Back in October 2009 I went to Syracuse, NY to present my master’s project so I could finally get the master’s degree in photography that I earned back in 2000-01 from the SI Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University. The goal of a master’s project in general is to come up with a real-world, self-generated assignment that demonstrates the skills that you learned while in the program and to use those skills to come up with a portfolio piece that showcases your abilities.
Over the years I came up with several ideas for projects but due to having a full time job, freelance work and limited free time I was never able to follow through with actually completing one. I finally chose to do a multimedia piece for a state government program called the West Virginia Governor’s Guaranteed Workforce Training Award that I worked with while I was a staff photographer for the WV Department of Commerce from 2002-07. Since my master’s studies were in photography I wanted a project that was photo driven but I also wanted a lot of emphasis in multimedia to reflect on what I had been doing since I left school.
I decided not simply to show what I could do but I also wanted to develop new skills that I could use to enhance my career. I had a somewhat limited knowledge of developing with Adobe Flash and wanted to learn the program better so I could use it do develop highly interactive multimedia pieces that integrate photography, video, audio, graphics, etc. For this reason I chose to build the bulk of my project in Flash and Actionscript 3.0. By conceiving and building an in-depth, real world project I was able to learn Flash and Actionscript intimately and built a stockpile of code that I could tweak and copy into new projects (which is proving to be less useful as non-Flash compatible smart phones sales continue rise). I also wanted to know more about using social media so I incorporated a networking aspect into the project as well.
Thankfully my faculty advisors, Tony Golden, David Sutherland and Ken Harper, loved the project and my presentation and I passed with flying colors. Now it will probably take another 7-8 years to get the degree framed and hung on my wall.
Find a brief overview and explore my master’s project on my website. You will find links to the main interactive and to the stories that are contained within the interactive.
Alex Wilson Photography and Video 