Ask Mr. Advice

“It depends!”

Dear Mr. Advice,

I am studying engineering, but I am thinking of changing majors.
What should I do?

                                  —Puzzled in Madison

Dear Puzz,

It depends.

You certainly want to follow the guidelines provided by the university before you change majors. Do not change majors on an empty stomach. You should wait at least 12 hours after eating chocolate, red wine, aged cheese, or fatty meat. Do not change majors if you are taking medication for a chronic condition or death. Consult a physician if you are a male or female who is pregnant, nursing, may become pregnant, or have an erection lasting more than four hours. Side effects include nausea, blurred vision, blurred hearing, blurred speaking, and blurred thinking.

US citizens should notify the State Department if they plan to change majors outside the country. International students may have to leave the country for 30 days before re-entering after changing majors.

As a courtesy to others, please turn off your electronic devices before you change majors. You may lose rollover minutes if you switch majors outside the service area. Some restrictions may apply. Use majors before the “Sell by” date printed on your transcript. Recycle old majors properly—carry them out to the curb on collection day and place them with required and senior-level courses facing on-coming traffic. 

If you decide to switch majors, take your old major to the no-kill humane society shelter. Do not switch majors in direct sunlight; always wear sunscreen. 

Connect the red wire on your old major to the red terminal on the new major, then connect the black wire to some other part of the university before starting a new major. Shower off before and after you enter the pool. Running and horseplay are forbidden and will get you ejected from the pool area. Do not dive into the shallow end.

If a major has been opened or tampered with, report it to the Chancellor’s Office immediately. Breaking the seal on a new major may void the warranty. Unused majors may be returned within 30 days for a full refund. Re-stocking fees may apply.

Check your rear-view mirror before changing majors. Always wear a seatbelt when changing majors. Put your seatback and tray table in an upright position and turn off all electronic devices.

Close all windows and applications before you change majors. Restart your education by pressing the On button for five minutes until a green or red light comes on. You will need your old password, a new password (eight or more characters, one must be punctuation, one must be a numeral, and one must be a capital letter) with an Admin to change majors.

Changing majors is a personal life-style choice and taunting or teasing someone who has changed majors is considered a serious offense at the university. You must have exact change. Do not talk to the driver while the vehicle is in motion. Stand behind the yellow line. Exit via the rear door. Do not leave baggage unattended.

Pre-heat the oven to 300° F before you change majors. Majors should reach room temperature before changing. The procedure involves a local anesthetic and a small incision that will probably not leave a noticeable scar. Feel for a pulse and check airways for obstructions before switching majors.

After you change majors, you may receive a notice from the IRS telling you to file a form in compliance with subsection 47 (h) 3, explaining why you are letting your family and friends down. Depending on which major you choose, you may receive an annual “Tsk, tsk” Notice from the Treasury Department.

If you experience anxiety, shortness of breath, or trouble sleeping after switching majors, you may be able to use your extra miles to pay for an upgrade to Business or First Class. No part of your new major may be rebroadcast without the permission of Major League Baseball. Help is available for those who can’t help themselves from changing majors frequently. There are support groups in the area that meet on a regular basis. Most of them welcome walk-ins, but certain majors are not a good fit, so call ahead to reserve a table at least three hours before you change majors.

Some of my notes got mixed up before I wrote this, but the advice is certainly as good as you’ll get anywhere!

2018 Writing a Guide to Magazine & Newsletter Photography

Steven B. Zwickel

March, 2018

📷 As part of my job at the University of Wisconsin, I am Faculty Advisor to the student organization that publishes the Wisconsin Engineer Magazine (WEM). One area the students need help in is taking usable photographs to illustrate the articles in the magazine. The staff is composed entirely of undergraduate students, most of whom are majoring in engineering. Their photographic skills range from none to very experienced.

I searched in many places for a book that would teach them the basics of photography— nothing fancy, just enough to make clear, interesting photos that could be printed in black and white (or color, if the budget permitted). In 2000, the student who was magazine photo department head wrote and illustrated a very good basic guide to taking photos for the magazine. But, because she was an expert photographer herself, a lot of what she put in the handbook was too complicated for the staff photographers, some of whom had never used an SLR camera before. Nevertheless, I was able to revise her work and turn it into a usable Guide to WEM Photography that did the job for several  years.

Then the smartphone put a camera into the hands of millions of people who had never taken pictures before. Not only did it make cameras ubiquitous, using them is fairly easy and the quality of digital images has steadily improved. Unfortunately, the smartphone became so good as a camera and  made it so easy to take photos that people didn’t bother to learn the basics of visual composition and graphic design. We started to see students joining the magazine photo department who had never taken photos with anything other than a smartphone. Our photo editors did a good job of training them to use a digital SLR, but the learning curve can be steep and time was limited.

      In 2015, I went on another hunt for a decent text that would introduce students to the basics of taking photos for the magazine. Even though content on the internet has exploded in size, I still couldn’t find a book on the topic.

      Photography books tend to showcase the work of professional photojournalists and fashion photographers, or they teach readers how to get started in photographing weddings. The photos you’ll find in WEM are of professors and scientists, experimental labs, and the cool inventions and devices engineers come up with. Needless to say, guides explaining how to shoot lions hunting gazelles in the veldt or models wearing the latest swimwear in Majorca are not helpful. The terminology they use is confusing to anyone who doesn’t have a good background in the field, and there is an assumption among some writers that no one should be taking photos who isn’t capable of spending thousands of dollars on equipment.

No one, it seems, has written a simple guide for the non-professional photographers who illustrate the thousands of  newsletters and magazines put out by schools, companies, religious organizations, community groups, etc. Apparently, the job taking pictures to illustrate the articles is given to the writer/editor, who may hand it off to “some guy who owns a good camera.”

What the WEM photo staff, and anyone else who wants to use photos in a non-fashion, non-travel newsletter or magazine need was a simple manual without a lot of bells and whistles. I don’t claim to be a professional photographer, but I have been taking pictures for 60 years, I used to have my own darkroom, I am an expert user of Adobe Photoshop, and I know my way around different types of cameras. I put together two guidebooks for the WEM staffers—one on taking pictures of people, the other on taking photos of places and things.

Portrait Photography: Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles, came out in 2015. There are no examples of tracking lions in the wild and no tips on lighting fashion models. I divided the material into four chapters:

★    Working with a Human Subject

★    Lighting the Subject and the Scene

★    Composition

★    Preparing Photographs for Printing: Black & White and Color

I made the advice given in each chapter simple and straightforward, with a minimum of technical jargon (although I did provide definitions of terms in case a reader wants to try using one of those other guidebooks).

To illustrate the guide, I used my own photos and added examples of how the photos could be used to design a magazine layout. While the material in Portrait Photography: Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles was prepared specifically for the college students who work on the Wisconsin Engineer magazine, the information really applies to anyone who takes on the responsibility of illustrating any magazine, program, or newsletter.

If you would like a copy of Portrait Photography: Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles, please contact me at ProfSBZ@gmail.com.

The follow-up to Portrait Photography is Photos of Places and Things Using Interesting Photos to Illustrate Articles © 2016, Steven B. Zwickel.

★    The Exposure Triangle

★    Photos of Places

★    Photos of Things

★    Captions

  ======================

Portrait Photography:
Using Photos of People to Illustrate Articles

Contents

📷 Working with a Human Subject

➢    Kinds of Portraits

○      Orientation

○      Types of portraits

○      Sizes

➢    Poses

○      Warming up

○      Smiling

○      Where should the subject look?

○      Sitting, standing, leaning, and bending

○      Clothing and Props

📷 Lighting the subject and the scene

➢    Lighting Outdoors

○      Sunshine and Clouds

○      Bracket your exposures

➢    Indoor  Lighting

○      Shooting in Low Light

○      Use a Tripod with a low ISO in low light

○      Backlighting

○      White Balance

➢    Using a Light Kit

➢    Catchlights

📷 Composition

➢    Taking photos of more than one subject

○      Two people (not always a Couple!)

○      Group Photos

○      Compensating for some physical attributes

➢    Camera Angle and Viewpoint

○      Background

➢    The “Rules” of Composition

○      Rule of Thirds

➢    Balancing Elements

○      Composition: the camera “Portrait” setting

➢    Crop images

○      Why crop?

○      Cropping tips

○      Size photos proportionately

○      Cropping in the camera

📷 Black & White and Color

➢    Choosing the correct mode

➢    Black and White Printing

➢    Converting Color to Black & White

○      Color to grayscale in the camera

○      Color to black & white with Adobe Bridge

○      Color to black & white with Photoshop

■      Hue/Saturation

■      Black & White

■      Black & White Properties

■      Desaturate

➢    Desaturation is just the first step

➢    Increasing Contrast

➢    Photoshop tools for adjusting contrast

○      Brightness/Contrast

○      Levels

○      Curves

○      Shadows/Highlights

➢    Ethics and Photoshop