Luscious, inviting, mysterious, soft, cool, warm — a few of the words that came to my mind as I watch Lose yourself in film by bif, on Vimeo.
I share this piece for all of you, who like me, came of age photographically working in darkrooms.
Smell the fixer?
I feel the sensation of unrolling wet film, eager-anxiously first glimpsing the images on my negatives. Now I’m opening the drying cabinet, dust my enemy. In an hour or five I will be back, and reach into the strands of film, ready to cut-and-sleeve, excited-nervous to hold the plastic sheets up to the light, beginning to carefully explore what sunlight has wrought in silver before I print contact sheets.
Squinting, imagining, I don’t need positive images or a light table and loupe to begin to wade through the potential of my film. This unique sensation — tactile in the fingers, images coming alive in the mind’s eyes — is a specific kind of visual exploration that has vanished with digital, something special that this video evokes for me.
Do you miss wading through your film?
I don’t — not really. But then, I sure can become nostalgic for it. For me working with film is like my childhood: the distant past I would not chose to return to, but which in so many ways I still know better than my world of today.
More than once Gail Mooney has advised photographers new to video to shut up when recording audio interviews. I got the point — I thought. If we are not quite, in general, or jump to quickly to the the next question we risk making a mess of our audio files, making editing a real bitch, possibly losing precious soundbites. That made sense. But I’ve discovered that Mooney’s advice actually is much more deeply valuable than had thought.
When Mooney was here in Buenos Aires finishing up her “Opening Our Eyes” reporting, she invited me to help her and Erin Kelly (her daughter/project partner) with one on their interviews. My job: to help with translating. Mooney gave me a quick prep talk before the interviewing, insisting that I shut up as much as possible, and advised me to nod my head, make eye contact and try to encourage further talking — on the subject’s part — by not doing any talking on my part.
If you’ve ever met or been interviewed by me, you’ll know that one of the hardest things for me to do is shut up. I talk, talk, talk, talk.
But then, on location interviewing Maria Eugenia Cuyas, with Mooney working the camera and Erin and I asking the questions, I saw the value of shutting up in action. It wasn’t — as I had thought — just about not jumping on top of the interviewees final words. It was about eliciting much more interesting, expansive answers by using the power of silence.
A Chance to Shut Up for The Master
On Mooney and Erin’s last day in Buenos Aires, I was honored to have the chance to interview them both. That’s right, in the “making-of” video short Mooney created on returning home, she and Erin are responding to my questions — and even more, to my silence. They had tons on their mind, and just needed a little prompting.
Christopher Cairns says his sculpture transmits an impeding sense of disaster that is born out of his attitudes about modern life. Cairns, who relies heavily on music for inspiration, also notes, “The detachment of the contemporary culture from classical music and serious jazz is a disaster.” Regarding the value of friendship, Cairns says, “Part of being an artist is to try to find other people that you can share feelings and ideas with.”
Cairns’ sculpture is powerfully evocative and his sentiments about music and friendship in relationship to the visual artist’s life will be of interest to photographers. Although I can share all this about Cairns, I only know the artist through this five-minute video created by Richard Anderson. This speaks to the incredible storytelling power of documentary shorts. It is also reason to applaud Anderson for taking a great leap forward in his video-making pursuits.
Check it out this video for inspiration from both Cairns and Anderson. Take particular note of how Anderson puts his photographer’s eye to excellent use. His framing of Cairns among his sculptures is fantastic and not typical of standard documentary interviews. And Anderson’s still images make wonderful b-roll that clearly reveal Cairns’ vision of impending disaster.
“I’m not sure I’d agree with you as far as learning multimedia on the job,” Gail Mooney commented to one of my recent posts. I’m glad she brought the point up. In writing about the new multimedia project I have taken on for Human Rights Watch, I wrote: “Photographers can learn multimedia skills on the job,” and explained that thinking this way is what allowed me to take a leap and offer HRW services requiring skills I am still learning.
Learning on the job can mean taking a calculated leap, with plenty of support - like this woman boarding a train in Lima, Peru.
I think that Mooney and I are probably really on the same page, and simply looking at the fine line between offering services we are not capable of delivering professionally and offering services out of our skill range but that we know we can deliver. When it comes to still photographers offering video and multimedia services, we can do this by outsourcing services or, more specific to my point, knowing through experience that we can learn the skills called for — before and during the job.
Not Pro Cake Baking
It would be an unprofessional disaster if I sold professional services to bake a wedding cake this weekend. I just couldn’t do it. But regarding my offering multimedia services to HRW, there are a few thing to consider that put this “learning on the job” in a different category:
I studied multimedia in college pretty seriously, making a polished project that was used by the United States Post Office for public education. (Yes, the technlogy was very, very different.)
I’ve been playing around with modern multimedia, learning some skills and — just as important — identifying the many skills I still have to learn.
I’ve been interviewing numerous photographers over past three years on the topic, processing their advice by writng articles.
Many of these photographers have become friends and have made it clear that they will support me when I need help with my own projects.
When I pitched the project to HRW, I made it very clear that this would be a relatively simple project, fundamentally using the skills I already have (if not yet at the most professional levels).
I was honest and direct with HRW that I would be learning on the job, and that we would need to consider this in terms of both project timeline and our working relationship.
Learning on the Job IS Professionalism
None of these points are to argue with Gail Mooney. She’s been working very, very hard for more than a decade on her film-making skills and she’s still learning. This must be respected. It is why I wrote a post about how hard it is to make movies, in which I encouraged photographers to Continue reading “Learing on the Job, Or Not?”
In the world of new media, still images are like solid, immovable monuments, while videos are like fluid, unstoppable viruses. Given the fact that most of us want our images and ideas to “go viral,” understanding this concept is critical.
I have a lot to say on this topic, but for this first post directly speaking to the strange paradoxical way in which — in the world of the Internet — still images are like Mt. Rushmore and videos are like the bubonic plague, I will simply offer an illustration of the concept.
Let’s start with the little, uncredited thumbnail you see to your upper right. I stole this image from a photographers Web site, I give him/her no credit and I provide no hyperlink back to his/her site. This kind of screen-grab stealing and usage happens 3.4 million times a second, and it’s totally illegal.
Below you see a bigger version of the same image. Now I will tell you it was made by Ian Shive. You will note that I’ve added his copyright stamp, and if you click on the image you’ll see that I’ve created a hyperlink to his site. Further, I will tell you that Ian Shive is a wonderful photographer, a great guy and that you should definitely check out his site and use his services. The fact that I’ve done all this does not change the fact that I what I have done is totally illegal. I have stolen this image from Shive’s Web site, broken copyright law and abused Shive’s right to control his intellectual property. I just can do this with a still image without breaking the rules.
Now, I’m going to post the five-minute episode one of “Wild Exposure with Ian Shive”, a video hosted on Vimeo.com. This multimedia production by Shive and Russell Chadwick features stunning video by Chadwick, amazing still images by Shive, an original musical score the team had commissioned, and yes, you got it: the same photograph that I already stole twice in writing this post.
Not only am I legally allowed to share this video, I am encouraged to do so by Shive, who enabled the “Embed” button, allowing me to post this video directly into my post. And there is no stipulation that I have to say wonderful things about Shive, or provide a link back to his main Web site. In fact, I’m free to host this video on my “The World’s Shittiest Videos” Web site, and even if this really irritates Shive, there’s very little he can do about it.
While it’s impossible to move Mt. Rushmore, powerful viruses have a way of a way of moving with wonderful, unstoppable speed.
Richard Anderson has joined the wave. The wave of still photographers embracing video, that is. We had a long, great conversation today. We discussed nerdy photo stuff and more important ideas about family, friendship and creative satisfaction. Our talk started by touching on all themes at once when Anderson shared his new excitement for video. He’s getting off to a nerdy and creative start by focusing on projects featuring family and friends.
The first piece Anderson published to his Vimeo channel highlights his son, Nicholas, showing off his Lego gun, a real monster of creative engineering. (Man are Legos cool! If you haven’t seen Mike Stimpson’s decisive Legos, definitely check them out.) Anderson’s next two videos are both music videos of Daniel Hill, a family friend whom Anderson captured at Chincoteague, Virgina, during a family vacation.
Anderson’s “Nothn’” music video is pretty basic, but required greater video making skills than “Nicholas & the Lego Gun.” He had to deal with recording sound with tricky ambient wind, and now we do not hear his off-camera voice. More polished, more professional.
“After 11 years of shooting motion and over 30 years of shooting still images, my mind seamlessly makes the switch a hundred times a day between thinking and seeing in ‘moments in time’ or ‘time in motion’”, Gail Mooney shared yesterday in “True Convergence with the DSLR Cameras,” a great blog post from her “Journeys of a Hybrid.” Mooney speaks of how photographers new to video tend to get consumed by the technical challenges and “forget that they need to think and shoot differently when shooting video.”
This is something that I have been struggling with in my very initial steps into video and multimedia. I notice that I either shoot all stills or all motion. My mind is not only not switch seamlessly, it’s hardly switching at all. And when I am in video mode, I hardly know what I’m doing. And why should I? While I’ve been making still images for 20 years, I’ve only played around with multimedia a tiny bit over the past year. How would I know how to make a movie?
To make a movie. That’s the real challenge of photographers “moving into motion”: embracing video capture, as well as audio capture, as well as the editing these element together, or even “just” editing still images and sound into multimedia pieces. This “move making” factor might seem incredibly obvious, but I think few of us really realize this.
Maybe you realize this. But if you do, do you really realize this?
I ask because I recently finished up a 4,000-word article sharing photographers’ insights on embracing video and multimedia and, as good as the article is — I’ll share it with you when I have the PDF — I think I fail to communicate this obvious-subtle idea: Moving into motion is all about making movies, and making movies is hard.
Because of all the TV programs and movies we consume, we have a sense of how movies work, which is great. But, just as casual photographers Continue reading “It’s Making Movies, Stupid!”
I’ve been writing a lot about multimedia these days, focusing mainly on providing inspiration. That’s because I think being inspired about what we can do will lead to us figuring out how we can do it. Still, excellent how-to learning resources are critical, so. . .
Two Great Books
From Still to Motion: A photographer’s guide to creating video with your DSLR (New Riders, 2010) is an absolute must have. Written by James Ball, Robbie Carman, Matt Gottshalk and Richard Harrington, From Still to Motion is an engaging, comprehensive techniques manual geared specifically for knowledgeable photographers. Very, very, very cool.
How’s that for timing? Last Thursday I feature the underwater storytelling of Tony Wu, on Friday I make a case that we should embrace the opportunities of learning multimedia on the job, and then today I hear from Wu. “I’ve been offline for a while,” he writes. “I was in the midst of editing this.”
“This” lead me to Wu’s “Adventures with Craig” blog post, which features his latest video, “Captain Craig,” a project which required Wu to head into uncharted waters with Final Cut Pro. “This is the first time I’ve edited anything with Final Cut Pro and Motion,” Wu notes in his post, and asks us cut him some slack regarding aspects of his video that might need improvement.
Cut some slack? Huh??? The piece is great – successful in terms of what might be considered “traditional multimedia journalism,” but which also focuses on the more “cinematic experience” that Ian Shive told me about.
“The way I learn the best is just to do stuff,” Wu said. “So I will just take an assignment and learn along the way.”
This thought from Tony Wu came near the end of my post yesterday, and I thought I better elaborate on it, both for the sake of clarity and to fend off the likes of Gail Mooney, a photographer who has spent years mastering video and multimedia and who has told me more than once (understandably) that she gets very irritated by photographers (and clients) who downplay the difficulty of creating video and multimedia.
Where did I learn to photograph on a train at high altitude? Um, that would be, on a train at high altitude. (Nearing 15,023 ft., heading to Huancayo, Peru, from Lima.)
Tony Wu is as conscientious of his professionalism and the difficulties of creating multimedia as Mooney. Also, to be clear, this was just one brief thought from him in a very long conversation. Wu didn’t make a big point of the idea that photographers should take on new challenges while on the job. However, I will.
I don’t think it goes against best professional practices to suggest that on-the-job learning should be a critical strategy embraced by still photographers venturing into multimedia. As Wu suggests, why not go out an get jobs that require a slightly higher level of expertise?
