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« August 2004 | Main | October 2004 »
The final work day of VE2K4 is under way. This day will end late into the night, after much Final Cutting, Photoshopping and Flashing. So far, this is the most "event free" day we have had. Just a quick survey uncovered some wonderful pictures and stories in process of being turned in great multimedia packages.
"What doesn't kill ya, makes you stronger." - Gary Oldman as Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg, The Fifth Element
Another day of trials and tribs at VE 2K4. This morning - no Poynter (power out), no computer lab (inside Poynter) and for several participants, no assignments. By this afternoon we had a backup lab outfitted and all participants out and working. This evening, David Leeson spoke and inspired. Poynter is back online and everything looks good...till the locusts arrive anyway.
Yet another interesting night at Visual Edge. Poynter's Howard Finberg on the emerging "connected" future; cramming (of video knowledge) in the hotel lobby; and the dueling tech-heads. And true to the spirit of this 'hurricane edition' of VE, there was a blackout at Poynter this evening leaving only a few rooms with electricity and the air conditioning off.
The weather finally broke yesterday and we got started with a marathon 14 hr day at Poynter. Everyone was a little glassy-eyed by the end - especially after a session on flash and an evening lecture by Mario Garcia. Today, more instruction; Wed. out in the field!
Laughing in the face of Hurricane Jeanne, Visual Edge for 2K4 is attempting to get under way. We are trapped in the hotel, but thanks to a conference room with wireless internet, Karl Kuntz has begun!
I am here in beautiful, wet and windy St. Pete for another Poynter seminar - Visual Edge. This seminar is designed to teach visual journalists the why and how of online story-telling. The week long class has always been on "the edge" (for almost 20 yrs I think, first as the Electronic Photo Workshop in the '80's); but this year, for several reasons, may be the last.
We had an interesting discussion last night among the faculty about introducing the participants to the still-forming world of blogging; thinking about it as another viable means for online visual journalism. The discussion was spirited - my hope is that we get a chance to look beyond the current debate about the impact of blogs (see the excellent New York Times Magazine for Sunday, September 26), and begin to look at blogging in its raw form; as a real simple publishing platform for the group or the individual photojournalist to do new and challenging multi-media reporting.
ABCNEWS.com : Photojournalist Eddie Adams Dies at 71
"Eddie Adams, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist whose half-century of work was defined by a single frame an Associated Press photo of a communist guerrilla being executed in a Saigon street during the Vietnam War died early Sunday. He was 71."
This is the second edition of the new Style magazine from the New York Times. Again, its full of ads and upscale editorial stuff - guess they have figured out yet another way to make money and look good doing it.
Of particular note is the integration of the print product online; a very clean re-interpretation that enhances and doesn't just shovel - notes should be taken here!
Great little piece in Friday's Washington Post; anime hits the big time in the U.S. as its director's are now getting the celeb interiew treatment! Also check out the N.Y. Times review.
Nine years ago, Japanese writer-director Mamoru Oshii's "Ghost in the Shell" was the first anime film to be nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes. It became a cult hit, and now Oshii has returned with the highly anticipated "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence," opening today in Washington.- Bill Booth, The Washington Post, Photograph by Samuel Ortiz/Wireimage.comBoth movies envision a world, circa 2032, where machines and humans have become interchangeable. There are gun battles and yakuza mooks, of course, but the characters quote Rene Descartes and Isaac Asimov, Confucius and the Bible, in an Aristotelian dialogue about the nature of man and machine.
The Post's Bill Booth caught up with Oshii in Los Angeles recently. We don't know about the movie, but his view of the future is a don't-miss:
• "The human body is becoming obsolete, and so we must find a place for all life forms -- human, animal, robot, computer -- where they are all equal."• "People are very different from animals. We don't accept our original bodies. Humans wear clothes, have earrings and tattoos, do cosmetic surgery, take vitamins. If they are sick, they get organ transplants. And now we have radios, telephones, microphones, watches, computers, microchips outside the body now, but soon we will utilize these machines inside our bodies and then we will become part cyborg. This is inevitable. The process has already begun."
• "Humans have always created their environments so they can live more comfortably. A person has a heart problem. He gets a pacemaker. I believe in a new future where people will become mechanized. And you can see they are already starting to lose their original bodies."
• The pioneers of body mechanization "will probably be Japanese. That, and human cloning. . . . Because we do not have the same taboos. Japan is a really weird country without any religion. We take ideas from everywhere. We don't really care about what is lost and what is acquired. Japanese don't believe in anything. They don't have very strong wills. They are weak but adaptable." Oshii pauses. "I think Japanese people could live in outer space," he says. "Very easily."
TIME.com: Why Iraq's Not Getting Better
US soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division salute their dead comrade, Specialist Edgar Daclan of the 1-77 Armored, who was killed on 10 September 2004, during a memorial service at a US military base in Balad, north of Baghdad.(AFP/Jewel Samad)
Every day in Iraq seems to bring a new horror. On Tuesday, for example, it was 47 killed by a car bomb in Baghdad, 11 slain by another in Baquba, 8 dead in a clash between U.S. troops and insurgents in Ramadi — and those were just the major incidents. U.S. casualties have risen every month since the June hand-over of political authority to the interim government of prime minister Iyad Allawi, and the pattern of confrontation is not encouraging. - Tony Karon
