One of the more exciting, and challenging, initiatives this year has been the short videos of the varsity athletic teams. Shooting video of teams and sports that are very familiar to me as a still photographer has provided a new set of challenges to my athletics schedule.

This all came about primarily because I upgraded my still-image camera to one that is also capable of capturing video (it’s the Canon 1D Mark IV). I figured that as long as I was at the games and meets to capture still images that I may as well use the video capabilities of the camera to capture video clips as well. The other videos that I have made for the online magazine have been very well received by the Trinity community and I thought that videos of varsity athletics might be equally popular.

As I considered how I would need to change my shooting style to accommodate video, a photojournalist whose blog I enjoy reading (Dan Chung at http://www.dslrnewsshooter.com) profiled a camera called the GoPro. This is a small video camera that is capable of capturing high definition video and is easily mounted to people’s heads, chests, and wrists. After reviewing some of Dan’s footage I knew that this camera would provide compelling footage to cut into the footage that I would be capturing with my camera.

The first team that I covered in the autumn was Girls Varsity Tennis. I asked ...

With the redesigned Tiger Sports Report page, new athletics Twitter feed, and e-mailed delivery of the e-book edition of Trinity Per Saecula there are plenty of new design features on the site. Here's my overview.

Tiger Sports Report
It's clear from watching the traffic statistics for Sine Charta that Tiger Sports Report is consistently one of the most visited pages on the site, so it was time to consider a page redesign page in light of that. The first thing that you will notice is the larger team portraits as well as new text boxes that post the most recent results for that team and, when they are available, descriptions of the game. The game and match slideshows remain, indicated by an icon that looks like photographic prints fanned out, and are joined by something new…short videos, indicated by an icon that looks like a movie camera. I upgraded the camera that I use for the athletic images (to a Canon 1D Mark IV) and this new camera body shoots video as well as still images. I figured that as long as I was taking the time to document each varsity team with still images that I should add video to my responsibilities. You can see the first video with Girls Varsity Tennis. Short videos of all of the other varsity teams are coming soon!

@TrinityTigers
Throughout last year the response to the same-day varsity and junior varsity results that posted ...

A number of people have asked me about the arts documentaries…how classes are selected, how the documentaries are made, why they aren’t longer, why there hasn't been one about the Upper School arts programs this year, and how come there aren’t more of them? I’m glad that people are interested in and enjoying these documentaries, so I thought I would address all of these questions today.

The current plan is for there to be three arts documentaries each year, one for each division of the School, alternating between visual and performing arts. So, for example, last year the Lower School arts documentary focused on the Native American Festival, a performing arts production, while the Upper School arts documentary focused on printmaking, a visual arts project. (There was no Middle School arts documentary last year as "The Arts" section was added to Sine Charta in March there simply wasn't the time to produce one.) This year the Lower School arts documentary focused on the Grade One Circus Train, a visual arts project. (I do plan to move around different grades within each division, although that may not always be possible or practical.) The Middle School arts documentary this year focused on the Middle School Orchestra (performing arts) and the Upper School documentary will focus on the Theatre IV one-act plays (performing arts) directed, and in some cases written, by graduating seniors. Next year the Lower School video will be about the performing arts, and the Middle and Upper School videos will ...

Last week I received three media calls related to the Forbes.com article, from last year, that ranked schools. All three were from broadcast outlets: two from domestic broadcasters and one from a German broadcast company. It would be difficult to say whether I was more surprised by calls generated by an article that is over one year old or by the fact that none of the broadcasters were from New York City. Perhaps most surprising of all was that all three calls arrived in the same week, which made me wonder why, with everything that is going on in the world, broadcasters were still trolling through last year’s news. The arc of the life of any particular media story depends on a number of factors. Perhaps most important would be how it first breaks. A story that breaks in a respected print outlet is pretty much guaranteed to be picked up by what I still refer to as the “wire services” and the appearance of such a story on AP, AFP, Reuters, or similar means that a great number of the print media will run with the story simply because they have paid for it already. If they have the column inches, or Web space, available then the story will run. Other stories take on a life of their own, regardless of how they first broke. Several years ago a story broke about a sound that could be heard only by young people. This was developed by an Englishman who wanted to keep ...