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2008 July 29 M&M Quicktips: A CONDUCTED TOUR OF GARY’S PHOTO VEST PRESENTER: Gary Crallé

Pocket by pocket

#1 zoom telephoto lens + 2X tele extender lens

#2 zoom wide angle lens + studio quality digital recorder

#3 wine glass plate clip for fancy events

wet naps (for those social faux pas at fancy events)

leftover bar of soap (from swank hotel stays, to avoid industrial grade public washroom cleaners)

mini folding hair brush

eye drops

mini toiletry container of talcum powder (for those tense moments when the ‘gator looks you in the eye as you’re focusing)

mini folding toothbrush

nail file & clippers in a ziplock snack bag

plastic knife, fork & spoon (when not dining at swank venues)

film cassette of lecithin granules (to digest oils and fats from heavy meals)

film cassette of vitamins & any medications

mini insect repellant

#4 a nifty micro carry-all bag from Fairmont (my newest vest addition)

digital compact flash cards for my cameras

folding table top tripod wrapped in a Tilley hat top (available at the Tilley main store, Toronto) --- indestructible and good for kneeling on, as a mat for delicate items, and to prevent abrasion of clothing

#5 spare camera battery + candies to lubricate my throat during dusty photo shoots

#6 SPF 30 lip balm + anti-bacterial gel (essential for cleaning your hands in far away lands and nearby too)

#7 spare lens caps

#8 car keys & spare change in a film cassette

#9 folding eye glasses

#10 NASA space pen to write underwater, over grease, in broiling heat and frigid cold (everything I try to avoid)

nutritional snack bar

#11 mini calculator

mini screwdriver for repairs to eyeglasses, cameras & computer

cosmetic brush to clean lenses

ear plugs for rock concerts and more

thin strip of non-slip material (multiple unexpected eg. to remove a binding lens filter, to prevent any thing from sliding off a surface)

LED penlight

#12 sunglasses

#13 microfibre cloth for cleaning lenses

white cotton gloves for arranging delicate photo setups

a level for my cameras (yes, I view the world askew --- just ask anyone)

heavy duty elastic band

4GB USB flash downloaded with all my basic computer data

shower cap for rain protection of delicate equipment (although my Olympus E3 and lenses are basically waterproof)

#14 polarizIng filter (the one essential filter for digital photography)

#15 adapter rings to fit filters to different lenses

#16 reporter’s trusty spiral ring notebook + spare pen

#17 ratty-looking vinyl folder holding a page of all relevant contact info for credit cards, business, friends & banking (coded!) + model release forms + airline tickets + passport + mini notepad, sticky notes etc

#18 wallet

#19 business cards & cellphone

#20 Sharpie fine point permanent marker to write on anything

#21 Swiss army knife with essential corkscrew

#22 mini tape measure (for clothing sizes and everything else) & min sewing kit

#23 matches (to light fireplaces & restaurant table candles for photos)

#24 public transit tokens

#25 mini Swiss army knife with scissors

#26 spare local change

#27 guidebook & maps

#28 waterproof/shockproof camera

silk kerchief for sun protection around neck & throat

#29 piece of black felt to block reflections when photographing through a window

#30 folding umbrella

#31 spare lightweight jacket or poncho

Les pièces de resistance: a bottle of wine & fresh baguette

1. Pay attention to the background. (Photo example) You probably didn’t expect that trained elephant from Bowmanville Zoo could lift an adult with the tip of his trunk.

3. Constantly make pictures in order to keep your reflexes and sense of vision sharp, just as a pianist requires practise to keep those fingers nimble. Practice your happiness and photo skills on your kids and relatives. I publish a coffee table book each year for my kids. It’s relatively inexpensive, good offset quality and presentation. The website is: www.mypublisher.com

4. We usually read from left to right. It’s the same with pictures. Think about a story when you compose an image. Introduction on the left, …apogee,… and conclusion on the right.

5. We usually write about topics which excite us. Take photographs only when you have that same feeling. Otherwise you are wasting your own time and somebody’s patience.

2008 March 27 M&M Quicktips: The Nuts and Bolts of Soup to Nuts PRESENTER: Amy Rosen

1. Be inspired by food. Don’t bother if you’re not interested. Unlike some things in life, you can’t fake it.

2. Don’t get bogged down in adjectives. Say something about the food in another way.

To explain these tips, here are a few examples from recent features I’ve written, for not other reason than I’m too lazy to search through other food writers’ work.

Here’s the opening paragraph from a piece on eating Hairy Crab in Hong Kong that appeared in enRoute magazine…

"There are too few food moments in life that you remember forever: those fried zucchini blossoms in Provence, that pizza bianca in Florence, the barbecued goat face in Marrakech (albeit for altogether different reasons). And now this: my first taste of hairy crab."

Make the food, or finding and eating the food, active. Like you would describe any other adventure in your travels. This next bit is from a story I wrote on going to Poland with my oldest brother to discover our Polish Jewish heritage. It appeared in the travel section of the National Post…

"It is in Warsaw that we finally get a taste of authentic Jewish-Polish cultural life, when we sit down to our first Jewish meal of the trip. At Pod Samsonem, on a thriving pedestrian thoroughfare just north of the Old Town, we order cold beer and cool beet borscht swirled with sour cream, shredded cucumber and fresh dill. "This soup has the genetic fingerprint of our grandmothers," David pronounces. It's so good I could eat it forever."

Another bit of food writing advice, and I’m kind of alone on this one, is don’t be so serious. People tend to slip into pretentious mode when describing food and wine, and I’ve never quite understood that. Have fun with it.

So, this last example is from a story I wrote about cooking with Daniel Boulud in NYC for enRoute magazine. This part describes eating his famous burger…

"Momentarily lost in the reverie that is love at first bite, meat juice dripping clear past my watchband, I realize too late that I’m actually meant to use a fork and knife to eat the thing, like the businessmen surrounding me who also wisely removed their suit jackets in anticipation. “Yes, that is what most people do,” volunteers my waiter as I lick my elbows clean. Bottom line: Daniel Boulud is an evil genius – and if this burger were single and Jewish, I would marry it.”

The food, the people, the room, should all be telling you a story, as if you’re seeing giant tortoises for the first time in the Galapagos. It should be exciting. It should say and mean something. Find the pleasure in it.

Say you’re caught in a destination where everything you were after falls through – too cold to ski, too warm for polar bears, and the whales have gone AWOL. Well, you’ve always got to eat, and there should be a food story in there, somewhere. In Whistler I did a feature on cheaper mountainside eats, and in Churchill I did a story on cooking at an isolated lodge in the dead of winter.

You can also become a local expert; in the past few months I updated the Where to Eat section in Fodor’s Toronto 2008, wrote the Toronto picks for Food & Wine magazine’s annual restaurant roundup, and wrote the sidebars on a few Canadian farm restaurants for Conde Nast Traveler. One would hope starting with sidebars and roundups would increase one’s chances of eventually landing a feature.

Don’t be afraid to write about wine and spirits. I like my wine, but I don’t have a memory for all the detailed info needed to be a great wine writer. That hasn’t stopped me. I’ve written stories ranging from the new high-end hooch stills popping up on Vancouver Island, to getting blotto on a “woman in wine” trip to the Riesling region of Germany. Adopt this motto: Have glass; will travel.

Food and wine writing is one of the fastest growing trends in travel writing. And it’s not just about writing culinary travel-oriented articles. There are personality profiles; you can write a piece that follows a culinary trend; or a roundup, of say, the best clam shacks in Massachusetts. In the past two weeks the Globe has run features on eating alone in Paris and a guide to a foodie’s 1^st Ave. in NYC. Start by pitching your regular travel outlets stories with a food or wine bent. Once you’ve built up some great food feature clippings, then move onto the food sections of newspapers and food magazines you admire. I got into Food & Wine simply by emailing them a hello with some clippings.

Then there’s Alan Richman’s stuff in GQ (he also has a blog called Forked at the GQ site), and Jeffrey Steingarten in Vogue.

Some books I’d recommend: “Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food & Drink”, which came out this year. “The Best Food Writing 2007”, which is just like the Best Travel Writing series, only about food; much of it also including travel, mind you. Julia Child’s recently released memoir is also fantastic.

Reading some classic cookbooks; say, Julia Child, New York Times, The Joy of Cooking, to better understand the basics behind the food you’re eating, isn’t a bad idea either. You can also take it a step further and enroll at a great cooking school, like Le Cordon Bleu in Ottawa, or George Brown in Toronto, or the Stratford Chef School, even for a weekender class.

But I guess the bottom line is, love food, always be thinking of food, and the stories will find you. Bon appetit.

Hit the “More” list to register with Google Alerts. They will alert you if your name comes up somewhere – as in your story being posted on someone’s blog! Or Alerts will let you know if someone has linked to one of your stories from their site. Use Google Images to actually see something you’re researching or reading about. A recent search for a fikka table (what the Swedes use for coffee breaks) brought up hundreds of photos.

Print out Karen Bond’s list of the differences between Canadian and American spellings and keep it handy.

This site used to be AskJeeves.com (but it seems younger audiences don’t relate to a butler) and the butler knew the answer to everything. The ask.com site doesn’t seem to be as fussy but if you have a very specific question such as “What are the rules of etiquette during a Japanese tea ceremony?” you’ll get a listing of many other sites to check.

“The World’s Favorite Currency Site.” Get an up-to-date currency conversion for the Canadian or American dollar (or any other currency) against any currency in the world. For obscure monies, just hit the “More Currencies Available.” Sometimes as the site refreshes, you’ll make a bit of money between checks. I like it because it converts both ways.

Thinking about getting a digital camera or upgrading your digital equipment? This site offers thorough reviews and comparisons for most makes. My new digital camera had a 28-page review and included photos, diagrams and explanations. The site also offers discussion forums under specific topics such as “Nikon SLR Lens Talk.”

Want to track a particular flight across the ocean so that you know when to head for the airport? Or do you want stats on how often a particular flight is late in taking off before you book? If a gate changes, or there’s a delay with a flight, or if a plane has finally left the runway, this site will tell you. And you can follow a plane as it flies back to Canada. It’s a fun site with stats and visuals.

For New Markets: if you’re looking for new American markets (or even info on ones you already know), this weekly subscription newsletter ($89 US per year) sends info each Thursday into your Inbox giving relevant details such as Rights, Pay, what an editor is looking for from freelancers, how to send it, etc. This week, for example, the email featured pet markets like The Bark and Fido Friendly. FLX also offers a Pay Check Database, sample Query Letters, a Free Sample Issue, writer forums and more.

For Contracts: ASJA (American Society of Journalists and Authors) has a Contracts Watch committee that will send out quarterly reports to anyone who signs up on what’s new, how to modify an indemnity clause, the difference between exclusive and non-exclusive, etc. On the Home Page, click onto “Free Resources” in the nav bar under “For Writers.” Then click the Contracts Watch link under “Contracts Watch.” All the archived contracts watch newsletters are posted.

For Research: The lii stands for Librarians’ Internet Index. This is a web site database with over 20,000 entries, maintained by librarians, organized into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related sub topics. Travel comes under Recreation but has many sub topics such as Medical Tourism, Hot Springs, Outdoor Recreation and Cruises. Punch in something like “Roller Coasters” and you’ll get a database site for thousands of coasters, a history of roller coasters, roller coaster designers, the physics of roller coasters, amusement parks with fabulous coasters and more.

For Inspiration: The Poynter Institute, in St. Petersburg, Florida, is a school for journalists, future journalists and teachers of journalism. Many writing coaches also teach here, and there is a wealth of information on their site, including words of wisdom from the pros. Just one example from writing coach and musician Roy Peter Clark: “Put odd and interesting things next to each other: Remember that the Vampire Slayer’s name is Buffy, not Conan.”

** Note: This list of favourite websites is a personal compilation for TMAC QuickTips only, and is not available for distribution or reproduction without written permission by Kate Pocock.

Thanks to Participants! And thanks to Barbara Kingstone, Vice-President of the Ontario Chapter and Chairman of Professional Development Sessions, and Mark Stevens, moderator of the Panel.

In order of Appearance: Industry: Jerry Grymek, Sana Keller, Karisa Lui, Susan Melnyk

There are no answers, only questions. Every press trip is different. When planning a press trip, whether it’s to the sunny warmth and Spice Island scents of Grenada or to New York’s Hotel Pennsylvania – The Word’s Most Popular Hotel®, it all comes down to Organization and Communication:

Communication:

Representative for Virginia Tourism Corporation, Virginia Beach CVB, Dallas CVB (Western Canada) and Tropical Incentives DMC (Mexico)