BLOGGER’S NOTE: Much of my blogging energy recently has gone into writing posts for Recordnet.com’s Multimedia Reporting and LENS blogs, to which I’ve began contributing last last year. In order to make sure Ianhillmedia.com doesn’t site idle, and to better showcase what I do, I’ve decided to start featuring four-paragraph excerpts of some of those blog posts here. The excerpts will link back to the fill post on blogs.esanjoaquin.com.

I’ll continue writing original posts for ianhillmedia as well. My Recordnet posts will have the category of the blog from whence it came, as this one does.

An ideal news article has three elements: Text, photos and multimedia features. Over the past few years I’ve been working to put together a toolkit that would allow me to produce each of those elements for Recordnet.com and The Record.

The first item in the kit was a MacBook Pro for writing text while out of the office, if necessary. Then a Pentax K200 digital camera was added for taking photos. This Christmas I was able to complete the kit with a Flip HD camera for multimedia.

My first test of the kit came Jan. 5, when I brought my cameras to the Andrew Jackson Jihad concert at the Plea for Peace Center in Stockton. It resulted in a blog about weeknight entertainment in the city that you can find here.

I discovered that producing the text and video for the blog was relatively easy, as I have experience with both. Taking photos, however, was a challenge that involved making a complicated connection between the light, the subject and the technology of the camera. It’s as much of an art as it is a science, and it gave me additional respect for the great news photogs I know and admire.

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