Visual storytelling: The day in photos at Penn State coach Bill O'Brien's first game

The Daily Record/Sunday News is reporting on a new era in Penn State football in a million ways -- among them, of course, visually. Here are collected images that, if you were to look at no other coverage of today's events -- could tell the story by themselves.

'Dragged by the claws of civic duty ...'

Lauren Boyer and I started by wondering how people deal with being blindsided by victory when they find out they've been elected, by write-in votes, to a position they never intended to fill.

We ended with this probing look at this vexing political problem:

What I learned: Kate Penn on sound

More shared wisdom from York Daily Record/Sunday News staffers whose work was recently honored in the Keystone Awards. Photographer Kate Penn won first place in the video storytelling category for her video "Equine smile restoration." From Kate:

This video reinforced the knowledge that sound really drives video. "Equine Smile Restoration" features the sound of grinding horse teeth, whinnies and coaxing. These sounds layer with the subject's smooth voice telling his compelling story of being laid off and changing careers. This video reminds me that if you slow down and take the time to capture compelling audio, the story can tell itself. Also, people love weird animal stories.

Maybe that last line is all you really need to know about this one. But seriously ... you can see how Kate's attraction to the sounds she encountered, and her decision to use that sound to help build the video, paid off. What sensory things do you encounter in your work that you can use to help tell stories?

What I learned: Chris Dunn on blending in

Photographer Chris Dunn won second place in the photo story category of the Keystone Awards for Football fanfare. Here's her insight, adding to our collection of what our staffers learned from working on their winning entries. From Chris:

Shooting a photo package about one Friday night football game at West York meant I had to “embed” myself with the football players, the cheerleaders, the fans, the coaching staff, the marching band, everybody. Photographers have to be able to blend in effortlessly and gain enough trust from the people they’re photographing. So covering all these aspects of the game and the before-and-after was a good exercise not only in trying to show what a high school football game demands of everybody involved, but also in having to work with a lot of people in not a lot of time.

I'm always amazed to hear photographers talk about becoming inconspicuous, given that they're usually draped with equipment and often right in the middle of whatever they're shooting. What tips do you have for blending in?

For Veterans Day, a video package brings together veterans from America's past and present

From our AME visuals Brad Jennings this morning:

If you're growing weary of Penn State stories, here's something a little different you can check out. For Veterans Day, Kate Penn profiled veterans from the current wars, all the way back to World War II, and conducted video interviews with them.
Sam Dellinger created an interactive presentation that you can see here.
This is a great example of multimedia storytelling. You'll notice few printed words, and short video clips. But if you watch them all, you'll come away learning a lot about a diverse group of local people.
You can see George Eyler get emotional as he remembers getting shot at in Korea. You can hear Michael Janis talk about having blood and excrement thrown at him when he returned home from Vietnam. And you can listen to Dawn Hicks describe how woman in Saudi Arabia must eat in a separate room at their local KFC so they can uncover their faces to eat.
I'm glad we were able to meet these veterans and let them share their stories in this way.

Really cool effort by Kate and definitely worth your time to watch the videos and meet these people.

Thoughts on 'Carrying Darisabel,' an Emmy award and a journalist's choice

We got news last night that YDR visual journalist Jason Plotkin won a regional Emmy award for his documentary "Carrying Darisabel." A 2-year-old girl had been viciously beaten, and Jason told the story of the people who tried to save her life, and how Darisabel's death haunted them.

It's a huge moment for Jason and for the YDR: As his editor, Brad Jennings, noted, it's the first time a newspaper organization has won a mid-Atlantic Emmy, as the competition is made up mainly of television news organizations. Historically, newspapers take still shots and TV gives you video. Not anymore.

The Emmy award is fantastic news. I was privileged to see Jason at work on this film from beginning to end, to see the daily devotion. He believed in the story so strongly he practically willed it into existence. His focus never faded or frayed, and yet, where some journalists by their nature would have resisted too many voices offering their best advice, Jason invited people in. He listened, and, through a combination of skill and personality, took the best of what others had to offer and still kept the film true to his vision.

I've been a reporter and editor for 25 years. I've never seen anything like it.

But it is odd to celebrate a "victory" in the Emmys because -- and I know Jason believes this too -- this film should never have existed. Darisabel should still be here. There should have been nothing to make a film about.

And that is where a journalist stands at a crossroads.

Do you turn away from something so painful to a family and to a community, so fraught with damage, so incomprehensible to so many? Do you decide we're all better off if we don't look for too long at what happened here? Do you pull up short because, to do the story, you will be seen as taking advantage of a tragedy?

Or do you tell the story and draw your community in? Insist that they look? Embrace others' pain as part of the storytelling? Understand that some will see you as an opportunist, and do it anyway?

 For a journalist like Jason, there really is no choice. You tell the story. You tell it because you know it's real. Darisabel died. Her family was devastated. The people who tried to save her life have holes inside. Yet they go on. When they tell their story, we come closer to knowing how -- and maybe we walk away a little bit better equipped to make our way in this world, to understand what's going on around us, and to decide what, if anything, we would like to do about it.

Watch and listen. It will hurt. But you will see both darkness and light.

How does one photographer capture all three outs of a triple play?

To visually tell the story of a major-league triple play with a video camera is no great feat; every game is televised and shot by multiple cameras. But to capture all three outs with stills takes anticipation and preparation, as Boston Globe photographer Jim Davis says. It's a lesson that can be applied by any photographer or reporter in almost any situation, be it breaking news, a sit-down interview or anything in between.

Joplin, Mo. tornado: First the video, then the narrative

Two storm chasers shot incredible video of the tornado that destroyed a chunk of Joplin, Mo. in May.

Then the Joplin Globe's Carole Liston reported the story behind that video and produced this compelling piece about how the storm chasers helped alert officials about what was happening, documented the tornado, and then helped people after the devastation.

The story published less than two weeks after the tornado.

'Carrying Darisabel' a finalist in national competition

Congrats to Jason Plotkin, whose 'Carrying Darisabel' documentary was a finalist in the American Society of Newspaper Editors' awards, a national competition. I'm attaching the note below from Jim McClure's e-mail that gives some context to what it means to be a finalist in this competition:

The ASNE Awards judging was held late last week at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg. This was an especially competitive year, with a 30 percent increase in entries over last year's contest.
Jason Plotkin was a finalist in the Online Storytelling category. The staff of the Washington Post was also a finalist, and The New York Times was the winner, so your organization's achievement is quite impressive.
... Congratulations on your outstanding work.
Best regards,Richard Karpel

Writers (and more), gather

Poynter's NewsU has lined up a really good-looking series of webinars on all kinds of writing: short writing, narrative, social media, revision, writing for visuals/sound, and more. Great lineup of presenters, including Chip Scanlan, Jacqui Banaszynski, Roy Peter Clark and more.

These webinars will offer a lot to anyone from the least- to most-experienced person in our newsroom.

Check the right-hand rail for dates and times and I'll see you in the conference room. I'm sure these sessions will give us plenty to talk about.

Time-lapse of N.E. snowstorm: Do you need anything else to tell the story?

From the Providence Journal's Tim Barmann:


A little bit on how he did it is here.

Katrina 5 years later: Great multimedia from USAToday

USAToday used a lot of cool ways to tell the story of Katrina 5 years later -- virtual neighborhood tours and computer-animated explanatory videos of what's been done to the levees and waterways, for example. You can spend a lot of time on this, but it's worth it.

Pictures spawn stories

 I started looking through these pictures -- color photos of Depression/war-era America, from a photo blog at denverpost.com -- and with each one, my mind started racing to fill in a story.

Who was this person? What's happening here? How did these people come to be in this situation in this place? What happens in the next frame, and the one after that?

It's a great mental exercise to start to fill in the blanks, and then think about the interviewing you'd want to do to get the facts to tell the real story that's behind each photo.

Overcoming obstacles in video storytelling

As part of Living's 'Senses' project, Kate Penn produced a video about a deaf couple raising a hearing child. Brad passed along this note, which talks about challenges Kate faced and how she dealt with them:

"The video that goes with this week's Sense/Ability story had some cool challenges involved.

The Drawbaughs answered Kate's questions with sign language, and Kate had to match up their responses with the interpretor's translations. (The interpretor doesn't speak as they are signing, she gathers their statement and then repeats it afterward.) So once Kate assembled the video, she reconnected with the interpretor, who came here and helped her place the responses at the right moments during editing. 

Another challenge was showing "B roll" while still keeping the Drawbaughs on screen so their signing could be seen.

Some interesting obstacles, but she put it all together well."