Editorial/Opinion session

Sarah Gassen hopefully had excellent A/C in her car for the drive down to Phoenix...it was truly valuable to me to have a session on editorial/column writing, as it is something many of my students think they can just pick up and run with. It was great to see it get a thorough treatment, and I wish we could've practiced editorializing like we did with leads. Right: Ms. Gassen shares a moment with Nunn Winship.








I apologize for the truly appalling quality of my dinky Kodak's pics; Rob Schumacher may be right about how you can get decent results with "crappy" cameras, but I think my $60 special probably doesn't even have a glass lens, and if it does, that glass is smaller than the button on my pants. Here's my only shot of Mr. Schumacher, as case in point:

Scary, I know. Mr. Schumacher opined that it's easy to shoot lightning; personally I think a lightning strike will probably occur in my vicinity at some point (even if it's only the Camera Gods trying to blot my Kodak out of existence)...which is a roundabout segue to his discussion of (extreme) preparation for photos. Like many of you, I was just dumbstuck by the results of that preparation. I was also thinking that I will probably personally never have the opportunity to shoot any pictures from a helicopter, at least not in the school journalism setting. I can just imagine the response from my principal when I try to get reimbursed for a photo-op like that.

If anyone has any helpful suggestions about really effective ways to spend on a very limited camera budget, I'm all ears. On average, we have less than $600 per year to work with; some years we've had zip. I've also seen that the durability of cheap equipment is not equal to student use (abuse); yet our district business manager won't let us buy nice used stuff. So if we only have two or three decent camera bodies, what kinds of lenses should we buy? I believe someone (possibly Brent?) did ask Mr. Schumacher about this, but his reply (to my knowledge and understanding) focused on f-stops and vibration reduction...what about zoom ranges, and brands that hold up?

Zach Anderson

Indian River High School

Philadelphia, NY