16 things I wish they taught me in school
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under career, inspiration
This is a useful list of 16 things you probably didn’t learn about in school.
A few of my favorites include:
The 80/20 rule.
The Pareto Principle – basically says that 80 percent of the value you will receive will come from 20 percent of your activities.
First, give value. Then, get value. Not the other way around.
If you want to increase the value you receive (money, love, kindness, opportunities etc.) you have to increase the value you give. Because over time you pretty much get what you give.
Be proactive. Not reactive.
Your attitude changes your reality.
But the thing that I’ve discovered the last few years is that if you change your attitude, you actually change your reality. When you for instance use a positive attitude instead of a negative one you start to see things and viewpoints that were invisible to you before.
Tags: career, lifehack, productivity, school
Soul of Athens 2008
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under school
Check out some the great work my talented peers did this school year and spring at Ohio University with the 2008 edition of Soul of Athens.
The best way to succeed
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under school
In the latest issue of PDN there’s an article about Dan Habib and his Including Samuel project.
On completing the project Dan states:
The best way to succeed professionally is to surround yourself with talented people.
Dan summed up in one sentence what I was trying to explain in my 5000 word post yesterday about one of the greatest benefits of going to grad school.
A program like OU attracts the passionate and driven, which in turn allows one to take root and blossom.
So to my peers, professors and everyone at VisCom. Thank you for the most grueling, but rewarding two years of my life.
My super classmates and professor Julie Elman. Photo by:Not sure
(Note: Missing are fellow super classmates Chad Stevens, Bob Sacha and
Julie Robert)
Just say no to grad school?
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under school
Mindy McAdams had a post this morning that as a grad student I thought is worth sharing. She writes about a topic I’ve been living for the past two years of my life; grad school.
She makes some valid points and others that I don’t agree with.
Mindy writes
Journalism is not rocket science. You don’t need a master’s degree to know how to do it, and you won’t do it well until you haul yourself out of school and into a working newsroom. Journalism is learned on the job, and if you’re not prepared to go out and do it after four years in undergrad, maybe you should just give up on it — and go to law school instead.
No one in a newsroom will respect your master’s degree, and what’s more, there is no reward at all for having it. So why do you want it?
I posted a reply on her site, but thought it’d be good to share here since I know a bunch of you are either in grad school, on the fence about it or soon to be attending grad school.
Here’s my reply:
Interesting post Mindy with some valid points.
From my own personal experience as a grad student in the Visual Communications program at Ohio University I can confidently say grad school for me was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
Environments like the ones at OU don’t exist in newspapers and if your undergrad wasn’t in journalism or in a program that had a weak journalism or photojournalism program finding a place like OU can be a tremendous asset to your growth.
This is the most intense and fertile environment I’ve ever known and nothing my internships have come close to matching.
Sure working in the real world is great, but don’t dismiss what surrounding yourself with passionate and driven people can do for your growth.
For example last year in my video class two of my classmates included Bob Sacha and Chad Stevens both of whom are now working at MediaStorm as producers. Talk about setting the bar high.
I don’t know many environments like this that fosters creativity, critical thinking and promotes strong quality storytelling. Just how many newsrooms can say they do that on a regular basis?
I have to disagree with not doing journalism well until you leave school. How many newspapers do you see doing work on par with what my classmates did with Soul of Athens? Or doing what my classmates and I did for our capstone class?
If you’re interested a few links to the projects we did for the class -
Jenn’s multimedia piece on Mental Illness in America’s Prisons - http://indepth.jennackerman.com/trapped/feature.html
My piece on Snowbirds in Quartzsite, AZ
http://www.timgruber.com/moment
Kainaz’s print piece on the public housing crisis in New Orleans - http://kainazamaria.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/right-of-return/
So basically what I’m trying to say with all the shameless plugging of my friends and peers is that graduate school is more than just a piece of paper and I wouldn’t expect anyone to respect the fact that I have a masters degree, but with time I hope I’d earn their respect with the skills and knowledge I bring to the table.
The skills and knowledge that took birth and grew in grad school.
Tags: journalism, ou, photojournalism, school
A new breed
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Check out the Verve Photo blog for the work of a new breed of documentary photographers. It’s a nice list that includes some work thats new to me. Geoffrey does a nice write-up of each photographer he profiles. He was kind enough to profile me a few days ago.(Shameless plug, sorry.) Thanks Geoffrey.
Geoffrey Hiller has created Verve to feature photos and interviews by the finest young image makers today. Verve is a reminder of the power of the still image.
While you’re checking out new work see the photo collective Aevum that includes fellow OU photogs Matt Eich and Yoon S. Byun.
Tags: inspiration, photography, photojournalism, school
Trapped - Mental Illness in America’s Prison
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
My girlfriend, Jenn, posted her stunning magazine project that deals with mental illness in prison.
Jenn’s work is one of the strongest multimedia pieces I’ve seen in recent memory. From the featured project to the raw inmate interviews the pieces will leave you feeling for these men.
Of the project Jenn wrote on her blog:
My intention was to make a multimedia piece that made the viewer feel what I felt when I was there. There were days that I was extremely scared and others that I left thinking how much someone on the outside missed them. Some days, I had to remind myself that many of these men had done heinous things.
Great job Jenn. I’m so proud of you.
Tags: inspiration, multimedia, photojournalism, school, video
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
One class to go.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
I haven’t updated in awhile thanks to running at less than 100%, but mainly due to the end of the quarter crunch. The good news is my project is nearly done. It needs a last minute coat of polish before it goes live. I know what you’re thinking, “Hey Tim, you can’t polish a turd.” I hear ya! I’ll post the link here in a couple days when everything is in place.
Minus my master’s project, which I’ll hopefully get to this spring yesterday marked the last day of my required classes at OU. It was a sad feeling knowing this was it. What can I say? I’m a sentimental sap. I’d imagine most students in other programs are excited by the thought and go on to burn their textbooks and get sloshed on the cheapest dirty 30 they can find.
For me though it was a sad day to know I’m leaving the best environment I’ve ever found as a storyteller. This is the end of classroom critiques and classmates/friends who constantly raise the bar. This is where I learned the importance of making images that make someone feel. There’ll be no more photo nights or getting 7 different edits of a project as contest season approaches. No more walking down to Baker to hear the likes of Scott Strazzante and Rob Finch. This is where I learned the importance of surrounding yourself with endless talent and passion. There is where, as one of our professors would always tell us, “Dare to suck.” This is where I lived and most importantly this is where I learned to love.
It’s going to be sad when I finally do have to leave what’s been an oasis of inspiration and passion to jump aboard the life raft of an industry that is fighting to stay afloat. Let’s hope I remember how to do the doggy paddle.
Tags: school
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
Rocketboom takes a look at MediaStorm
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Rocketboom took a look inside MediaStorm yesterday. The highlight, by far, is hearing our Knight Fellow last year Bob Sacha breaking things down. Nice work Bob. If you watch closely you might even catch a glimpse of Chad buried under his headphones working.
via: Bob
Tags: interview, multimedia, photojournalism, school
