ABOUT THIS PROJECT
In our day to day lives, we often tend to miss many things. We see them so often, they become part of the background of our existence. We tend to live within a condensed box—seeing the same places and scenes day after day, with the same rotating groups of people who come in and out of our lives depending on the time of day. Unknowingly, and through no fault of our own, we become enveloped in our own existence and thinking. This portfolio, done as part of a course, is a showcase of connected introspections and external stories that have helped me think outside the unintended confines of my own personal reality. The individual perspective that I and everyone else has about life is not ‘wrong,’ per se, but everyone benefits from reading, hearing, and seeing things from outside their typical point of view.
Words on a screen are not the only, or necessarily the best, way to compose a story. Sometimes, visual or aural means work better, or a mix of all of the above. Think of some of the most award-winning news pieces you may have read over the past year—often they included a variety of media or were designed to be interacted with. Depending on the subject matter in each of the five pieces included here, I chose to involve writing, photography, audio, or just allowing a video to speak for itself. Sometimes raw footage, with no voiceover, can be more powerful than having someone describe the situation, particularly when the subject matter involves people whose emotions can often convey an issue far better than the voice of an outsider. Similarly, an audio conversation, like a podcast interview, can convey far more than a transcript or written interview, by virtue of its ability to showcase audible cues, such as pauses, hesitations, inflections, and emphasis on certain points or phrases. A single photograph can convey powerful messages, though they are just slices of a fraction of a second in time. Award winning photographs have helped topple governments and brought about major changes, such as environmental reviews and laws being implemented after widely published images of fetid water and oil covered ducks touched the public conscience, and forced society to take an reflection of itself. Each media method has its values and flaws, but all of them fall back on the power of the written word, which is often necessary to provide context and clues, even if it is written or read out in a way reflective of the media choice, such as captions on the bottom of the screen, or a programming note read out at the top of a podcast.
I am proud of the work in this portfolio. I wrote from the heart, and used research, personal experience, and a hunger for introspection to fuel these essays and provide credibility. At times, I could feel a sudden deep connection to the subject matter and persons involved, and the words flowed out, like a writer’s block dam had broken. My goal from every piece was to provide an insight into my world and create thought provoking ideas that will continue to percolate in readers’ minds, long after they have finished taking in my stories.