CLARE BECKER

Twitter’s squiggly temblors hit MPW

WEDNESDAY’S WEATHER

6749

source: wunderground.com

by Ivy Ashe

“You can’t presume anything,” says Team A faculty member Rick Shaw. He’s referring to the paradoxes and problems encountered during photo story-finding, but could just as easily be offering sage life advice. After all, as of last Thursday, Rick wasn’t supposed to be here in Festus.

He’s a new addition to the faculty, asked to step in at the last minute when Randy Olson found himself unable to attend.

“I threw my body in front of the train,” Rick deadpans.

So far, though, the workshop ride has been smooth. Both Rick and his Team A partner Penny De Los Santos are first-timers on the faculty, but other than a lit-tle too much time spent on brainstorm-ing yesterday afternoon--“We could

have been more efficient”--the two have risen to and met MPW’s challenges.

The workshop isn’t the first time Rick and Penny have been on the same team. The two worked together in 1998, when Penny interned at the Sacramento Bee. At the time, Rick was the Bee’s photo editor.

“The great thing about this work-shop, besides the great creative mental exercise, is that it’s also a chance to rein-vigorate these old ties,” he says.

As for the mental exercise part, Rick has found that much of faculty energy is spent in offering advice for approach-ing obstacles—anything from subjects not returning their photographer’s calls to, more often, streamlining and focus-ing the story itself. Still in the early days of the workshop, Team A is “all over the place,” in terms of progress, he says.

“But,” he adds, we have compasses.”

RangefinderThe

Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009Issue 61 - Volume 2Festus & Crystal City, Missouri

by Duane Dailey

In southeast Missouri, we sit atop the upper lay-ers of a network of cracks deep under the earth. That New Madrid Fault shifted sharply in 1812, the biggest earthquake in U.S. history. The Missis-sippi River, over there by Crystal City, ran back-wards and church bells rang in Boston. The whole world shook.

Last night, I swear I felt temblors in the world of MPW. They were tiny seismic shifts, just twitches. NO! They were

tweets. They may be the first indicators of the Big One. You’re part of a ma-jor shift.

Twitter came to MPW. Dennis Dimick, the

fine-tuned reader of the world of photojournalism nuance, challenged you to present your story idea in 140 characters.

In the past our chal-lenge was to condense story ideas down to a few words: A headline. Tweets are the new stan-dard. Can you condense your story facts, feelings and impressions into the electronic essence?

More than ever, ideas

are refined for quick com-munication.

Instead of those long, rambling, inconclusive, maddeningly unfocused, endless, non-linear story pitches, give us a tweet. Unlike Twitter, an in-stantaneous translation of a brief brain synapse, this must be as thought-ful as a Zen haiku.

Photojournalism is the melding of words and pic-tures. Words! Those lit-tle abstract squiggles de-scribed by Larry Dailey. (My other brother Larry.)

Larry sensed the oth-er seismic shift. Maybe it is time for more humor.

Communicate the light-er side. That would be so unusual in journalism, it would grab attention.

I hinted at that in my first rumination in the Rangefinder yester-day. (In the Maggie Ste-ber Poll, we discovered that you do know your rangefinder from your au-tofocus.) “You don’t have to look in every dark cor-ner,” quoting myself. Up-lift us. Make us giggle, as well as cry. What ever you do, make us feel. Make us connect with the people in these twin towns.

That is your respon-sibility, Larry said. Tell

their story. It is your pho-tojournalistic obligation. It’s in the contract.

Maybe a tweet will lead you to your slice of “Doc-umenting Small Town America for Six Decades.”

Have fun, look for the bright lights through those tears.

But remember your first tweet is only a hy-pothesis. You must col-lect data, lots of data, to prove your theory. Your faculty awaits delivery of your supporting digital evidence. Go forth and find the essence of The Twin Cities.

Bring us visual poetry.

FYI

400 image limit for entire week

No deleting

Shoot fine, large jpeg

Download any raw im-ages you want to keep-

cards will be wiped

Kim Komenich, far right, and Carolyn Cole, second from right, critique test images with the rest of Team D during Monday’s story introduction sessions.

“If you take pictures

without tellingthe story,you’re not

taking,you’re stealing.

”Larry Dailey

No presumptions from Team A

“Trust your instincts

for makinga goodpicture.

”David Rees

“Bide your

time until life happens.

”Carolyn Cole

August Kryger and Team A faculty Penny De Los Santos and Rick Shaw near the end of the story approval process.

CLARE BECKER

“You can have $4,000 worth of pearls, but without that five cent string, you don’t have a necklace.”

-Kim Komenich

“Learn to dance with them.” -Maggie Steber on your subjects

“They’re not the exclamation points, they’re the dot, dot, dots...”

-Penny De Los Santos on her favorite photos

Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009Issue 61 - Volume 2Festus & Crystal City, Missouri

8 am - 12 pmstory consultation

1pm -5 pmstory consultation

7pmHenri Cartier-Bresson’s “The Decisive Moment”

story critiques

Rangefinderfounders Cliff and Vi Edom

co-directors Jim Curley David Rees

director emeritus Duane Dailey

MPW coordinator Amy Schomaker

photographer Clare Becker

Rangefinder staff Ivy Ashe Seth Putnam

roving reporter Liz Lance

consultant Sid Hastings

TWIN CITIESFact or Fiction?

RUMOR Gordon’s Stop Light Drive In in Crystal City serves up the best hamburger

in town(s).

REALITY Four out of five people agree that the hamburger at Gordon’s is the best

around. Hillsboro resident Herman Jett doesn’t know exactly why it’s the best,

but figures it is because “they cook it with finesse.” The lone dissenting voice, Louis Clark of Festus, prefers to his hamburgers at the Steak ‘n’ Shake, served with cheese, raw onion and dill pickle. “You get more

hamburger there, I think,” Clark said.

Grocery Stores 4Ice Cream Shops 1Custard Shops 2Cakeries 1Food Banks 1 Diners in Crystal City 2Mexican Restaurants 2Mexican Groceries 1 Festus Chamber of Commerce

Wednesday’s Schedule

Join mpw on

mpw is now on facebook.com! Become a fan today by searching for

“Missouri Photo Workshop.”

by Seth Putnam

Have the honey chicken at Lam’s Gar-den Chinese Restau-rant.

Seriously, try it. It’s delicious. Several piec-es of crispy, honey-glazed chicken come on a bed of rice sticks. There’s a side of pep-pery fried rice, and ap-parently good things come in twos, because you’ll also get a couple of sugared donuts, two fortune cookies and a pair of creamy crab rangoons—“the best in the city,” says Lin-da, who’s been a part-time waitress there for 22 of the restaurant’s 24 years in operation.

“It’s hard for me to recommend things be-cause we sell a lot of ev-erything,” she says. “I eat it seven days a week, and I love the hot-and-sour soup.”

The restaurant serves plenty of lo-cals, and you’re bound to run into a charac-ter or two—like John McWherter, an 18-year-old from near-by Pevely. He got fired from Wal-Mart after he filmed himself breaking a bottle of Sobe over

his head in his employ-ee’s uniform, so now he works at Lam’s.

And at $5 a plate, it won’t clean out your money clip. Lam’s is located behind Dairy Queen on Bailey Rd.

McDonald’s is anoth-er option, and you’d be supporting MPW, albe-it in a roundabout way. The family of Sarah Flagg, one of the Nikon assistants, owns five of them. Her dad, Jer-ry, has been a McDon-ald’s man all his life—he worked his way up from burger-flipper to franchise owner.

And get this: Jer-ry met his wife—Terri (I’m not even joking)—while they were both working at a McDon-ald’s in Florida. If you’re lucky, you might see Jerry flipping burg-ers. Even as a franchise owner, it’s still his favor-ite thing to do on a Sat-urday morning.

Sarah swears they uses real meat; she’s been to one of the com-pany’s meat processing plants. With the expo-sure the restaurant has across the world, it can’t really afford to be con-doning inhumane food processing practices.

Her favorite meal is the double cheeseburg-er, but with Ranch. And be sure to ask her about the secret menu items. “If you put cheese on a McChicken, it’s heav-en,” Sarah says. “A lot of people wrap their nuggets in cheese.”

David Rees says to be sure and check out White Grill in between Palliet and Hague on Main Street. He and Jim Curley dined there

Monday morning and came back satisfied. Good for a mid-day cheeseburger or break-fast if you’re up ear-ly enough—try two eggs over easy with wheat toast and hash browns—the diner of-fers food made from scratch.

“It’s the place to get real oatmeal and not instant,” David says.

Get out there and taste the Twin Cities!

Eat at Lam’s!

Hyon Fortney reviews the menu at Lam’s.SETH PUTNAM

Answer Me ThisToday’s QuestionIf you couldn’t live on Earth, what planet would you live on and why?

Tomorrow’s QuestionWhat’s the weirdest thing that has

happened to you in the Twin Cities?

See the Multimedia Team — Erin, Kristen & Parker — to answer!

Twin CitiesBy the numbers

Words of Wisdom

SETH PUTNAM

John McWherter shows off the tooth he broke while trying to separate a piece of pipe with his teeth. He’s been working at Lam’s Garden Chinese Restaurant for the last three weeks.