Feedback requested for "Stewart's First Year" documentary project

[lex_jenkins]

<p>I hope I'm not pushing the "no critiques" policy too far here, but I have what I hope is a request that falls within the mission of the Street & Documentary Forum.</p>

<p>I've just uploaded a first draft of a project titled "<a href="../photodb/folder?folder_id=908598"><strong>Stewart's First Year</strong> </a> ," documenting the early life of my nephew, born in 2006 with a serious heart defect and not expected to survive. (He's still with us and doing well.) I've neglected this project too long and need to do something with it.</p>

<p>I've learned it's a waste of time to submit portfolio critique requests through photo.net's usual critique forum. Very few viewers using that queue understand the unique character of a multi-photo documentary process and tend to zero in on a single photo without regard to context. And most photos submitted to the Documentary genre in the critique queue are lone, isolated photos lacking any context or narrative. The S&D forum is the only place on photo.net I can think of to find fellow photographers who understand the unique genre.</p>

<p>What I'm looking for specifically is whether the 10-photo project hangs together as a coherent story, even without a written narrative. So far the narrative I've written is sketchy, just enough to give an idea of the time and place and basic info, but without the background details. I have hundreds of other photos and paring it down to 10 has been difficult, but I'm still uncertain about the flow of the visual narrative.</p>

<p>Ruthless but constructive feedback on technical aspects of the photos and overall presentation will also be appreciated. I'm not looking for attaboys or praise and I've disabled ratings because it's irrelevant to my intentions. For example, conditions were very difficult with mixed lighting so color correction has been a nightmare. But it needs to be in color, not b&w. So one of the specific types of feedback I need is whether the variation in color balance is a serious detriment to the overall effect or would be considered negligible given the context of the project.</p>

<p>My sincere thanks in advance.</p>

[a._j._jacobs]

<p>I think it's very coherent. Even without you saying anything about what was wrong with your nephew, looking through the photos you see the baby has something wrong with his chest, worried-looking sleepy parents, a procedure, then the baby healing. I feel like you can tell the emotions that are going on with each photo and that the sequence of photos goes from a stressed, worried emotion, to a healing, happier emotion. Just my 2 cents, take it for what it's worth. I always like photos with emotion. :)</p>

[a._j._jacobs]

<p>PS. I'm glad to hear he is still doing well!</p>

[starvy]

<p>compositionally they are all very good, however, i noticed that they were all a little too bright and lacking in colour. this could well be due to the nature of hospital photography, the clinical white sheets and barren lighting. i'd have liked a little more saturation and perhaps a few black and white shots.<br>

i hope he has a long and prosperous life ahead of him. very best wishes to his parents.</p>

[Hector Javkin]

<p>It's a very powerful sequence of photographs. Trust me, I have no right to complain about color correction issues but, in these images, I find myself looking at the baby's skin for indications of how he's doing, so that proper balance is more than an aesthetic issue. Just do the best you can -- the content will still carry the day. And good luck to your nephew and his parents.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Thanks, all, very much appreciated.</p>

<p>Regarding colors...<br>

I did either use the lowest saturation setting on my D2H or toned down the color a bit on others. The D2H is notorious for excessive sensitivity to near-IR and under some artificial light can produce gawdawful tinges in skin tones, particularly in shadowed areas. It's usually greenish in shadows, such as under jawlines, but occasionally there's an overall "meat skin" look with excessive magenta. Live and learn... if I had it to do again I wouldn't choose a D2H for people photography where color accuracy was a critical factor. The light needs to be perfectly neutral, either midday-daylight or electronic flash, to minimize the odd skin colors.</p>

<p>And over the course of this year-long+ documentary project the lighting varied tremendously from place to place, including wild mixtures of fluorescent, halogen and other light sources in the same rooms or over the hospital beds. Under the circumstances I had only a few options: use flash, to overpower ambient lighting (not always feasible or desirable, tho' I did use a lot of bounced flash whenever appropriate); white balance based on the available neutral colors, usually a blanket or sheet; fix it in post with selective application of a hue replacer brush to the skin. I did a little of each, but not on every photo.</p>

<p>Hector, excellent point regarding the baby's skin color being an indicator of health. Throughout the year Stewart's skin color varied tremendously, from pale and cyanotic to beet red, and only occasionally a "normal" skin color until he was over a year old. At times his skin color was quite alarming. To the best of my knowledge (and feeble digital editing abilities) the apparent variation in skin colors accurately reflects what I actually saw during those times.</p>

<p>Regarding brightness...<br>

The overall contrast and gamma seems about right to me on my monitor. I tended to nudge the photos perhaps a bit brighter than my personal preference in order to accommodate viewing on un-calibrated systems, which includes most of my family's PC's. (A common complaint I've heard from them is my photos are "too dark", a reflection of my preferences in b&w film photography.) But other than a few hot spots on a white diaper or tape I'm not seeing any overall problems.</p>

[stevecarlson]

<p>Lex, it is a very strong story, and well said at that. I think any adjustment of the photo's would take away from that, also the naritive would have lost alot if you had added to much filler. Please dont change a thing, Steve</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>It's susinct and focused. Nikon skin tones can be challenging often (except for some reason for me when I use the longish 70-200), but I wouldn't put too much focus on that. Definately well taken and told. Great that things are going better. All the best..</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Thanks. What about the written narrative? Leave it pretty much as-is, succinct, and let the viewer draw his/her own impressions from the photos? Or more narrative detail? I'm more of a writer than photographer and tend to overwrite everything so I'm trying to rein that in for this project.</p>

[pnital]

<p>Lex, I looked at them one by one, and read your chronological information. I don't think this series has to be evaluated in the usual terms, as it is so very touching . Feeling the struggle of parents and first sick child. I think that you did a very interesting and unusual documentary work, taking into account as well the hard condition of photographing in hospital condition and light . Your "story" Imo is important and has enough information and follow up. You have photographed all the aspect of a long , hard ,every day situation and struggle, hopes and anxieties of a long ,very long year.</p>

<p>It brought me back to my previous profession as an RN and supervisor in a maternity hospital, I think I can say( practicing both medicine and photography) that you have succeeded in transferring the process, from the worried, pale mother in the first photo, to the incubator , to the parents devotion, to the medical stuff, and especially to the baby struggle and even his personality in this small age. The last one, is simply amazing, and looks like a victory( miracle) against all medical chances. I find the juxtaposition of your photography and follow up story, adequate in telling the story also in words, even though the photos speaks for themselves, and I thank you for sharing it with us here, as I find it the right forum and not the regular critique one. I find the compositions and colors well done( and I looked at them several times). I Wish that little fighter to continue toward a regular childhood.</p>

[james_lai]

<p>Lex, simply amazing! I've often wondered how Stewart was doing since you last posted about him a few years ago, thank you for providing this update.</p>

[Uhooru]

<p>A simple narrative like you have is one good way of doing it. I don't think it needs much in the way of photo captions at all,unless you want to. You can read the intro and then either just look at the photos or you could have a brief caption explaining the what/when, or you can even have a small story for each photo. That also is another way of doing it. Depends on how important to the story it is that the photo's describe important distinct events. <br>

If you look at some Magnum documentaries or Burn magazine, you will see that often a simple story, they just copy for each photo, but I think the little more detail in the story up front is more helpful.</p>

 

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Pnina: Thank you for sharing your perspective, from having been an RN. I was in health care during the 1970s-early '80s (dialysis and other areas), which helped me in framing some perspective. There are many other photos showing the hospital staff in action as well, but there wasn't room in a 10-photo documentary. I plan to share these other photos with the hospital, in hopes of helping them in fund raising and promotional work. And I appreciate your feedback on the written/visual narrative flow.</p>

<p>James: I could hardly believe it myself that it's been three years. I've been sitting on this project so long I'd completely lost track of the time perspective. Other family illnesses intervened so I was busy with other matters and didn't realize until a few weeks ago when I was burning extra backup CDs and DVDs how long it had been.</p>

<p>Barry: Thanks for helping me to evaluate the written narrative. I may revise it slightly, but will try to keep it succinct, with specific information relevant to each photo. I suppose a longer or more detailed written narrative might be appropriate in another context, such as a book or personal website over which I have control of the presentation, but I needed some fresh eyes from the perspective of how the written narrative works within the context of photo.net's presentation.</p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>Lex, you need to rewrite the captions as you said. I will email you some suggestions through the photo.net bio page links because my list is too long for the thread. Every one of those photos needs the captions edited. The photos by themselves are good enough; but, there were two main appearance-related concerns that I noticed:</p>

<p>1. You need to explain the skin color in heart surgery photo, dead-on and up front.<br>

2. You need to be sure to unify the captioning and titling of the photos to make it clear to people who don't know you or your idea that the baby in all of the photos is the same person. The adults change in the sequence, but the baby is the same. Yet, the child that unifies the sequence changes radically in appearance from photo to photo because of both his growth and development, but also changes in his health. I recommend you unify all of these with clear references to "Stewart" early on in any captioning of the photos.</p>

<p>Also, title of the series has got to go. "Stewart's First Year" sounds like a greeting card baby book. Your content passed that up before the first frame.</p>

<p>"Stewart's First Year" is only going to send the right message if you follow it with a subtitle that outlines the critical nature of the health situation featured in the photos. I don't know what to suggest just yet, but you need to underscore danger while staying away from just about every danger-related cliche phrase around. Maybe find something specific about the ailment or the cure or the tools or the wait and tie it to the child's name. </p>

<p>Don't mean to bust your chops, Lex; but you need to take a red pen to the captions in order to write some words that are going to cut it to be worth the photos. I'll tap something out and send it up. Delete as desired. Good photos. Sorry to hear about the troubles. J.</p>

[sasvata__shash__chatterjee]

<p>Hi Lex, the story comes across loud and clear, a job well done. I think your connectedness to the family and empathy for the subject comes across as well. I would not add too much narrative, particularly for photojournalism, the pictures should be doing most of the work and in this case do. Only the minimum words necessary to set the context should be present, I'd put at one or, at most, a couple of sentences each. One suggestion might be a narrative for the entire folder setting the context, and just a very brief one liner for each individual image. Technically, I have but just a couple minor comments. Hard as it may be, the skin tone and overall color matching is important in this case since the selected pictures are similar in content; to that end I think the skin tone in the very last picture could stand to be a bit more red. The other thing that stands out for me is that it would be better if the aspect ratios in the whole sequence could be similar. If you could get the aspect ratio of the eighth picture in line, I think it would be better. Same goes for the fourth picture, although a 1:1 aspect ratio may be "neutral" enough to go with the rest. I understand the necessity and relevance of the fourth picture to the story, but strictly from a visual sense it seems out of place.</p>

<p>On a side note, we in North Texas are immensely blessed by having two great medical institutions for children, Cook's in Ft. Worth, and Children's Medical Center in Dallas, both staffed with caring and competent professionals.</p>

 

[michael s.]

<p>These are emotional photos, Lex, and very good ones. </p>

<p>I will say that Stewart's character emerges in these shots. What you say about his eyes looks to be on target.</p>

<p>It's a tight edit. So tight that I found myself wanting something I rarely want: <em>more photos</em> -- and particularly more photos of the parents, though I realize they were not the core subjects. I can scarcely imagine what they must have felt when they were given such disturbing news and a poor prognosis at the outset, and I want to see part of -- or perhaps more of -- their elation as little Stewart dug in and survived. </p>

<p>Separately, Lex, my best wishes for continued health and strength to your remarkably courageous little great nephew.</p>

[mikal_grass]

<p>Lex,<br>

He's beautiful!!!! Thank you for sharing the photos with us. Yes, the captions are a bit wordy, but who cares. Please keep us posted on his progress and give him a kiss from all of us.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>Thanks, John, all very good points. I wrote up everything very hastily while I was tired, probably a bad idea. And I knew that "Stewart's First Year" was a lame title, but I was exhausted and couldn't think of anything stronger that didn't make me want to wince and say "Gimme a break." That's exactly the kind of feedback I needed.</p>

<p>Shash, good eye. I hadn't paid attention to the sizes and aspect ratios. Some of those photos were prepared over a year ago, others only recently. I hadn't noticed they were mismatched in dimensions onscreen.</p>

<p>Michael, it was really tough paring it down to 10 photos. But I planned to enter this for the Jodi Cobb LOVE Project sponsored by photo.net, and the requirements were for 10 photos. It was a good exercise in discipline for me because my first web-slideshow of these photos back in 2007 ran almost 50 photos. The magic number is probably somewhere between 10 and 50.</p>

<p>My next project will be to work up a slightly longer version on CD/DVD with emphasis on the hospital care, for Cook Children's Hospital in Fort Worth. They were amazing and we all had the greatest confidence that Stewie was receiving the best possible care.</p>

[pnital]

<p>Lex, coming back to the series after reading your thoughts and suggestions, I think that the series needs a better title and I thought it might be like " A straggle for life". I don't find the aspect ratio disturbing , on the contrary, adding interest and variety ( I mean the square format, my taste of course) Usually I like a title to each photo , and I thought that instead of the title present, what do you think of titles like " Stewart one month of age," etc. So it will have a chronological dates of the year, fit to your short explanation and chronological events during that year time. Just some thoughts, looking at this touching series again.</p>

<p>I think that doing a series for the hospital , in order to help and thank them ,is a very nice gesture.</p>