Photojournalism Today

In today’s world where we can share photos of what is going on in our lives with anyone at a moment’s notice through the use of our smartphones and social media accounts, what role does photojournalism really play in our society? Is it becoming obsolete as a career?

With the release of social media websites and apps such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, along with the invention of smartphones with fairly featured cameras in their own rights, many people feel that the role of typical photojournalists in spreading news has virtually vanished.

Now any witness to an event can simply snap a photo with their smartphone and post it to social media almost instantly, thus making it much easier to share news with the world, while most photojournalists use DSLR cameras, which do not allow instant sharing of the photos, thus forcing the photographer to wait until he or she has access to a computer to share their photos with the world.

And possibly even more important is the nature of the photos being shared on social media-the people taking these photos and sharing them online don’t have to wait to write an article about the photo or let their publisher see them first-they can simply post them instantly and say whatever they want about the event depicted in their photo.

Technology like this that allows anyone to become a type of journalist is the reason why many people believe that the roles of traditional journalists will soon vanish and be replaced by normal, everyday people.

Meetings Scheduled To Decide on Future of District

Over the last several years, Greater Johnstown Middle School building has suffered from large amounts of damage and wear and tear from its many years of use.

Now, GJSD has scheduled three meetings with community stakeholders in the school district in order to decide whether the middle school will stay open following the 2016-2017 school year, or if it will be closed down.

The meetings concerning the future of the middle school will be held on the following dates-April 25th at 6 pm in the West Side Elementary cafeteria, April 26th at East Side Elementary from 5:30 to 6:30 in the auditorium, and April 26th at Johnstown High School from 6:30 to 7:30 in the auditorium.

Johnstown: Third Fastest Shrinking City In The US

According to a list recently released by 24/7 Wall Street, Johnstown and its surrounding area is officially the third fastest shrinking city in the United States, with the only ones listed above it being Pine Bluff, Arizona and Farmington, New Mexico.

When describing Johnstown, 24/7 Wall Street said “Most metro areas with declining populations also have declining economies. Few had as rapidly shrinking GDPs as Johnstown, however. The metro area’s economic output contracted by an average of 2.4% annually between 2011 and 2015. As is common in areas with significant population declines, property values are low in Johnstown. The typical area home is worth only $89,100, one of the lowest median home values of all U.S. metro areas.”

From 2011 to 2016, the population of Johnstown decreased by 5.50 percent, the average household income was a mere $38,512 (compared to the nationwide average of over $50,000), and the unemployment rate was 6.1 percent, versus the nationwide average unemployment rate of 4.7 percent.

Johnstown is shrinking fast, and many are now wondering whether the city will be able to recover, or if it is destined to go the way of so many other small cities-slowly fading into the background over time.

Respect Your Peers (Fellow photographers)

I have recently been seeing this a lot in social media, so I wanted to make a short video of it.

D5100 First Day Review

So, yesterday, after what felt like decades of waiting (even though it was actually less than a week), I finally got my new(-ish) Nikon D5100 in the mail that I ordered from B & H Photo Video. My first impression of the camera was that it was fairly similar to the Nikon D3300 that I was accustomed to shooting with, despite the obvious differences. Many of the functions seemed to be the same, and I had no trouble at all understanding how to operate the D5100 right after I pulled it out of the box.

In the video here, you can see my first thoughts on the D5100 after pulling it out of the box. Then, later last night, after I charged the battery and messed with the camera a little bit, I recorded the video below.

And then, below the video here, you can see some of the photos I've taken with the camera over the last twenty-four hours or so (not quite twenty four.). 

I have enjoyed the camera so far, and haven't really found any big problems with it, but I'll update with a new article possibly in the next few days to tell you about my further experiences with the camera.

Portraiture Advice From A Beginner

Portraiture From a Beginner

Mr. Smith, Greater Johnstown Senior High School Principle

To a young photographer with little to no experience, portraiture can be a very daunting experience to try.

A portrait is any photograph where your subject is a person, although normally, a portrait is more of a posed photo instead of the more candid ones.

This photo here is of my niece, Aria, when we went for a hike one day in the woods near her aunt's house.

The reason portraiture is a little scary to most new photographers is because it can seem so formal, like something that only professionals can really do, but in reality, that's not true. Every time you lift you camera and take a picture of another person, you are taking a portrait.

My brother, Melvin, and his daughter, Arial. 

To take a portrait, you don't necessarily have to bring your subject into a studio and spend twenty minutes getting a perfect pose out of them. Just try to capture their personality in your photos. That's really the ultimate goal of any portrait photographer, to just capture the personality of their subject and tell a story about the person with a photo.

When you're taking a photo of someone, do your best to make them feel comfortable. If they're nervous about being in front of the camera, you won't capture an authentic vision of who they are, because everyone acts different whenever they're in front of a camera. 

Make your subject forget that the camera is there. Make them think you're just a normal person-one of their friends even, and that's how you get the most genuine depiction of who a person truly is. 

Photos

Nikon D3300 Review

Now, I know this review is probably more than a little late, considering that the D3300 has been out for a long while now, and has technically been replace by the D3400, but I still want to write this, because I want to give my opinion on the camera as a teenage amateur photographer.

Now, my school’s journalism department owns the Nikon D3300 with the 18-55mm kit lens, and we also have a collection of older Nikkor lenses that belong to film SLR cameras, but due to Nikon’s choice to keep their lens mount the same, the lenses still work with the D3300-albeit only on manual exposure mode and with no auto focus.

The camera performs fairly well with the kit lens, and it offers a nice little range, from a wide angle to a short telephoto, and works for everything from landscapes to portraits, although it’s not the sharpest lens available.

Nikon D3300 with 18-55mm kit lens.

The camera focuses fairly quickly, but not in like a split-second time, like some other cameras are supposedly able to do.

The camera is fairly easy to use, and I was able to learn the basic, and even some of the more advance controls, in about a week or two, and then I quickly learned how to operate the rest of the camera, to the point where I am now able to use the camera in whatever shooting mode the situation requires, including full manual mode.

Shot In Manual Mode with The Nikon D3300 and 18-55MM Kit lens

With five frames per second continuous shooting, the camera works fairly well in situations where I want to catch a lot of photos in a short amount of time, which isn't very often.

With an Iso range of one hundred to twenty five thousand and six hundred, the D3300 performs fairly well in low light, although the higher ISO's definitely introduce their fair share of noise to your photos, so I recommend shooting at the lowest ISO possible and changing your other settings accordingly.

The D3300 does include a live view mode, although I rarely use it due to several reasons: It lacks and adjustable screen, so even when shooting in live view, the camera needs to be directly in front of you in order for you to see exactly what you are shooting. Also, the focus in live view is not very great, and is much slower than the focus when using the viewfinder to frame your subject.

Overall, the D3300 is a good camera for beginners such as myself, although I wouldn't recommend it to more experienced/professional photographers.

The Champ Is Here!

Carlton Haselrig, former wrestler and pro football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers, took some time on Thursday, February 23, 2017, to go into the auditorium of the high school he graduated-Greater Johnstown Senior High School-and speak to a crowd of hundreds of students from Greater Johnstown, Richland, Forest Hills, and Bishop Mccort.

He spoke at length about the importance of the willpower of a man, and how the one thing that can help you succeed in life above all else is to simply never give up.

He also spoke about his own origins in Johnstown, and attending the same school he was in at that moment.

Greater Johnstown Jazz Band

Say "hello" to the fantastic Greater Johnstown Senior High School's Jazz Band. The group has an upcoming concert. They will be performing at the First Lutheran Church on Vine Street, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on April 4th, 2017, at 12:00 P.M. 

I had the honor of holding their photo shoot to provide them with pictures for their promotional campaign, and look forward to seeing them in action.

A great group of talented individuals, consisting of Kate and Emily Knapp, Brady Hess, Marissa Moore, Chase Seelig, Joshua Spencer, Logan Gagan, Amber Kreasko, Luis Lache, Divine Rivera, Tyreis Berry, and Griffin Gagan,the Johnstown Jazz band has existed in several forms over recent years, including as a pep band for a period of time.

The group is headed by Mr. Eric Pfeil, a music teacher at both the high school and the middle school who is also the head of the marching band.

They will also be holding a concert on February 28, the theme of which will be "A Night At Apollo", and will focus on songs from movies, and will also feature poetry readings from other students.

Who is Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams, born February 20, 1902, is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential photographers of all time-even to this day, more than three decades after his death in 1984.

While presenting Adams with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, President James E. Carter said, “At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been a visionary in his efforts to preserve this country’s wild and scenic areas, both on film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature’s monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans.”

In life, Adams was primarily a landscape photographer, who also wrote several books containing his photos meant to help aspiring photographers to get introduced to the craft.

His photographs of the American mid-west, specifically the Yosemite National Park, have been widely reproduced, whether it be on the Internet, in calendars, or in other formats.

He was also known for being an active environmentalist who did everything he could to protect the planet.

Adams was born in San Francisco, California, to Charles Hitchcock, a businessman, and Olive Bray. The family was fairly wealthy and lived in a house among the sand dunes of the Golden Gate.

When Adams was four years old, an aftershock of the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 through him to the ground and broke his nose, marking him in a unique way for life.

Just a year later, Adams’s family lost their fortune to the financial panic of 1907, and his father spent the rest of his life fighting to win the fortune back, without any success.

Due to natural shyness, and certain other factors, Adams always had trouble fitting in at school, and in later life, he also stated that it is likely he was hyperactive, as well as possibly dyslexic. Thus, his parents ended up sending him to several different schools, none of which he managed to succeed at, and eventually, his father and aunt chose to home-tutor him instead of sending him to even more schools that he was unlikely to succeed at.

Ultimately, he managed to receive what he called a “legitimizing diploma” from the Mrs. Kate M. Wilkins Private School-approximately equivalent to completing the eighth grade.

This solitary lifetime caused Adams to develop a great love for nature, which is shown by the fact that he often took long walks in the still-wild reaches of The Golden Gate.

When Adams was twelve, he taught himself to play the piano and to read music. Soon after, he was taking lessons in music and even considered it as a future profession, although he ultimately abandoned music for photography.

Adams first published photos in the 1922 bulletin of the Sierra Club, and his first ever one-man exhibition was in 1928 at the club’s San Francisco headquarters.

In the late 1920’s Adams began to realize that he could actually earn more money as a professional photographer than he ever could as a concert pianist.

1927 was perhaps the most important year of Adam’s life. In that year, he took his first fully visualized photograph, titled The Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, and more importantly, he met Albert M. Bender, a patron of arts and artists.

Exactly a day after first meeting Adams, Bender started working on putting together the photographer’s first portfolio-which they titled Parmelian Prints of the High Scenarios. Bender’s support of Adams and his work changed the young artist’s life for the better.

In fact, many believe that it was Bender’s friendship and support that changed Adams from a concert pianist to a professional photographer and an artist. Although Adam’s career didn’t change overnight, after meeting Bender, his passion rapidly changed from music to photography.

In the year 1927, Adams met a fellow photographer named Edward Weston, and the two instantly formed a friendship that would affect their lives and the lives of many others for years to come.

The two became very important to each other as friends and colleagues, and eventually worked together as co-founders of the famous photography group known as F/64. F/64 was a popular photographic group during the time period, consisting of photographers who shared a similar style in their works, characterized by sharply focused, and carefully composed images showing events through a Westerner's viewpoint.

The group quickly gained popularity, and their work was shown in numerous exhibits across the country.

Even after his death, Adams was considered a great photographer, and today, he is widely considered to be one of the greatest landscape photographers of all time.

Who is Eddie Adams?

Who Is Eddie Adams?

Eddie Adams was a famous photojournalist and a nobel prize winner. He is known for his portraits of politicians and of celebrities, as well as his coverage of thirty different wars throughout the course of his career.

Adams was born in New Kensington, Pennsylvania, on June 12, 1933, and died on September 18, 2004, in New York City, New York, at the age of 71.

As a teenager, Adams developed an interest in photography, and served on his school newspaper’s photography staff, and also worked as a wedding and portrait photographer. After graduating from high school, Adams enlisted in the United States Marine Corps, where he served as a combat photographer during the Korean War.

After leaving the United States Marine Corps, Adams joined the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin as a photographer. From 1958 to 1962, he also managed to become a photographer for the Associated Press.

In 1956, Adams decided to travel to Vietnam and photograph the war there. He remained in Vietnam for about a year, photographing the way as a journalist.

Adams then left Vietnam, but would return once again, and while there in 1968, he took what is likely his most famous photograph, a picture of a Viet Cong soldier being executed by a police chief, which would then earn him the pulitzer prize. This photo also established him as a great photojournalist who knew what kind of photographs to take.

Adams' famous photo of the execution of a Viet Cong soldier

Along with earning the Pulitzer prize, Adams also earned over 500 other awards throughout the course of his career.

In May of 2004, Adams was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Despite this, he continued with his work, and even created a video profile of himself, which was shown during the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Telethon to help raise awareness about the illness.

Throughout his life, Eddie Adams had a great impact on people throughout the world, whether it be through his photographs of wars or through his video about his illness towards the end of his life, and he will certainly be remembered for a long time.

Ms Marvel: A Cultural Phenomenon

Recently, Marvel comics has been confronting the problem of cruel treatment towards the Muslim community directly through its comic books-specifically, the Ms. Marvel series, featuring Kamala Khan, a sixteen-year-old Pakistani-American girl from Jersey City, New Jersey.

Kamala first appeared in Captain Marvel:Issue 14 in August of 2013. In the Marvel Universe, Kamala Khan is a young girl who learns that she has Inhuman abilities after being exposed to terrigen mist at the end of the Inhumanity storyline.

After Marvel announced that a Muslim character would be headlining a comic book series, public reaction was very verbal, and the first issue of Ms. Marvel won the Hugo Award for best graphic story in 2015.

The character was created by Marvel writers and artists who wanted to provide the public with an accurate portrayal of the life a Muslim-American.

At first, the creators of the character had intended for her to be an Arab girl from Dearborn, Michigan, but chose instead to make her a Pakistani girl from Jersey City, New Jersey, because they wanted to make it more likely for the character to be able to interact with other Marvel characters and storylines, many of which happen in the city of New York.

The creators have said that one of the points of the character is that she has to overcome being a second-string hero from a second-string city.

The story not only focuses on Kamala’s battles with supervillains, but also focuses on her battles with her own religion and cultural identity.

Many people have also compared the character to Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man, due to the fact that they are both teenage superheroes who have to come to grips with their new lives and powers.

However, despite this comparison, the differences between the two characters are quite obvious. While Peter Parker may have had to face many problems throughout his life, his race was never really one of them, being a white male, while Kamala Khan must find her way through life while having to learn who she really is. American or Pakistani? Or both?

Because of Kamala Khan’s cultural background, she has to face many challenges that no other superheroes have to face, and she has to face them while also facing herself.

Her biggest conflict isn’t the battles she faces across her city with the attacking supervillains and everyday criminals, but more the internal conflict she faces twenty-four-seven.

Artsy Fartsy: How Photography is Art

Photography is a big part of everybody's lives today, from professional photographers, to kids with cell phones, almost everybody takes pictures today, and because of this, the art of photography has become very prevalent in today’s culture.

Online, a debate wages between traditional artists and photographers: is photography truly art? Or is it a science?

The people who believe photography is not an art argue that because photography relies so heavily on modern technology, it cannot truly be considered an art. They argue that without modern technology, photography wouldn’t exist.

The people who support the belief that photography is an art, however, mention that despite photography’s reliance on modern day technology, it is still a creative way for people to express themselves, just like any other form of art.

In my opinion, photography is definitely a form of art. Through photography, I am able to express myself in whatever way I want. I can show anyone how I see the world around me, and give them a chance to see the world from my eyes; to get a glimpse into my life.

Photography has changed my life, despite the short amount of time I’ve been involved in it. I truly hope that my photography can change the lives of others the way they change mine, and I believe that many other photographers feel the same way about their work.

Why Yearbooks Are Still Important

In today’s world, we share our memories through photos, and doing that is very easy, with social media sites such as twitter, facebook, tumblr, snapchat, instagram, flickr,  and others making it easy for friends to send photos to each other.

In this day and age, some people may think that it is not important for high school students to purchase a yearbook before graduating. However, yearbooks still have many advantages over simply keeping photos in a digital format.

As our school’s yearbook squad has stated on posters around our school, “Snapchats don’t last forever, but yearbooks do.”

And that’s true. A picture posted on a social media site might not be there forever. What if something happens to the site and it’s shut down? Or what if you decide to deactivate your account? Any photos that you had on there will be gone forever, lost to you and anyone else who may want to see them.

With a yearbook, however, you’ll always have access to those photos that represent the great memories you have from your time in school, and whether you really enjoy your time in high school or not, it will be nice to be able to look back and remember your time in school, when you spent time with your friends, your teachers, and other peers, who you may have never seen again afterwards.

After graduation, your life will change. No matter who you are in high school, you will not be the same person after graduation, and you will want to look back and remember the person you were back then. So, don’t forget: “snapchats don’t last forever, but yearbooks do.”

Buying a Camera

So, I recently decided that I am ready to buy my first DSLR camera, so I’ve been researching almost nonstop on the internet, reading articles, checking prices, camera types, lense types, bundles, used, new, different brands, how the interfaces work, the different features available, and everything else there is to learn about a camera before you actually buy it.

I decided that I don’t want to buy a D3300, which is the model I am using now, because I want something new that I haven’t used before to expand myself and my work. However, I only have access to Nikon lenses, and my school has a nice collection of Nikon lenses that I put to use-from the 18-55mm lens that came with the camera, to an 18mm prime lens, a 180mm prime lens and a few other lenses that were donated to the school.

Because of the nice collection of Nikon lenses that are available for me to use, I believe that I want to stick with a Nikon camera.

I’m not too worried about the megapixel count of the camera, because, honestly, even with a ten megapixel camera, I can still produce good pictures. At this point in time, it would be hard to buy a bad camera even if you tried, as many other online blogs and websites I’ve read have said.

The only camera I actually own is a Nikon Coolpix B500, which is a point-and-shoot camera with many of the functions of a DSLR camera, but without the interchangeable lens system or the ability to view your images through a viewfinder while shooting them-instead, you see you pictures exclusively on the LCD screen while shooting.

I like using that camera, but I want to move up to an actual DSLR camera, because I love shooting with the D3300 my teacher owns that I use all the time. I have much more fun composing my images on a DSLR, and because of that, I’ve found that my photos usually turn out better. The way I see it, the more you enjoy doing something, the better you usually will be at it. (that’s just my opinion, though.)

Right now, I am looking at a Nikon D5500 DX-format Digital SLR w/ 18-55mm VR II Kit (Red), with a retail price of about $696.95.

But I still have to also focus on the price of any camera that I want to buy, because I don’t exactly have a lot of money. The D5500 is just a little outside of my price range, which at the moment is around $550 to $600 at the most.

Tribune Democrat "Picture This" Contest

Prior to my own introduction to photography, I honestly had no idea of how big photography was in today’s world. I mean, sure, I knew maybe one or two people from my school who were photographers, but not too many.

Now, as I become more and more involved as a photographer myself, I have started to notice how popular photography is in the world around me. In my city alone, it seems that there must be hundreds of people who have some level of interest in photography.

Johnstown’s local newspaper, the Tribune Democrat, runs a weekly promotional photography contest known as the Picture This contest.

The contest gives local photographers of any skill level a chance to display their skills to the world, with two winners being chosen each week-one over the age of eighteen, and one under the age of eighteen.

Each week, a category is announced for the competition in Monday’s paper, which also showcases the previous week’s winning photographers. The categories range from history to family to wildlife to many other things.

The Tribune’s weekly Picture This contest gives local photographers of any skill level-from amateur to professional-the chance to get their work out there in the world and show off what they can do.

I have personally been entering my photographs into the Tribune’s contest for the last few weeks, although I have not won any of the contests. However, for me, my main outlet for my work is through my journalism class. That isn’t available for some other amateur photographers, though, so the Tribune’s contest is a great way for them to share their work with other people.