News event assignments

News Event Assignments

General description:
Throughout the semester you will hand in five News Event Assignments. Each one will be of a news event of your choice (examples below). For each event, you will hand in:
• Your five best photos from the event
• Captions for each photo
Some of these events will overlap with other assignments (like your sports photo assignment). However, a news event must be different than your other assignments. For example, you can shoot a basketball game, but you can only use it for your sports assignment or your news event. You can shoot two games and use one for sports and one for this.

Examples:
DMACC Bears basketball game
State wrestling events (in the spring)
High school games
Drake basketball
iCubs
Media events like press conferences, speeches or unveilings/groundbreakings
Spot news like fire, accidents, etc.
Special campus activities
Concerts or plays (talk to whoever is in charge of media)
Special conventions or shows, like the Home and Garden Show
Special events for kids like KidsFest

Where to find ideas:
Des Moines Juice newspaper
DMACC website
KCCI community calendar
Des Moines Register events


For some of these you will need to speak to the media relations person to get a media pass or just to make sure it is okay to come and take photos. You can say you are a photojournalism student and inquire about a media pass or you're a freelance photojournalist or that you're shooting for the DMACC Campus Chronicle (especially for DMACC events, the Chronicle is always in need of photos).

Due dates:
First event should be done by our second on-on-one meeting
Events 2 and 3 by our third one-on-one meeting
Events 4 and 5 by our fourth one-on-one-meeting.

The main purpose of the one-on-one meetings is to discuss the photos you take at these news events.

Handing in assignments:
You can either hand in your assignments a few different ways:
• Burn files on to a CD
• Put the files in a folder on a USB drive and we can put it on my computer during a meeting
• Put your photos on Flickr and send me the link

Remember, captions should either be in a word document in the same folder or in the photo description (I can show you how to do this in Photoshop).

Grading:
News events are worth 20 points:
10 points for technical quality (proper focus, exposure, cropping, and Photoshop work)
5 points for newsworthiness
5 points for captions