For this post I would like to direct your attention to a piece that is, in my opinion, as good as it get. Elissa Eubanks is a staff photographer with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She made this piece on the return of Evander Holyfield to boxing ring. It is quite clear that Eubanks has gone through all the possibilities of how she wanted to put this story together and considered every detail.
There are a few things here that I want to talk about. First of all I would like to talk about the pace of the piece. It starts off slow and brings the viewer into the story. I tried to imagine it starting with some quick burst of jabs, hooks, or some other boxing move. I think that would have been effective but in a very different way. It is important to consider what type of message you are trying to convey through the work. To me, this piece is about his personal struggle to work harder and harder and the viewer needs the intimate slow pace at the beginning to reach that personal connection. The combination of the slow transitions between images and the dialog bring the viewer into the story. Once Eubanks establishes that connection she can boost the intensity.
Boost the intensity she does, and it works perfectly. This story will be naturally fast paced so it makes a lot of sense to have runs of sequences. But you cant just sequence through an entire piece or your viewer gets overwhelmed. Further, if it doesnt make sense with what is going on in the story than it will just look like you are trying to show off. Eubanks balances everything perfectly, she bursts off some shots and then brings us in close with a detail shot. By going back and forth between fast sequences and single images she is able to keep the viewer's attention and lay out a framework for her story.
Then she brings in the voice overs. By using tracks of Holyfield and his trainer Eubanks keeps the story... a story. I think it often tempting for photographers to showcase their work and try and put an emphasis on there best images. Eubanks doesn't do that, it is all about telling a story of a struggling boxer.
The last thing I want to mention is how well everything works together. When the audio track changes energy so do the visuals. Eubanks doesn't use video or sequencing just because she can, she put it in where she wants it and where it works with the message she is trying to convey.
As far as I am concerned it doesn't get much better than this. This piece is definitely going into my favorites file.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
The Next Step
If you haven't heard of FLYP yet, well you're a little behind, but here it is. It's a new wave of media that, in my opinion, is best utilizing the power of broadband and interactive applications. Several newspapers and magazines have dabbled with this but FLYP is definitely taking the world of online media in a new direction.
As much as I hate the phrase "thinking outside the box," the people who created this site are so far outside the box that they have created a new box. All the content on the site is typical of new magazines; little politics, little sports, nice personality feature, things that are generally fun to read. But FLYP takes those stories and turns them into something of an experience.
Traditionally, magazines' web pages consisted of navigation bars and helpful links to take readers to information that they deemed valuable. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this but the site quickly becomes a database for articles and statistics rather than something you sit down and read through.
So the challenge is to keep readers who enjoying sitting down with a magazine happy even though you are moving online.
There are a few things that I think are valuable about rising to the challenge. For one I think your readers are going to be happier with the final product. FLYP is so different from every other online magazine that its readers remember it and spread the word.
FLYP has another leg up on its competitors given that it is much easier to spend a long time looking through pages. Other sites let you search, find your data, and be done with it but FLYP keeps you turning to new pages. I didn't see any advertising on the pages of FLYP but when the time comes to advertise FLYP knows readers spend more time actually looking at their page.
The funny thing about FLYP is that it isn't that much different from a normal magazine. They took what they already know how to do and just moved it online. Yes, they have added flash, video, and sound but generally all the layouts look and feel like a magazine. They are making the digital transition the right way.
As much as I hate the phrase "thinking outside the box," the people who created this site are so far outside the box that they have created a new box. All the content on the site is typical of new magazines; little politics, little sports, nice personality feature, things that are generally fun to read. But FLYP takes those stories and turns them into something of an experience.
Traditionally, magazines' web pages consisted of navigation bars and helpful links to take readers to information that they deemed valuable. There isn't necessarily anything wrong with this but the site quickly becomes a database for articles and statistics rather than something you sit down and read through.
So the challenge is to keep readers who enjoying sitting down with a magazine happy even though you are moving online.
There are a few things that I think are valuable about rising to the challenge. For one I think your readers are going to be happier with the final product. FLYP is so different from every other online magazine that its readers remember it and spread the word.
FLYP has another leg up on its competitors given that it is much easier to spend a long time looking through pages. Other sites let you search, find your data, and be done with it but FLYP keeps you turning to new pages. I didn't see any advertising on the pages of FLYP but when the time comes to advertise FLYP knows readers spend more time actually looking at their page.
The funny thing about FLYP is that it isn't that much different from a normal magazine. They took what they already know how to do and just moved it online. Yes, they have added flash, video, and sound but generally all the layouts look and feel like a magazine. They are making the digital transition the right way.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Making the Right Shooting Decissions
So what makes a photographer decide to shoot one thing but not another? What leads the photographer to focus of the performer on stage but not the crowd? Or in the graphic case, the near dead bodies instead of the commotion of the emergency teams and rowdy neighborhood.
Take a look at part one of A Quiet Night's Menace.
One of the first things that come to mind when I watch this slide show is the potential to do many different things with this one incident. I'm not saying that this doesn't work, but I don't think I would have had the patience or discipline to do it.
Despite all the commotion going on around the intersection this photographer stood and shot from one angle. It's possible that the police didn't let them move and it's possible there was another photographer covering other aspects of the story, but someone still had to make the decision to stand and shoot there.
So why does it work? What are our other options, and why do we choose this one?
This could have been a pretty dramatic video piece, one that I think would have been way too graphic. Even just shooting from the same angle for the duration of the event would have been way too graphic for TV and offensive to many online readers in my opinion. Stills, however, dont provide the same sort of realism so I think the graphic content is more manageable. So, if you did want to turn this into a video package you would need to focus almost entirely on what was going on around the intersection as opposed to in the middle of it.
Another option could have been a gallery slide-show with a variety of different angles. Some with people crying, the two guys dead in the street, police running around, fire fighters, ect.; there is plenty going on here worth shooting.
So why not? I tried to imagine this story shot in that way with the same audio. I don't think that would work at all. There is a certain level of commosion that comes with 991 recording and police transmissions. Regardless of content, 991 recordings always put people on edge, audio slide-shows don't. If you wanted to do this story that way I think a better option would be getting sound bites from people after you were done shooting and after things had time to settle down. At that point the story is completely different, especially depending on what your sources say.
So what of the product we have?
Having the presence of mind to get out the audio record was just as important as deciding not move around and shoot a variety of angles. I really don't the images would have worked without an audio track like this and the audio track wouldn't work with any other images. The two have to work together. Both are chaotic, both are graphic, both tell the story.
This is definitely a very unique piece and I think it is important to recognize all the decision that go into its creation. If the photographer had decided to get much closer this could have been very graphic and/or they could have been injured. If they hadn't recorded any audio this show would have been really boring. If they had of decided to make a traditional show they would have had to tell the story as they interpreted it.
Whether the decision was made prior to the shoot or not is irrelevant, the point is the photographer took a big risk in making this piece and I think it clearly paid off. As it is the story seems to tell itself, and that to me is what it is all about.
Take a look at part one of A Quiet Night's Menace.
One of the first things that come to mind when I watch this slide show is the potential to do many different things with this one incident. I'm not saying that this doesn't work, but I don't think I would have had the patience or discipline to do it.
Despite all the commotion going on around the intersection this photographer stood and shot from one angle. It's possible that the police didn't let them move and it's possible there was another photographer covering other aspects of the story, but someone still had to make the decision to stand and shoot there.
So why does it work? What are our other options, and why do we choose this one?
This could have been a pretty dramatic video piece, one that I think would have been way too graphic. Even just shooting from the same angle for the duration of the event would have been way too graphic for TV and offensive to many online readers in my opinion. Stills, however, dont provide the same sort of realism so I think the graphic content is more manageable. So, if you did want to turn this into a video package you would need to focus almost entirely on what was going on around the intersection as opposed to in the middle of it.
Another option could have been a gallery slide-show with a variety of different angles. Some with people crying, the two guys dead in the street, police running around, fire fighters, ect.; there is plenty going on here worth shooting.
So why not? I tried to imagine this story shot in that way with the same audio. I don't think that would work at all. There is a certain level of commosion that comes with 991 recording and police transmissions. Regardless of content, 991 recordings always put people on edge, audio slide-shows don't. If you wanted to do this story that way I think a better option would be getting sound bites from people after you were done shooting and after things had time to settle down. At that point the story is completely different, especially depending on what your sources say.
So what of the product we have?
Having the presence of mind to get out the audio record was just as important as deciding not move around and shoot a variety of angles. I really don't the images would have worked without an audio track like this and the audio track wouldn't work with any other images. The two have to work together. Both are chaotic, both are graphic, both tell the story.
This is definitely a very unique piece and I think it is important to recognize all the decision that go into its creation. If the photographer had decided to get much closer this could have been very graphic and/or they could have been injured. If they hadn't recorded any audio this show would have been really boring. If they had of decided to make a traditional show they would have had to tell the story as they interpreted it.
Whether the decision was made prior to the shoot or not is irrelevant, the point is the photographer took a big risk in making this piece and I think it clearly paid off. As it is the story seems to tell itself, and that to me is what it is all about.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
What I am Shooting For
For my first actual post I have found some things that I hope to take a closer look at and build up to in the future. Consider these links a "this is what we are shooting for" sort of list. Hopefully over the course of researching for less complicated features I can take the knowledge I gain and combine it into something more like what I have here.
I decided that the best place to start would be what is considered in the industry to be the best, or at least according to the Nation Press Photographers Association. I took a look at the Best of Photojournalism 2009 awards and found some things that were particularly interesting.
I want to start with an idea that I have been thinking about a lot lately but haven't until now been done. Many papers have started posting web galleries and audio slideshows, some have posted videos from sister TV station or produced their own, but few have combined the two.
This story about Windsmiths has taken the two disciplines and used them together. This isn't that great of a story and it wasn't a NPPA winner but it is a good example. Their gallery "Faith and Competition" place 3rd in the Sports Audio Slideshow category.
A much better example of this technique, which for the sake of consistency I will call video-slideshows, can be seen in the entry that won the News or Feature Multimedia Package, "Cape Fear to down here." The package features several audio slideshows that are all worth watching but one in particular caught my eye. The second one from the left titles "A Living Profession" features a fisherman and his day on the water.
By utilizing still photos, audio, and video the story becomes more enticing and makes you want to keep watching. Sometimes when looking through audio slideshows I find myself feeling like they all look alike. In order to be effective a slideshow needs to have good audio, good photos, and they need line up with each other. Most people seem to have trouble with the third one.
"A Living Profession," however, keeps in mind the connection between what is being seen and what is being heard. It is design in such a way that makes you wonder what is coming next. Some sections could have been done with still photos but they use video. Others could have been done with video and they chose stills. By blending them together you get a much better sense of the pace of the fisherman's and you feel like you are right there on the boat.
Hopefully I can find a lot more video-slideshows like this one.
A final note before I finish and that is a link to the winner of NPPA category for Best use of Multimedia, "Thirst in the Mojave." It's pretty easy to see why this one, it might be the most incredible use of multimedia I have ever seen. A few things to pay attention to while you watch.
1) It's not just a video that plays while you watch and "learn" about the story, it is completely interact.
2) Whoever did the reporting for this must have been working on it for a very long time and desearves a lot of creadit. There is a ton of information here.
3) Sticking with the theme of combining techniques, unlike many other multimedia features I have seen this uses video, photos, interactive properties, audio, pop-up text bubble, and so on.
I really hope you check this out it is really cool.
I decided that the best place to start would be what is considered in the industry to be the best, or at least according to the Nation Press Photographers Association. I took a look at the Best of Photojournalism 2009 awards and found some things that were particularly interesting.
I want to start with an idea that I have been thinking about a lot lately but haven't until now been done. Many papers have started posting web galleries and audio slideshows, some have posted videos from sister TV station or produced their own, but few have combined the two.
This story about Windsmiths has taken the two disciplines and used them together. This isn't that great of a story and it wasn't a NPPA winner but it is a good example. Their gallery "Faith and Competition" place 3rd in the Sports Audio Slideshow category.
A much better example of this technique, which for the sake of consistency I will call video-slideshows, can be seen in the entry that won the News or Feature Multimedia Package, "Cape Fear to down here." The package features several audio slideshows that are all worth watching but one in particular caught my eye. The second one from the left titles "A Living Profession" features a fisherman and his day on the water.
By utilizing still photos, audio, and video the story becomes more enticing and makes you want to keep watching. Sometimes when looking through audio slideshows I find myself feeling like they all look alike. In order to be effective a slideshow needs to have good audio, good photos, and they need line up with each other. Most people seem to have trouble with the third one.
"A Living Profession," however, keeps in mind the connection between what is being seen and what is being heard. It is design in such a way that makes you wonder what is coming next. Some sections could have been done with still photos but they use video. Others could have been done with video and they chose stills. By blending them together you get a much better sense of the pace of the fisherman's and you feel like you are right there on the boat.
Hopefully I can find a lot more video-slideshows like this one.
A final note before I finish and that is a link to the winner of NPPA category for Best use of Multimedia, "Thirst in the Mojave." It's pretty easy to see why this one, it might be the most incredible use of multimedia I have ever seen. A few things to pay attention to while you watch.
1) It's not just a video that plays while you watch and "learn" about the story, it is completely interact.
2) Whoever did the reporting for this must have been working on it for a very long time and desearves a lot of creadit. There is a ton of information here.
3) Sticking with the theme of combining techniques, unlike many other multimedia features I have seen this uses video, photos, interactive properties, audio, pop-up text bubble, and so on.
I really hope you check this out it is really cool.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Welcome to my Blog
Thanks for coming to see what my blog is all about. Hopefully this blog will turn into a source for photographers and photo-gallery builders to find new ways of building effect presentations. It's a topic I have been interested in for quite some time and I hope that we can learn new techniques together.
The internet makes it possible for news organizations to devote time and space to image galleries, slide shows, and audio slide shows. It's a new form of expression and a new way to tell stories that people are using in interesting ways.
One of my bookmarked sites is the Multimedia page of the New York Times. Of what I have found, they are leading the way with new methods of presenting images and graphics to tell stories. I try and visit the site on a daily basis.
I am guessing, however, that there are many other people out there doing interesting things I don't know about. This blog will be a way for me and my readers to find new techniques and hopefully shed some light on how people are using the power of the internet.
The internet makes it possible for news organizations to devote time and space to image galleries, slide shows, and audio slide shows. It's a new form of expression and a new way to tell stories that people are using in interesting ways.
One of my bookmarked sites is the Multimedia page of the New York Times. Of what I have found, they are leading the way with new methods of presenting images and graphics to tell stories. I try and visit the site on a daily basis.
I am guessing, however, that there are many other people out there doing interesting things I don't know about. This blog will be a way for me and my readers to find new techniques and hopefully shed some light on how people are using the power of the internet.
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