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Intimate audio

Adam Westbrook — Sun, 02 May 2010 19:55:04 +0000

Have you checked out the daily blog Someone Once Told Me?

It’s a collection of photographs where the subjects are holding up a phrase someone once told them, that has somehow affected their life. I included it in this list of collaborative photography projects, and was in it last year too (warning, rude words).

Well here is today’s SOTM, by a girl in Los Angeles. The picture doesn’t say too much. But click on the image, and have a listen to the audio which accompanies it.

I still maintain good quality, intimate, close up audio grabs you like nothing else. Her pauses, hesitations, umms and errs, add such emotional weight to her admission and tell us much more about who she is than a picture can do.

No-one ever pulled up in their driveway and stayed in the car to look at a really good photograph, but they’ll do it if there’s something amazing on the radio.

Still, arresting audio is harder to come across than a virgin in Los Angeles. But why? It sounds to me like the girl in the above picture recorded her story on an iPhone. Apps like Audioboo mean we can all start recording our own audio stories and sharing them with the world.

Mary Hamilton‘s a journalist, who has just started recording a daily AudioBoo on her way home from work. Nothing in particular, no real theme, just what’s on her mind as she potters home after work. Lovely idea.

Imagine if we all started recorded our own audio diaries? How many great stories would emerge from the ether?

ADAM WESTBROOK

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Bombay Flying Club’s Streetlights: a last for Flash?

Adam Westbrook — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:25:23 +0000

Multimedia producers the Bombay Flying Club have just published their latest piece, shot in Ethiopia.

At 11 minutes, Streetlight is a little on the long side for most armchair viewers, and the Flying Club’s trademark use of rich black and white photographs, while stunning, perhaps steals something from the overall piece. Their use of audio is wonderful, and they do what all audio slideshow producers should do (but rarely do) and match their pictures to their sound.

In Streetlights we hear a game of table tennis in mid flow – and that’s what the picture then shows us.

What’s interesting is a line buried at the bottom of the Bombay Flying Club’s post announcing the new story:

Streetlight is presented in full screen Flash and it requires a decent broad band connection in order to run smoothly. A low res version has been made for the NGO partnerships in Ethiopia.

This might be the last Flash documentary produced by BFC. In the future we will be working closely together with professional programmers in order to keep pushing the limits for online visual storytelling.

It is good to see multimedia producers looking beyond Flash for their work. While easy to use, Apple’s refusal to include it in some of its big products recently limits its potential. Meanwhile Javascript, J-query and eventually HTML5 promise the ability to create stunning interactive graphics with little or no big installations.

ADAM WESTBROOK

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Wootton Bassett..the town that honours

David White, photographer — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:32:15 +0000

Sent to the duck by Ian Forsyth, this multimedia piece looks at the repatriation of soldiers killed on operations whilst in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the thoughts of the residents of Wootton Bassett..a town through which many bodies of these men pass. His piece is an MOD produced handout, maybe the first of its kind for them.
I’d like to thank Ian for passing it along to us for your viewing.
Also, check out Ian and Matt Kirwan‘s other multimedia here.

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I see and yet I cannot find (Asim Rafiqui)

Ciara — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:28:59 +0000

I feel off-balance, and unable to keep up with the pace of the life unfolding in front of me. There are a million obvious images, but none that feel right to a frame. I see and yet I cannot find. I struggle to look, but yet I sense that I am not looking in the right places. Or I just miss….

Is it proper for a professional to admit that he is constantly burdened by a sense that even after nine years as a professional he continues to have moments that don’t even lift him beyond an amateur or hobbyist, or the dilettante?

…an interviewer once asked me why I loved photography and I responded that it wasn’t photography that I loved, but the act of searching for and making an image. After that I was largely indifferent to the rest of it. And so I remind myself that like all great loves, like all obsessions, the struggle is what makes it so compelling and not the goal itself.

National Geographic photographer Asim Rafiqui was given the 2009 Aftermath Grant for his project The Idea of India. He’s also a fantastic writer. I highly recommend you check out his blog, which is one of my favourites and is about much more than photography.

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Drawing the dead (audio slideshow)

Adam Westbrook — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:07:26 +0000

It’s not often the BBC’s small audio slideshow team really nail it on the head, but they’ve put together something special today.

Portraits of the Fallen tells the story of a Vietnam veteran who gets up at 4am every morning to draw pictures of service men and women killed in Iraq.

As well as excellent use of music and natural sound, this slideshow stands out because of the wonderful use of split screens to tell the story. The narrative itself is very simple, with the artist, Michael Reagan,telling three stories of killed soldiers he has drawn.

Well worth the 3:14 it’ll take to watch.

ADAM WESTBROOK

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Faces of the uninsured – Evan Vucci, you have inspired duckrabbit

duckrabbit — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 01:15:14 +0000

“Our original mission was to provide airborn medical relief in the developing world but since 1992 we’ve been heavily involved in providing care here in the United States.”

Stan Brock, founder Remote Area Medical

Please do check out AP photographer Evan Vucci’s stunning multimedia feature about a charity providing medical care in the USA. This is one one of the best, most coherent pieces of visual journalism I’ve ever seen. There is NOTHING detracting from the story.

No crappy voiceover.

No dodgy graphics.

No arty photography.

No reams of text.

No unnecessary music.

And damn doesn’t it make you stop and think.

Now if we could only export Evan’s approach to the way we communicate about people in the developing world then visual journalism might start actually helping to achieve some of the changes needed to make the world a fairer place.

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Comment from Stan Banos …

duckrabbit — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:29:39 +0000

Because someone has to state the bleeding obvious to all these photographers who want to save the world by taking wonky black and white photos and getting them up in galleries …

If you’re devoted to making it in the art world, you’re not exactly dedicated to making social change…

Which reminds me of something I read on John Levy’s (Foto8′s) excellent highs and lows of the last year (much better than all these really annoying top ten lists). Lows:

Edward Burtynsky for suggesting we pay him $25,000 for a HOST gallery talk on Oil. Well if we make a packed house then I’m sure everyone will wish to contribute $340 towards that! (not)

More outspokenness for 2010 please John.

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The Vision and the Voice

duckrabbit — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:00:10 +0000

A few days back I exchanged emails with the photographer Stephen Alvarez, who for the last fifteen years has shot for National Geographic. He suggested we take the conversation onto our blogs.

If you’re not aware of his work than I would say it is characterized by being both hard won and sublime:

He also writes a proper blog that I recommend you add to your readers list.

Its his pictures on the Sudan/Uganda border that have really caught my eye.

If you’ve hung out on duckrabbit for long enough you’ll know that I have an issue with a lot of black and white photography taken in Africa. The truth is in the dark continent you are much more likely to be blinded by the light then suffocated by the darkness.

Stephen’s answer to my question as to why he shot this work in black and white is both a technical and aesthetic one:

‘On my first trips working on this body of work I photographed in both color and black and white. I found the color to be too garish, too distracting for this particular story.’

Stephen’s vision of the border is compelling. I can see glimpses of the parts of Africa I love, just without the color. That’s very much his vision. But then I spotted another of his videos. Also shot in this part of the world. And here we turn to the Voice. Bang. Bang. It shoots you down.

Photographers celebrate the vision but I’m often most often moved by voice.

Fred Taban tells me more than half a dozen photo books focused on African poverty. His voice has soul.

People are a bit like music. You can look at stunning pictures of Hendrix burning his guitar. The pictures tell a great story but you’ve got to hear the sound to really understand.

Actually the real power is in the two brought together. Vision and Voice.

The power is because Fred is staring you out.

It’s a one on one experience and no-one is getting off the hook.

Amen to that.

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duckrabbit wholeheartedly recommends the thinking person’s alternative to

duckrabbit — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:12:43 +0000

us:

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There is the plague

duckrabbit — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 21:05:53 +0000

and then there is the ICO Gallery in New York.

Both should be avoided but if I think my career would more be more likely to survive a dose of the plague then a stint on the ICO’s walls.

Intrigued? Read the ever brilliant Mark Page, of Manchester Photography fame for more …

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