Photo assignment for Wednesday

Pride Week in the Krentzman Quad

By now you have already created pages for yourselves at Wired Journalists. I hope you will find it to be a useful tool as you explore the technologies that are changing our work as journalists. We are all learning, and Wired Journalists is a great place to share.

Here is what I would like you to do before class on Wednesday. Take some photos that have perhaps at least some news value — they could be taken at an event, they could be features, whatever. I am not looking for breaking news. (Although if you find some, by all means start shooting.)

Choose your three best photos. Do whatever editing and cropping you think is needed. Because I have a Mac, I use iPhoto for simple photo editing. But there are other tools, including free online programs such as Snipshot and Photoshop Express that you can experiment with. Shrink your photos so they don’t take up too much space — maybe 400 pixels across for a horizontal, 300 for a veritical.

Once you’re done, upload your three photos to Wired Journalists. Be sure to add some description and some tags so people will know what they’re looking at.

Finally, I want you to write a post about Wired Journalists on your blog. Your post should include the following:

• One of your three photos, along with a link to your photos on Wired Journalists. I’ve done it here, so this post may help you as a guide. (Note that you can also build a link in to a photo.)
• A description of your experience in taking photos and uploading them to Wired Journalists. Was it easy? Was it hard? How might you do it differently the next time?
• Your overall take on Wired Journalists. Please join at least one group in addition to the Northeastern University group, explore a little bit, and explain why you joined it and what you hope to learn.

This is the first step in learning about digital photography and social networking.

A final thought: You will get out of Wired Journalists what you put into it. I’d love to see some of you spending some serious time there. Although I am not requiring it, I recommend that you upload a headshot and really establish a presence there. Among other things, as you will see, this is a job-networking site. Jobs are good.