Beat Blog : What Photography Means

To everyone in MCOM 258, I have now created and published my beat blog for the class, titled "What Photography Means."

Hey MCOM 258

For those of you who have not met me before, my name is Benjamin Knepp and I just finished my junior year of college, and my first year here at Towson. I come from the rural and peaceful Garrett County, MD, and transferred to Towson from Garrett College. My hometown of Oakland, MD (and the surrounding lands) makes a plethora of appearences in this blog. I am currently a MCOM major here at Towson in the journalism and new media track.

As apparent from this blog, I have a passion for photography. Almost all of the images in this blog tell a story about myself. This is what I love about it; the ability that one image has to narrate an entire story. What I do in this blog is to relate to the readers the stories that the images hold for me. For every picture I take, I want to be able to relate the readers the stories behind them, and the feelings behind each image that means a lot to me and who I am.

And so photojournalism is my favorite way to tell stories. This is what I wish to incorporate into my news beat for MCOM 258. I want to report on and write about individuals who share my passion for telling stories fwith images. I think that the most important part of journalism is the storytelling aspect of it, and images are vital in doing this. I will create a new blog for this specific beat when I start reporting on it, and will let announce the web adress as soon as I start.

From this class, I want to most of all build on my knowledge of all the technology that goes into multimedia storytelling that is so dominant in journalism today. I hope to increase my ability to incorporarate audio, film, and images in order to create effective news stories. Also, I want to be able to learn the differences in writing stories for different media platforms, such as blogs, online, and broadcast journalism. In this class, I will improve my abilities for writing across all the different platforms.

The Air

"Because the night belongs to lovers, because the night belongs to us."

- Bruce Springsteen

Say it on the midnight air.

Turn around love, and she's not there.

Tucked in, soft and warm somewhere.

Her perfect form to soft brown hair.

And your feelings are laid bare

Shifting restlessly on the midnight air...

The Mind When It Dreams Of Stars Aligning

"All I do is kiss you through the bars of orion,
Julie I'd do the stars with you anytime."

- Dire Straits


It is the same night that a carnival became a succession of still images when my mind is running at the speed of light. It is act one of the stars alligning in my late summer. I don't know it now but I will know it looking back. Do you ever have the fleeting moments where the there is imperceptable forces at work in your favor and you become untouchable? Call it a helpless romantic who believes such things in a world of rhyme and reason but helpless to believe this I will remain.

It is now one in the morning. And while the world sleeps, my mind races on into the warm stillness of post-midnight August. This image represents how the restless mind doesn't stop in the night when it is dreaming of a world of dissolving limits.

These dreams bleed out onto the film tonight, and they will always be here to remind me how it feels to believe that this night is mine alone. A part of me lives in tonight forever, living on the tails of shooting stars, and never wanting to come back.

Nine in the Evening

"...son take a good look around. This is your hometown."

- Bruce Springsteen



" As the grey unyielding concrete, makes a city of my town."

- Flogging Molly

At nine in the evening, a hush falls on my small town and those lights shine down on ghost streets. If you want to walk them, you must want to walk alone. Maybe you need to get away from those you know a little too well (it is a small town by the way). Or do you want to feel the cool air while you try to forget the day? Still, it may that you are tired of the intimacy and isolation of being young in a small town.

Last May I went to the overlook to witness the hush at nightfall for myself. From here you can see the town in its entirety. Here you can see each of the six banks within a mile radius of each other. Over there is First United, down the street is M&T. The next block up is Susquehanna. It's as if this small town doesn't have enough places to hold all its money.

Over to your left is Shaffer Ford and Team One Chevrolet. They used to put them oversized extended-cab trucks out front. Now they hardly keep 'em on the lot. I guess everyone doesn't want to take all their money out of all the banks.

You can also see the lights of the six gas stations. What you can't make out from up here is the numbers on those signs that didn't want to stop last summer; it was 10 cents, 20 cents a day. I am glad that you can't see them from up here. I wouldn't want to put an imperfection on this scene.

In the middle of all this stands is the Oak-Lee Dairy Land, as it has for the last 50 summers. You and your girlfriend went there on the first date. After 50 summers they tore it down when the dollar amount was right. Now there is a sign that says "Coming Soon: Walgreens Pharmacy." I suppose that makes sense when there is a CVS right across the street.

I heard someone argue that Walgreens is open 24 hours a day as if there was going to be someone down there that is going to break the stillness of the night.

"I suppose that's a sign that Oakland's getting bigger," my uncle said. And it most definately is. My dad always tells me about the time that there was no Pizza Hut, no Green Acres, and no Dollar General. And I can remember the time there was no Taco Bell, no CVS, and no Wal-Mart.

Just this year they opened up Lowes and are starting construction on a Dairy Queen. This is the home town not as it is remembered. Changes come as a part of life.

But one thing doesn't change: nine in the evening. Every night at this time the silence lingers under the street lights. My picture is a falsehood, because as the world is moving at the speed of light, this town sleeps quietly tonight.

A Representation of Energy

"Can you feel the energy? It's gaining strength oh so slowly."

- AFI

An image should capture the feelings and energy of an exact moment in time. That, to me, constitutes a good photograph. It isn't about the image quality, color saturations, lighting, or even the composition. If an image can symbolize every feeling, emotion, and thought in one instant, than it has served its purpose.

In the past few years, I have had the chance to take hundreds of photos at concerts my freinds have performed. I even get in free because of this. It must be the most difficult task however, as a photographer, to capture even one image that is a perfect representation of the energy at a live show.

The shutter speed is slowed down to 2 seconds to capture the movement of the music one feels in the audience. Black and white film was used because I wanted to give it an old school, unpolished look that coincided with the band's music.

This photograph is of my freind Mike Murphy, playing with his band Arson Decor in 2007. Of all the live shots, this one continues to be my favorite.

The band May have broken up later that year, but at the very least this image will be here as a representation of energy of the show that night. Many things over the years may be fleeting. Taking taking photos is to help them live on at least in memory.

Throwaway Roses

"...that I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel."

- The Cure

Late one Saturday night in November of 2007, my manager brought back a dozen roses that had begun to wither and tossed them in the already overflowing trash cans. The customers had passed over them and they had begun to die. Roses, by nature, have always been one of the most picture-perfect subjects. Their symbolism abounds with love, beauty, purity, and frailty. Something inside me caused me to pick out four of these wilted throwaways and carry them out of the store and into the night.

At one in the morning...the time of night when the world moves slower and thoughts flow easier, I put the blacklight behind those flowers. Their silouettes created something that was moving that I couldn't quite understand. And rarely will I understand how an image moves me until I look back at the moment and see how much of my thoughts and feelings are reflected and are now held there forever. It was a fleeting rare moment (here in my basement at one a.m. of all times) that the image truely and to the deepest level becomes a reflection. I once had an English teacher years ago that writers create some of their best work in moments of extreme excstasy or in moments deepest despair. That was what happens the moment you allow your entire self to come through. And I am thankful of those moments.

The first is titled "PostLustPop" and the second is titled "That's Love, Not Lust..."