www.fithiansphotos.com - continue to learn (from: PubSub: Scoble)
http://www.fithiansphotos.com/i_know/2005/02/continue_to_lea.html
Weblog: www.fithiansphotos.comSource: continue to learn
Link: http://www.fithiansphotos.com/i_know/2005/02/continue_to_lea.html
Today I went to a lecture by Robert Scoble in the MLK library about blogging and such - very interesting perspective. To think about where the whole world is going, how media is evolving and people (just like what I am doing now) can comment and post to the net is amazing. Scoble discussed how he is able to get stories from across the globe, read them, link back to others, while commenting on a subject. What’s fascinating is the ability that anyone can comment on a product and the more hits a person gets, the higher up on google’s search results a person will be. Word of mouth travels fast, faster than what printed media can keep up with - resulting in people finding out about different products, news, etc. going on in the world. This just goes to show how the old forms of media like the conventinal newspapers across the country need to do something else to maintain profits and readers, as others can just turn to blogs and receive their news.
I talked to one of my professors after leaving the discussion about how I am uncertain of my career in photojournalism. Again, I told him I am confused. On my way back from New Orleans on my flight, I began to read Ken Light’s book, Witness in Our Time, and began to become excited about the profession again. It excites me when I read things about growing, self-discovery, and becoming culturally aware of what’s around us. The ability to go outside of the box, document others, and in turn, growing too. As reading, these images aren’t going to change people who are photographed, but in turn, change the photographer. Maybe this whole thing is just a self-discovery process, a way of finding who I really am.
As I heard from Robert Gumpert who gave a discussion yesterday in my J145 class, the image people should see will earn you little money. What the big bucks will come in are the images that people WANT to see, images of celebrities, scandal, and so on. I think that’s frustrating, as a photojournalist, we want to document change, be the eyes of the world…but others are more interested in what Brad and Jennifer are up to. This probably relates to my pop culture class too, hahaha. Where people like myself WANT TO KNOW what Britney is up to, we crave it, we feed off of it. Wow…this is all very interesting…everything is connected, mass coporations own majority of the markets, publish something and MTV shows music videos, which in turn, is really a promotion for the CD to sell records, and then other outlets, like AOL pick up the videos show "AOL FIRST VIEW" or "AOL FIRST LISTEN" to drive up hype, where fans talk about such things on their blogs, which in turn, people link, read, and it is all over the place. hmm. Interesting…
A big learning curve right now….As for the photojournalism thing, I will just keep my options open, allowing myself to keep the open mind, enjoy the classes i’m taking…and allow room for my own self-discovery. :c)