we produce beautifully crafted multimedia » So What Do You Think?

Wish you were here…

duckrabbit — Mon, 23 May 2011 13:54:44 +0000

No, really. You are missing out on one of the most beautiful, creative and inspiring workshops I’ve ever known.

OK, I have a vested interest, but I don’t do bullshit. The Hinterlands Workshop is exceeding our wildest expectations.

We are blessed to be able to spend time teaching and learning from some fascinating students, blessed to be able to see a blanket of stars every night, lucky to sleep in huge Mongolian Yurts and even luckier to be chasing intriguing stories.

Oh, and don’t forget the awesome food, the real ale, the cider, the campfires, the sheepskin rugs, the camaraderie. Plus…..there’s a whole lot of learning going on ( that is the point, after all ).

Our students have been up in gliders, seen the emergence of new life, learned about beekeeping, steam trains and eagles, amongst a thousand other things.

As I write this they are sat in the communal barn working on their story edits, and tomorrow they will produce their final pieces. Also tomorrow the subjects who were kind enough to allow our students to pester them for a day will be coming to watch the final pieces, voting amongst themselves which team has created the most interesting and inspiring piece.

Like it says at the top, wish you were here…you’re missing out. Please come next year… what’s not to love.

“I have four babies, beautiful, gorgeous, why should I ever think about suicide? I had these thoughts in my mind. I was messed up.”

duckrabbit — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:51:11 +0000

This is an astonishing photofilm about how one small fishing community has been affected by the BP Oil disaster. What the photofilm lacks in context about the disaster it makes up for in emotional punch and as good a set of documentary photography as you are likely to see.

I take my hat off to Director/Photographer Melanie Burford.

“Its not a job, it’s who you are. We are losing it. I don’t think we’ll ever get it back.”

Please watch this, share on Facebook and Tweet. You may not see a better photofilm this year and guess what, no shallow depth of field in sight.

Photojournalism and ‘What is the point of ‘exclusivity’ these days?’

David White — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 15:58:51 +0000

Like many, I have been glued to my computer watching the epic events in Egypt unfold. Images coming in from all over, different views every day, a plethora of images.

Visually I have a great handle on things thanks to the amazing power of the tintertwizzle.

I noticed Time shouting that they had an exclusive set of images from Dominic Nahr. Now, don’t get me wrong, Dominic is a quality photographer. He knows his shallots from his red onions. I’m not talking about him. The point is, what value is there, in an online environment, from having an exclusive set of news pictures? Especially if they come a few days after all the live stuff people have seen?

The power of an immediate, maybe blurry, a bit noisy, but live image snapped on a ‘phone as it happens totally beats the crap out of a beautiful image posted online a few days later.

Totally.

I can understand exclusive access, a unique story…that has a value to me.

A set of images, however good, however exclusive after an event now seems a bit pointless.

You can’t leverage the exclusivity to get punters to buy your product…they are free, online.

LINK TO PIECE

War Never Looked So Hip

duckrabbit — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:41:46 +0000

(amended title because Joerg’s was MUCH better)

Take a look at this picture by Damon Winter, as featured on the (excellent) New York Times, Lens Blog, and part of a series featured in the newspaper:

The photographs have been taken using an iPhone that automatically applies heavy processing with an iPhone app. On James Estrin’s (LENS Editor) Facebook page Nina Berman had this to say:

In his introduction to the photos James makes the point,

‘Does it really matter what camera Damon Winter used to make these beautifully composed images? I don’t think so. It’s the images that are important.’

But I disagree.

Not that the photos aren’t ‘beautifully composed’, nor that there isn’t a skill in taking them. However to me the camera and the processing applied to the images is fundamental to how we respond to them. That’s why so many people are buying these Apps because as one website comment about the Hipstamatic iPhone App puts it:

I *love* the photos that come out of this app, it makes just about anything look amazing.

Even, it seems, the Afghan war.

Once again we are talking about how ‘beautiful’ the photos are, or what a great device the iPhone is, but not about the war in Afghanistan (although many people do comment that the photos bring them close to the lives of the soldiers). Would we really be talking about these pictures if they hadn’t been processed by an app on the iPhone?

Realistically we can only be debating the use of an iPhone because we are so detached from the reality on the ground for the many suffering Afghanis, despite the photography (or lack of it beyond American and British soldiers). Journalistically that must be viewed as a failure. It’s also a failure of democracy, the very thing we are trying to import into Afghanistan, because there is so little debate about the billions of dollars of taxpayers money that have been used to wage a war that we are only just starting to admit we can never win.

Not to mention the well documented torture and murder of Afghan citizens in detention by American soldiers.

In the meantime a lot of people have got very rich, some people have better lives, many have died and the photo community are rushing out to buy iPhone apps. Fair enough, I saw the pictures and want one too.

Maybe the New York Times can do an experiment, to help us understand how post processing affects the way we are manipulated by an image and wether these photos mean, as Nina Berman points out, that the ‘doors have been blown open.’ After all if an editorial standard is to be dumped there should be some kind of rational explanation.

Present the same images both with and without the additional processing (the camera’s standard JPEG) and measure the response.

It seems to me that if you take editorial integrity seriously, as some kind of objective process (not that I believe in such a myth), this would be a simple way of gaugeing just how much our response is being manipulated by the skill of the photographer or the skill of the computer and where that line should lie?

(Please note I have no problems with manipulation, staging or otherwise, just as long as you don’t try and hide it from me)

UPDATE:

Tom White who writes the EXCELLENT Photography Lot already posted on this story and wrote the following comment:

I worry about this – as I said to my students when they brought it up; it sends out mixed messages. The AP guidelines on retouching (in a typically vague manner) state that anything above basic colour correction and toning should be labeled clearly as a photo illustration. I think these fall into that category. On the other hand, is using the hipstamatic app really so different than choosing to shoot with a holga or load your camera with high speed black and white film because of the effect it gives? At what point are these things unethical? When do they become culturally acceptable as standard journalistic practice? I do know that if I took raw files from my SLR and hipstamaticised them in photoshop I would be in trouble. Wouldn’t I?

http://photographylot.blogspot.com/2010/11/shooting-from-hipster.html

The problem is that photography is both a science and an art and as such contains an inherent contradiction in the form of the objective/subjective process. With photo manipulation and retouching, there is a huge grey area between definitely acceptable and horrifically unethical. This debate has been going on since the invention of the medium and will no doubt continue without ever getting properly resolved. I could pull up examples of manipulation that have been held up as unethical while at the same time find similar (and more extreme) examples that no one seems to have batted an eyelid at.

My personal view is that when you are presenting work in a documentary and journalistic context and viewers are looking at the style and the process to the detriment of the content then you have failed. I actually do find some of these photos have a great intimacy to them that in cultural terms is enhanced by the use of the iphone app and may perhaps bring the daily lives of the soldiers into the barhopping world of the iphone wielding hipster, stopping them for a second to make them think about the war. However, ultimately I doubt it. Especially as I imagine the more common response is ‘wow, cool app’.

I wish I had a penny for every time I heard someone who I am photographing ask me if I was going to ‘make them look good in photoshop’. This to me is the really worrying thing. If people assume that photos are manipulated then how can they trust what they are seeing? For a journalist, where trust and believability are essential aspects of the work, this is a problem.

In any case, while he’s over there, perhaps Damon could use his iphone to get the same intimate view from the afghan side….

Is Seeing Believing? (powerful, powerful, photofilm)

duckrabbit — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 11:08:15 +0000

In many ways sound is the ultimate visual medium. When we listen to something, or someone, we create images in our mind.

One of the clichés of photography, particularly humanitarian photography, is that it gives people a voice. Watch the video on the front page of the VISA website to see exactly what I mean. But if you break down why images are selected by editors, photographers and even NGO’s, hardly ever is the dominant reason that they feel the image gives the person in the photo a voice. That’s not a discussion that you will hear in editorial meetings. Aesthetics, information or emotional manipulation remain the dominant drivers of the images that we see (all good reasons to pick a photo).

As more and more and more and more and more and more (into infinity it seems) photographers scramble to get noticed the situation will only get worse. (here’s an example of what I mean on Burn Magazine)

I think one of the major differences between radio documentary and photography is that radio producers tend to know when something is over-produced, indulgent, mawkish or just crap, and generally they are happy to say so. Even though audio producers are dealing with people’s voices, they rarely, if ever, make claims about what their programmes can or can’t achieve. For me it’s always enough to know that someone is listening.

Below is a photofilm by Claire Barthelemy one of my students at The London College Of Communication.

I’ve shown this brilliant photofilm at pretty much every training I’ve run in the last year. It splits opinion, but I love it.

I defy anyone to watch this photofilm and not afterwards be happy to sit and have a cup of coffee with the man featured in it. Given his situation that’s a major leap for many people.

In this film we see the person, because we hear him. That makes all the difference.

Submit your thoughts/ideas on the Visa pour L’Image Festival here

duckrabbit — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 11:35:11 +0000

If people have concrete ideas as to how to make anything at Visa or around Visa better, more engaging, more relevant, or more interesting, they should get in touch with us. Think the work we show is bad ? Send us your own, better work. Think Visa is irrelevant ? Come and make it relevant. Think Visa sucks ? Come and make it good. We don’t care who distributes your images, and we won’t show your work because it was published in a prestigious magazine, even if that magazine is our sponsor. We won’t show it because it wasn’t published in a prestigious magazine, either. We will show it because we think it is good, and that others will, too.

It’s that simple. We’re a small team, and we have limited ressources. But we’re listening.

JF Leroy, Festival Director

(only constructive comments welcome)

Where good ideas come from….

Iamnotasuperstarphotographer — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 11:20:14 +0000

I am going to start off by asking the question “How can ‘photofilms’ avoid being classified as ‘cheaper films’ by the film community?”

I am honoured to be able to be part of this progressive discussion on what happens next for photojournalism.

Much negative stuff has come from dealing with the problems of the industry from me but with every problem, there is a solution where exciting opportunities can come and replace establishment thinking.

I have my own ideas but what do you all think?

So I will kick off progressive discussion with this little piece that has influenced much of my current thinking in regards to the question we all want to know… what is the future for Photojournalism?

As you have probably guessed, I believe the future is not coming from the people who run things today.

I am going to start off by asking the question “How can ‘photofilms’ avoid being classified as ‘cheaper films’ by the film community?”

Related posts:
The film that would win the World Press Multimedia Award (if there was a public vote)

The future of photojournalism? This is brilliant. Almost makes me want to learn french…

Silver’s going up….

Photog Bites Off Video (and chews)

duckrabbit — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 08:40:39 +0000

Making the transition from still photography to videography is bloody hard. There are no short cuts. But rarely has someone made the transition so convincingly as Chinese based photographer Sean Gallagher. Armed with a grant from the Pulitzer Centre he’s been investigating the plight of the Chinese alligator.

Watch his short film and then read Sean in his own words about how he trained himself to become a film-maker. Hats off to you Sean, you did a great job.

As China continues its rapid economic development, the wetlands of the country are increasingly coming under threat.

Many of the species that inhabit these wetlands are being pushed to the brink of extinction, including the Chinese Alligator. Only 120 individuals are now estimated to be left in the wild, as a result of wetlands reclamation since the 1950′s.

Photographer and Videographer Sean Gallagher travels to Anhui Province in central China to document the crisis facing this species, for the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

http://www.threatenedwaters.com (Coming Oct 2010)

“My first experience with video came when working on assignment in North Korea in August 2009. At that time I could only use a touristy camcorder because of the restrictions we were under and the fact I was posing as a tourist, however after producing three short videos for The Globe & Mail (Canada’s national newspaper), I became hooked on the possibilities video could give me for new ways in visual storytelling.

I was very excited to see video come out in Canon DSLRs in late 2009 and was blown away by the quality of the footage. Rather than rushing out to buy one however, I actually headed to Amazon and bought a bunch of books about how to shoot, edit and produce documentary films. I knew I had a lot to learn, so rather than rushing into it, I decided to take my time and try to learn the fundamentals of video to try to give myself a solid base from which to build on.

I think by taking this approach, it has facilitated a smoother transition for me to shooting video. Video really is a whole different world compared to stills, so rather than being overtaken by my initial enthusiasm and trying to ‘learn on the job’ say, I forced myself to take a little more of a planned approach to learning this new skill.

In terms of books, I highly recommend “Directing the Documentary by Michael Rabiger. It’s a bit of a tome but is my ‘go to’ reference book. With regards to websites, I think DSLR News Shooter has been very useful to in terms of the technical side and seeing what has worked (and what hasn’t) for other professionals, in these teething stages we are in with DSLR video.”

Related posts:
shifting sands – desertification in China

You’ve got to love a video that takes the piss out of DLSR video geeks

Dan Chung, we don’t believe in flame throwers

Is Getty wearing Leroy’s trousers?

duckrabbit — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:19:37 +0000

UPDATE Jean Francois Leroy has emailed duckrabbit to say he will be responding within the next 48 hours.

Some of you will have been following the debate about why JF Leroy (Director of the Visa Pour L’Image Festival) has gone to such lengths to give the Haitian photographer Daniel Morel a kicking for uploading 15 of his pictures to Twitpic on the night of the Haitian earthquake.

After a rather lengthy response to our original post Mr Leroy has chosen not to answer the following questions (update Mr Leroy has emailed to say he will respond in 48 hrs) that we put to him.

Isn’t it true that Visa has a business relationship with Getty, one of the companies who distributed Morel’s photographs and then refused to compensate him?

Do you yourself derive benefit from that relationship?

Given that Getty are one of the key sponsors of Visa is it possible that some of the money Getty received from the sale of Morel’s photographs could benefit Visa?

Getty are much more forthcoming. The following text (edited for brevity) is from a press release put out by them shortly before the 2010 festival.

‘“We are delighted that their (Getty photographers) projects are being highlighted at Visa Pour l’Image, which we are sponsoring for a third year, as we continue our support for the photojournalism community.” comments Adrian Murrell, senior vice president, global editorial, Getty Images.

Eugene Richards, Walter Astrada, Antonio Bolfo and Athit Perawongmetha, Paula Bronstein, Mario Tama, John Moore, Alvaro Ybarra Zavala, Tom Stoddart and Marco Di Lauro who are all photojournalists with Getty Images, have been chosen by the Visa Pour l’Image festival to showcase their work to festival attendees from August 28 to September 12, 2010.’

Draw your own conclusions.

____________________________________________________________________________________

For more insight on this story, read the excellent Olivier Laurent (BJP) who has dug away on this way, and Jeremy Nicholl’s (The Russian Photos blog) one of the best writers about photography on the web, as well as a renowned photographer. Finally Peter Marshall (>Re: PHOTO) is worth checking out. Good to see Mikko (photojournalism links), and Trent Nelson (The Click) keeping tabs on the story too.

Related posts:
Why AFP, Getty, Jean-Francois Leroy, CNN, ABC, CBS love photographs but have no time for photographers, or ‘it wasn’t rape your honor because she was in the room and I was horny’

JF Leroy, ‘I am listening’

AFP, CNN, Getty, ABC, V Morel, why this case matters to all professional photographers or why Getty could be selling your photos without you even knowing …

Dear Mr Leroy (an open letter)

duckrabbit — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:23:18 +0000

Thank you for your response to my post yesterday critisizing the way way certain photo agencies seem content to abuse the rights of indvidual photographers. I am sorry that we misunderstood you. Might that have something to do with upholding a logic that many people find is at odds with your self stated remit of ‘defending professional photographers’?

If you take that remit seriously and if you want others (the one’s who are not desperate to grace the walls of your festival) to take you seriously, doesn’t it make more sense to embrace the digital world in which the vast majority of professional photographers produce their work?

To tell photographers not to use social network sites is a bit like suffering from agoraphobia and then insisting that nobody else in your family leaves your cave for fear the sky will fall on their heads. Let’s briefly look at two things.

The use of the web by photographers

Your attitude towards Morel

Many, many photographers successfully use social network sites and in fact many agencies actively encourage this because they rightly conclude that the danger of another agency stealing and selling their work is far less than having an invisible and therefore worthless product.

Photographers that have used social networks to promote work recently include Kashi, Nachtwey and Bleasdale. David Alan Harvey’s Burn magazine is a social network site. Images can be stolen from it in exactly the same way as Flickr or Twitpic, infact the pictures on Burn are generally of a higher resolution.

How many other cases like Morel’s are you aware of? By putting his pictures on Twitpic he got them out to a huge number of people, at a time when the most important thing to him was that the public was aware of the magnitude of the crisis in Haiti.

Did the fact that he published his photos first on Twitpic stop any of the world’s major news outlets from publishing his photos also? No.

Did it stop any of them from paying for his photos? No.

The only problem is that the money went in the wrong persons pocket and now they want to keep it, for which your comment to Olivier Laurent of BJP was:

‘AFP acted in good faith.’

Mr Leroy if that’s not defending them, then I’m a haricot vert.

Infact the majority of those news outlets who wrongly published Morel’s pictures have now paid him for his work. So actually in many ways his strategy worked. And as stated above it’s a strategy pursued by many of the world’s major agencies.

Take Magnum. Just like Morel everyday they use Twitter to link to their images.

I continue to be perplexed by your unwillingness to accept that there is little difference in protection between publishing a photo on the Visa website and on Twitpic.

In your response to my taking images from the Visa website in the same way AFP took them from Twitpic (to demonstrate the hypocrisy of your comments) you write:

‘The images that are displayed on Visa’s website were licensed for the use on Visa’s website, and, as stated by the universally-recognized copyright sign at the bottom of the front page where you stole the work of others, they are protected by copyright. If you have some kind of viewing impairment that prevented you from seeing this, please accept my apologies.’

This is the copyright sign that you are referring to:

But you are mistaken. It refers to the website but not to any of the uncredited images that I copied from your website because Visa is not the copyright holder of those images, the photographers are. Infact your use of copyright is almost identical to the sign at the bottom of the Twitpic page, the site that you call Morel an ‘amateur’ for posting his pictures on.

However if you want to be seen to really care about the rights of photographers you may want to take a lesson from Twitpic who add the following text to their website under terms and conditions: Given the fact that your own website offers less explicit protection then Twitpic’s isn’t this a case of two standards, your own being lower than the website and the photographer you seek to denigrate? That brings me to issue two, your attitude towards Morel and your bizarre analogy with car insurance. Let’s go along with the analogy for the sake of argument.

You are driving your car and an earthquake strikes. That earthquake destroys much of the city and kills tens of thousands of people. Within minutes this is the scene you are photographing (Morel’s words published in the New York Times and 100eyes magazine):

Destruction. Horror. Black. This place was hit by — I don’t know — hundreds of cruise missiles at the same time. I never saw anything like that. People, dead bodies were all over the place. And in minutes, I would say like 10 minutes, the street was full — full of dead bodies. Everybody was panicked. Sobbing and dazed —people crying for help. Buildings collapsed—the Cathedral of St. Trinity, the Cathedral, the Iron Market, the Presidential Palace, the Palace of Justice, my father’s bakery. The principal manifestations, institutions, and symbols of my Haitian childhood were destroyed in less than a minute. There were aftershocks every 15 to 20 minutes which lasted from three to five seconds.”

And whilst you are doing the job of a photographer someone comes and steals your car, which they then sell through their showroom. When you write to them to try and get compensation they write back to you saying that if you come near the showroom they will run you over.

Infact it was the first evening of the earthquake that Morel, after having just lived through the scene above, had a friend’s daughter help him upload the photos to Twitpic over a dodgy internet connection on the roof of a hotel. Both of them will have been in a state of shock.

I have to tell you honestly Mr Leroy many people are wondering in these horrific circumstances what kind of person who claims to represent photographers (or otherwise) goes right out of his way to beat up on the guy for leaving his keys in the car rather than expressing outrage at the people who took his car and sold it?

Here’s a possible answer that to question. Take a look at this screengrab from your website:

Three questions for you to answer:

Isn’t it true that Visa has a business relationship with Getty, one of the companies who distributed Morel’s photographs and are now refusing to compensate him?

Do you yourself derive benefit from that relationship?

Given that Getty are one of the key sponsors of Visa is it possible that some of the money Getty received from the sale of Morel’s photographs could benefit Visa?

If the answer to any of those questions is yes there is an obvious conflict of interest. Nothing wrong with that. Conflicts of interest are a part of life. But it does mean that given your readiness to lay into Morel people will question your impartiality and ultimately your commitment to photographers, to journalism and to storytelling. That’s a shame considering how much of your life you have given to these things.

I’ll end with an extract from a comment one of our readers made in response to your attack on Morel:

‘If you left your keys in your expensive car, I would take the keys out and give them to you.’

Me too.

Yours Sincerely

Benjamin Chesterton (aka duckrabbit)

Related posts:
Why AFP, Getty, Jean-Francois Leroy, CNN, ABC, CBS love photographs but have no time for photographers, or ‘it wasn’t rape your honor because she was in the room and I was horny’

JF Leroy responds ‘My position here is that of an insurance company.’

Is Getty wearing Leroy’s trousers?