Photography and Video, together forever

I've been busy lately. Very busy. Between putting together a project I've been working on for about 18 months, and all of the end of the year contest entries, I've hardly had a moment to comment on this blog.

I've also been learning about HDSLR. Yes, the newest fandangled toy of the photographer. I've had a Canon 7D for about a year and a half (not coincidentally, it is about the same time I've been working on my aforementioned project).

There are a lot of neat things about the idea of shooting video. But I have to go back to when the idea of video and newspapers first came about...at least from my perspective.

I can remember when I was interning at The Potomac News and The York Dispatch. There were these occasional vague calls for using video to "enhance" our coverage of events and stories.

Mostly these calls for "more video, please...", came from above and not from other photographers. At that time, about 5 years ago, the calls for more video were not accompanied by any effort to inform us on how to do it or what to use video for. Just because you can shoot still photography, does not mean you can shoot video. They are two different things. This is something to remind the editors about whenever you get a chance.

I can remember attending a seminar during a workshop put on by NPPA. During this seminar, a photojournalist, perhaps an editor, extolled the virtues of shooting video and proceeded to show us how it could be done. Oh the possibilities! What we watched, however, was a boring 2 minute video of the scene of a house fire. "Oh my, what have we come to?", I thought. If this is the future of video and photojournalism, I'm out. It was awful. It was nothing more than a sad attempt to replicate what TV stations had been doing for the past 50 years. As a friend seated next to me said, moments into the dreadful piece, "...I don't understand the need to reinvent the wheel...". Well said.

Fast forward to today. The HDSLR is the "game changer". Vincent LaForet first showed us "Reverie" and since then, the creative potential has been unlimited. These HDSLRs produce stunning video. But how can we utilize this? That is the question for all of us still working for newspapers, or even freelancing.

Here's a hint: The people who most want you to produce video do not have a clue how to do it, nor do they have any idea of the financial and intellectual investment required to produce it. It is all on you. But there is a silver lining. It is worth your time.

When the first HDSLR came out in Aug/Sep. of 2008, I was still trying to figure out how to make money. I was shooting real estate and the occasional freelance job. In other words I was worried about that month's rent and bills, not about how to get my creative juices flowing by learning a new skillset. Getting a full-time job in November of '08 changed that. With some consistent (albeit, small) pay, it meant I could concentrate on getting back to finding good stories and honing my storytelling abilities. In December of '09 I bought the Canon 7D for myself.

Video is here to stay. It's that simple. If you aren't learning it, you'd better start. Yes it's a new skill. Yes you have to invest in new gear (don't forget the audio, software., that also goes with video). And yes, you have to think differently about what you're shooting. Because the bottom line is that with video, you can tell stories more richly and more vividly than ever. This is a good thing.

I go back to that day where I sat in an auditorium, watching a sad video of a house fire, and not 3 years later, I'm producing video of my own that looks more like a film than amateur video.

I've now attended a couple basic classes learning more about HDSLRs (@ Penn Camera and the Virginia Press Association), and I recently was awarded a partial scholarship to attend the Santa Fe Workshops, Multimedia Storytelling with Ami Vitale at the end of February.

I'm excited because producing my first piece (it will be online in two weeks) taught me that shooting basic video without thousands of $$ of gear doesn't mean you have to stand in front of an accident scene with a tripod and post 3 minutes of boring video. It can be dynamic. It can tell a story. And now, more than ever, video offers us all the chance to produce the most compelling types of stories.

The newspapers will still call for video of breaking news, and I believe this is shortsighted, at best, stupid at worst. This doesn't advance the art of storytelling, which I believe should be our goal as photojournalists. If you'd like to post videos of football games and house fires, then please, do so. You can compete with every other amateur out there. It's only becoming easier for citizen journalist XYZ to have the same gear you do. We can all stick a camera on a tripod and film something boring.

Or we can realize this is a moment to separate yourself from the pack. I see this as a blatant call to raise the bar. I can begin to think about ways to document and tell a story in a million different ways (and I have a book of ideas). There is a strange fascination with many journalists with trying to duplicate what they see on the local news. I think this is a huge mistake. Print (and now web) publication should be striving to produce meaningful, in-depth stories that defy traditional narratives. Joachim Ladefoged recently produced a piece called Mirror that defies normal storytelling. There is no audio, save for the scoring. There aren't any interviews. There are no voiceovers. Just powerful photography. It's only one example of shooting something in a different way. We should see this and be inspired to produce something different, something beautiful.

Storytelling has always evolved. 60 years ago, photographers like Robert Frank, and Eugene Smith raised the bar. They showed us you could sequence images together to produce a story without words. Video is a new tool. It's time for us to collectively raise the bar again and produce better stories than ever before.

The economy hasn't been too kind to photographers these days, but I'm still excited to be a part of it. I think there's more potential now than ever to create meaningful work. And there's no limit to who will see it. That's motivating enough.