Maursupial

A soundslide that I work on all semester sounds like a good reason to generate a good topic, so I hope one of these ideas falls into that category:

1. Arial Dance Major: It’s a real program at UGA and apparently one of only five in the country. The picture opportunities would be insane and apparently the director is very receptive to photographers because the major is so unknown. Career aspirations for most of these individuals include companies such as Cirque de Solei and it would be interesting to cover the story in the context of a traditional class- what do they do in class? How are they graded? Graduation preparations? Etc.

2. Entrepreneurial Athens: What makes a small business in a small town successful? This would be focused on finding common threads between diverse small business such as bars, vintage stores, coffee shops, and jewelry makers.

3. Bike Athens: This would be an in-depth look at bike culture in Athens. I’m interested in the juxtapositions in town: from a piece-meal and eclectic bike shop like Ben’s Bikes to a sleek and professional shop like Sunshine Cycles. There’s an opportunity to include Twilight with timing as well. I would also look into the type of people who bike and why they do: from trendy hipsters to people who invest a lot of money into biking as exercise to people who have no other mode of transportation due to cost.

4. Behind the Bar: Looking at who you support with your dollar tip downtown on Thursday nights and how and why students work insanely exhausting hours to juggle bar tending and academics. Preliminary research indicates money is the reason people start bar tending, but a deep sense of community keeps students clocking in.

5. Sustainable restaurants: Mostly because I love food, secondly because I love food photography. Profiling different restaurants in town that make a big deal about local sourcing (Five and Ten, The National, Heirloom, Farm 255) to find differences in practices and common threads in their practices and thinking. This idea needs the most fleshing out, but I’m just really intrigued by the restaurant culture in town and love photographing food.

My name is Maura (mar-uh, not more-uh) and I’m a photojournalist. Well, aspiring. I’m also a magazines and political science double major and a new media certificate candidate, so I guess that makes me an aspiring journalist, political scientist, and lol cat too. My main goal is technical improvement. I like to think I’m pretty good at composing photos, but the perfection of the frame doesn’t matter if it’s blurry or you just didn’t get the settings right to take the picture at all. I also want to hone my ability to think of stories and their visuals in telling but unexpected ways. I’m very good at talking to strangers (though I stay away from the ones with candy), which has helped me immensely in building trust and gaining access with my subjects. The aforementioned talking, however, is pretty difficult for me to turn off and it’s a constant conscious effort for me to try to fade into the background to take natural photos of others.