The Official MIPP Newsletter
July 2013
FOCALPOINT
www.mipp-malta.com
Issue No. 30
EDITORIAL
This July issue came out a bit late!
Apologies for this, however we ran out of articles and June rolled on too fast and before I knew it, it was July and I still had to collate a few more articles to make the newsletter interesting for you all. I encourage you to come along on 9th July for JP Gatt’s lecture about DSLR Revolution in Film Making. JP is the present leading in dslr videography on the island so this will surely prove to be an interesting and inspirational evening. Another event not to miss is the opening night of Sergio Muscat’s Exhibition on 17th July called ‘Fringe’, which is his collection of work shot during the local Jazz Festival. I surely won’t be missing this especially since this year I will be missing out on the Jazz Festival, so this exhibition is my alternative to feel better! Also check out the October Convention Website here for more information and bookings: http://convention.mipp-malta. com
Newsletter Team Editor: Therese Debono Design: Therese Debono Articles: Various contributors
Happy Reading! Editorial Advice: Kevin Casha Contact: newsletter@mippmalta.com
CONTENTS
JULY 2013 pg 3 pg 5 pg 15 pg 23 pg 29 pg 32 pg 33 pg 37 pg 38
cover artist
president’s viewpoint travel feature swpp feature foreign write upcoming exhibition upcoming lecture upcoming event calendar mipp notices
July Viewpoint Raw Comino The Maltese Wall A New Age of Lectures Fringe The DSLR Revolution Launch of MIPP Convention Mark your diaries! Onto Le Meridien
Alexei Sammut
Alexei Sammut is a psychiat-
ric Nurse by profession. He finds photography as a means of escape from the difficulties of daily life and a way to express his inner artist. He has been a member of the MIPP for the last 3 years. He shoots a variety of genres, but his main interests include nature, architecture, street and abstract/fine art photography.
Alexei considers nature photography as a big challenge in order to get quality photographs which portray the beauty and diversity creation, The cover photo portrays a lizard taken in French Guyana using a Nikon D90 with Nikon 70-200mm lens. Alexei is also on the MIPP Executive Committee as Public Relations Officer.
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president’s viewpoint
JULY VIEWPOINT It was with great pleasure and satisfac-
tion that I recently read an article by UK photographer and tutor Dave Wall about his visit to Malta with the MIPP. The write up, published in the Societies’ prestigious Image Maker Magazine, was full of praise for the way the event - the MIPP-Societies March seminar was organized and conducted. First of all I would really like to thank Dave for his praise of the event and the kind words he had about the committee and the members. As always, we have again proved the high standard of hospitality the Maltese have towards foreigners – particularly those we take a liking to! I am sure that we will see Dave again in the near future, not only for his kind comments, but for the fantastic way he prepared and delivered his lectures and workshops. A true professional indeed!
The MIPP has always managed to give great publicity not only to Maltese photography, but also to our island. Alas, the authorities don’t often notice or appreciate the efforts we do to promote Malta through our photography. Naturally, with the new government administration now in place, I have renewed my crusade to obtain premises for the Institute.
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Kevin Casha My dream has always been a Centre for Photography – and, as most of you know, I have been not only day dreaming about this but I have for a long time now, (over 9 years!), been lobbying for this dream to come true. I have lost count of the many meetings I have had with parliamentary secretaries, Ministers and government officials on this issue. I can easily say that I have been given quite a merry go round time over these past years and only my determination has kept me going. While everyone I talk to agrees with the concept, I keep doing the rounds of the offices as everyone in some way or another tries to put me off by sending me to yet another ministry or local council. I admit, I never thought this would be easy, but I must say, I did not believe this would be so difficult. There are so many government owned properties that have been left closed, neglected and without maintenance that I cannot believe that there is no space for this centre. Naturally, with our new government, I have had to start the rounds again. I am sure it will be just as difficult this time round again, but I will give it my utmost as I truly believe that Photography, as the newest art medium,
deserves the respect it merits. We are one of the few genres of art which regularly bring in international successes time and time again. The photographic community in Malta needs this centre as much as we need a contemporary art museum. It can only lift itself up to more greater heights through this centre. I just hope that my passion and stamina lasts throughout what promises to be another long slog of meetings – but most of all, I hope that the politicians will finally see reason and sincerely try and find a solution for this. I live in hope.
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RAW COMINO This time I am not taking you to far away places for our travel feature. Just a quick 20 minute boat ride to Comino where I was enchanted by its raw beauty during a day trek. Write up & Photos by Therese Debono
Recently I was invited to trek round Comino and I gladly accepted this invite since I have always been intrigued about this tiny island. Comino is many things, tiny maybe is one of them when compared to the vast Mediterranean sea, however trekking it is an entirely different story. We set out early for our trekking expedition. I was accompanied by an experienced trekker so I was a bit anxious about whether I will manage to keep up with ‘the trekker’ or not. I was also packed with water bottles to carry on my back and so the slr was not an option. I had to find other means of shooting.... so I took along my point and shoot camera. As long as the camera shoots raw then I am a happy bunny. We got to Marfa early to catch the first ferry to Comino and to avoid the crowds which were sure to accumulate at landing point, Blue Lagoon. The day started a little bit cloudy, which was not worrying for early June, and anyway clouds were a welcome relief against the strong sun. I was really excited to start off so on landing I just started shooting here and there. I am not a landscape photographer however the intense blues of the sea in contrast to the rough garigue were simply stunning, not to mention the plants which were all in purple bloom on the island, offered great photo opportunities. All I had to do really, was walk behind ‘the trekker’ and shoot, however this soon proved to be dangerous especially when we switched from trail roads onto garigue. I then had to take care not to twist an ankle and dam-
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travel feature
Above: ‘The Trekker’ checking out the map, with Gozo as a backdrop
age my precious camera. I have been to Comino many times during the years but always on a boat. I had never walked the island as we trekked it on this particular occasion. ‘The trekker’ of course had a map and station points marked too. The plan was not to walk around the island, but to cross through it too, so I was keener than ever to find out what’s also inland apart from the hotel and the lovely idle beach of Santa Marija. So our first route was to walk from Blue Lagoon round to the hotel area. The garigue here was all pointed rocks however one could also get lovely views of Gozo. Once next to the hotel, we walked on towards the hotel bungalows area till we reached Santa
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Above Clockwise: The grey sky which started the day; The fisherman at Marfa before we boarded the boat; View of Blue Lagoon from Comino; Blue Lagoon before being hit by the crowd; The clouds making way for the blue sky. Opposite Page: The lovely contrast of the blue sea, the garigue and the purple flowers in bloom
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Marija Bay and the camping site. Once there, we stopped walking along the coast and continued walking up inland towards the pig farm. The latter was constructed way back in the 80s to prevent the foot and mouth decease in pigs when the epidemic hit. The walk there was nothing scenic at all and my let down was clear to ‘the trekker’ who gently nudged me about my lack of photos. Comino is an island of contrasts really! There we were walking uphill in what felt more like a desert than an idyllic island in the Mediterranean. At that point I needed some cheering up which I could not get from shooting, so ‘the trekker’ quickly supplied me with a snack pack. At first I was not really keen on nibbling on nuts whilst walking, however as soon as I took a few handfuls I was happy like a kid. ‘The trekker’ put in some jelly sweets in the mix too and the sugar rush helped me cheer up and walk on. This distraction made the trek enjoyable once again and soon enough we got to the pig farm which was nothing spectacular, just one big mass of concrete, which is all run down since it is no longer in use. After this we kept on walking upwards. Even though the hill was steep, at least the garigue was greener and ‘the trekker’ mentioned that we were walking towards a helicopter landing point. Now I was really curious to know how this looked. This made the walk uphill a bit easier since I was so curious to reach up there and see it all.
The helipad was not very scenic in itself, however looking out one could see all of Comino and Gozo on one side and Malta on the other....Now that was worth the climb up since this was the highest point of the island. We were on a tight schedule for this trek. We could not really stop for long and rest much. So after this point it was all downhill to reach the other station. This time we went towards the battery which was very well kept and open for visitors. I had to have another handful of goodies here not to mention water to keep hydrated. At that point I was grateful for taking up ‘the trekker’s’ advice and wear the hat I had on, no matter how ridiculous I looked! Below: St Marija Battery
From the Santa Marija Battery, we trekked towards Santa Marija Bay but this time all along the coast which in my opinion is the best part of the island. The cliffs are high and ‘the trekker’ was not too happy seeing me snap away nonchalantly so close to the edge, however I could not stop shooting and even tried my hand out at some abstracts and I might even have captured a fine art shot too! I was getting excited all over again and endorphins were so spiked, that I did not even need my snack pack anymore! Who needs sweets and nuts when the blues and the scenery is so spectacular?! I think this is the trek’s part where I shot the most. It was also a bit tough due to the garigue, but somehow that did not stop me! We even encountered two bunnies hopping along and for some bizarre moment I wished I had my 70200 lens, however I soon dismissed the idea. The bunnies were so fast, one could barely keep track of them! After this long trek we arrived once again at Santa Marija Bay which by now had filled up with boats and the beach was packed with bathers. I so wished to take a dip however onwards we walked and this time we took another trek inland towards a quaint little chapel which somehow reminded me of some greek church. I snapped this one and this time trekked on even ground towards the bakery. It used to be a bakery in older times however it is another uninhabited building. And after that we had another station point to reach which was the cemetery. Walking the slight incline up the cemetery felt daunting, however from that point we could see the castle in the distance and on we walked. It was nearing lunch time and the snack pack was no longer playing its magic on me. I wanted food, real comfort food to make me feel better. So ‘the trekker’ walked us down to a nice spot close to the sea and started unpacking stuff from his back pack and lit up a fire to start cooking. It was no homemade sandwiches and tea in a
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flask for ‘the trekker’. He prepared a good coffee for me and then presented me with pasta and tuna sauce which I devoured like it was the best gourmet food ever! Now that I was happily satiated, I was raring to go for the final leg of our trek, walking back to Blue Lagoon along the coast. Once again the garigue here proved to be tough since it was all pointed rocks, and the sun was in our faces so any chances for photos were ruined due to the glare. On and on we walked and suddenly we were faced with another long uphill. I did not tackle this very well. ‘The trekker’ took up a steady slow pace and went upwards. I tackled this uphill in a different way. Being an ex 100m runner, I just decided to fast walk it till I could feel my gluteus burning. I took it as a challenge and just walked on with my head down. At the top of this hill we reached the ‘Torri ta’ Santa Marija’. This time we did not walk up towards the tower since we had to reach Blue Lagoon for the last ferry back to Malta by a certain time. We walked back towards Blue Lagoon along the coast and one spectacular view was overlooking over Crystal Lagoon. There were a few sailing boats which made my photos more interesting and at this point ‘the trekker’ pointed out that he noticed when I get a good shot because I suddenly perked up when a speedboat sped out at sea giving me a great image (see image).
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Sweaty and exhausted we battled amongst bathers towards our destination. Everyone was in their swimming gear, and there I was in the middle of the bay with heavy trekking gear on! I so wanted a deckchair and a dip in the sea by then. Didn’t I deserve it after keeping up with ‘the trekker’! A word of advice: Put on high factor sunscreen to avoid sunburn and nasty tan lines. Also if possible trek with a light long sleeved top for better protection against the sun and sweat. Us photographers are used to carrying heavy equipment, so we tend to mistreat the point and shoot camera because it’s light and we forget about it. I found that keeping the point and shoot hanging around my neck a much safer option than wrapping the strap around my wrist. At times I was shooting blinding because I could not see the camera screen due to the sun so if your camera model takes a viewfinder it will come in handy. Also get a camera which shoots raw even if it’s a point and shoot model. The post processing of my Comino Trek images were still a pleasure to edit and I could recover anything! Below Right: The image which put a smile on my face towards the end of the trek, because I knew I had shot a good one. Three Sailing boats at Crystal Lagoon, at least I still had my creativity mode on.
Above & Below: The fine art looking image which is a favourite and the small chapel
THE MALTESE WALL We decided to share with you the article which has been published in the ‘Imagemaker’ which Dave Wall wrote, about the seminar he conducted here in Malta last March about product and interiors photography. He not only gave great lectures, but also had fun and got sunburnt too!
So my mini Malta tour has come to an end…but what great fun we had! This has to have been some of the most enjoyable training I have undertaken in a very long time (and that is saying something considering the amount of training I undertake in any given year), mainly in part to the generosity and warmth of the Maltese delegates, and the impeccable organisation from the MIPP. So where do I start? How about…meeting up with Juliet at some ungodly hour at Manchester Airport (read 4am!) After hazy ‘good mornings’ we jet off to the sunny island of Malta, getting there a full 40 minutes ahead of schedule due to a 140mph tail wind…fantastic. So just after 9am we were met by Martin Agius, a local press photographer and all-round fantastic guy who drives us over to our hotel to drop off our bags.
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feautred article So what next ? Food and beer of course! Sitting outside in the sun having a natter about nothing in particular, enjoying the Maltese sun…burning my head and nose to a crisp! Back to the hotel to change before we are back out again down to the pub! Hard work this networking you know! Here we meet back up with Martin and also with the president of the MIPP, Kevin Casha (a very funny guy with a twinkle in his eye that says he is always looking for mischief…a man after my own heart). A few beers later and we have all put the photography world to rights; a really relaxing enjoyable evening where I am instantly made to feel extremely welcome. So Friday morning dawns and again Martin comes to pick up Juliet and me for a day site-seeing around the south of Malta. Tough this training malarkey you know! We had a really enjoyable day (burning more of my bald head) before we were taken into the fantastic crumbling capital city of Valletta by two more members of the MIPP Therese Debono and Sergio Muscat for an evening eating local Maltese cuisine. Much to Juliet’s delight the main course of the evening was ‘legitimate’ horse stew which Juliet couldn’t resist taking pictures of to send back to Phil (it did look, however, extremely nice, although I didn’t risk it, chicken for me!). So finally the frivolity ends and Saturday arrives and time to actually do some work! Saturday’s training session was one of my new courses ‘Studio Photography – On a Shoestring’. This particular session takes quite a while to set up and requires lots of little items of equipment to allow things to run smoothly. Thanks to Easyjet for not weighing hand luggage I was able to haul most of it into my overhead locker so my seminar could have full impact. The early part of the morning was taken up with the whys and wherefores of product photography, equipment needed and the skills required to ensure professional results – mainly being patient (at which point the delegates started laughing out aloud as Kevin isn’t famous for this particular attribute).
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In addition to this I also wanted to dispel the myth that lighting products was less technical than photographing people, as the products obviously don’t move, photographers assume things will often be easier (afraid not)! In this early section of the day I also like to cover the subject of photographing ‘cut-outs’ – products on plain white backgrounds, and how it (if done correctly), is pretty much a licence to print money. With all the boring stuff out of the way it was time for the room to be plunged into darkness and start shooting. As always I like to ‘impress first’ to get people sitting up in their seats so I set up what many would perceive to be the most complicated product shot – the Gucci aftershave you see on these pages, shot with just two watts of light and three pieces of children’s tracing paper! This demonstration always amuses people with how easy product photography can be with a little ingenuity and thought. From here I took the delegates into Photoshop and Lightroom to show how easy ‘building’ the image can be and how quickly it can be achieved. It’s still not even lunch time…so time for another completely different product to shoot, the Cree torch (again shown on these pages). This time, however, it was time to show off my Blue Peter home-made strip-lights to undertake the lighting duties. In fact all my modifiers generated a great deal of interest throughout the day and I am pretty sure I sparked quite a few imaginary light bulbs above the delegates’ heads. Time for a quick retouch before lunch! While eating lunch I decided to rip up the rule book for the afternoon session as I got the feeling that delegates ‘had got it’ and they were ready to dip their toes in the product photography waters. Time for a social experiment!
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I divided the group into two sections, experienced and non-experienced and gave each a product to shoot and a 20-minute window to complete the task. To make things a little more interesting I was the client and I gave both teams a strict brief to follow. The experienced members went first with their ‘opponents’ heckling at every opportunity! Under the guidance of Kevin Casha (their most experienced photographer) the group made progress quite quickly, however, fell at the last hurdle somewhat, as they had decided to shoot their product with various exposures while moving the lights around ready to piece together later in Photoshop (my preferred method). However, somebody knocked the tripod in the last minute causing havoc! From my point of view very amusing but a valuable lesson learned nonetheless. Next was the turn of the less-experienced group. Although they instantly went along the correct path, they made the fundamental error of changing too many lights all in one go, causing confusion to reign with a few heated debates on the merits and pitfalls of this! Even so I awarded them the winning prize as they completed their shoot without any errors. When we had finally completed the live shoots everyone commented that it was far harder than they had anticipated, and that maybe I had led them into a false sense of security (which actually was my intention all along). This part of the day was purely intended for delegates to problem solve, slow down and get organised, as these are the main attributes for any product photographer.
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As the afternoon session was now not following a programme, I threw myself on the mercy of the delegates and asked what they wanted to see – always a BIG risk this one, especially when you are working with a background roll that is just a piece of A4 paper (no, I am not joking) and just three watts of lighting! So next we covered how to shoot effective and efficient cut-outs, using just one watt of light, whichwas great fun. The next request, however, did make me stop and think ‘why am I doing this?’ ‘Can you show us how to shoot a white, shiny object on a white background?’ Great !?@*?!!! Shooting white on white is pretty tricky at the best of times but when you are working within just a few inches from product to background, things become a lot more tricky! Thinking on my feet is often what I do best as it makes me dig into the cloudy bits of my mind to find solutions…and within five minutes we had the shot nailed (which even impressed me if I am being totally honest). So a really fun day which was a great eye opener confirmed with so many delegates milling around at the end looking and taking notes of all my equipment to put their new found skills into practice. I think I can safely say that none of the delegates now feels that product photography is boring, and they will never look at everyday objects quite the same again!
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My final training day dawns and I am really excited as the MIPP have (some how) managed to get permission for us all to have complete access to shoot in St. James Cavalier in Valletta – an amazing art gallery with a mix of medieval and ultra modern combined architecture… a perfect backdrop for my Ambient Interiors seminar! We all met in the main gallery area, which is a long cave-like structure thatused to be the gunpowder store for Valletta, an amazing and inspiring space. I explained to all the delegates that shooting interiors is very formulaic and actually quite easy if the space has been prepared in advance (fully working light bulbs,clean and tidy, etc). We spend half an hour or so discussing techniques and then began shooting. We only had three hours so I proposed that I shoot all the interiors as if it were on a live job, as I have promised the gallery I will have some images for their archive for their generosity in letting us have full reign around the building. This way the delegates could also go off and shoot what they want and then can drift back to me at any point to see what I am doing, show me what they have shot and also ask technical questions along the way. I have to say, from a delegate’s point of view, there is nothing more boring than watching another photographer just clicking away, so this approach worked brilliantly, as people could shoot at their own pace and enjoy the experience. With time against us we all worked away with great speed, meeting up to discuss ‘my secret sauce’ on how the images are pieced together on the computer. At this point there
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was many a dropped jaw, and discussions that ‘it can’t be THAT easy surely’! As time comes to a close we all drift off for a bite to eat and a few (more) beers before and evening of…you guessed it…more food and more beer ! It’s a tough life this training you know! I would like to thank all of the MIPP who made this trip so much fun and go so smoothly. Thanks especially to Kevin, Therese and Sergio for their hospitaity and warm nature, but most of all to Martin who ran Juliet and me around the whole of our stay (it was like having our own personal tour guide). Thanks guys, Juliet and I really appreciated it.
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Heard It All Before? A New Age of Lectures
“A lecture is much more of a dialogue than many of you probably realize.” — Harvard University professor George Wald “Before I came here I was confused about this subject. Having listened to your lecture I am still confused. But on a higher level.” — University of Chicago professor Enrico Fermi
If there’s one thing you can say about universities, it’s that they love tradition. They
love it so much that when a system takes root, it takes years and years to uproot it. For example, it took 700 years or so before the first coed college came into being. When it comes to the college lecture, we’re still waiting for a successor to appear. Enter any given classroom at any given campus across the country on any given weekday, and odds are better than 50/50 that you’ll see anywhere from two to 200 young learners facing a somewhat older speaker, the former scribbling while the latter soliloquizes. But the chances are growing that you’ll encounter something else: a professor with a fresh take on the lecture, or one who has nearly abandoned it altogether. Even though some of the “new” techniques these men and women are using were first iterated as early as the 1980s or before, real change to the structure of the college classroom is finally making the slow march from the fringes to the mainstream.
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Why Lectures? The roots of lectures harken back to a time when mentioning the prospect of a machine that could mass produce books would have been branded witchcraft talk. In those medieval days beginning in the 11th century, universities were strictly the business of the Catholic Church and were thus closely tied to the development of Christian thought. The professors or magistrorum would present oral arguments applying Christian theology to the works of Aristotle. Handwritten books being rare and the professor being the only one with a copy, the students would take notes. If that sounds more than a little familiar, it’s because the basic format for the majority of college classes hasn’t changed much. The chalkboard arose then gave way to the whiteboard, the personal slate to the digital tablet, the transparency to overhead projectors beaming bulleted PowerPoint slides. Note-taking still consumes most of students’ in-class time, and the industry that caters to them with apps, software, and tech tools to help them jot down spoken info continues humming right along. Despite their persistence, the shortcomings of lectures are many. Students become passive receptacles, prone to boredom and mind wandering, instead of active participants in their education. Professors too can become passive readers-aloud rather than dynamic knowledge awakeners. Even the most dedicated students cannot pay attention for the entirety of a 90-minute lecture, nor can they retain everything they hear. What they do retain skews closer to rote memorization rather than critical understanding of concepts. Nevertheless, lectures have survived for several reasons. A live, experienced instructor can word a difficult concept in multiple ways until students understand a fact, something a static textbook cannot do. It’s also a low-cost way to transmit information to large audiences. The massive freshmen and sophomore courses are frequently presented in the large lecture hall setting. Assuming there is one, the question and answer component of lectures is invaluable, providing both a feedback and assessment aspect that is an integral part of the new lecture. Lectures in the Digital Era Here are the high-tech tools and revolutionary methods college professors and other teachers are using to give updated lectures in the digital age.
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Real-time feedback and assessment: Providing students the means of submitting questions, answers, or comments while a lecture is underway is one of the hottest ways to revitalize the college classroom experience. “Clickers” — simple handheld devices that allow students to wirelessly submit answers to multiple choice questions from their desks — have been in use around the country since the early 2000s and could be found in the palms of as many as half a million college students in 2010, according to The New York Times. With the prevalence of smartphones, some profs are finding it easier to use students’ own mobile devices for the same purpose. At the National University of Singapore, assistant professor Adrian Roellin uses software called questionSMS to poll students via text message before and after a lecture to gauge what they know coming in, what they learned, and how they felt about the lecture itself (too slow or too fast). Some profs are harnessing social media to ramp up the dialogue between them and their audiences. In 2009, a history professor at the University of Texas at Dallas began requesting questions and comments via live Tweets during class, which she then projected on the screen at the front of the class as discussion prompts. Some teachers are taking to Google Moderator to not only take live questions from students during a lecture, but allow them to vote up those that they most want to see answered. Peer instruction: One of the oldest proponents of the “new” lecture is Harvard’s Eric Mazur. One day, frustrated over his inability to get his students to understand a point, the physics professor offered to let them discuss it with each other. In three minutes, they had it figured out. Thus was born what Mazur calls his “guide on the side” teaching style that he’s been promoting and practicing since the release of his 1997 book, Peer Instruction. Today Mazur has effectively ditched the lecture, speaking at the front of the class only “a few minutes” to introduce a student-raised subject and polling the students for an answer. Mazur told us he uses assessment software called Learning Catalytics to compile the answers, which allows students to respond via laptop, smartphone, or tablet. If there is not a clear consensus on the question, Mazur turns things over to the students, who are charged with finding a classmate with a differing opinion and arguing their case. Because his is the only Physics 11 section at Harvard, comparison with similar
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classes is not possible. But Mazur told us exam performance increased significantly as a result of his introducing peer instruction. More importantly, students’ understanding of concepts improved, instead of their ability to pass tests with the “bag of tricks” they had picked up. Mazur says on the Force Concept Inventory — an assessment test for Newtonian physics — the normalize gain for his students tripled after he switched to peer instruction. Restructured setting: Any effort to shift the focus of a class away from the lecture should really begin by adjusting the environment; you can’t very well expect anything other than a lecture in a lecture hall. For the University of Minnesota’s Rochester campus, officials opted to ditchthose halls entirely. Rooms don’t have fronts. Instead they have wheeled furniture so students can collaborate in small groups. The notes they jot on their dry erase boards can be easily photographed by cameras hanging from the ceiling and saved to a laptop for future reference. The class is flipped, meaning students are expected to come to class having read the material already, because any lecture they will get will be brief. Perhaps most important of all, the school has changed the teaching environment by making learning research a requirement for promotion and tenure. How to Keep Your Lectures Alive Whether you choose to make use of high tech or keep it old school, let these suggestions for remixing your lectures guide you. Make it relevant to students: Even preachers today recognize that effectively getting your message across means connecting with your audience “where they’re at.” Paradise Valley Community College creative writing professor Lois Roma-Deeley uses this technique to make 449-year-old Shakespeare relatable to 21-year-old college students. When teaching Sonnet 116, Roma-Deeley tells them to picture the setting as two guys having a beer in a bar at 2 a.m. in the hopes of tying their imaginations to the course content. It’s not just the content that needs to be relevant to 19- and 20-year-olds but the medium. An estimated 90% of college students will own smartphones by 2016, and of those who already own them, 92% are using them during class (partly because they’re bored and partly because they’re literally addicted). Instead of fighting them by taking points off their final grade for using iDevices in class, find ways to integrate them into the lecture. At Howard University, English professor Ada Vilageliu-Diaz invites students to call up online books on their smartphones. At Harvard, Mazur has his students submit the answers to their mi-
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ni-quizzes via smartphone. Keep it brief and quiz often: A recent study out of Harvard University about curtailing mind wandering in online students could have much light to shed on the issue of keeping students in brick-and-mortar classrooms engaged. Cognitive psychologists found that students who watched a 21-minute video lecture and were tested at the end of each five-minute break took more notes, reported daydreaming less, and did better on the final than students who took breaks with no test. Postdoctoral fellow Karl Szpunar led the research. We asked him if he thought these results would apply in a face-to-face lecture class. He told us he suspected the results would be similar, if not even more pronounced. “In the classroom, students are often surrounded by familiar classmates, their laptops, smart phones, and so on,” said Szpunar. “Basically, there are more possibilities for distractions to pull their attention away from the lecture.” Szpunar added that it’s also important to note that tests may not necessarily be the only or even best way to keep students engaged. He offered as an example the possibility of students generating questions about lecture content that would subsequently be graded by the lecturer. “Whatever the task, I think that an evaluative component will be important in giving the students incentive to pay attention,” he said. Give them something to look at: There’s a reason infographics have become so popular: people appreciate having boring text presented in a way that’s visually stimulating and memorable. In fact, they more than appreciate it; they need it that way, as 65% of the population are visual learners. By definition, the lecture is an auditory experience, so a professor who wants to give a well-rounded lecture needs to incorporate plenty of visual elements. Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence and Educational Innovation offers a great rundown of information visualization tools that can help you spice up the driest of data deliveries. Gapminder.com, for instance, can take info from the World Bank on agricultural land as a percentage of land area by country and turn it into a vivid, interactive work of modern art. At Harvard, professor of music Thomas Forrest Kelly has traded in textbooks for multimedia in his lectures on The Rite of Spring in his Literature and the Arts course. He plays for the students recordings of composer Igor Stravinsky ruminat-
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ing on the 1913 premier performance, shows them paintings and photographs of the man, the dancers, the conductor, the score and costumes, and the play’s set. He even uses a laser pointer to guide his pupils through the score. Before he made the jump to online courses, well-known UCLA biology professor Bob Goldberg was “very skeptical” of the new medium’s ability to provide highcaliber instruction. But when he learned that the format would allow him the ability to demonstrate concepts with hand-drawn illustrations, filmed experiments, and two-way video and audio correspondence with his students, he was won over completely. Even with developments like massive online courses, the lecture continues to be the agreed-upon instrument for delivering information to learners. Come robot instructors or hologram video tutorials, there will never be a replacement for a brilliant lecture from a fun, passionate, energetic teacher. Make that your ideal, professors, and supplement with peer instruction or dazzling audio and video displays, and you’ll be set for another thousand years. http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2013/04/23/heard-it-all-before-a-newage-of-lectures/ Article by Nicole Foster who is a researcher for a site dedicated to online education.
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upcoming exhibition FRINGE Fellow MIPP member Sergio Muscat will be launching a solo exhibition featur-
ing a collection of images created during the Malta Jazz Festival over the past few years. “Fringe - Capturing the Malta Jazz Festival” features a series of images developed through his distinctive style using long exposure to retain and transmit the experience in its most pristine form possible. His work is a performance within a performance - created through collaboration between musician and photographer. The exhibition will run between the 17th July and 30th September 2013 at Palazzo De Piro in Mdina. For more info, visit Sergio’s website at www.sergiomuscat.com.
Seeing Jazz Like his music, a fine photograph of a musician reflects his soul. I’m very interested in photography and in how the camera can capture personality… Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993) The jazz photographs of Sergio Muscat aim to capture the entire physicality of a musician’s performance in one telling story. For Sergio, seeing the music (performance) is as important as hearing it. But unlike Wassily Kandinsky’s abstracted paintings of musical improvisation or Piet Mondrian’s rhythmic depictions of the sound of jazz, Sergio is not after representing the music genre through his preferred artistic medium. He is more interested in the artist’s performance as an activity that develops over time. Capturing the real soul of the jazz musician requires Sergio to become synchronous with the performer’s own movements. Snapping the picture is therefore a refined exercise in clockwork body movement and camera control. This performance by the photographer is also the technique used in Muscat’s recent Soul Searching series; a body of work which also incorporates the gambled gestures of the camera in movement as a means to capture the artist’s personal memories of a place. Sergio’s recent interest in such temporal afterimages has its roots in an internal search for the very soul of the viewer-viewed relationship, a pursuit for the absolute human experience befalling the photographer and the photographed. One therefore needs to view this body of work not as a document of the many prominent jazz musicians that have graced our shores over the many years that the Malta Jazz Festival has been organised, but rather as a collection of fragments of outstanding performances executed by a duo of artists – the jazz musician and
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the photographer. Like a duet, these works require the input of both performers equally and, if one were fortunate enough to have been present during one of those incredible starry nights at Ta’ Liesse, one can truly relive the magic of the moment through each one of these works. Written by Dr Vince Briffa, Artist and Researcher
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UPCOMING JULY LECTURE The DSLR Revolution in Film-making Date: 9th July Time: 19:30hrs Venue: Le Meridien
This talk will be delivered by MIPP member, good friend and leading film-maker
Jean Pierre Gatt. JP has been in the film industry for a few years now, and has established himself as one of the top people in the industry.
There are few people (none I can think of) that can better be suited to give us a guided tour into the growing world of DSLR film-making, a phenomenon that since its inception only a few years ago has taken the industry by storm, making high quality film-making more accessible, and enabling film-makers to introduce nuances and photographic effects which were difficult to achieve before. JP will be covering a number of topics, including: What is Cinematography? What is the difference between a DSLR and an HD Video Camera? What is so revolutionary in a DSLR for making films? Lenses, grip gear, sound gear, and film making accessories. What are the pros & cons of using a DSLR for filmmaking? This promises to be an exciting, if somewhat different session, to say the least!
Please note the change of venue. We will no longer be at Corinthia San Gorg, but we are now moving to Le Meridien Hotel in Balluta Bay, St Julians. Go to the 1st floor and follow the signs. Please park in the underground parking, and you will be able to get a refund from the reception on the 3rd floor after the talk.
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Launch of the MIPP International Convention This year’s MIPP convention, in collaboration with The Societies, promises to
be bigger and better than ever, with some major changes being introduced, and a complement of start-studded speakers! First and foremost, after three years, the MIPP is changing home. The Le Meridien Hotel in St Julians has made us an offer we could not refuse, and we are very excited to be hosting our first International Convention there this year. The programme for this year has also been given a pretty heavy shakeup, focussing more on spending more quality time with a more restricted lineup of speakers. Most of the changes are happening on Friday, whereby we are now holding a public talk and forum in the evening, allowing for most of us to attend without needing to take time off work. On the other hand, for those who want to make the best out of the day, we will be holding an exclusive on-location fashion workshop with star photographer John Denton on Friday morning, available only to those who prebook and purchase their convention ticket before the 5th October! John Denton will also be delivering a series of lectures throughout Saturday and Sunday on nude photography, accompanied by professional model Nikki Hafter. And this is just the beginning! International front-line photojournalist Heidi Levine is nothing short of a legend in her field. She will be joining us starting Friday evening with and inspiring journey through her career, and the challenges she has had to face, as a photojournalist, woman and mother. This will be followed by a series of lectures covering the ins and outs of a photojournalist’s career, with the help of her colleague and friend Darrin Zammit-Lupi. On a lighter note, our good friend Podge Kelly will be giving us a view on his own 36-year photographic career, with a journey through “All Kinds of Everything”, undoubtedly to be delivered in his unique fun style.
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For the past three years, the forum has grown into an event we all look forward to. Hosted by Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia, this year’s theme will focus on building ourselves into a brand, discussing the strategies to adopt and the challenges we will undoubtedly face. Finally, the convention would not be complete without the annual Qualifications, which this year will be held on Saturday, and the Societies image competition on Sunday. To top off this year’s programme, we have (with no small effort) managed to include the awards night into the ticket price, which this year will be changing format slightly, presenting itself as a reception rather than a sit-down meal. Of course, additional tickets for partners are available upon request. The committee has been working tirelessly since the beginning of the year to ensure that this year’s convention is better than ever, and with your support we will be able to grow it even further over the coming years into the event we envision it to be. P.S. Get updates and previews by joining the convention event on Facebook
Best Regards, Sergio Muscat Hon Secretary General MIPP Executive Committee Info & Bookings: http://convention.mipp-malta.com
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CALENDAR 9th July Jean Pierre Gatt - DSLR Video Corinthia San Gorg; 19:30hrs
23rd July PTYA Judging Session Corinthia San Gorg; 19:30hrs
August Keep tuned for more upcoming events!
20th August Portfolio Presentation Evening
Corinthia San Gorg; 19:30hrs
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MIPP NOTICES Onto Le Meridien! The Committee is always looking for improving the value and service of our membership and I have the pleasure to announce that the MIPP will be moving its official quarters from the Corinthia San Gorg Hotel to the Le Meridien Hotel in St Julians. This move has been done because the Meridien has kindly accepted to become an official sponsor and also due to what we think will be a more beneficial deal for our members. The Meridien management has offered also a 20% discount to all our members. This will not only apply during MIPP events, but also at any other time that a member would like to use the hotel’s restaurant and bar outlets, even for non MIPP related visits. Furthermore, we have also obtained free parking, (in the hotel underground parking), for members during MIPP meetings. A special card will be issued for this purpose by the MIPP in order to avail yourselves of this offer. Members will have to present this official card together with their ID card when ordering. The MIPP will also be affixing an official bronze plaque on the outside of the hotel which states that it is our official meeting place. Le Meridien is also a five star venue and further reason which convinced us of moving was its facilities and willingness to host art exhibitions. This will definitely enhance the events that the MIPP can offer to its members. In fact, as regards to exhibitions, we will be starting the ball rolling by putting up a members’ exhibition at the hotel during December. This will give our members an opportunity to exhibit as well as generate more exposure to the MIPP. I would here like to first of all thank the Corinthia management and staff for their help and co-operation throughout the MIPP’s stay and also thank Le Meridien manager Mr Franco Vella who left no stone unturned to enable this new partnership to go ahead. The committee and myself look forward to seeing you at our events at the Le Meridien hotel. Kevin Casha
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