Success? Reflecting on my final portfolio

Danielle Lowenna
Jan 8, 2025
3 min read

Updated: Jan 13, 2025

PORTFOLIO ARTICLES: Screenshots of the three articles submitted for my final portfolio, as displayed on The Mouth.

Article 1 - Student pantry raided 'within hours' as cost-of-living soars

ARTICLE 1: Feature image showing the empty shelves vs. fully-stocked pantry.

My first article didn't have any people in my featured image, so wasn't as visually striking as others on the site.

This was due to ethical concerns of photographing vulnerable students using the food pantry. Two of my main interviewees also wished to remain anonymous.

The NUJ Code of Conduct states that a journalist shouldn’t ‘intrude into anybody’s private life, grief or distress unless justified by overriding consideration of the public interest’ and must ‘protect the identity of sources who supply information in confidence’. In this case, I decided that an image of the pantry being used by students wasn’t necessary to the public understanding of the article.

I did manage to interview SU President Falmouth, so I included a photo of her and the SU President team to try and compensate for the lack of people in my main image. This interview was also beneficial for other students' stories, such as the campus food prices and new coffee cups, as I was able to ask her to comment on these issues. Aimee and Florence were then able to include the perspective of the SU in their articles.

My multimedia element of this story was a video collaging images and quotes from the article. I chose to use the brand colours of The Mouth as the video background and text in order to be cohesive with the site. It could have been interesting to set up a timelapse of the food pantry being used, but this was overruled by the ethical choice to protect the identity of students using the support service.

Article 2 - Małgorzata Mirga-Tas: Behind the scenes at Tate St Ives

ARTICLE 2: Feature image showing the Tate Collective Producers sat discussing one of the focal pieces of the exhibition.

This article was more striking with colourful photos of the gallery. However, I was advised not to include the faces of the Tate Collective Producers (TCP), due to the nature of it being a young people's group. This meant I had to get creative with the angles and framing of my photographs.

Before I joined the TCP, I was required to have a DBS check by Tate St Ives and be briefed about duty of care whilst engaging with young people and members of the public.

I also had to ensure to give appropriate credits to the artwork and chose to include the full credit line as a footnote, rather than make my captions cluttered.

I was pleased with my interview with artist Becky Tyrrell and think that this is the type of content that would lend itself well to a piece in a creative magazine. I would be interested in pursuing culture and arts reporting in the future, as I enjoyed researching the background of the exhibition as well as the opportunity to photograph the space.

I tried to create a narrative in my multimedia video, using both photos of the gallery and captions, as well as videos of the gallery event being planned. This culminated in the date and location of the festival workshop with further details in the article to signpost the audience.

Article 3 - Egg-cellent student script sets its sights on Dawn French

ARTICLE 3: Feature image showing the lecturers and student writers sat together following the successful performance of their script.

This article reported on a student event on campus. Ideally, I would've liked to report on more stories in the wider community beyond my immediate circle, however this piece wasn't premeditated and I was pleased with my opportunistic reporting.

Rather than just writing about the performance from the perspective of an audience member, I also interviewed the writers and one of the performers. This added value to my article and shared exclusive behind-the-scenes content with the reader that would otherwise be behind closed doors.

I was also able to gain a recording of the performance to edit into a trailer. This was my first multimedia edit using the original audio of the video instead of overlaying music, which meant I had to pay more attention to how I was cutting the piece together to ensure the sound also transitioned smoothly, not just the visuals.

As the module progressed, I can see stronger use of multimedia techniques in my work, from purely photo collage, to combining audio and video editing. I would've liked to include more multimedia work in my social media promotion of these stories, rather than just sticking to photos and captions. Accounts such as @bbcnewsuk demonstrate a blend of captioned photos and video reels to promote their articles, which would've been interesting to emulate on The Mouth socials.