RitzBitz

Nine senior photojournalism students at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) have created an innovative multimedia website, Frostbitesports.com. The student photojournalists chronicled different sports linked by one common thread — an extreme element. Through a blend of photography, audio, and video, FrostbiteSports.com looks into the world of extreme winter sports, exploring into the motivations and passions that turn people into winter athletes.

  Throughout the Frostbite Sports project, the seniors worked with professor Doug Rea, department chair of the photojournalism program in RIT’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences. Together the nine students collaborated in a group setting, simulating a realistic production environment.

   In related news, recent University of Michigan graduates Kevin Borders and Joe Golden created a new type of photo sharing website, ScrapWalls.com . The website allows users to upload their high-resolution photos and arrange them into different shapes or designs. The end result allows users to scroll around and zoom in and out on a customized collage.

  Borders, now a Ph.D student in Computer Science at the University of Michigan, wanted to make the perfect, personalized 5-year anniversary gift for his girlfriend. He had seen large compilations made up of many smaller photos before, and he decided to make one of his own using their photos together. Borders wrote the Web application that would become ScrapWalls, creating the first ever wall as a memorial to his 5-year relationship with his now fiancee, Jennifer Cendrowski. From there, Borders and Golden developed the software into a website that allows users to make their own photo collages.

  Currently the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based ScrapWalls is host to more than 250 personalized walls. ScrapWalls will soon become a Facebook application and feature captions as well. Borders and Golden are currently working to establish a partnership with a printing service so that users can eventually order full-color prints of their walls.