New Media In Photography
How we all miss the golden age of photojournalism, when Life magazine and Picture Post were at their peak, and every issue brought amazing picture stories by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson or W. Eugene Smith. A few years later we had the brilliant Sunday Times Magazine featuring picture stories by the great Don McCullin. Alas, those days are gone, as publishers decide that more and more pages should be sold to advertisers, and the remaining pages dedicated to the lives of so-called celebrities.
However, all is not lost. We´re now beginning to explore the internet and its infinite number of pages – pages that can be as large as our monitors and not destroyed by adverts. Once, the internet was for computer-savvy nerds, but it has now grown in popularity to the extent that all age groups, from all walks of life, are at ease using the web.
But publishers now look at the internet and ask: “What can we do with it?” One of their answers is to use it as a delivery mechanism for video. I suppose they think that a moving colour image with sound is much more ‘modern’, so photographers are being asked to “shoot it in video” as well as using their skills to capture the story in the single image.
In one particular paper in the United States, the whole photography team has had their stills cameras replaced by video. There are two main problems with this approach. First, no one remembers great video of a particular event; it´s always the still image that springs to mind. Secondly, how can anyone use two different apparatus at the same time? The decisive moment will probably be lost as the photographer is busy switching from one to the other.
© Edmond Terakopian
Apple´s Aperture 2 allows image editing, captioning, RAW conversion and export of images. A very handy feature is that it also builds up your fully searchable image database as you continue using it. After having searched through several terabytes of images, I’ve imported my selection into Aperture to make my final edit and corrections.
However, we should embrace any technology that enhances story telling, not just because we can embrace it. This is where ‘new media’ or ‘multimedia’ comes in. Slideshows are by no means a new thing. However, the internet, ADSL and specialist software like Soundslides Plus means that we have a modern equivalent to the fondly-remembered Kodak Carrousel projector and the tatty off-white slide screen that never quite stayed straight.
As photographers we have our own ways of looking at things; our own way of capturing little snippets of life frozen in time by our shutters. The whole approach is different from that of the moving image, and the golden era of Capa, Cartier-Bresson and Eugene Smith can live on in the age of the internet. A step further brings us back to the slideshow. There are various ways of delivering slideshows. While some subjects look fine as silent slideshows, others benefit by having sound with them. This can either be in the form of music, or a recording made of the subject, including audio interviews and ambient sounds. For the Fashion Week project outlined below I used the simple-to-use and easily learnt Soundslides Plus package to include images and audio.
© Edmond Terakopian
Keeping an eye out for nice candid shots provided one of the challenges of the Fashion Weeks.
My wake up call came when a paper I work for called me to do a shift. I gladly accepted the fashion assignment, but then came the request from the picture editor that he wanted it shot in video for the paper’s website. I had lost my first shift to video! I spent a few weeks looking into video; the courses and equipment. It was depressing, as my love is for the magic of stills. But I started to explore to see how I could expand my repertoire. Audio Visual (AV) slideshows was my answer.
This still left a huge amount to be learnt. As far as the still images are concerned, one still uses the pure discipline of constructing a picture story. In very basic terms, it needs a beginning, middle and an ending. Every image needs to be shot and included in the edit because it brings something new to the viewer.
On the hardware side, I shoot with two Canon EOS-1D Mark II bodies and two Canon EOS 5D bodies, choosing between them depending on the assignment to hand, plus a range of Canon lenses from the EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye to the EF 500mm f/4L IS USM. On the audio side of things I use a Roland Edirol R-09. All of this and my Apple MacBook Pro laptop are carried around in various ThinkTank Photo bags and pouches.
As for the software - I use Apple Aperture for image editing, captioning and conversion; Apple Soundtrack Pro 2 (part of Final Cut Studio 2) for audio editing; Apple iMovie or Final Cut Studio 2 to arrange images and audio together to make a QuickTime movie; and Soundslides to do the same as iMovie but in a Flash format for faster web delivery.
Soundtrack Pro 2, which is part of Apple’s Final Cut Studio 2, allows full audio imports and multi track editing. The audio for the project has several tracks (ambient sounds from the program’s own library, a recording of camera shutters and the music track), with various volume settings. Using this program made the editing and combining of the tracks very straightforward. The final track was output as an MP3 file.
For a photojournalist the audio is where it’s an all-new field. If you study the TV news or movies, it’s very apparent just how important good sound is. Good content with clean and neat recordings are paramount. A bad choice of music, or a bad recording of the subject, either technically or content wise, will distract the viewer of your slideshow and loose the impact of your pictures.
The Roland Edirol R-09 is a very neat little package, about the size of an iPod. It records onto SD cards and uses two AA batteries. It also has a built-in stereo microphone. For even better recording quality, it allows you to plug in an external microphone. On the side of the unit is a set of buttons for adjusting the recording level, and a display on the front lets you monitor the recording level. You can also plug in some earphones to hear the recording.
The most important aspect of a sound recording is to get the microphone as close to your subject as possible and to set the correct recording level. Too low and you will get a very noticeable hiss. Too high and you will get clipping and distortion. Think of it as exposing your picture perfectly, keeping all the highlight and shadow detail intact.
The Roland Edirol R-09 is a field audio recorder with built in stereo microphones, and is now part of my everyday kit. It’s superb at recording interviews or ambient sounds, which can really add to the mood of a series of pictures.
When using music, you will have to buy royalty free tracks. A quick search on the internet will show several companies selling downloadable MP3 content for which you can buy the royalty free license. It may be tempting to use a favourite track in the charts, but you will be breaking the law. Just as you’d be upset if someone stole one of your images, so the musicians and their recording companies get upset if you steal their music.
Choosing the right track can take many hours of listening. You need to make sure that the mood and tempo of your chosen music works with and enhances the mood of your images.
As I mentioned earlier, the subject needs to lend itself to a picture story. This method of delivery won’t suit all subjects. The more journalistic the images, the more they will benefit from this treatment. I’ve been fortunate to cover London Fashion Week for years. My very first time was very stressful and I felt totally out of place, as photographers who travel the world just covering fashion surrounded me. However as the days went by and I was assigned to other fashion weeks, I totally fell in love with the assignment. It’s a great mixture of imagery and its up to the photographer to find these.
My first trip back stage at a Basso and Brooke show really opened my eyes to the images that could be made. The energy and speed with which models are brought in, changed, made up and then moved to the catwalk was amazing. Keeping an eye open for nice candids, working in sometimes very low light and all the while trying not to get underfoot all provide their own significant challenges, but they also yield beautiful journalistic images.
© Edmond Terakopian
Shooting the catwalk can be a creative opportunity if you use wideangle lenses.
Then comes the catwalk (or runway), at the end of which you will always find a large number of photographers doing an impression of sardines. Space is at a premium and everyone squashes together, filling every centimetre. Nowhere else will you find such a concentrated amount of 70-200mm and 300mm lenses jutting out from such a small space.
On the face of it, it’s all pretty straightforward. There is a long catwalk, and all the models walk up and down it, wearing the designers’ new seasonal range. This is where it gets interesting though; you can photograph it in a very straightforward fashion (which on certain occasions works very well) or you can get creative and use wideangle lenses, play with the light or move completely away from the ‘pit’ and try shooting from the sidelines.
For this slideshow I decided that I was going to find my favourite images shot over the last four years. After collecting them all I did all the conversions needed in Aperture and output them all at 800 pixels across, using a preset I had already made.
© Edmond Terakopian
In the Soundslides Plus program you can view all your selected slides and adjust the exact length of time to view each specific slide via a sliding timer at the bottom of the screen.
For the next part I spent a while listening to music and finally found a song with the right energy for the catwalk sequence. Unfortunately I didn’t have any ambient recordings made backstage so I found a suitable track in Sound Track Pro’s library.
I wanted to convey some of the excitement of cameras being fired so decided to make a recording of the shutter being fired on an EOS-1D Mark II and an EOS 5D. After recording these separately, I imported them into Sound Track Pro and overlaid them, making the finished track begin slowly and build to a climax, which sounds like hundreds of cameras being fired. The whole thing though was using only two cameras. Lastly came the mastering of the final soundtrack, which was combining all three.
© Edmond Terakopian
The final ‘It’s fashion darling...’ slideshow after production in Soundslides Plus.
Click on the image to view the video
I had already decided that I wanted to show each image for three seconds, so a few calculations showed that I had a few too many pictures in my edit. After deleting four of them, I had the lengths just right. Using Soundslides Plus I imported the photographs and the sound track, and after spending another minute filling in the credits and choosing the colour scheme, I was done.
