'One of the hazards of publishing a well-known photojournalism blog - getting multimedia like yours, where the photos are both powerful and moving, and I end up in tears at my desk.'
'I am a fan of duckrabbit. I am not a fan because I agree with everything Ben has to say, but because he says it without frills and then will spend the time necessary to engage the consequent discussions. Such commitment is a priceless commodity.'
'I met one of them at an academic conference in the summer. He was the sanest person there, but sure enough by damn gadnabbit ruffled more than a few fluffed up peacock feathers.'
This is a very short photofilm that David and I threw together during our training here in Kenya. We wanted to demonstrate to the wonderful people at ILRI that you can build a photofilm in a short amount of time.
We had about an hour on location. After a lot of smiling, shaking hands and throwing rocks into trucks (to prove how hard he was) David had about forty minutes to take the photos. The audio is made up of two tracks. One track is the ambience in the quarry. The second track is the interview with the young man, which was edited down to ninety seconds from about nine minutes of audio.
David spent one hour editing the photos. I spent ninety minutes editing the audio. The photofilm was thrown together in IMOVIE 9 in one hour. I spent another hour putting the text on the slides and encodeing the films.
Total man hours on this photofilm are roughly seven. Of course that’s not ideal and the film would be stronger if we had had more time. But the point was to demonstrate that there is no need to overcomplicate things.
Hopefully one or two of you will like the outcome.
SURVIVING THE DROUGHT
The 2009 drought in Kenya has had a devastating effect on pastoralists. Hundreds of thousands of cattle died and with them went a way of life that had provided families a livelihood from the land.
We met Lawrence in a quarry just outside of Nairobi. For many generations his family have reared cattle on the rangelands of Kitengale. Now he shifts rocks in order to pay his way through University and for the dream of a better life.
This photofilm was made by duckrabbit during a duckrabbit photofilm workshop at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi August 2010.
Japanese photographer Takashi Arai works with daguerreotypes, an old photographic technique which he says record ‘piles of moments’ – revealing the subject’s ‘true personality’. It’s not a quick process and you’d be gutted if you missed the shot. The use of mercury and other chemicals in its preparation makes it somewhat unsafe. But it’s kind of magical, since each daguerrotype is a one-off, a unique capture. Spotted on John Edwin Mason’s fab blog.
Can’t quite stretch to a new Noctilux? Let’s face it, who can ( unless you’re a minted intern)..
Well, if you’ve got a micro four thirds camera, such as the wonderful Panasonic GH-1, which we are great fans of, then maybe you might be interested in the announcement that Cosina are going to start producing their wonderful Voigtlander branded lenses in the four thirds mount…no need for adapters. And, as of October, you will be able to get their 25mm f0.95 in that mount. And it will be about a TENTH of the price of the Noctilux. So, full 1080 hd at f0.95. Sweet.
Just don’t come running to me when the nose is in and the eyes are out. And as for follow focus…..
One thing I’m just starting to realize through our training is that tonnes of people seem to buy a digital recorder and then plug an external microphone into it. In most instances this is almost entirely pointless. It will generally result in worse audio.
On that note I noticed that Yasuyoshi Chiba was recording with a new digital recorder. Its a Roland R-05, which is like a baby version of the Edirol R-09, which I use.
The great news is that I think the R-05 is actually a better recorder. It costs considerably less and picks up voices beautifully from distance. The built in microphones produce incredible pro quality field recordings.
So if you are a photographer thinking about investing in sound, I seriously recommend that you take a look.
At the end of the second day of our photofilm training here in Nairobi we stopped off at a quarry.
David and I had just short of an hour to see if we could find someone willing to chat and also shoot off some pics. We wanted to demonstrate to the wonderful people at ILRI (who we are training) that producing a simple photofilm neither has to kill you, nor cost the earth.
It turned out that the majority of the men and women working in the quarry were pastoralists who had lost their livestock in last years drought. Contrary to what you might think they were happy to be working. Even if it’s not the life they dreamed of, it is a life.
Someone made the comment that they were like ‘men in a chain gang’ but this couldn’t be the further from the truth.
Perhaps we should stop trying to put ourselves in other peoples shoes. It seems pointless because we end up feeling sorry for someone they are not and then coming up with solutions that suit us.
Just listening is a great starting point. Infact isn’t it the only starting point into someone else’s life?
Anyway, this is just to say I absolutely LOVE this picture by David. I want it for my wall.
I am feeling inspired by David’s quote by William Blake.
Anyone who attends a duckrabbit training will know I talk a lot about Shakespeare. If you can’t learn something about storytelling from the greatest ever writer in the English language someone must have turned your life support off.
“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres.”
I could have chosen one of many, many William Blake quotes. I was going to put one up about infinity or somesuch, but the one below resonated due to the fact Ben and I have spent most of the last week training in Kenya. I’m always banging on about playing to our students; playing with ideas, stories, kit, software, production. Just play, please. Don’t be cowed by the myriad of options that seem to present themselves when starting out, or by those who seem to do it better. Keep things simple, focus on the story, and jump in. As William himself said ( and I’m sure he was talking about Photofilms ) :
“The true method of knowledge is experiment.”
Next week, a quote from Aristotle on the best codecs to use when exporting from Final Cut.
Erdal Redjep is one of the (many) stand out students on the Masters in Photojournalism at LCC. I suggested he bounce his work up to the BBC and it’s great to see them publishing his work on the London website.
If Erdal can just inject a bit more ooomph into his photofims than there will be little to stop him establishing himself as one of the best producers in the UK.
A Facebook spokeswoman said: “We can’t comment on individual cases for privacy reasons but I can tell you that one group, entitled Death to Mary Bale, has been removed today.”
“Photography Ispresents more than 3,000 phrases that define one of the most democratic and ubiquitous of all art forms. Mirroring the ambiguous and untrustworthy nature of photographs themselves, each phrase in this book has been torn from the context in which it originally appeared. The result is contradictory and chaotic, frustrating and insightful. In short, it is photography, without photographs. This book was made after I began to question my own role as a photographer in an age when everyone is either taking, looking at, or talking about photographs….”
It’s been a bit mad but very enjoyable running so many training courses over the Summer. By early September we’ll have done nine, ranging from one to four days.
Duckrabbit’s workshop was very practical and will teach you everything you need to know to produce photofilms to a very high standard. Benjamin has a wealth of knowledge on this subject which he is more than willing to share and does so in a very fun, enjoyable and informative manner. If this is an area you are interested in exploring, I would highly recommend going on one of duckrabbit’s workshops.
Kelvin Brown
Lots of people tell us we’re not charging enough. Maybe. But the point of the training is that we want to see more people making photofilms in the UK. That’s going to help grow the market of organizations who want to incorporate photofilms into their websites.
The other point is that duckrabbit does not believe in elitism. Neither are we motivated by a desire to accumulate a lot of cash. There’s no pockets in shrouds. Genuinely we get a buzz out of seeing the people we train do well, whatever walk of life they come from. The most rewarding training we’ve delivered has been to a group of men who have been in and out of prison in recent years. Their hunger for learning and commitment to the process was inspiring and humbling. I can’t wait to share the work when its finished.
Kelvin attended duck’s August workshop in Birmingham and here’s the photofilm he produced with Shiasta Chistry. Pretty amazing considering they had never done anything like this before. Which just goes to show a couple of days training can go a long way, even if its a bit on the cheap side.
More than a million papers relating to the 1953 discovery of the building blocks of life – DNA – are being digitalised and made freely available in a pilot project by the Wellcome Library. Sit back and enjoy this BBC slideshow.
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We Say/You Say