Since I was going to be at the weekend Relay for Life event any way, I volunteered to shoot something for the newspaper. After more than 30 years in newspaper photography, I can usually walk into most situations and see the feature photo even before raising a camera to my eye.
I stepped outside the tent where my wife and her sorority sisters were encamped at the edge of the stadium track, and there was my page-one image: the long shadows of late afternoon cast by relay participants walking around the track. It was that easy. Later that evening I gathered a few more images for a small, three-picture layout: someone kneeling in the dark along a row of luminaria, a closeup of one luminaria sack bearing the words “my brother” (the candle inside highlighting the Relay for Life logo), and a third image of someone standing before the word “HOPE” spelled out in luminaria sacks arranged in the grandstands.
For years I’ve been parlaying one-picture assignments into photo packages – one strong image to go on the front page with the story (if a reporter has also been assigned), and another three or four photos to run inside, either with the story jump or as a related photo layout with captions only. Why? The extra work makes my job at a twice-weekly newspaper more interesting. I’ve become almost as facile at crafting these little photo clusters as I have at spotting stand-alone images. The point is, my job has become quite breezy: Either shoot for one good image and gather enough information to write a decent caption, or look for a few more supporting images and gather a little more information to put together a small layout.
That was my whole newsprint paradigm before attending the multimedia seminar.
What struck me from the past weekend is just how much sheer work would be involved in producing a decent two- to three-minute slide show.
I’ve studied a few good slide show productions found on the Internet and learned that they average about 12 images per minute – one image every five seconds. For a two- to three-minute production, that means having to gather between two and three dozen decent images . . . in addition to gathering enough clean audio material for story construction.
And that only amounted to the time spent in the field. There would also be a considerable amount of editing time needed to build the audio story and then assemble and coordinate the accompanying images.
What was I getting myself into here?
In the headlong rush to jump on the multimedia bandwagon, I don’t think newspaper photographers have paused to consider what a huge investment this promised to be in time and effort compared to routine newspaper photography.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
The surges of silence, hmmmmm
For the past five years my community has staged an annual Relay for Life in our new stadium, 24 hours filled with team participants and individuals walking round and round the football field to raise funds for the American Cancer Society. For the past few years, my wife has served as a team captain, so I knew I’d be involved one way or another.
Why not bring the audio equipment and practice gathering good, clean audio – perhaps even enough to produce my first audio story? During the multimedia seminar, those of us just starting to learn these new skills were advised to start with audio. First learn the techniques of gathering good audio, then learn how to build a good audio story. Learn audio before trying to produce an audio-driven slide show.
The stadium setting with music blaring over its public address system proved to be a challenging environment for interviews. I was equipped with a decent set of headphones now, so I could detect audio problems. I found that the simple use of a lapel mic worked well to subordinate the blare of music, rendering crisp audio of the person being interviewed. I could hear that much over my headphones. What I could also hear, however, was the background music raging back at full volume each time the speaker paused, creating a seesaw effect with the recording levels.
By the third interview I realized the surging music was probably not a problem that could be edited away. The audio surge needed to be fixed in the field, but how?
Back home in bed for the evening (the overnight relay being my wife’s project, after all, not mine), I settled into re-reading the manual for the Olympus WS-300 series digital recorder and found there is no way to set a recording level manually. The little recorder does this automatically. All you can do is switch the microphone sensitivity between Conference and Dictation. I had the recorder set on Conference, making the microphone as sensitive as possible. With no up-front speaking voice to level during pauses, the little recorder was apparently switching over to the music in the background and re-leveling. Would the lapel mic set at the less sensitive Dictation solve the music surge problem?
Back at the stadium the next morning, I planned to test my theory: find someone to record twice, once at the Conference setting and again at the Dictation setting, to learn whether this resolved the surge.
Interviewee and headphones in place, I pressed Record.
Even before asking the first question, I noticed a steady, low buzz. Something was creating a hum, and I knew from experience that the hum would trump anything else I tried to record. The hum hadn’t been there the day before, and several attempts to relocate the interview within the stadium revealed there was going to be no escape. [I figured out much later after combing forums and tutorials on the Internet that the hum was most likely due to a poor connection with the 1/8” jack on the external microphone. Apparently these small jacks are notorious for imprecise connections that can produce an auditory hum.]
I put away my recording gear reluctantly – defeated again – and helped my wife pack up her sleeping bag and tent for the return home, all the while telling her about the problems I was having with recording.
The weekend left me wondering whether this was how my summer would go, tripping over one technical snag after another?
My wife, however, seemed oddly unsympathetic.
Why not bring the audio equipment and practice gathering good, clean audio – perhaps even enough to produce my first audio story? During the multimedia seminar, those of us just starting to learn these new skills were advised to start with audio. First learn the techniques of gathering good audio, then learn how to build a good audio story. Learn audio before trying to produce an audio-driven slide show.
The stadium setting with music blaring over its public address system proved to be a challenging environment for interviews. I was equipped with a decent set of headphones now, so I could detect audio problems. I found that the simple use of a lapel mic worked well to subordinate the blare of music, rendering crisp audio of the person being interviewed. I could hear that much over my headphones. What I could also hear, however, was the background music raging back at full volume each time the speaker paused, creating a seesaw effect with the recording levels.
By the third interview I realized the surging music was probably not a problem that could be edited away. The audio surge needed to be fixed in the field, but how?
Back home in bed for the evening (the overnight relay being my wife’s project, after all, not mine), I settled into re-reading the manual for the Olympus WS-300 series digital recorder and found there is no way to set a recording level manually. The little recorder does this automatically. All you can do is switch the microphone sensitivity between Conference and Dictation. I had the recorder set on Conference, making the microphone as sensitive as possible. With no up-front speaking voice to level during pauses, the little recorder was apparently switching over to the music in the background and re-leveling. Would the lapel mic set at the less sensitive Dictation solve the music surge problem?
Back at the stadium the next morning, I planned to test my theory: find someone to record twice, once at the Conference setting and again at the Dictation setting, to learn whether this resolved the surge.
Interviewee and headphones in place, I pressed Record.
Even before asking the first question, I noticed a steady, low buzz. Something was creating a hum, and I knew from experience that the hum would trump anything else I tried to record. The hum hadn’t been there the day before, and several attempts to relocate the interview within the stadium revealed there was going to be no escape. [I figured out much later after combing forums and tutorials on the Internet that the hum was most likely due to a poor connection with the 1/8” jack on the external microphone. Apparently these small jacks are notorious for imprecise connections that can produce an auditory hum.]
I put away my recording gear reluctantly – defeated again – and helped my wife pack up her sleeping bag and tent for the return home, all the while telling her about the problems I was having with recording.
The weekend left me wondering whether this was how my summer would go, tripping over one technical snag after another?
My wife, however, seemed oddly unsympathetic.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
About those headphones . . .
Just having an expert tell you how you should develop a new set of skills, doesn’t necessarily constitute a lesson learned.
Case in point: an early effort to get good, clean audio from a brief interview.
I gave myself a Father's Day photo assignment for the newspaper to cover a father and child enjoying an afternoon performance at a traveling circus in town. This could make a nice front page centerpiece for our next issue. I wound up getting a much stronger image of a circus performer juggling three lit torches, which became the centerpiece with the father-and-son image subordinated. I had caption information on the father and son, but none on the circus performer, which meant I had to return to the circus.
So why not take the opportunity to practice gathering good audio by interviewing the ringmaster, right?
Even before setting foot on the circus grounds, I decided that wearing the recommended over-the-ear headphones might look rude, if not a little weird for a newspaper guy, so I opted to wear ear buds, instead. Once face-to-face with the ringmaster, I lost nerve even to wear the ear buds. I simply used the little directional mic plugged directly into the recorder and hooked that over the top of my shirt pocket so both hands could be free to take notes. Why? I’ve been sabotaged too many times in the past, thinking that taking notes weren’t necessary as long as I was recording an interview.
I wrote the caption from my notes, as usual, then sat down that evening to listen to my audio recording. The interview itself took less than five minutes. At the time, I didn’t notice the light breeze blowing across an unshielded mic, nor the plane landing at the airport next to the fairgrounds, nor my occasional shifting from foot to foot apparently swinging the sensitive little mic away from the interviewee.
[heavy sigh here]
Okay, I get it now: headphones – the big, honking, over-the-ear kind.
Case in point: an early effort to get good, clean audio from a brief interview.
I gave myself a Father's Day photo assignment for the newspaper to cover a father and child enjoying an afternoon performance at a traveling circus in town. This could make a nice front page centerpiece for our next issue. I wound up getting a much stronger image of a circus performer juggling three lit torches, which became the centerpiece with the father-and-son image subordinated. I had caption information on the father and son, but none on the circus performer, which meant I had to return to the circus.
So why not take the opportunity to practice gathering good audio by interviewing the ringmaster, right?
Even before setting foot on the circus grounds, I decided that wearing the recommended over-the-ear headphones might look rude, if not a little weird for a newspaper guy, so I opted to wear ear buds, instead. Once face-to-face with the ringmaster, I lost nerve even to wear the ear buds. I simply used the little directional mic plugged directly into the recorder and hooked that over the top of my shirt pocket so both hands could be free to take notes. Why? I’ve been sabotaged too many times in the past, thinking that taking notes weren’t necessary as long as I was recording an interview.
I wrote the caption from my notes, as usual, then sat down that evening to listen to my audio recording. The interview itself took less than five minutes. At the time, I didn’t notice the light breeze blowing across an unshielded mic, nor the plane landing at the airport next to the fairgrounds, nor my occasional shifting from foot to foot apparently swinging the sensitive little mic away from the interviewee.
[heavy sigh here]
Okay, I get it now: headphones – the big, honking, over-the-ear kind.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Minimalist gear for multimedia
I was encouraged to find on the Multimedia Shooter website that the digital audio recorder recommended was the one I already had. Not only that, but I discovered the point-and-shoot camera I had was a distinct improvement (in my view) over their recommended camera.
In the section on getting started, the tiny Olympus digital voice recorder WS-300M is recommended for recording sound "on the cheap." For a digital recorder no bigger than most mp3 players, the audio quality is impressive. Last year I bought the Olympus WS-320M model with one gig of storage and added a tiny "noise-canceling" directional microphone (Olympus accessory ME52W) that can double as a lapel mic. Other than a problem with this digital recorder being more sensitive to interference than any other recorder I've used, the Olympus gear is the best I've come across for price and portability.
As for the camera, Multimedia Shooter recommends the Canon PowerShot SD500/digital ELPH at about $350. Months ago I bought the much less well marketed Fujifilm FinePix F30 for about $100 less. According to the Steve's Digicams website, the ELPH provides a little more pixel power (7MP compared to 6.3MP), but the F30 offers a far wider ISO range of exposure indices (100-3200 compared to 50-400), true macro capability rather than digital macro, twice the battery life, and even a larger monitor (2.5" compared to 2"), despite the F30 being only very slightly larger than the little ELPH. Of even greater significance to a photojournalist is the lack of aperture- or shutter-priority modes on the ELPH, much less manual control. The F30 has all three.
Although my first attraction to the F30 was its extreme ISO range, it was the design of its controls that endeared this camera to me. I started out in street photography back in the early 70s, making those grainy, off-the-hip grab shots in black and white. (My newspaper work has disciplined me over the years to shoot much more precisely.) Even though righthanded, I can fully operate the F30 with my left hand alone, giving me the kind of free-wheeling sense of discovery I used to enjoy. Setting the mode dial to Anti-blur, the F30 provides a suitably high shutter speed while optimizing the ISO for the lighting. This often results in the use of a higher ISO setting than I'd normally select, but the image quality and color rendition on the F30 are both quite acceptable. As for the inevitable digital noise in images in the ranges of 800 and above, that, too, is almost nostalgic.
I'm Old School. I actually like photojournalism with a little grit.
In the section on getting started, the tiny Olympus digital voice recorder WS-300M is recommended for recording sound "on the cheap." For a digital recorder no bigger than most mp3 players, the audio quality is impressive. Last year I bought the Olympus WS-320M model with one gig of storage and added a tiny "noise-canceling" directional microphone (Olympus accessory ME52W) that can double as a lapel mic. Other than a problem with this digital recorder being more sensitive to interference than any other recorder I've used, the Olympus gear is the best I've come across for price and portability.
As for the camera, Multimedia Shooter recommends the Canon PowerShot SD500/digital ELPH at about $350. Months ago I bought the much less well marketed Fujifilm FinePix F30 for about $100 less. According to the Steve's Digicams website, the ELPH provides a little more pixel power (7MP compared to 6.3MP), but the F30 offers a far wider ISO range of exposure indices (100-3200 compared to 50-400), true macro capability rather than digital macro, twice the battery life, and even a larger monitor (2.5" compared to 2"), despite the F30 being only very slightly larger than the little ELPH. Of even greater significance to a photojournalist is the lack of aperture- or shutter-priority modes on the ELPH, much less manual control. The F30 has all three.
Although my first attraction to the F30 was its extreme ISO range, it was the design of its controls that endeared this camera to me. I started out in street photography back in the early 70s, making those grainy, off-the-hip grab shots in black and white. (My newspaper work has disciplined me over the years to shoot much more precisely.) Even though righthanded, I can fully operate the F30 with my left hand alone, giving me the kind of free-wheeling sense of discovery I used to enjoy. Setting the mode dial to Anti-blur, the F30 provides a suitably high shutter speed while optimizing the ISO for the lighting. This often results in the use of a higher ISO setting than I'd normally select, but the image quality and color rendition on the F30 are both quite acceptable. As for the inevitable digital noise in images in the ranges of 800 and above, that, too, is almost nostalgic.
I'm Old School. I actually like photojournalism with a little grit.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
What I have in mind . . .
Individuals on the newspaper staff, its local management and, indeed, the corporate office, all have their own agendas, and my job at the paper is defined by those agendas.
My agenda here is to learn what I can about the future of community photojournalism and find some form of practical adaptation. I can neither afford the HD digital video equipment and software advocated at last weekend's seminar, nor do I think my small newspaper likely to employ such for the duration of my career. My format will have to be the audio-driven slide show, and I want to learn how to produce these slide show stories using the bare minimum of equipment: a Fujifilm Finepix digital camera and an Olympus WS-320M digital recorder.
Toward the end of the seminar, I mentioned this idea to an intern at the newspaper in Tacoma. She gave me a look of disgust. What she didn't understand is that sometimes you have to employ guerrilla tactics in order to bring about revolution.
Back in the late nineties I shot most of my daily assignments with a Nikon Coolpix for more than a year, simply to demonstrate to my newspaper the sheer efficiency and economy of going to all-digital photography.
The Fujifilm/Olympus gear might demonstrate the viability of the sound-slide format for community journalism and help hasten the development of our website into the inevitable alternative to newsprint.
My agenda here is to learn what I can about the future of community photojournalism and find some form of practical adaptation. I can neither afford the HD digital video equipment and software advocated at last weekend's seminar, nor do I think my small newspaper likely to employ such for the duration of my career. My format will have to be the audio-driven slide show, and I want to learn how to produce these slide show stories using the bare minimum of equipment: a Fujifilm Finepix digital camera and an Olympus WS-320M digital recorder.
Toward the end of the seminar, I mentioned this idea to an intern at the newspaper in Tacoma. She gave me a look of disgust. What she didn't understand is that sometimes you have to employ guerrilla tactics in order to bring about revolution.
Back in the late nineties I shot most of my daily assignments with a Nikon Coolpix for more than a year, simply to demonstrate to my newspaper the sheer efficiency and economy of going to all-digital photography.
The Fujifilm/Olympus gear might demonstrate the viability of the sound-slide format for community journalism and help hasten the development of our website into the inevitable alternative to newsprint.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
An introduction of sorts . . .
So here I am, 60 years old, 32 years into a career in community photojournalism – the last 26 years spent covering the same few communities for a twice-a-week newspaper. That's a long, long time to look at people and activities that remain essentially the same from one year to the next, and still retain a sense of mission.
This evening at an awards banquet I ran across an old acquaintance, someone I met the first year I joined my newspaper. He was the staff photographer – only a few years older – for a community newspaper in a nearby town. He told me he was retiring within the year. I replied that I couldn't afford to retire. I probably had another ten years of work ahead of me.
That, however, isn’t the real problem. I don't know whether my newspaper has the same amount of time to survive the rapid changes taking place in community journalism. I've spent the past two days at a seminar listening to one speaker after another forecast the end of traditional newspaper culture in general, and the imminent demise of newsprint in particular. I am convinced that the Internet offers the only future for community journalism.
This humble blog is my personal commitment to understand and embrace the changes taking place in my profession.
This evening at an awards banquet I ran across an old acquaintance, someone I met the first year I joined my newspaper. He was the staff photographer – only a few years older – for a community newspaper in a nearby town. He told me he was retiring within the year. I replied that I couldn't afford to retire. I probably had another ten years of work ahead of me.
That, however, isn’t the real problem. I don't know whether my newspaper has the same amount of time to survive the rapid changes taking place in community journalism. I've spent the past two days at a seminar listening to one speaker after another forecast the end of traditional newspaper culture in general, and the imminent demise of newsprint in particular. I am convinced that the Internet offers the only future for community journalism.
This humble blog is my personal commitment to understand and embrace the changes taking place in my profession.
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