Online Portfolio

You can check out the whole site here!

Right now, I don’t think that my portfolio is 100% what I need to get the internship that I want the most. Even though I want to look into more than just animation, I’d want to get an animation internship the most. Right now, I don’t have any drawings or animation work that I personally believe is high enough quality to have on my online portfolio alongside all of the work that I’ve been graded on or paid for, such as the media writing examples or the wedding photo.

Another internship that I’ve been interested in has been one with Buzzfeed, or another online media company. I feel like my portfolio works well if I were to apply for one of those internships. I have some articles that I’ve written up, so an employer would be able to see the quality of my writing work. I also have up videos that I’ve shot and edited (even though they were both done with a partner), which I believe are both very fun videos to watch. The two I have up are a short interview video (the International Student Documentary) and a fake movie trailer (For the final project) and they are both very Buzzfeed-esque, I believe.

I also have examples of my design work and photography up. Since I don’t really want to be a photographer or a graphic designer, I’m not sure that these would help me very much when I’m applying for an internship, besides to show the employer that I can use Photoshop or that I know the basics of photography. Some of the photos up were for class and taken with the still cameras, some of them were taken with DSLRs, so it shows that I can work with more than one kind of camera and that I can adapt to them. I also feel as though the array of photos may help; one of the photos I was paid to take, two of those photos were published in my high school yearbook, some were taken for class and some were taken for fun.

All in all, I think I need to get a very solid grip on where I want to go with my career, and then adapt my portfolio to reflect that. If I decide I want to head in the animation direction, I really will need to sit down and work on some of my older projects in order to finish them and put them in my portfolios. If I decide to go in the route of working with an online media company, I should continue to try to perfect my portfolio more.

Final Project: Mind Games

I would say that everything we learned in this class was extremely useful to me. When I took FreshTV last year, we touched on all of the subjects from class for a very short amount of time, and it was a great experience to have more in depth lessons on all of the topics we discussed. However, I think one of the most useful lessons I learned was the one on Adobe Premiere Pro.

Even after both FreshTV and editing for Elon Tonight last year, I still only understood the absolute basics of Premiere Pro. I didn’t know very much about the editing process, but I did think it was a lot of fun. Because of the video scavenger hunt, the international student documentary, and now the final project movie trailer, I know so much more about using Premiere Pro. I’m very interested in learning even more about it, and I’m considering checking out even more tutorials on it. This class really helped in helping me figure out more about where my interests in cinema lie. I’m excited to be able to shoot and edit more content.

In our Final Project, Hali and I both edited a fair amount. We didn’t split up any of the project– we wrote the story together, both shot some footage, both edited some footage, and both worked in Photoshop on the movie poster. Because of this class, each of us were able to do both well.

I felt confident doing parts of the projects that I would have been unsure about just a semester ago. I really do believe that this course helped me more than any classes or workshops I’ve taken before on any of the subject matter. I also managed to learn even more about the subjects that I was already familiar in when I came into the class, especially in the case of Premiere Pro. I feel very prepared for my next communications classes.

International Student Documentary

We decided to do our project on Eline Roillet, a junior here at Elon from Lyon, France. Eline is the RA of the hall I live on, which is the Gender and Sexuality LLC. Throughout the year I’ve learned a lot from her about French culture, but some new aspects of it were revealed to both Hali and I during the making of this documentary.

One of the most notable things she taught us was actually not included in the final version of the documentary. When she spoke about being a part of Spectrum, the queer-straight alliance on campus, we asked her if there was one that she was a part of in France. When she told us no, we asked if people were more open and accepting in France than they are in America, and she said no again. She told us that the main differences were race and religion.

When she did an internship with the Human Rights Campaign in Montgomery, Alabama, she learned more about racism and told us that it wasn’t super prevalent in France. People in France are more likely to discriminate against you because of your religion rather than because of your skin color. Most people are either atheists or catholics, and the French population tends to get Islamophobic when it comes to discriminatory behaviors, whereas our population tends to get racist.

She also told us some interesting things about how the French view cultures. She says that when you’re in France, you’re expected to partake in French culture. French people would want you to be able to speak French and not be boisterous about your own country . Because of this, her belief is to adapt to the cultures everywhere; so, for example, when she is living in America, she speaks English, even when she is with other French people. She says that she would rather take on the culture of the country she’s in than “preserve her French-ness” everywhere she goes.

Learning about other cultures is always a very interesting experience for me, and I learned more about French culture from talking to Eline while filming this project than I did in both of my high school French classes. Making this mini documentary was a lot of fun and quite eye-opening, and I’m very glad to have had this opportunity. As her resident, I hope she’ll continue to teach me more about her culture.

Call to Action: Stop Plastic Bag Usage

Call to action poster: Choose canvas bags over plastic ones!

Before this project, I knew that plastic bags were no good for the environment—just like I knew how any single-use plastic was bad for the environment. I knew that they just turned into debris and blew around in the wind until they ended up in the ocean eventually. I knew they were bad, but in a way where, in my mind, the convenience of the bags overshadowed the negative impact they could have on the environment.

When I first began to research for this project, I immediately assumed that the best alternatives to plastic bags were paper bags. I ended up being very wrong, paper bags are also bad for the environment; in fact, they’re equally as bad as each other. I made sure to include this in my press release, as I thought it was interesting and useful information, as well as information that the Office of Sustainability to disclose. I think that paper being more environmentally friendly than plastic is a myth, and it is important to debunk any myth that could end up not causing any change in the end.

When I was preparing to take my photos for the poster, I realized that I had quite a lot of plastic bags—more than I even knew what to do with! I had them in all shapes and sizes, which was great for brainstorming ideas for the poster, but bad when I realized what my poster was all about. Not to mention that now that I already have a huge bag full of plastic bags, what could I do with them? I couldn’t just throw them away, I felt like that would have been useless. I decided to keep them and eventually find some other use for them.

I found that any kind of reusable bag is better for the environment than a single plastic bag, I have one backpack and one purse with me at college, and I will definitely try to lessen my plastic bag usage as much as I can with those. I also have one reusable canvas shopping bag that I received from my roommate early my freshman year. The next time I decide to go grocery shopping, I will be sure to use the reusable bags that I own rather than getting my items packed in a bunch of new plastic bags.

Doing this project has really opened my eyes and led me to change my actions regarding plastic bags and their damaging effects on the environment. Because of this project, I’m going to work to change my habits.

The History of Burlington City Park

Labor Day is a national holiday dedicated to the many achievements of America’s workers throughout the years. Since workers and students alike get the day off, what better way for parents to spend it than with their kids?

This Labor Day, the city of Burlington’s Recreation and Parks Department recommended that citizens make a new tradition—going to the City Park with their children.

The City Park is the anchor of Burlington’s Park System. At over 75 acres, the park contains five athletic fields, an amusement area, a walking track, twelve tennis courts, a youth center, an aquatic center, and much more. At first glance, you’d think the amusement area only contained rides (that require tickets to ride, which are priced at a dollar each), but it also contains a good amount of history that the average park-goer wouldn’t know about without a little research and questioning.

In the heart of the park’s amusement area sits the Historic Dentzel Carousel. The carousel was built in the early 1900s by Gustav Dentzel, an immigrant from Germany and one of the earliest carousel builders in America, and his carousel company. It was purchased by the city in the summer of 1948 from an amusement park in Ohio. No one knows the exact date the carousel started running, but there are markings of “March 1913” and “May 1914” across the top and bottom of the carousel respectively. Since the early 1900s were considered the “Golden Age” of carousels in America, the Dentzel Carousel is truly one of Burlington’s treasures.

There are 46 wooden animals on the carousel (26 of which are horses), all of which were carved by hand. The animals appear very realistic—the veins and muscles are defined, the eyes are glass, and the hair on the tail of each horse is real horsehair!

“I don’t know much about the actual merry-go-round,” said Sierra Andrews, a Burlington teenager who was visiting the park Monday. “But I know it’s old. It’s different from a regular merry-go-round you’d see at Disneyworld or something.”

Further down the path from the carousel is a train ride, but it has its own historical catch. The train was a small replica of C.P. Huntington’s “C.P. #3,” a locomotive built in 1864, before the Transcontinental Railroad officially opened. In fact, it was built specifically to aid with the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Once the railroad was built, the C.P. #3 was considered an honorary train and was given special, specific tasks—such as pulling the private car belonging to the current governor of California and president of the railroad, Leland Stanford.

The train ride is about 10 minutes long, and it travels along a track laid through some of the park’s forest and underbrush, and even across a bridge over a stream. Surprisingly, children weren’t as interested in this ride as they were in the rest of the amusement area.

Burlington man Jerry Rice decided to ride the train by himself. “My kids think it’s boring, they say ‘nothing happens, nothing fun happens.’” he said. “It’s tranquil, it helps me clear my mind. I appreciate that.”

Many Burlington citizens took advantage of the Recreation and Parks Department’s suggestion this Labor Day. However, these people were likely riding and walking past historical objects without thinking twice about it. Burlington City Park is definitely more than meets the eye.

Find out more about Burlington City Park by clicking here, or more about the carousel by clicking here.

Stranger Portraits

ISO: 800
Shutter speed: 1/60
f/2.8

ISO: 200
Shutter speed: 1/50
f/8

ISO: 800
Shutter speed: 1/60
f/3.2

This was a difficult, but interesting, exercise. I faced a series of challenges while completing this.

The first challenges were small– I’d never needed to rent anything from ESTV, I’d only ever used my own equipment. I wasn’t sure how to use the G12 cameras (or even how to rent equipment) before we went over both of these things in class. These challenges were pretty easy for me to overcome, even if I still am not one hundred percent comfortable with the still cameras.

The next challenges were pretty manageable. I had to learn how to get all of my settings right very quickly, and I had to remember all of the new things I learned in class. For example, I kept forgetting to make sure I wasn’t cutting people off at their joints.

The worst challenges involved the actual strangers themselves. I’m not exactly afraid of speaking to strangers, but I didn’t like the idea of asking strangers for things– especially not for pictures, and especially not ten separate times.

I was expecting a lot of people to say no to me, but only one of them did, which wasn’t so bad. However, each time was just as awkward as the last. I had to explain the project to every person I photographed. Almost every person was in a different location, so I had to reset my white balance, shutter speed, ISO, and aperture each time (all while explaining to them what I was doing). Then came the question, “What should I do?” I never knew the answer to this. Sometimes, I asked them to do specific poses, other times I asked them to act natural, and sometimes I tried to talk them through the whole photoshoot. No matter what I did, it was never less awkward.

This was a good exercise to help me practice taking my photography skills, but it, unfortunately, showcased my faulty people skills.

On Anne Geddes’s Photography

Anne Geddes is a popular photographer known mainly for her work with babies and mothers. Many of her photos include babies dressed in costumes of imaginary creatures, plants, or animals. Geddes was born in Queensland, Australia in 1956, but she is currently based out of New York.

When she was a child, she lived and worked on her family’s cattle farm. She ended up leaving her home at the age of 17 and moving to Hong Kong with her husband who worked in television. Since no school she attended offered photography classes, she began teaching herself how to use a camera. At the age of 25, Geddes decided to become a photographer.

She started out as a local Sydney photographer’s assistant, but later created her own studio in her garage. Her career really took off after pictures she took of her two daughters for a Christmas card gained popularity. She had always loved babies and decided to change up how they were generally portrayed. “I had seen the way children and babies were generally being photographed,” Geddes said. “It just didn’t seem realistic to me that people took their children along to photographic studios all dressed in their Sunday best, photographs that didn’t really show the personality of the child.” She also doesn’t use babies as models—she thinks all babies are beautiful and is willing to photograph any of them!

Today, her books have been published in over 83 countries. She has sold over 18 million books and 13 million calendars. Her first book, titled Down in the Garden, is now a bestseller. As her popularity grew, Geddes also started a philanthropic trust in 1992 in order to raise awareness about child abuse and neglect. In 2011, she started a partnership with the United Nations Every Woman Every Child Initiative. This initiative is meant to protect newborn children and pregnant woman, as well as to keep them a global priority.

Her photo shoots are generally very short and early, so the babies will be in good enough moods to be photographed. She sets up all of her equipment early so that the babies have as little work to do as possible, and most of the props and costumes she uses are custom made. Geddes keeps the babies’ parents nearby during the shoot and also stays in touch with them even after their photo shoot ends.

The first photo is an image from Geddes’s “Under The Sea” collection. It depicts a baby asleep inside of a moon jellyfish, which is transparent. I like to look at this photo because of its serenity. It brings the tranquility of the ocean and the slow movements of a jellyfish together with the tranquility of a resting child. The photograph depicts both the ocean and a child, two things that can both be quite rowdy at times, as very peaceful.

The next photo is from her “Down In The Garden” collection. In this photo, there is a baby’s face in the middle, covered by flowers of slightly different colors and shapes. I enjoy looking at this photo because of its creativity. The colors of the different plants and leaves go very well together, making the image pleasing to the eye. The baby is almost an afterthought—if you just glance at this image, you may even miss the baby at first!

Geddes says that people are likely attracted to her work because of its simplicity and personality. Both of these attributes prove to make her photography original and refreshing.

Both images are from Anne Geddes’s website at http://www.annegeddes.com/.

Resume

Click here to see my resume.

Elon student’s Taylor Swift project makes it to Grammy Museum

First-year McKenzie Floyd spends years delivering scrapbooks of stories to pop star Taylor Swift

By Aneesha Smith

Scrapbooking supplies litter her floor as the Elon first-year McKenzie Floyd gets down to business. This isn’t any ordinary scrapbook project, however – this is a scrapbook made specifically for country-pop sensation Taylor Swift.

Floyd designs scrapbooks she titles “Swiftie Stories” filled with letters from fans around the world that she gathers through her “Swiftie Stories” Facebook page. It now has over 4,000 friends. The second of these books is now on display in the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, California.

Floyd became a “swiftie,” or a Taylor Swift fan, in 2007 after hearing Swift’s song “Tied Together With a Smile. ” “She’s relatable. She isn’t afraid to put things into her music that other artists are,” Floyd said. “She’s open about everything and I like what she stands for.”

Floyd with Taylor Swift’s newest record, “1989.” Photo by Aneesha Smith

Two years later, Floyd and Swift met for the first time. “I was begging my parents to take me to Nashville my whole life and, for my 14th birthday, they finally did,” Floyd said. After waiting for 12 hours outside the 2009 Country Music Association Awards, Floyd was able to have a conversation with Swift. “I was really lucky to be able to meet her and tell her how much she means to me,” she said.

This experience sparked the idea for the “Swiftie Stories” Facebook page. The page started as a place for fans of Swift to talk about how she’s impacted their lives, but transformed into a submission board for the first book. “I collected all of these stories to put them in a scrapbook and went on a mission to give it to Taylor,” Floyd said. “I’d gone to five different shows with it before I got it to her.”

After the first book, the Facebook page rapidly began to expand and Floyd decided to get to work on the second book. People from over 50 countries submitted stories, sometimes in different languages, which Floyd translated. She never includes any of her own stories, however. “I write the first two pages and explain what it is and why I started it,” she said. “The rest is just everybody else’s stories.”

“Swiftie Stories 2” is now in “The Taylor Swift Experience” exhibit in the Grammy Museum, running from Dec. 13 to May 10. This has inspired Floyd to begin on a third “Swiftie Stories.” “I wasn’t planning on doing a third one until the second one ended up in the museum,” she said. “I thought since she knows who I am, I should keep it going.”

Floyd said she will likely remain a Taylor Swift fan for the rest of her life. “It’s been eight years so far,” Floyd said. “She’s been such an integral part of my life that I can’t imagine not liking her and being supportive of her.”

Read more about The Taylor Swift Experience exhibit at http://www.grammymuseum.org/on-display/special-exhibits/thetaylorswiftexperience, and check out “Swiftie Stories” at https://www.facebook.com/SwiftieStories.

Press Release on Bernard Lafayette

For more information, contact

Aneesha Smith

Elon University Study USA

(123) 456-7890

asmith127@elon.educ

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Civil rights leader and Martin Luther King Jr. colleague Bernard Lafayette to speak at Elon Monday

The Study USA program is funding a campus talk with Selma organizer Bernard Lafayette. The event will occur at 7 p.m. Monday, April 20 in the Isabella Cannon Room of the Center for the Arts at Elon University.

The former leader of the Alabama Voter Registration Project of 1962 will cover topics such as the 1965 Selma March, the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign and recent voter identification efforts.

Lafayette is currently a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He is a long-time civil rights activist who has participated in sit-in movements in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1960, was a Freedom Rider in 1961 and co-founded the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.

Civil rights activist Bernard Lafayette will be speaking Monday night. Photo from Emory University

Lafayette was appointed by Martin Luther King Jr. as the national program administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. During his time in Alabama, he was an organizer of the Selma March that resulted in Bloody Sunday in March 1965 on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He later went on to complete a doctorate in education at Harvard University, and he now teaches at Emory University.

For more information on the event, contact Study USA director Mark Dalhouse at mdalhouse@elon.edu.