Yankee train

David R. Busse

Well-known member
Good concept for a story that would have gotten :20 at the very most without some good work by a news photographer..

The only problem I had was with the first couple of shots...they were "textbook" scene setters but there was nothing about them that grabbed my attention. Juxtoposition is a term we formerly used a lot when we were looking shot-by-shot at stories, and it would have been nice to see some juxtoposition as an opening shot...a Yankee fan with baseball cap on, going into a train station instead of a ballpark turnstyle. I don't want to say that you needed to use a shot that didn't exist...the piece was fine...but those are the kinds of shots you need to seek out to really make stories like this one sparkle.

Opening shots notwithstanding, I always enjoy watching work where the photog expended considerable extra effort to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. This was one of them.
 

MMrozinski

Well-known member
I'm usually not a fan of music but in this case the music did the trick. It set the tone for the story and helped carry it in a few areas. You did a good job of not making the music the story but rather using it as a subtle tool to enhance it. This story was one of those light features that allow this kind of creativity.

You had some good sequencing in areas. I would have liked to see you use a little more natural sound. One of the problems with using music is it sometimes gets in the way of me hearing pictures as opposed to just seeing them.

I like how you b-rolled a lot of his sound and never really "interviewed" him. Nice job of keeping your characters in the action... keeping them comfortable. Not that you had any where else to go.

I think I would have liked to see an opening sequence that showed him pulling out of the dock. A tight shot of rope flying or something.

Careful with those sun shots. Make sure your lens is clean. When I shoot a shot of the sun I usually remove the clear filter all together, clean my lens, spin it to filter 4, flick my camera to -3db, and may even add a little shutter. It looked to me like you were on a lower filter, had the iris nearly closed, with a dirty lens.

What kind of opportunity did you have to shoot anything from land? Like David said, a very postcard like photograph for an opening shot or closing shot would have been a great way to kick off this story and end it.

Were you able to get to the front of the boat some how? I would have liked to see a shot from the bow facing back. Also a few of your shots almost looked repeated. I know it's tough when you are trapped on a boat.

Here is a thought. I could tell you were having a rough time battling the waves to get a steady shot of light houses. If I can't get off the boat to get tripod shots up close, I think I would of taken an actual picture from either a postcard or a jpeg from a web picture and edited them in there with a little photograph sound effect and some fancy editing. It would have been great if you could have used some actual postcards and had that as a theme throughout the story. This had a very vacation like feel to it. Like something I would have watched in the travel channel.

Decent job though. I was entertained.
 
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