ae•gis |'ējis| (n) • the shield of Zeus or Athena; protection, support
o t o ph
The word of the day Go to dictionary.com. Learn the word of the day. Then take a photo representing that word. Sound easy? Have you looked at some of those words?
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Dictionary.com is a multi-source dictionary search service with more than 35 million visitors every month.
aving lost the majority of my personal work in a tragic hard drive crash, I found myself constantly without motivation. I wanted a good portfolio, sure. But where do you start after such a loss? “I really want to take pictures, but there’s just nothing to shoot,” I told my girlfriend over the phone, still spread lazily in my bed at 11 a.m. Likely fed up with listening to me pore over the same photographic speed bump, Jamie, my fiancé, looked up Dictionary.com’s word of the day “Go take a picture for parry,” she told me. “It means, ‘to ward off.’ ” As I still had a few hours before work that day, I mustered the energy to drag myself outside and get a shot. It wasn’t award winning. It wasn’t even in my own top 25. But that set a precedent for the entire project. I had not contemplated the benefits of what I was doing until I was already up to my knees in it. Fast forward a week, and I found myself leaping out of bed in the morning to check the word of the day. Each new word provided an assignment
and thus a purpose for my photographs. Albeit unforeseen, the most beneficial part has been an “ever-developing oneness” with the mechanics of photography and lighting. The shots occasionally incorporated “subprojects” I had seen or thought about — lighting accessories made of cardboard and duct tape, a tilt-shift lens out of cloth and medium format gear. Through immersion, research and discussion, my knowledge base has grown with the duration of the project. And by publishing every day’s photo online, I’ve enjoyed the added satisfaction of selfpromotion. Mine is most definitely not the first photo-aday project on the Internet — and I give myself weekends off. But I like to think the unimaginable assignments have the added benefit of removing the “I’ll just go out and shoot whatever” mentality that can keep photographers in the same cycle. These excerpts are from times when I have challenged myself. They do not necessarily reflect the days I regrettably simply walked outside to take a picture of a flower. t
FLASH ATTACK Using this Photo of the Day assignment, photography instruction can turn into subtle prep for expanding vocabulary. Collegebound students may be learning new words that pad scores when they are taking SAT or ACT tests. Definitions with the photographs are from the New Oxford American Dictionary, now available on computers and Dictionary. com which is an aggregate of many dictionaries. On Dictionary.com, students can find a definition that includes a “person” pronouncing the word — sometimes a help.
By Rob Fisher 2 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY
WINTER 2009