Magzalez’s eyes on media

Sports columnist Greg Cote inserted a cute little quip about his newspaper in a column about the Florida Marlins, their game last night and their playoff push:

The buoyant crowd of 23,165, seventh-biggest home gate of the year, found warring factions of fans vying for supremacy in the stands as their teams worked the diamond — the home side winning both ways.

Cody Ross delivered what proved to be the winning RBI single to right field in the eighth as the crowd roared, “Co-dy! Co-dy!”

Apparently it was a chant for Ross. For a second, I thought the crowd was chanting “Co-te! Co-te!” so that I might be inspired to make deadline.

(By the way, I hope this column made it to you OK, as these are austere times for a newspaper industry beset by drastic cutbacks. For example, I was recently made to give up my laptop and etched this column on small stone tablets transported back to the paper by night-flying carrier pigeons).

Oh that crazy singing sports writer is a funny one. Greg Cote and I got locked out of the Dolphins locker room together once at Dolphins training camp last year, true story. He asked me how to get in. I gave him the best “are-you-serious?” look I could. We eventually found our way in and laughed it off.

More on what I think about this later, but check out how cool this interactive piece about Ana Ivanovic’s serve by The New York Times. It helps that Ivanovic is a cutie.

• Power in Motion – New York Times – May 26, 2008

I edited a podcast — or a bit of audio for the Web which has absorbed the name of “podcast” — for alligatorsports.org last night. It is the sportscast for May 22. The topic isn’t exactly the most interesting, but it has a niche — UF softball.

Alligator Softball Podcast

The guys who put together the audio, Mike DiFerdinando and Kyle Maistri, did a pretty good job considering they’ve never done something like this before. I just edited the audio so they sounded like they knew what they were talking about even more than they already did.

I talked to the guys after I finished editing and encouraged them to try and do this sort of thing more often. Hopefully, next week I’ll get a chance to talk to them about how to make it better. I’d like for it to change from a regurgitation of information to more of a leisure conversation — more like a five-minute segment of a sports talk show let’s say.

Hooray for a truly successful photo story! I went out yesterday with my girlfriend, cousin and two of my friends to Ginnie Springs in High Springs, Fla., about 40 minutes out of Gainesville. Ginnie Springs was the last stop this semester for the Gainesville Explorer series at The Independent Florida Alligator, which, as you know, I have had a heavy hand in.

Well I went out to the springs thinking I was going to shoot a video. I have been taking my new D-SLR camera just in case–ya know, the way photographers nowadays are taking video cameras out just in case? I do everything backwards.

I started with some pictures of my friends and realized that the lighting was just too good not to take advantage of the photography. The springs is also a very low-key, relaxing place. There wasn’t a whole heap of movement going on. So with that in mind, I never even bothered taking my video camera out, I just walked around like a regular photog, fly-on-the-wall style.

I tried my best to adhere to some of the guidelines of composition I learned way-back-when in my photojournalism class, ones have been applying to video lately–rule of thirds, fill the frame, get close, repetition of shapes, etc. One of my hindrances in all of this is that I only own one lens, 18mm-55mm, so when I say I have to get close, I mean it.

All in all, the photos came out pretty OK, but it took more than pictures to make my Soundslides successful. I got very good, rich sound. I just sat by one of the springs for about a minute and a half and captured the sound of the water and people rustling and bustling about. Then I decided, rather crazily, that I would play “Swanee River” on my lap harp over the natural sound. Then I did a voice over. The voice over could have been better, but I couldn’t believe how nice the music and the natural sound went together. My first few shots are of a bus riding by with some inner tubes and a bunch of people. The sound of the laughter, water and music gave it a going-to-camp feel.

So check out my audio slide show of Ginnie Springs for yourself, and tell me what you think. It may not be the best Soundslides in the world, but this is the best slide show I’ve done since I made one about a dance teacher here in Gainesville a while back, and it is officially my favorite Gainesville Explorer piece.

Maybe for one of my next posts, I’ll recap all the videos and slide shows I made this semester for the Gainesville Explorer series, grade them and talk about the dos and don’ts I learned from them.

Well I finally got a photo story done. It’s not amazing or anything, but it’s good enough. It is of course another installment to the Gainesville Explorer series. The photo story is about the Gainesville-Hawthorne State Trail.

I’m only just starting to pick up photography. I know I have the eye for it, it’s just the technique I need to hone in on now. I took a photojournalism class a while back, and I did OK.

In this particular photo story, I tried to use some video techniques–multiple, sequential pictures that gave the illusion of motion. Hopefully I’ll have more time to work on this.

On an unrelated note, it has been raining in Gainesville for days and days. It doesn’t look like it’s ever going to let up. It’s put a real damper on outdoor videos and pictures. I never got a chance to shoot that video Friday, and these pictures were shot in really crummy, about-to-rain light.

On another unrelated note, Rafael Nadal, my tennis hero other than Gael Monfils, lost in the finals at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami to Nikolay Davydenko. It was a bummer.