“At the end of the day, your multimedia project is only as good as your story,” Ian Shive told me today during a fantastic interview. Both insightful and contagiously enthusiastic regarding the evolving possibilities in multimedia for still photographers, Shive is a 31-year-old nature photographer who turned pro only a few years ago — from a background in marketing major Hollywood motion pictures. Driven and focused, Shive is having tremendous success, recently publishing “The National Parks: Our American Landscape” and having launched Wild Collective, a full-service multimedia production company with partner, Russell Chadwick.
Shive’s portfolio is a strong, lush statement that speaks to his capacity to create top-notch nature imagery. However, to get a much better sense of who Shive is — and to gain inspiration for possibilities in leveraging still images in multimedia projects — watch “Wild Exposure with Ian Shive – Episode One – The Southwest.”
Created with Chadwick, the original idea behind “Wild Exposure” was to create a multimedia promo piece for “Our American Landscape.” The thing is, returning from their 28-day, 7,500-mile National Parks road trip, Shive says the team realized that Chadwick “had shot 36 hours of the most stunning footage you have ever seen in HD.” What to do?
Keeping their eye on the all-important story, what the team decided to do was to use Chadwick’s footage, Shive’s stills, voice-over narration and an original music score to create a four-part series that is featured on their Vimeo channel. Much to their delight — and speaking to the unexpected possibilities that mark the new landscape of media — the series was picked up by Current TV, as well as Virgin America airlines, where it is currently playing on in-flight entertainment systems.
A Taste of Ian Shive and Awesome Multimedia
To get a fuller taste of what Shive is all about, you can check out his bio, and watch “Wild Exposure” episodes two, three and four.
To see a beautiful example of multimedia storytelling (Shive explained that Wild Collective aims for a cinematic experience that is more Hollywood than typical multimedia journalism), watch “Ranger Doug Follett: 50 Years at Glacier National Park,” a heart-warming piece Wild Collective produced for “National Parks Magazine.”
To see the Hawaii through the vision of Shive of Chadwick, check out Wild Collective’s most recent story-driven multimedia experience, “The Island of Hawai’i.”