Nothing runs like a Deere.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
An audio slideshow show I shot and produced: The John Deere Shuttle
And a few thoughts:
A recent assignment had me camping at a musical festival called Floyd Fest. It was the kind of story I love to work on. You know the kind where you’re asked to focus on everything but the main stage? One of my photographic inspirations, William Allard, (a MN native) states that the best photographs often happen on the perimeter of an event. I couldn’t agree more.
Away I went, with my eyes chasing the light and ears on full alert. Shortly after the sounds of a bullhorn drew me in.
I was talking to the writer minutes earlier about wanting to find something different for the audio slideshow. My hope was to find something more than the standard soundbites of “Floyd Fest is great because and I love camping because and so on.”
The man behind the bullhorn was my ticket to just that.
Here’s the audio slideshow.
On a side note the assignment became another lesson in finding a balance between life and work.
Being an intern I feel there’s a lot I have to prove. (The list is long and worthy of a separate post.) I’m sure all interns feel that way. As an intern you need to be working harder than anyone on staff. If you’re not you should be. Not all that hard to do considering when you’re interning you’re only there for a brief time and came there with a very defined purpose.
I was out in San Fran all weekend for a wedding. Earlier in the month my girlfriend and I talked about the importance of finding a balance between work, our relationship and life.
Here was I was zippin across the country trying to get this piece produced in-between connections and overpriced smoothies, while working against the seconds ticking away on my MacBook’s battery.
The battery won out.
I was able to get a decent amount of the audio clips logged and an edit of the tracks done, but still needed to sequence the story.
Back on the ground in SF I spent what was suppose to be a night with my girlfriend and her friends throwing together my story. I felt bad knowing my work was getting in the way of us spending time with each other for the first time all summer.
By 6am, my time, I had the piece finished. For you OU grads it felt like another all-nighter down at the grad lab. Except instead of sleeping on the grad lab floor I was able to fall asleep next to a very understanding girlfriend.
Thanks Jenn. 
A couple images:
Further Reading:
Tags: audio, internship, photojournalism, Uncategorized
August 1st, 2007 at 6:39 pm
hey tim-
try applying allard’s message about roaming the periphery to the image as well as the event. the first thing i noticed with the audio slideshow was how center-weighted all the photos were. if you start pushing things to the edges and using the whole frame, it’ll change the way you see and approach things… dramatically.
just my 2 cents,
m
August 1st, 2007 at 9:07 pm
i hear ya Melissa. i’ve been battling a case of centeritis recently…it’s tough to shake let me tell ya.
thanks for the feedback.