FIRST IMPRESSIONS ARE A BITCH

Tuesday, March 24 2009

Today I said "Cheers" to London and "Bonjour" to Paris. During the flight, I started to get that language barrier tingling sensation that starts in the stomach and somehow makes its way all the way up to the back of the brain, fogging any knowledge of foreign tongues. I never made an ass out of myself in London but I knew it would happen often in Paris. I think this is the body’s way of preparing you for your inevitable doom, worst-case scenario wise.

Anyways, by the time we got to our hotel and did the check-in thing, which had an excessively brutal tone set forth by the sight of twenty unruly students, it was already pretty late and the editors decided the day would best be used to rest and gather our thoughts. My body was thankful but my mind was full of ideas. After all, I did just arrive in Paris.

A group of us went to the Eiffel Tower to take photos for the Web site and I was surprised I liked it so much. It wasn’t even on my list of things to do. We got there as the sun was dropping so the light was fantastic for photos, although my incompetence of SLR cameras made that a moot point. We checked out some other spots around the Tower area that seemed really awesome in my haze of tiredness and I told myself I would come back to really see them after I got some sleep.

I also made a plan to work with Kim Nguyen, another broadcast student, because I knew I would run into the same problems as I did in London and be forced to do a similar story. She had a pretty solid lead so we’ll check that out tomorrow. After working with Diana Nguyen, I realized that videographer experience is just another good line for my resume.

I’m not sure how I’m feeling at this point. I definitely should have worked harder at setting up interviews before we arrived in Europe. Or maybe I should have bought a suit so people would take me more seriously. Either way, I came into this trip a tad overconfident. I’ll chalk it up to a learning experience and leave it at that. No use sweating the petty.

John Ellis
Print Journalism

... AND SUZANNE SAID, "LET THERE BE WORK"

I took a digital SLR out with us for our first day in Paris. I'm not normally a photographer, but this trip has been entirely about getting our hands dirty with multimedia. "All-platform journalists," as they say. So I got out there with the group to the Eiffel Tower and started playing around with the camera.

It's been roughly 10 years since I've taken a photography class. The last SLR I worked with was film, so it was a lovely change of pace to see exactly what went right and what went wrong after each shot.

And as I was reacquainting myself with F-stops and shutter speeds, I took this photo.

Our photographer Carlos Moreno ran in front of me and I snapped it without thinking or paying much attention. It ended up being my favorite picture of the trip, because it says it all. We are here to work, with this amazing city as our backdrop. And work we did, and work we shall.

Suzanne Yada
Managing Editor

Magazine Journalism

www.suzanneyada.com

FROM BIG BEN TO CHINATOWN

It is my second day here in London, and I have to say, I am probably in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I have never been in Europe, and everything is completely new to me.

I am definitely loving it here. The culmination of different cultures, the different types of food, all the new sites, everything!

Today, I helped Kim Nguyen, a broadcast journalism major, with her travel and tourist stories. We went from Chinatown to Big Ben in all one day. Chinatown, here, is not the like Chinatown in San Francisco. There were no oriental style buildings or signs of Chinese culture. In fact, we did not know that we were in Chinatown until we asked someone, and he replied,

"What are you talking about? You're standing in it!."

Kim and I did stumble upon a niche in the heart of Chinatown. This little square was surrounded by tall buildings housing Chinese buffet restaurants, Asian grocery stores, and gift shops. To enter the square, we had to walk underneath an Oriental arch similar to the red gates that stand out in the oceans of Japan.

After Kim shot the stories she needed, we met up with the rest of the group at Big Ben. Big Ben, is nothing like what I've seen in Peter Pan or in Hook. I never got to enter it, but it was still amazing from the outside looking up at it. The group took a photograph together, and I tried my hand at making a one-handed MySpace-like point-and-shoot shot with my DSLR, and failed, fantastically. But hey, it is still worth a keepsake with the 10 bad shots I took, so I'm not complaining.

Evening fell, and London is even more stunning. Every street is well lit with its signature globe streetlights. People are still bustling about. The city is still alive, even on a Sunday. I took a couple of shots of the scenery at night.

Finding free wireless Internet is nearly impossible here, so I'll have to keep this blog short (if it isn't long enough already).

Anyways, I gotta get back to work so I have more time to enjoy this already wonderful city.

Christian Garrucho

Photographer

Radio Television Film

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