Author: Mark E. Johnson

Road Trip Blur

Posted on by

The great family vacation has begun, after four days on the road.

Our first stop was to see family in Massachusetts, a two day haul from our Georgia home. We got in Friday afternoon and chased the nephews around for a while, then spent Saturday seeing my mom and the evening with some friends. Sunday was spent seeing my other brother, fetching the kids, seeing some other friends, dropping the kids at the first brother’s house so they could chase their cousins around, heading back to the hospital to see mom, then packing up for a Monday morning departure.

Which involved a six hour tow into the Adirondack Park, where we learned our camper leaks when being towed in the rain …

Ahhh, vacation.

Of course, 24 hours out from seeing family and friends, it’s crystal clear it wasn’t enough time. Three nights just went by in a blur – there was some checkers with a nephew, some time by the swings, some attempts at getting them to eat the zucchini we brought from our own garden … and then we were off. In a blur.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 35 mm f/1.4 L USM, ISO 640, 1/800, f/1.4

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 35 mm f/1.4 L USM, ISO 640, 1/800, f/1.4

Order from Chaos

Posted on by

My academic lifestyle was supposed to let me rest for a bit each summer. Not stop work completely, but at least lighten it up.

It was a myth. Or an outright lie. It hasn’t slowed down much, because as soon as work lightened up with the end of the Maymester (and the publication of the stunning work my students did), everything hit the proverbial fan: kids went on the road, wife went on the road, I went on the road. And in the middle of all that, my mother went through a double organ transplant (liver and kidneys).

I’ve been pacing around here in Georgia until we can get up there to see her. So I did the only thing I could think of to occupy my hands and mind: I moved my office to a new room. So now we have two disasters in the house – the half-emptied old office and the unorganized new one.

At least the wiring is neat. For now …

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 35 mm f/1.4 L USM, ISO 800, 1/50, f/1.8

Canon EOS 5D Mark II, EF 35 mm f/1.4 L USM, ISO 800, 1/50, f/1.8

Time on the Road

Posted on by

I’m just back in from five days of driving. I should be tired, but I’m kind of buzzed … good drives, good roads, great friends, great visuals … the basic schedule:

  • Friday, 7 a.m. – Depart Athens for Pittsburgh, 651 miles away.
  • Friday, 5 p.m. – Arrive Pittsburgh, meet up with Frank, do a little car prep then head to dinner. Tell many stories, catch up, reminisce about past car rallies.
  • Saturday, 7 a.m. – Wake up, tell more stories, prep for the Steel City Region 24 – a round-the-clock car rally, noon Saturday to noon Sunday.
  • Saturday, 12:06 p.m. – Start the SCR24 PM.
  • Sunday, 12:06 a.m. – Start the SCR24 AM.
  • Sunday, 12:30 p.m. – Finish the SCR24, feast and collect hardware – First overall and in class for the SCR24 AM, first overall and in class for the whole SCR24. Total event mileage was somewhere around 700 miles through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Ohio. (I will admit to sneaking in one 30 minute nap around 6:15 a.m.)
  • Sunday, 2:30 p.m. – Load up, start the two-car caravan south to Elkins, West Virginia.
  • Sunday, 5:30 p.m. – Arrive in Elkins. Even though I’ve been up since 7 a.m. the day before, I can’t sleep so I do a walk-about downtown and shoot photos for an hour or two.
  • Monday, 8:00 a.m. – Wake up and head out to check the Rally West Virginia route.
  • Monday, 7:00 p.m. – Return to Elkins after driving around all day doing our favorite thing – “looking at roads.” We see some cool stuff, and some damned scary stuff …
  • Tuesday, 8:00 a.m. – Frank heads north, I head south, finishing off the check with one last segment, then point the car towards Georgia.
  • Tuesday, 6:00 p.m. – Arrive back in Athens.

I have no idea how many miles I did, as it was split across two cars … but it was a lot.

And it was good.

Images from Elkins after the break …

(more…)

Done

Posted on by

Okay, it was last week … but my teaching duties wrapped up on Wednesday. Freedom! Freedom! Excepting for this book I need to finish designing. And this multimedia immersion workshop I need to plan. And redesigning all my fall courses, including building a new course from scratch. And catching up on the industry changes via stories and sites I bookmarked but didn’t have time to read. And … well, I guess I’m not really done at all …

(more…)

New American Media EXPO

Posted on by

(This post has not much value unless you were there … just saying.)

On Friday afternoon I spoke to a room full of journalists from all types of media and from across the country about multimedia storytelling on the cheap. Several folks asked for a link to the presentation itself, which is now available.

Several others asked for a list of the recommended hardware and software, so that’s up now, as well.

I mentioned some of the storytelling my students have been doing, so here’s a couple of things to check out:

  • The Grady Journal – This is an online news site we created for our students this past year. Content comes from two places – class projects and an independent group of students who meet every Wednesday morning to plan coverage. (Go to the staff page and you can see who they are.)
  • Giving Voice to Us – This was a joint project between my class and a social work class looking at life inside public housing in Clarke County, which has the highest poverty rate in the state of Georgia and is also home to the University of Georgia.
  • A Day at UGA – Another collaborative project, this has 24 multimedia stories produced by my class.
  • Rural Health Care – This was a project with Prof. Patricia Thomas’ class looking at rural health care issues in north Georgia. 

(Those last three, by the way – all the photos, videos and audio slide shows were produced by the same 16 students. I kept them kind of busy …)

Found

Posted on by

It has been a long time since I have been trailering. (I call it that and not “camping” in deferance to those who claim it is not camping unless it involves hanging your food in a sack to keep it away from bears.)

My first nine summers were spent in a series of travel trailers – a 20 foot Ace, a 30 foot Prowler and, in the waning years of our excursions, a Jayco pop-up. Excepting a three week stint in a borrowed pop-up around 1990, hauling my youngest brother to Florida and back, it’s been nearly 30 years since I lived the trailering life.

But a few weeks ago, we found the perfect camper for us – a 21 foot hybrid travel trailer by Trail-Cruiser – and, of course, got it for practically a song as it as a bank repo. A month of afternoons with the tools and Internets taught me how it worked and Friday afternoon we hitched up for our maiden voyage.

It’s Sunday morning now and the family is mostly asleep. As I sit here at the dinette and watch the sun stream around the blinds, I think I have found a little piece of it.

iPhone, run through the Helga filter on CameraBag