The Decentralized Dance Party
A summer party is always fun, but a decentralized dance party… is next level.
There were so many interesting things about this project. First and foremost it was the first multimedia piece I independently put together from sourcing the subject matter to formatting the post and publicizing it. Crucially it’s one of the first pieces I created where all the parts were equally integral to the telling of the story. They weren't so much layers of an onion, as they were different paragraphs within the same chapter or to continue the food metaphor different layers of a sandwich, each bringing something unique to the sandwich which together formed a delicious whole.
Second, there was a lot of prep work for this. The idea for this project came about by way of a friend of mine who forwarded me an email with the information because she thought it sounded incredible and like something I might interested in. She was right, and I developed the idea with a simple goal to document the Decentralized Dance Party as it happened in Boston. I did a lot of research and interviews pre event and I also spent a long time mapping out the story as I wanted it to appear on the blog. It sounds excessive but because it had multiple components and I knew people would interact with each component differently I had to really think about how I wanted the story to unfold and how the pieces would work together. Also I didn’t want to miss anything or waste time on something that was clearly going to be superfluous.
Third, although I had been a photographer for a long time I had only really started to seriously wade back into the photographic waters in early 2012. While I never stopped shooting and photography never stopped being part of my life I had to stop doing it professionally for a while I had take a more regular job in 2008 to make ends meet. This meant that I had to refresh some of my skills before the event took place. So prior to the event I did equipment checks and tests and ran back through all the new changes in Lightroom and Photoshop etc... just to make sure I had a handle on what I needed to use and had to happen before the actual event occurred.
Fourth, and finally, I had to publish the post. I wouldn’t say piecing it together was super difficult but finding a balance between the written content and the visual media was harder than I thought it would be. There were also a lot of little things to remember, you know… stuff like tags, category(yes), hyperlinks, the best time to schedule the post for publication and SEO (which I didn’t know much about), and captioning the images took forever but in the end I was able to publish and it was well received. The resulting piece included a short feature, a basic map of our route and a photogallery and even a short video for to add a little flavor and which I shared on Four Letter Word. Since publication the Decentralized Dance Party, Boston has consistently been one of my best received and most successful blog posts earning views from people all over the world. If you’re interested in reading the full piece, please click the link down below.