International Festival

UCO held its 57th Annual International Festival Thursday at the Nigh University Center ballroom. UCO has international students from over 100 countries studying here! Some of those were showing off their different cultures at the festival!

First of all, my mouth is still feeling spicy from all the food I ate! It was so delicious though! Seeing everyone in their cultural outfits was great and watching all the dancing was very entertaining! You might have seen me with my little video camera to the side of the stage! I did a time lapse of the whole festival that i will post later after i put it together.

Napali student dancing

Vietnamese student showcasing her culture

How to be "posh" according to Alan Smith

"If you're too stupid to use the apostrophe, then you're too stupid to have a degree from this university!" 

   My blogging class at UCO had the pleasure of hearing British writer and teacher, Alan Smith, speak to our class yesterday! Alan is a writer for one of the world's best newspapers, The Guardian. He writes a lot about prison because he used to work in a prison so he has seen things in quite different perspectives. Smith didn't start writing until he was 50 (and let me tell you - he barely even looked 50 to me) so I was quite surprised to hear this! Before he started writing he worked construction pouring concrete. He explained to us that one day he was walking home from work and he looked up in a school building and through the window saw a student leaning against a rail talking to his professor. He explained how relaxed that conversation looked and was envious of them. So he decided to go to school and become a teacher. 

   At 49 years old Alan Smith started writing his first novel because he had planned to have it published by the time he turned 50. He told us how he made 400 copies trying to sell his books and get them put on the shelves of bookstores, but at the end of the day he "came home with his heart in his boots," and never sold one copy. By the end of the week he ended up selling the film rights of his novel for $1,500.00. Unfortunately, the film never actually got made because the man who was suppose to make the film went on to make the Harry Potter movies. He made a joke about seeing the man now excepting an Oscar on TV for his movies, and he was standing their guest speaking to a University in little ole Oklahoma.

   The main things I took away from hearing him speak was the importance of never giving up and basically not taking no for an answer. He told us to "always write for something - don't ever write for free." He explained to us how he called every agent from A-Z, and not giving up because he found an agent by the name of Patrick Walsh (hints the "W" being at the end of the alphabet).

   The end of his rant was all directed towards education and grammar. He said, "you have to be able to spell, know how to use a semi-colon, and the apostrophe. Using an apostrophe is like putting on the right tie for the day. It separates the stupid from the intelligent. Apostrophe is the perfect dish to get into the posh club and the posh club pays." 

Happy Halloween Everyone!

Assignments

Over the last couple weeks in Blogging for Journalism we have had two guest speakers. First was Dr. Kurt Hochenauer who started blogging in 2004. His background is filled with experience in journalism. His blog Okie Funk is where he rants about politics and can share his liberal views. In class I asked what was it that kept him going? He responded by saying, "I write now for people to read later." During this presidential election many will be able to go back and read and get different points of view. He also made it a point to be the one to speak out and be a leader for Oklahoma so others may speak out too.

Dr. Kurt Hochenauer

The second guest speaker we had was Mr. Dave Rhea. Dave is a social media blogger and is the editor of the Journal Record, the statewide daily business-focused media company in Oklahoma City. Dave gave some great advice for us amateur bloggers. One thing we have talked about with both guest speakers is the fact that everyone and their mom has a blog now. Blogging about whatever they want. Dave says that if you blog then you need to find a niche, something you are interested in to  blog about. One problem though that I see with blogging - he couldn't have addressed better by saying, "if you give everyone a microphone, you're going to have a lot of noise."

Mr. Rhea and my professor, Mr. Clark

To improve my blog, I think I definitely need to start posting more. I have found my niche - photography. The only problem with that is photography blogs are so overpopulated.. but the good thing is that it gives your clients something to look at and follow you on. Second, I need to work on my writing skills - even though my blog is mostly pictures. These two guest speakers have given us amateur bloggers a lot to think about and work on! So I'd better get to work!

Beauty Photography

Every semester the photography department at UCO features images from the past semester's student projects on the walls of the Mass Communication building. So I thought it would be appropriate to share a few images from the series I had framed on the wall.

The image above made it on the wall this year. This series was created from my "beauty photography" assignment in Fashion Photography class a couple semesters ago. Beauty photography mainly focuses on the details and beauty of the face and/or make-up and hair. The above image is definitely my favorite from the series.

This was also my first time to meet my model, Miranda Schaeffer, and photograph her. Since then she has modeled for me several times and became a great friend. She is absolutely beautiful and has this thing about her that my camera just loves! Not to mention, she is a make-up artist and does her own for all the shoots. 

I was trying something new with the light fabric being draped over her and loved how it turned out! It gives the picture a nice texture. I used my Nikon D90 paired with a 50mm 1.8 lens. The lighting setup consisted of one ring light directly in front of her and a small amount of natural window lighting to one side as a fill light.

Instagram photo from behind the scenes