Our summer adventure begins in prison
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under documentary, me, prison
A lot has changed in the past month for Jenn and I. Mainly the fact that we both decided to forgo our summer internships at great newspapers in Roanoke and Minneapolis to work on a project together as a team.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make and one that I went back and forth on for over a week before finally making my choice.
It was especially hard for me as interning in Minneapolis at the Star-Tribune was one of of the goals I set for myself when I first picked up a camera four years ago. It also meant not being able to spend one last summer in Minnesota around family and friends.
So just what are Jenn and I working on?
We’re in KY working on a few projects at KSR (The Kentucky State Reformatory). The Warden has entrusted with Jenn and I access that I’m still amazed with. (ie:unrestricted access, a staff ID, and no escort) It’s access that comes with a great deal of trust and an obligation Jenn and I feel to do justice to the stories that we are working on.
One project Jenn and I have started working on is what we unofficially call Aging in Prison. KSR is home to one of the few prisons that has a full fledged nursing/medical care unit. Inmates there also run a hospice program. In the short time we’ve been there we’ve seen one man pass away and thanks to the hospice workers he wasn’t alone when he died. One of the biggest fears many of these men have is dying alone in prison and being buried in the prison cemetery called Chicken Hill.
I’ve been spending time on and off at the prison since Mid-May and feel like I’m finally to the point where I feel the pulse of this place. I’m another piece of the fabric that makes up their lives, which as a photographer is a great place to be.
Jenn is also continuing to build on her Mental Illness project that was highlighted in the June issue of PDN. Check it out if you have a chance. She’s also been blogging about her experiences this summer in the prison on her own blog. Jenn’s hoping by summer’s end that she’ll have enough quality material for a film. Judging by the video she’s logging right now I don’t see that as being a problem.
I’ll try to keep the blog updated as often as I can about my experiences working behind bars. It’s been educational in many ways thus far.
Jenn shooting some video of an elderly man that was going home
earlier this week thanks to being granted medical parole.
The rest of my Look3 essay from David Alan Harvey’s workshop
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under me, workshops
Here’s the rest of my mood essay from David Alan Harvey’s workshop at the Look3 workshop. Here’s the first part of the essay if you haven’t seen it yet. If there’s one photo related event you plan to attend next year be sure to make it Look3/Festival of the Photograph. Simply amazing.
Tags: festival of the photograph, me, workshop, workshops
Second Look3 Essay from David Alan Harvey’s class
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under me, workshops
Here’s the second essay I worked on in David Alan Harvey’s essay class at Look3.
This essay is one that’s all about mood and only mood.
Thanks to David and my classmates for a wonderful week.
I’ll post the rest in this series later on this week. Need to get back to packing my things up here in Athens.
Tags: festival of the photograph, me, workshop, workshops
Personal Ad Essay from Look3 Workshops /w David Alan Harvey
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under me, workshops
Thursday marked the end of the Look3 Workshops and the beginning of the Festival of the Photograph. The workshops ended with our work from the week being the opening for the festival. A pretty neat ordeal to have a packed audience see your images projected in such a stunning venue.
I shot two essays for the week with both being completely different. For the first couple days of the workshop I didn’t shoot much at all except for a few random singles.
Like all creative endeavors it took me awhile to figure out exactly what I wanted to say. It’s great seeing what can happen to one’s mind when you have the pressure of a workshop deadline looming. In many ways it was like my time in grad school - you drain yourself of all creative energy and in your cloudy desperation to generate a powerful, yet simple idea a project finds you and away you go. I believe strongly in the notion that some projects/subjects find you rather than you finding them.
The project combines my two biggest reasons why I love photography; encouraging my child’s curiosity and my love for meeting new people. I can’t thank the awesome subjects here in Charlottesville enough who weren’t creeped out by some stranger coming to their house to photograph them. They helped in making my week a memorable one.
The personal ad essay seemed to be a hit with everyone here and a concept I like a lot. It’s pretty neat to have people like Eugene Richards telling you he loved the series or Harvey telling you he’s going to steal the idea if you don’t continue to work on it. It’s anything but hard-hitting and a nice fit for the type of photography I’m enjoying more and more; a fun and light-hearted topic. It’ll also serve as a nice break from the multimedia project Jenn and I will be working on together this summer that is a much more serious topic.
For the rest of the project I’m only going to seek people out from newspaper personals as the craigslist listings just don’t have the same charm and quaint descriptions that only newsprint provides
Here’s a look at a few of the people behind the personal ads:
This Craigslist ad just doesn’t have the same appeal.
Tags: festival of the photograph, me, workshop, workshops
Redesigned my blog.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under me
I spent a few hours tonight giving my blog a shiny new look.
The picture editor in me spent 3 hours trying to find a header image that I thought worked well. Finally I found a few possibilities and settled on the one you see above.
If you’re reading this by a RSS feed drop in and check it out.
I was boxed in with my old theme. It was dated and was never meant to harness the full potential of WordPress. This should free me up nicely.
What do you think?
Tags: design, me, web, wordpress
Snowbirds in Quartzsite launches.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
My magazine project is complete. (This is when I’m told it’s safe to breathe again.)
One main multimedia piece. One photo gallery. One embedded map. One time-lapse. One website. All in the blur of one quarter.
It was the class of ones for me.
One step at a time, I wore the many hats that the class calls upon you to wear. I was the publisher who wrote the mission statement for my publication. I was the assignment editor who researched and wrote up the shooting assignments. I was the photojournalist out in the field shooting, which was the highlight even if it left me exhausted. After shooting came the tedious world of production and editing. Days spent hacking away at php files and hours cutting audio and video.
It’s a great(well somewhat great not fully satisfied with things, but who ever is?) feeling to see the end product and how all the hats eventually brought us to one uniform package. It’s no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, but it’s a quarter I’ll never forget.
It doesn’t feel like I’m done yet, but hopefully tomorrow when we have our show and tell I’ll be able to look at everything my classmates and I accomplished and be proud of what we did.
Is it on caliber with the multimedia newspapers produce? Hopefully.
See what you think for yourself.
Tags: me, multimedia, photojournalism, Quartzsite, school, web
Redesigned my website.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Spent all weekend buried deep in WordPress working on a redesign of my website.
Check it out here.
I’m hoping by using WordPress and a content management system to drive the photo galleries that I’ll actually update it more often now.
It’s not completely finished it yet, but it’s getting close. I need to get this blog integrated into the mix yet and finish up the multimedia page.
Everything look alright? I haven’t been able to try it on a PC yet. I’m a little fearful of the way it might render in Internet Explorer.
Any feedback would be great.
timg at timgruber dot com
Tags: me, multimedia, photojournalism, web
Editing multimedia.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under me, multimedia, school
Since returning from Arizona I’ve lost what little tan I had, narrowed a boatload of images down to a “tighter” edit of 60, designed a mock layout to only trash it for a WordPress theme, ingested a lot of bad video and pushed off editing audio and video until tonight.
As I type this my first rough, very rough two minutes of my project are exporting. 10 days of shooting boxed into a Final Cut window. The start to what will hopefully be the essence of a place in a shorter than Spud Webb timeline — only to awake in the morning to find the exported piece like nothing I dreamt and wonder just what my sleepless mind was thinking.
The joys of late night editing.
Forgive me for shooting this silhouette, but I couldn’t help myself when
I came across this couple dancing outside their RV sunset.
Tags: editing, me, multimedia, ou, Quartzsite, school
Editing makes me dizzy.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under editing, me
After a few days of trying to gather up images for College Photographer of the Year(CPOY) I don’t know left from right anymore or good images from bad. Although in my case it’s been easier to spot bad images since I seem pretty good at making those.
The only given it feels like is that the more you look at your work the more you hate it. It doesn’t take long and all your weaknesses seem to start leaking out of every crevice.
As Melissa pointed out on the APAD blog her favorite post on the new The Photo Editor blog is one that deals with the idea that everyone takes bad pictures. (You should have both blogs on your RSS feed if you don’t already.)
As many people say you’re only as good as your weakest image.
Here are a few images from a project I was working on last spring that I’m trying to edit into a tight essay.
I’m calling it American Trucker. It’s a personal exploration and commentary on an occupation(truck driving) that’s fascinated me since I was a kid.
Yep you guessed it. That’s me as a wee tot not knowing that in time I’d explore a topic I spent a decent amount of my childhood around.
Tags: editing, me, personal, portraits, truckers
Telling a story in 100 frames.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under me, school
My first photo story assignment back at OU had the class and I trying to tell a story from an event by shooting no more than 100 frames and with every frame being from a different angle/situation.
The whole idea of every frame being different wasn’t the easiest thing for me to do since as photojournalists we cherish the moment like peanut butter does bread. Normally we’re taught to work a situation until the moment falls off or we capture what we’re after.
As one song by Eminem goes you only have one shot, one opportunity(or something like that) to capture that moment.
I did cheat a time or two as hard as I didn’t want to, but the desire to capture the most telling moment is a hard habit to break.
It turned out to be a nice creative exercise though and a lot cheaper than breaking out of a creative rut by buying new gear.
Here are a few frames from the assignment:
Tags: me, ou, photojournalism, school
