Photos

I’ve been posting singles for too long, so with the new wave of discussion about the importance of pictures in series and of photo essays, I’m now going to try to move more in the direction of photo essays in my posting. I encourage anybody else out there with an interest in photojournalism to do the same, and I encourage critiquers with interest in photojournalism to support the efforts of other photojournalists on the site by trying to follow as a unit rather than a collection of singles some of the photo essays that go up, even if the essay followed doesn’t happen to be mine.

Last fall and spring I attended Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma. I have a few essays that I will be posting from there in the coming months, and hopefully in that time I will be able to find something to follow at my new school, the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma.

The center of much of the social life during the day at Oklahoma State University is the large lawn in front of the library... cleverly named Library Lawn. For the first couple of months of the spring semester of 2007 there wasn't much activity out on the lawn... everybody was bundled up inside as Stillwater experienced one of its heaviest snow years in recent history.

Towards the end of February, however, Stillwater experienced some exceptional weather—the sun was out, temperatures were warm, and life returned to the lawn.

One of the students set up what is called a slackline between two trees on the line. A slackline is a length of webbing anchored between two fixed objects that functions much like a tightrope, but is a little bit loose. Slacklines are generally just a few feet off the ground, so falling is of no great consequence.

In a photojournalistic failing, I never was able to get a very strong picture of the set-up work, but for the purposes of the series this one should be adequate. A prospective slackliner looks on while four men tighten the slackline around a tree.

Part one of a 13? picture series. i will link between them as i get them posted.

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Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11