suburbantumbling-blog - Tumblr blog

[suburbantumbling-blog]

#Relaxing at Wattles. #sunshine #la #hollywood #hollywoodhills (at Wattles Dog Park)

[suburbantumbling-blog]

50 years ago today (from my grandmothers newspaper collection). #kennedyassissination #kennedy

[suburbantumbling-blog]

50 years ago today (from my grandmothers newspaper collection). #kennedyassissination #kennedy

[suburbantumbling-blog]

Sunset in LA at Wattles Dog Park

[suburbantumbling-blog]

Taken with Instagram at Christopher Street Pier

[suburbantumbling-blog]

Contrary to the plan, technology has limited our choices. When you check boxes that define your preference in a date—say, Latina, between 24 and 27, loves birds, is a Unitarian, oh, and also should have hazel eyes—you're narrowing your world quite a bit there. We no longer "happen across" anything; we Google. We don't flip through TV channels; we look at the cable menu and choose by title—or watch things you've chosen in advance, then recorded. Don't answer the phone without that caller ID. Don't bother listening to that whole CD—you want to hear that one song you already like. In every corner of this newest of new worlds, very little happens that isn't planned out. Technology has trumped serendipity.

'iBone' — by Marshall Sella; GQ Magazine, Oct. 2011 

[suburbantumbling-blog]

A Look Inside The New York Times Morgue

Here's a look inside The Times' Morgue. But no dead bodies. 160 years of New York Times newspaper clippings. Information on tens of millions of important people, places and events. Millions of pictures, published and unpublished. Obituaries for the dead and the living. It's a treasure trove for historians, journalists, photographers and the average person. 

Where is the Morgue? The Morgue has been in the basement of every Times building since its inception. But now it's not in the basement of The Times Building, it's next door, in the basement of the old New York Herald Tribune Building at 219 W 40th St. The original plan was the massive archive to be in a temperature-controlled, hermetically sealed vault. But that didn't pan out.

How it works (Actually, worked. The Times stopped cataloging its content with the advent of the web in 1996.):

When a story was published in the paper, the story would go through a series of steps to archive it. First, it would go through a team of people who read every article to find out the main subjects of the article. Notations would be made, subjects underlined. Then the article was filed away according to the numbers and location kept in a card catalog system. If the article had multiple subjects — like Kennedy, Castro, Cuba, Bay of Pigs — then four copies of the article were kept, one under each category. 

Along with this system, file cabinets were kept for certain topics like wars and presidents. In here you can find negatives, contact sheets with editor's notes, full prints, research, articles — an entire record of people and events. There are also bound books that contain an entire decade of full newspapers.

It was a stunning tour. Here are a couple articles about the Morgue. Here are some photos from the space.

The entry to the Morgue with a cover of the 1953 book "Meet Me At The Morgue."

One of the thousands of filing cabinets of newspaper clippings.

Clippings are organized by topics.

I found a stack of cabinets belonging on to the Vietnam War.

Card catalogs in the Morgue.

The Kennedy drawer.

In the Morgue, a framed photograph of the Morgue in older days (this photo is from some time in the 1920s)

Fully intact newspaper prints, bound by decade.

Photos are stamped on the back with publish dates and photo and photographer information. The published caption is also cut and taped to the back. Today, this is done digitally through a program called Merlin. Above is a front and back for a legendary photo of Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) dodging a blow by Sonny Liston. This photo was laying out on a stack of binders.

One of the more interesting cabinets contain the "Advance Obits," obituaries for people who haven't kicked the bucket yet. These are half-written obituaries, photographs, information and clippings, ready to pull the day an important figure passes.

[suburbantumbling-blog]

Gorgeous web design by the NYTimes Interactive News Team.

[suburbantumbling-blog]

www.NYTGalleryOfReflection.com

[suburbantumbling-blog]

9/11 Exhibit - Fin

It's up. It's done. After an almost sleepless night (left The Times building at 4:30am), the building opened its doors to 9/11 Remembered. I'm very proud of this. The response today was beyond my expectations. Janet Robinson, the CEO, sent a very complimentary e-mail to my team; I gave the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., a tour of the exhibit; tourists began to pour in in the early afternoon; I received a number of congratulatory e-mails from the photo editors I worked with and my colleagues; and several people were talking about other exhibits we can put on like this. (Pics shot by Evan Sung)

[suburbantumbling-blog]

9/11 Anniversary Exhibit: Part 7

The 9/11 exhibit is pretty much all I've been working on lately. I've been keeping a to-do list and nearly everything's crossed off. Tomorrow night we set up and Thursday morning the exhibit opens. 

The past week I've been collecting videos from the newsroom (like this and this), working with an animator on the slideshows, checking in on the progress of the R&D department's augmented reality experience, designing signage for everything from the display cases ("Do not lean on the display cases") to contextual information for the Tribute in Light and Damon Winters photos and captions for the 9/11 relics our readers submitted to the paper. Most of the content in the exhibit goes live on or after Thursday 9/8.

During all of this our photo rights manager and project manager were double, triple and quadruple checking the photo credits with the newsroom and our database, which hasn't always been accurate. Incredibly frustrating for everyone involved.

Over the weekend I read Frank Rich's piece in New York Magazine about the stark difference between the America we thought we were going to have after 9/11 and the America we have today. It mentioned the "Falling Man" photo, which ran inside the NYTimes on 9/12 and was never published again. It's an example of the sterilization of 9/11 and the lack of sacrifice we've all faced since then. "Go shopping," Bush said. So I've decided to include this spread with a caption (we're fact checking Frank Rich's claim tomorrow before we write a caption for it). It's hard to look at, but treating it as a "relic" (a newspaper spread) and putting it in the display case instead of enlarged and mounted on the wall accomplishes my goal of paying respect to the actual events of the day while not focusing on really disturbing imagery.

I've never been involved in a project this big before and with this much exposure. If I think too much about all the little details involved from the exhibit and various signage to the ad and the program people can pick up at the entrance to the lobby, it can get overwhelming really fast. But I started at a macro level and have worked my way down through the details over the past two months. Because of that I know the big things are all covered and all I have left  are a few remaining pieces.

Tomorrow I'll be planning the layout for the relics in the four display cases; captions and signage will be mounted; and I'll be at The Times until probably 1 a.m. supervising the installation. I think this exhibit will be something The Times, its staff, its freelance photographers and hopefully New Yorkers will be proud of.

[suburbantumbling-blog]

My husband and I submitted these photos to the NYTimes and made the cut! (and it's not just because I work there)

[suburbantumbling-blog]

9/11 Anniversary Exhibit: Part 6

After Hurricane Irene passes (so far, i'm not impressed, but I'm sure that'll change tomorrow morning), I'll be heading into my final full week of preparation for the Times' 9/11 Remembered exhibit.

I was a little disappointed that we didn't get the word out to our own newsroom in time for them to promote us, but I'm sure it'll be fine. I got word this week that VII Photo Agency will be promoting the event, since a couple of their photographers are featured.

Last week I chose 20 of the photos from the exhibit to be featured in a Facebook gallery, which our social marketing team is managing. This week we hope to get approval from the photographers to use them.

I tested audio in our lobby for both the video that will be playing in the main corridor and the ambient sounds of the Freedom Tower workers that will play near the atrium alongside Damon Winters' photographs. Other videos will have headphones attached to the monitors.

I want visitors to the exhibit to experience (or remember) the thoughts, feelings and sentiments that were so widespread across New York and the world. For instance, I remember on September 11, 2001, everyone was talking about how blue the sky was and how perfect the weather was that day. That week there was a feeling that our innocence was lost in the attacks. There was a feeling that we were all in this together. There were feelings of hopelessness mixed with a desire to "do something, anything." I asked the newsroom to collect some quotes that capture these feelings from articles that will appear in the 9/11 Special Section. The newsroom delivered amazing quotes. I'm mixing these quotes with the printed photos and digital slideshows. These quotes, mixed with the visuals, will help transport people back to 2001, I think, by triggering our visual memories and our emotional memories. 

The Times has been asking readers to submit artifacts from 9/11 that they have held on to. The Times is accepting photographs of the artifacts and, in some cases, readers are dropping off these artifacts for The Times to photograph. Last week the events team and I chose eight or nine of these artifacts to appear in a few display cases along the corridor. 

I started art directing animation of the seven video slideshows that will appear in the exhibit. The video slideshows will appear on 50" and 52" LCD screens, hung both vertically and horizontally.

On Thursday I'll be supervising the mounting of photographs on the 4'x8' black gator boards. I'm really looking forward to that. That's when all of my planning, my scale diagrams and time and effort start becoming reality.

[suburbantumbling-blog]

NYTimes 9/11 Remembered Press Release

The New York Times has released the press release for 9/11 Remembered: Gallery of Reflection today. And last night the microsite went up. The ad will run in the paper next week. You can see the full release here.

9/11 Remembered will be a reflection on Sept. 11, 2001 and the past 10 years, and a look toward the future, told through still and video images curated by New York Times photography editors.  The exhibit will include:

- More than 150 photographs from The Times’s archive, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of photos depicting the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

- An interactive database of Portraits of Grief, where visitors can view biographical sketches and photos of the victims of 9/11.

- Interactive features, which allow visitors to share their thoughts and memories of 9/11, and their hopes for the future.

- A new series of photographs by Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Damon Winter, which captures the workers building the new Freedom Tower.

- Numerous video features, including a timeline of events since Sept. 11, 2001; interviews with New Yorkers about what they learned from 9/11; and a look at the troops who enlisted in the days after 9/11.

- A virtual model of the future World Trade Center site and Memorial Pools.

- A display of artifacts from Sept. 11, 2001, saved and submitted by readers.

[suburbantumbling-blog]

[suburbantumbling-blog]

9/11 ANNIVERSARY EXHIBIT: PART 5

Now the planning is done. And the reality sets in. This week we're officially in the home stretch.

I’ve had nights where I've dreamt about it, lost sleep over it, woken up so excited I can't wait to get to work and get to this phase. I also had moments of terror last week where I've thought "What if I've measured something wrong? What if my math was off? What if the prints come back, beautifully mounted on black foam core, but they're the wrong size? What if they're too small and dwarfed by the large 4' x 8' gator board they're mounted on — or too big and all the photos don't fit properly?"

But I've done everything I can at this point. I've designed layouts to scale for every gator board, notated the space between each photo and double and triple checked my measurements. All of the final photos have been chosen and have gone off to the printer. 

This week I'll be working with an animator to animate the slideshows and 10-year timeline of events. Another designer will be designing the captions and signage for the photos and videos. And on Thursday the ad for the event gets released and begins running in The Paper of Record.

I'm proud of the work I've done so far and my only hope is that my colleagues, New Yorkers and visitors will feel I've put something together that's respectful to the victims, the survivors, New York City and The New York Times.

[suburbantumbling-blog]

9/11 Anniversary Exhibit: Part 4

Finally, on August 3rd, a month before the exhibit goes up, we got the green light to have our exhibit in the lobby of The New York Times Building.

At this point this is becoming the kind of project that makes me so excited to be doing what I do, as I wrote about here. I've learned how to use my past experience to do something I've never done before. When I'm designing a user interface I'm always thinking about the user. What's their experience going to be? How should they feel while they're using it? How can I make it as clear and easy to use as possible? How can I teach them how to use this UI by organizing content and information in a certain way? What will the user expect to see and do?

I had to ask myself the same questions when I was designing the exhibit. Visitors will be able to enter from three sides of the building. So I'll be designing signage for the 40th and 41st Street sides to direct them to 8th Ave. On 8th Ave, we're putting two much larger signs (4' x 8')on either side of the entrance promoting the exhibit. These signs face the busy Port Authority bus station and a lot of foot traffic, so they have to be much larger and eye catching. Inside I'm going basically in chronological order and also organizing the sets of photos in themes within the 3 larger themes: 9/11/01; Where We Are Now; Looking Toward the Future. 

The Eighth Avenue entrance leads to a long corridor where the 9/11/01 section of the exhibit will be. There will be two interactive stations (a computer station where visitors can enter where the were the morning of the attacks and a touch screen where visitors can browse Portraits of Grief), Pulitzer Prize winning photography, other news photos from various sources and newsroom special feature videos. The permanent installation, Movable Type, will be turned off for the five days during the exhibit.

Against the Atrium there will be 16-foot-tall photo of the original artwork that was part of the plan for the Tribute in Light installation that shines from Ground Zero every year since the attacks.

I've been given permission to use photos that have never been published, including a beautiful black and white photo series of the workers building the Freedom Tower, shot by the Pulitzer Prize winning photo journalist, Damon Winters. These will be shown as a slideshow on 60' LCD screens, stacked 3 high on both sides of the Tribute in Light photo.

On the 40th Street side of the lobby is the section "Where We Are Now," which will an interactive installation asking visitors what they've learned from 9/11 accompanied by a video of New Yorkers being asked the same question, an animated timeline of events of the past 10 years, which I'll be working with a freelancer in my department to animate and photo series showing soldiers, specifically the women who have gone to war, and the bedrooms that have been left in tact since the soldiers who once occupied them were killed in action.

The 41st Street side of the exhibit, "Looking Toward the Future," will have renderings of the future World Trade Center site and an augmented reality experience allowing visitors to see 3D models of the future space from every angle, which I've asked our R&D team to provide.

But now the planning is done. And now the reality sets in. This week we've officially moved into production.

... More to come ...