African Drummers

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This a slideshow of photos that I took for Howard University's student newspaper, The Hilltop . In the photos I tried to capture how much fun the performers were having while they were playing their hearts out.

DC Cleanup

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The DC fix it program is one of Mayor Adrian Fenty's initiatives to keep the streets in his city clean. Workers travel through neighborhoods with and without the permission of residents to tear down dangerous tree limbs, paint over graffiti, and mow unattended lawns. City workers arrived in a back alley off of Sherman Ave. and established protocol then began the cleaning the process. The workers that I spoke and took photographs of all seemed to really care about keeping the city clean because all were DC natives.

Passing It On

I'm a journalist who loves to tell a good story and when I met Harold Foster I knew that I was going to write one. My journalism professor Dr.Kaggwa told me about a man who taught black history to children in Southeast Washington, D.C. and it went from there. Foster is the focus of the story because he made a transition in his life from being a criminal to wanting to change his community for the better. Black history is at the focal point of what he teaches but there is more to the group.Foster said in the video it is about passing it on and teaching history to those who do not know it.This is my first video so while I'm proud of it I know that I'm not a professional visionary just yet. When I went into shooting the video I had a vision but it wasn't direct and wasn't written out in a script so everything was all over the place. When it came to editing the video I had to put things at the end in the beginning and vice versa. In addition to not having a script I was in a noisy area and there were cars passing which can be heard in the video. I also needed a tripod so that the video wouldn't be as shaky and I kept messing with zoom button. Ugh!!! When I saw the raw footage I couldn't believe how bad it was. My photojournalism professor Craig Herndon encouraged me to look at as a learning experience. So I did just that. When I sat down to use Final Cut Express I wasn't sure how I was going to figure it out but its a rather simple program and I love it. I used the photos that I had taken of Foster and the children and used them where the video wasn't so good. I thought that audio be good so I borrowed a voice recorder from the journalism department and sat in my bathroom and recorded them. Overall I think the video is good for a first timer but it needs a lot of work if I plan on using these skills in the future. I plan on working on my photography, video recording and editing skills in the near future.I will be posting more of my own videos on this blog. YAY!!!