfect their skills. Day 3 was very practical and participants really enjoyed their work.