The Uptake: Inception, Breakthroughs, and Uncertainty

The news industry is suffering one of its worst years in modern history, including a splintering audience, plummeting revenue and the inevitable layoffs that follow. But even in this in environment some have found ways to find success in the fault lines of the media landscape.

The Uptake, a left-leaning Minneapolis-based journalism group has been working to not just survive but thrive under the current conditions by harnessing citizen journalists and live internet streaming.

I spoke with Chris Dykstra, Chairman of the board for The UpTake, asking him first about the news industry as it is today.

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Walking the line in Mt. Pleasant

Flanked on one side by an alley and by a crumbling antiques store façade on another, Dos Gringos Café has become a stable mainstay in a changing and sometimes troubled neighborhood. After nearly 9 years of serving the Mt. Pleasant community of Washington, D.C., however, it faces even more challenges than in the past.

Dos Gringos serves a diverse menu to an even more varied clientele. Doctors, laborers, young non-profit workers and local shop owners all find a meal in the café’s corner perch. But even as it approaches a decade in age, its beginning remains the same.

“I was living in the neighborhood and I wanted a bagel with cream cheese and tomato,” said Alex Kramer, co-founder and sole current owner of Dos Gringos. “It was the most expensive bagel with cream cheese and tomato I’ve ever had.”

For Kramer, the decision to open a restaurant with her former partner also meant examining what its role would be in a community that has undergone tremendous shits in demographics and fortune over the past fifty years.

Fotoweek Brings Pulitzer Winners Together

Photographers discuss the experiences behind iconic images

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalists from The Washington Post convened this Saturday to discuss the sometimes quirky and often wrenching stories behind their award-winning photographs.

Speaking at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. for a recording of Inside Media, 25 year veteran photojournalist Matthew Lewis talked about the difficulty of capturing political figures.

'You have 25 seconds'

"I decided I would put two cameras around my neck, one with color, one with black and white," Lewis said about his brief photo shoot with Ron Ziegler, Press Secretary to President Richard Nixon. "He walked in and said, 'You have 25 seconds.'"

"I don't think any photographer goes out thinking they're going to win," Lewis went on to say about his haphazard experience.

Winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Kosovo War along with Carol Guzy, Michael Williamson talked about covering the aftermath of battles in a civil war.

"I was literally going to the towns where I heard there were the most atrocities," Williamson said about how he found a man sitting on a bucket containing the charred remnants of a relative's body in a bucket. "He was waiting for the U.N…. he thought I was with them so he stopped me."

In front of their cameras

Carol Guzy and Michel duCille won their first Pulitzer in 1986 for their coverage of mudslides in Colombia following the Nevado del Ruiz eruption.

Talking about his photo of Omayra Sanchez, the young girl who became trapped in a pool of water and who died from exposure after a three day, Internationally-viewed saga, duCille said, "you can't believe she's right there… I left before she died."

The Newseum held the event as part of FotoWeek/DC series of events. FotoWeek's declared purpose is to, "attract those who make a living practicing the art, science, business, education, and craft of photography." Events for FotoWeek concluded Saturday.

Exam Anxiety

Nearing the end of my time at Carleton College, I sought to find and document those events – in a confluence of very special conditions – that only occur in such a college environment. The removed, rural setting of the college and intensely academic though thoroughly eccentric student populous produces many of these events and one very special one occurs the Friday before the first exam at the end of the term.

Winter term especially, with its pent up academic frustration and incubated angst, requires a unique outlet through performance and song. This slideshow piece attempts to follow the happenings in the Carleton College Gould Library through the night, from improvisation performances deriding the school across the river, St. Olaf, to the acapella groups the school is famous for.

Presented in Flash. Link.

The Record Librarian’s Domain

Nick Ver Steegh, manager of the KRLX record library in Northfield, Minnesota, gives an audio tour of his favorite place on Earth. Musk, weird growths, and the dusty haze of a half century of vinyl provide the backdrop for this interview.

Produced in conjunction with Emily Schwing of KRLX’s Periscope production staff. Photo by Cameron Nordholm.

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La Nouvelle Interface

In the summer of 2005 I left for Nice, France to participate in NYU’s Nice: A City in Motion program. Steeped in 3D animation, theory, and design, it explored the word of digital video and its manipulation.

The course covers conceptual design and production using animation and video processing software. We look at ways to shoot and manipulate visual media in 2-D and 3-D, playing with motions, colors, lighting, textures, camera movements, gestures, sounds, and human expressions. Students are asked to create their own story combining video and 3-D animation. Topics addressed include designing digital storyboards, motion capture, creating animated digital characters, camera tracking, lighting, and compositing. Course taught by NYU ITP Program Professor Jean-Marc Gauthier. [above]

My final project in this course involved using Maya3D to construct an extractable layer over a still photograph of the city of Nice, France, animating the buildings to represent the political vibrancy of it’s old section. Undergoing rapid development, Nice could be seen as standing to lose much in the coming years and this project can be taken both in a political and artistic sense within this context. All audio, photography, and rendering is completely original.

New Interface (QT H.264, 21MB) Link.
Program Website Link.
Exhibition Press Release (PDF) (French) Link.

Social Reform Photography Analysis

Art After New Media: Interfaces

For the Art After New Media course I spent much of our time examining the link between information and interface. My first project examined the map as an interface for the actions of our daily lives. I project my movements throughout the day in a breadcrumb fashion throughout the campus and also lay the communications infrastructure that enables my life to extend beyond physical limitations, hence data and phone networks. Mapped Interface Link.

Secondly we examined how interface, used in linear and nonlinear fashions, can change the meaning of information. This project uses flash to explore a record shop in a very casual way resulting in different outcomes depending on one’s browsing habits. Largely a conceptual piece, it presents the idea that interface can be used to tell a narrative in a dynamic way. Linear Interface as Narrative Link.

Photography in Graz, Prague, and Udine

These photos were taken in the summer of 2002 with a 35 mm Nikon EM. All selections are original scans from the negatives with no cropping or color correction. Please see license information in the asides.