A Documentary

This semester I took a documentary photography class at the U from Craig Denton. In the class we were required to do a documentary about a subject of our choice. I at first considered talking to the hockey team and doing a documentary about them because I like to shoot hockey and I know the team manager. I have also done work for him many times before. My friend Jarad Reddekopp was in the class too and he said to me, “You’re doing yours on hockey, aren’t you? You always do hockey.” This made me realize that I should try a different topic.

A few days before this conversation, I got mug shots for all the candidates running for ASUU office and met Patrick Reimherr, Jon Hayes and Madison Warren. The candidates and I had fun while they were having their mug shots taken for the paper. I thought that if they would let me come to all their meetings, I could do a documentary about the campaign for student government office.

I shot just under 1,500 photos for the documentary. During that time I was faced with many challenging situations. There was one situation that stands out in my mind.
The Focus party hosted a house party for candidates, supporters and volunteers. There was a dance floor in the basement where members of the Focus party danced along to music. It was one of the best parts of the party and I needed to take a picture of it. I tried to take a picture without a flash so I would not ruin the atmosphere, but it didn’t work.
I finally gave in and used a flash, but with the flash it was hard to see that the people were dancing. The picture made it seem like the dancers were frozen in place.
Next I tried to use a slow shutter to capture movement blur. I ditched the flash again, hoping the long shutter would give me enough light, but no such luck. I finally got tired of holding the camera and moved the camera too much, which gave me streaking lights in the shot.
I took the flash off my camera and flashed it in my left hand as I held the camera itself in my right hand. This worked, except that I moved the camera in between flashes and the walls looked like they were moving with the dancers.
I finally got one picture that worked where the walls were still. The people moving seemed like they were dancing and it all came together. This picture was taken while I was still holding the camera by hand. I used the door frame for some help but it was mostly successful because of my steady hand.
I did get a tripod to use, but at that point the party had died down and it did not help at all.
One of the party members, Pace Johnson, used some of the photographs I had taken to make a video. Check it out.


At the end of the semester I had to do a magazine layout for my documentary. This is the final lay-out for my project.