The Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe

by Andreas Braunlich

The photos on this Blog were taken as part of a summer independent study class at North Idaho College. The project was to photograph events from May through August, 2010, for the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe. Special thanks to Jerome Pollos, my instructor, Marc Stewart, Public Relations Director for the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe, and Phil Corlis of NIC for setting up this class and handling all the administrative stuff. I am grateful for the opportunity these three folks and the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe made possible for me this summer!

The entries below act as a learning journal and contain my feedback to my instructor, Jerome, on my various assignments and tasks throughout the entire course. His and other comments can be found in the comments section below each post. Everything is unedited and completely intact the way it was on the last day of class, July 28th, 2010, except for the Feast of Assumption section which I was asked to shoot for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe after my class was over. This section was added afterwords to completely represent my summer photography efforts.

PLEASE NOTE: Some photo sets unrelated to the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe have been included and were used as instructional tools along the way. These were situations where I went along with Jerome as he shot photos for the Coeur d'Alene Press newspaper.

The first section below is my final portfolio. Everything below that is arranged from newest to oldest, so everything is in reverse order by date.

Please feel free to take a look and leave me some comments. I would love to hear from you!

NO NEW POSTS WILL BE ADDED TO THIS BLOG.



Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Portfolio Candidates

These are the 28 photos I think I did the best on during this class.  They are not in any particular order and do not include photos from the Feast of Assumption set below as this set was photographed and added after my class was over.

Overall, I really feel like I learned a lot but I still have a long way to go before I can become a competent photo journalist. My weakest areas are not quite as weak anymore and that is probably my single biggest accomplishment for this class. However, they still exist as follows:

  1. Getting close. I need to work on and practice getting close using a wide angle lens to improve the intimate feel of being right in the middle of whatever is going on.
  2. Waiting for the photo journalistic artsy moment: action, mood, perspective, emotion and moment will take more practice than two short months will allow. Learning to anticipate this stuff rather than clicking away hoping to catch something at random still does not come naturally and I end up taking far too many photos out of anxiety rather than being patient and waiting for "it" to happen. I feel like I am not going to end up with anything and reflexively click when I should wait.
  3. Light and exposure. I have a better understanding than I did about light and exposure due to having to take photos on full manual settings. But I still cannot predict changing light reliably and I cannot utilize the "shooting my hand" technique to my best advantage. I also need to pause and think about how to use existing light to my best advantage. During the pow wow I realized that there where two occasions where I should have reversed my strategy to make better use of the light at given times of the day.
  4. Scheduling. As a wanna be photo journalist it is my job to get the photo. Several times, the scheduling information I was given was wrong or had been altered and I therefore missed any opportunity to get "the" shot completely. I need to learn to be on top of this so I can be present to have a chance.

Click on photo to enlarge



Monday, August 16, 2010

Feast of Assumption

This is a last minute addition that I was asked to add to the summer's photo sets. These photos were taken at the Old Cataldo Mission on August 15th, 2010 and fall after my summer class was over.  Since these photos were taken after my Portfolio Candidates were selected and posted, they are not included in this set above.


Click on photo to enlarge