John Lehmann is award winning photojournalist with the Globe and Mail in Canada. John shares with Munetake Kayo what he carries while working, and why he carries certain items. John is an amazing photographer and a friend. I like how organized he is with all his photo and multimedia gear, which has motivated me to organize my gear better too.
Video produced by Munetake Kayo of bighead taco.com. Check out his photo gear review blog, and his YouTube channel— there great!
Each time Apple releases a new product there is usually a collective groan from the faithful.
With the iMac, it was the lack of a floppy drive and serial ports. The iPad had no USB ports or simple way to move content from one device to another. The Macbook Pro ditched the optical drive years before the rest of the PC world would consider life with out DVDs.
Last spring landed one of the most controversial Apple products to come out of Jony Ive’s design studio—the 12-inch Macbook. With only one USB-C port—used for both charging and input, the head scratching and bitching tempered the coolness factor of what a revolutionary product this light, two-pound notebook really is.
I spent the better part of two months weighing the positives and negatives of whether to spend $1300.00 on what reviewers called an underpowered, port-lacking, retina screened gold-colored beauty. I was looking for a notebook, not to replace my trusted, but heavy 17-inch Macbook Pro I use at work, but a notebook, I could slip into my ThinkTank Retrospective 7 camera bag and have with me everywhere I go.
My newspaper is also moving to a digital first workflow–meaning that we are publishing first online before it shows up in the print newspaper. The pace is picking up and I need to be able to send as quickly as I can to meet the tighter deadlines.
As a photojournalist, I had reservations about whether the 1.1 GHz Intel Core M processor would be able to handle my Photo Mechanic/ Photoshop workflow. I searched online reviews and they were all really vague as if this little laptop could handle the stress. I decided to take the gamble and purchased the Macbook last week.
So far, I am really impressed with the performance. If you are doing a normal photojournalist’s workflow of ingesting into Photo Mechanic, editing and captioning the selected images, opening them in the Adobe raw converter and finally moving them into Photoshop for final corrections, then yes, this notebook will handle it just fine.
Pat Cason, dressed as the Bride of Frankenstein, makes her way along the course during the 5k Monster Dash + Kids’ Fun Run in Manito Park, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2015. Over 600 adults and children, many dressed in Halloween costumes, ran the 5k, or one of the shorter kids’ fun runs. The race was put on by Active4Youth – whose mission is to combat childhood obesity & juvenile delinquency through after-school sports programs. COLIN MULVANY colinm@spokesman.com
Last Sunday, I shot a Halloween Monster Dash fun run. I followed the above workflow and downloaded and edited 300 or so images into 14 color corrected captioned pictures. The Macbook never froze or slowed down, I was able to FTP the images back to the newspaper just like my 17-inch Macbook Pro. The screen is bright with tons of detail that I am not used to seeing on such a small notebook computer.
Looking south from the intersection of Glass Avenue and Washington Street, the trees of the Emerson/Garfield neighborhood are ablaze with fall color, Monday, Oct. 26, 2015, in Spokane, Wash. COLIN MULVANY colinm@spokesman.com
A few days later I was tasked with finding a feature picture in-between photo assignments. It was late in the day and I found a fall color picture of the tri-colored trees with the downtown buildings in the background. After taking the photo I sat in my car and opened up the Macbook and plugged in my Lexar card reader into a USB 3 to USB-C adaptor and quickly worked the image and sent it back to the newspaper via my cellphone hotspot and FTP. I found it much more comfortable to work on the small and light Macbook then the huge and heavy 17-inch Pro. A few minutes later I was off to my next assignment, with the Macbook tucked back safely my camera bag. For now I am happy with my the decision to go with the Macbook. The limitations are not for everyone. I will buck up and buy the dongles to make the one input port work for me. Other than that I like everything else about the computer. I am even getting used to the new thin keyboard. I believe days of heavy laptops are numbered and Apple is leading the way with the Macbook 12-inch.
A friend of mine asked me to read the first 200 pages of a novel he is writing and give him some feedback. I’m not a wordsmith (as you can tell) but I gave it a shot.
On critique day, I took a big sigh and gave him the bad news.
“I have no idea what your story is, nor do I care about your main character,” I told him. “You’ve written in so many dead ends into the plot that I’m not emotionally invested in the storytelling. I don’t think you know the story you want to tell,” I said.
Several weeks later we got together for breakfast and he told me my advice of know your story changed everything in how he approached writing his novel. He admitted that he was creating the plot as he was putting pen to paper. This, he realized, produced a lot of dead ends for the characters’ and storyline.
Know your story is fundamental to video storytelling too. Yet, time after time, video stories I review or judge in contests (and some of my own) are filled with meandering plotlines, too many characters, and failed endings.
Know your story
Before you shoot, it is important to have in your head, a solid framework of the story you want to tell. Identify what the conflict in your story is, then shoot it. Ask yourself: What is my opener? What do I need to shoot for the guts of my story? What’s my ender or resolution? You might not have all these worked out before shooting, but you better have by the time you finish pushing the record button. Few great stories are found in the edit afterwards.
Editing
Know your story. It will make editing a breeze. Focus on telling a story where you set up questions for the viewer, but then make sure you answer them. Intimacy and emotion rules with video, so edit those in not out. Keep focused. Tangents and redundancy are death in a short video.
It’s easy to get lost in all the small edits on the timeline. Make sure you always have a big picture of how your story is unfolding on the timeline. When you’re done, ask several people to watch your video and tell them to be honest as to whether it holds their interest. If your story does not work for them, then it probably won’t work for most viewers.
One of a Kind in the World Museum
In 2005, Joe Weiss released Soundslides, a killer audio slideshow production program that helped transition many newspaper photojournalists into the world of online multimedia. Audio slideshows soon flooded newspaper websites. Its simple interface and even simpler learning curve proved a perfect match for anyone wanting to add an audio narrative to their online picture stories.
But times have changed. Many of those same photojournalists moved on to add video to their storytelling toolboxes. As they began to master video editing programs like Apple’s Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro, it seemed like a no brainer to use them to produce audioslide shows. I cannot say building an audio slideshow is easier with a video editing program, but it does afford you some added features that are hard, if not impossible, to replicate in Soundslides.
Here are some of the things I’ve learned when making an audio slideshow using Apple’s Final Cut Pro:
Mount St. Helens comes to town
Thirty years ago on May 18, 1980, I was a senior in high school in Spokane, Washington. It was Sunday afternoon and I was still feeling the pain from a beer-induced hangover, you know, the only kind you can get when your best friend Russ throws an “End of High School” party for the senior class.
I grabbed a cup of coffee and went out on Russ’s front porch. Glancing up at the sky, I was perplexed by what I saw. Instead of blue sky, it was brown with a pillow texture to it. “ Must be a dust storm coming,” said my friend’s father who also had no answer for weird brown sky. Suddenly, a robin came fluttering in front of us. It dove hard, landing dead on impact at my feet. I gingerly picked the bird up and when I shook it, a small cloud of dust came off its wings. What the…
I would soon find out that Mount St. Helens, 290 miles away, had literally exploded in a cataclysmic volcanic eruption. The best part? A dark cloud of ash would soon turn daylight into darkness. It rained ash overnight and part of the next day. For the next week communities in Central and Eastern Washington banded together to clean up the mess. Ask anyone who experienced the ash fall and I’ll guarantee they’ll have a story to tell.
A week ago, it was politely suggested to me that I should do a multimedia piece for the Mount St. Helens 30th anniversary coming up.
“I can do that,” I said. “I’m sure we have tons of photos in the digital archive.”
A quick look showed only a few pictures from that time, many of which had been used over and over. A trip to the basement print photo archive left me nowhere. It was as if Mount St. Helens ash never came to Spokane. “ Where the hell were all the photos”?
When searching the negative archive, I found a week’s worth of volcano negatives missing from the box. About to give up, I walked to the far dark corner of the neg room on a hunch. I found a shelf of orphan negative boxes labeled with old projects I was hard pressed to remember. Running my finger down the labels, I stopped on the three words: “Mount St. Helens. “
Bingo!
I think over the years and many volcano anniversaries later, long gone photo editors found that putting all the prints and negs in one box was a good idea. If I hadn’t made that turn into a dark corner, this audio slideshow would have been pretty lame.
My next chore was to find someone willing to write and voice a narrative that would reflect the content of the photos I had edited together. My go-to guy for historical narratives is staff writer Jim Kershner.
“You wanna do a Looking Back piece for St. Helen 30th”? I asked Kershner.
Kershner had that “I’m swamped ,” look in his eyes, but he said he could probably crank something out by the next afternoon. I asked him just to just write the story of the first week in Spokane and I would match the photos up with whatever he wrote. The next day as I was pawing through old unlabeled negative sheets, Kershner arrived with a killer script in hand. Only two takes later, I was ready to start assembling our St. Helens story. I like to use Final Cut Pro as I find it gives me the most flexibility with photos. I can color correct, put motion on the photo, create multi-photo windows where I can time the show to the beat of the music.
The fun part of this story for me was being like a detective, where I had to find a photo that would match the narrative. When Kershner said “Soon taverns and golf courses began to reopen,” I was lucky enough to find a photo from that week showing rednecks covered in ash drinking tavern beer and a group of golfers walking an ash-laden course.
For music, our company has an extensive Digital Juice music library I can use for multimedia projects such as this. I also used a couple of Garage Band stingers– short mood building clips–that helped set the ominous tone of the ash cloud coming our way.
All in all, it was a fun project to do in such a short amount of time.
Finding the Frame, a website dedicated to giving feedback to newspaper multimedia producers and video journalists has launched.
My post in Mastering Multimedia last month, “Video at newspapers needs to improve,” resonated with many people. I received lots emails from producers who vented their frustration at not being able to get feedback on their multimedia stories.
After a brainstorming session over a few beers, Brian Immel, a former multimedia producer and programmer at The Spokesman-Review, graciously agreed to build a website for the sole purpose of connecting those who need feedback on their multimedia, to professionals willing to share some time and knowledge.
Here’s how it works
The plan is to have onboard as many “expert” volunteers as possible that have solid foundations in video storytelling, audio slide shows or Flash projects. This pool of reviewers will peruse the submitted links of multimedia in the “Story Pool”. If they decide to comment on a story, it will then become public on the Finding the Frame home page where anyone else is free to give added feedback.
So why do this?
While most publications have driven head first into the online world, multimedia storytelling is still in its infancy at many newspapers. Unfortunately, not all people tasked with producing multimedia received adequate training or had the financial ability to attend a multimedia storytelling workshop. Many multimedia producers are self-taught, having picked up bit and pieces of knowledge along the way.
When I judge a multimedia contest, I often get frustrated at seeing the same problems in the execution of basic video and audio production fundamentals. Many photojournalists are struggling with how to tell an effective video or audio slideshow story that is different from the traditional still picture story.
Our hope is that Finding the Frame will begin to address the need for feedback and in turn, help multimedia producers improve their storytelling. Just read some of the comments by reviewers so far–you’ll be impressed. The professionals that have signed on as reviewers are the some of the top in the industry. If they critique your story, please thank them for giving up some of their precious time to help out a fellow visual journalist.
What we need
What we need is for enough producers, multimedia editors and photojournalists who have a solid experience with multimedia storytelling to step forward and share some of their knowledge with those that are looking for constructive, honest feedback.
So if you feel you have something to offer, we would really like you to join the pool of reviewers on Finding the Frame.
So go check it out and give Brian and me some feedback. Create an account. Upload a link to a video, audio slide show or Flash project. Be patient, as it might take some time for your story to get reviewed
I am not sure how many people will upload stories, so let’s take this slow at first. It would also be helpful if non-reviewers could give some feedback to others by commenting on their work.
If you would like to be added to the reviewer pool, register your account, making sure you create a profile and upload a photo of yourself or avatar, then email me at cmulvany@findingtheframe.com with the request.
This website is for you. We would really appreciate your support and feedback.
A slap upside the head always comes when you least expect it.
“You have the coolest job ever,” said a hockey fan standing behind me admiring one of my photos at the Spokane Arena last night. I was on deadline preparing to transmit my pictures of a blowout Spokane Chiefs hockey game back to the paper when those six words stopped me cold.
“You have the coolest job ever.”
Up until that utterance, I’d beg to differ. It had been a long 14-hour day and I was tired. I started in the morning shooting a freelance job. I take extra work now whenever I can. It helps make up for the furlough days and pay cuts I have endured over the past year.
The economic trauma and turmoil facing my and every other newspaper in the country weighs heavily on my shoulders at times. When someone asks me why I entered the newspaper biz, I tell them it’s because I have a passion for telling stories. Like any good photojournalist, I see the world a bit differently from most people. There is a creative energy that burns inside me. When I put a camera up to my eye, life becomes my palette. I felt it when I bought my first professional camera in high school and I still feel it today…well most days.
“You have the coolest job ever.”
As I sat there hunched over my laptop, awareness washed over me. Here I was at a hockey game that I didn’t have to pay to get in, surrounded by the best cameras, lenses and laptop that I didn’t have to buy. The only thing missing was a cold beer by my side.
Looking back over the past seven days at some of what I have produced for the readers of my newspaper and viewers of our website, I realize that I can’t let the uncertainty of the future kill my creativity. Today, I put a sticky note on my computer monitor that simply says, “Try Harder.” It is my little reminder that (slap upside the head) I do have the coolest job ever!
These are some of the highlights of my past week– a mix of multimedia and stills.
Several dozen great blue herons were perched on pilings in the Pend Oreille River at Usk, Washington Tuesday, March 2, 2010. Area birding enthusiasts said this is the time of year large groups of the giant birds can be seen migrating and resting in certain areas, such as the Pack River Delta along Lake Pend Oreille. Soon they will disperse in smaller groups to nesting rookeries in cottonwoods or other woodlands near water.COLIN MULVANY colinm@spokesman.com
Tim Michaels, who lost part of his leg in a grain elevator accident holds a wooden foot carving a relative brought him during his stay at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, Wash.
Videos: Click image to view.
The king of Cat Tales Zoological Training Center gets a root canal.
In the Kalispel Tribal Language Program, new Salish speakers immerse themselves in daily conversation with elders and then teach what they have learned in nearby public schools.
I’ve been working on a presentation I will give next month called “Photojournalism in the age of the Internet.” In the process, I’ve been thinking a lot about how much photojournalism has changed for newspaper photojournalists.
With the rise of the Internet, traditional photojournalists have been faced with a dilemma. Stay a purist to the craft by clinging to their still cameras or embrace the change by venturing out into the online world by adding video and audio to their storytelling toolboxes.
Back in 2006, I was invited to speak about newspaper multimedia at The Southern Short Course in News Photography conference. During some free time, I dropped in on a panel discussion about the future of photojournalism. The panel was made up of a stellar group of veteran, but mostly old-school photojournalists. The room was packed, so I stood in the side-shadows taking in the conversation.
An audience member asked whether video was something she needed to learn. After a pause, one panel member said, “I don’t know, why don’t you ask Colin? He’s standing over there.” All 200 heads turned and looked at me.
My answer made many people squirm in their seats. “Yes,” I said. “You need to learn video. You need to add audio to your pictures and yes you’ll need to embrace change.”
I felt a little uneasy as the questions kept coming at me and not the panel. I could sense that many people thought I was crazy. I started to see the panic in some people’s eyes. One woman volunteered that her editor at a small newspaper was requiring her on a single story to write it, take the photographs and produce a video. An uneasy murmur rose in the room. I could tell, my belief that video was important to the future of online journalism, was a tough sell in this room of die-hard photojournalists.
Flash-forward some four years. Whereas, in 2006 I was an anomaly, now most newspaper photojournalists produce some sort of multimedia, be it audio slideshows or video. J-school programs have finally stopped wallowing in the past and are junking old curriculums for new ones that are multimedia focused.
Looking at the troubling position newspapers are in, one must wonder if all this talk of multimedia storytelling really matters. After all the rounds of layoffs, who has time to shoot video?
There are some days I wonder myself, but I quickly shake off the feeling. I have to remind myself that newspapers are awash in transition. As we near rock bottom, the economy is starting to show some life. I can only hope for some stability to return to the newspaper industry.
Today, if I faced a similar crowd like the one in 2006, I would say the same thing. Learn video storytelling, master audio gathering and editing. Embrace change. The future, I would tell them, is not in the printed-paper, but in the digital delivery that will eventually replace it.
Photojournalists are a curious lot. They are independent, visual thinkers. Most take photographs because they love to shoot and share their work. They know they’ll never get rich on this career choice, but instead find happiness in the people they meet and photograph along the way.
The disruption that online journalism has placed on the photojournalist, whose career choice was based solely on taking still photos for newspapers, has been gut wrenching. “That’s not what I signed up for,” is what I often see posted in forums dealing with the changes facing photojournalists today.
The technology being deployed is slowly changing the definition of what photojournalism is. Newspaper photojournalists are becoming multifaceted visual journalists who can now use a variety of formats to tell a story.
As lean as newspapers are running these days, I think we’re about to get a dose of “oh shit” real soon. Circulation is not coming back. Just look at the downward trend of the last forty years as proof of that. Our readership is dying off and screenagers are just not interested in buying the dead trees we’re selling. I think the last transition will be the messiest. More talented journalists will leave the profession. More photojournalists will become freelance wedding photographers.
What awaits those few who make it across the proverbial burning bridge is anyone’s guess. If I could flash forward four years, I can visualize in my crystal ball a world where newspapers have transitioned most of their subscriber base to the touch screen tablet platform that has suddenly gone white-hot with advertisers. I predict these multimedia centric devices will need a steady stream of visual content. And guess what? Visual journalists, who honed their multimedia skills during newspapers darkest hours, will be there to gladly step up and help feed the daily digital beast.
Many of may old posts that deal with tips about how to do video storytelling and audio slideshows get linked on a lot of blogs used by college professors who teach digital media classes. Most of these posts are buried amongst my pontifications about the changes facing the newspaper industry. So for anyone interested, here is a roundup of my best multimedia suggestions and useful tip posts in one place…
How to make your audio slideshows better
Great audio starts in the field
How best to approach a video story
Sequencing: The foundation of video storytelling
How to make your video editing easier
Get creative with your video camera
Opening your video: How not to lose viewers
It’s been a challenging year on the multimedia front. Many newspapers retrenched by refocusing their limited resources back on traditional print products and away from online innovation. This is in sharp contrast to the rush to develop online products so prevalent in 2008. Disturbing as it’s been, this trend is not wholly unexpected. Business model disruptions are historically messy. As publishers resisted the unfathomable idea that the era of the printing press is fading, precious time was wasted in preparing for their inevitable digital future. For the employees of these publications, the stress has been excruciating. Mass newspaper layoffs have hit visual and online staffs hard this year. Word people still control the tempo of most newsrooms. Seeing Washington Post master video storyteller Travis Fox shown the door is an example of this shortsighted trend.
Newspaper-produced video, once seen for its potential as an online revenue generator, was scaled back at many publications in 2009. Layoffs in photo departments left too few visual journalists with the time to do effective volume video storytelling. Just when the training curve knowledge was kicking in, many talented video journalists/photojournalists were sliced away from newspaper payrolls.
Newsroom innovation (beyond talk of pay walls) slowed too. Fear and uncertainty ruled many newsrooms in 2009. A brain drain has left the few remaining innovators reluctant to stick their necks out for fear of having them cut off.
Still, multimedia workshops like the NPPA’s Multimedia Immersion, Platypus and Knight Digital Media Center’s Multimedia Training continue to fill up with reporters, photojournalists and online folk who, many on their own dime, continue seeking out digital storytelling training.
Social media kicked in big time in 2009. The rise of Facebook and Twitter allowed everyone, including newspapers, to propagate their online content in the social media universe. Many, including myself, found new viewers for multimedia projects by posting links to social media sites.
University journalism programs got the multimedia religion in 2009. Curriculums are finally being rewritten in ways that reflect the new digital future of journalism. Students, hopefully, will now graduate with a skill set that will better prepare them for a multitasking future. As I’ve said many times before: “There can no longer be ‘just reporters’ or ‘just photojournalists.’ We all need to be multimedia, multi-platform savvy.”
Video technology took a big leap forward with the introduction of DSLR cameras capable of shooting high–def video. A visual journalist needs only one camera now to shoot stills and video. Though the technology and its clunky editing workflows are still in its infancy, the era of large, bulky video cameras for newspaper visual journalists is coming to an end.
Video delivery at newspapers improved dramatically in 2009. Many publications added full-screen modes to their players and improved video compression for stutter free viewing. Still, video seems like an afterthought at many newspaper websites.
In 2009, newspaper video storyteller’s experience and understanding of the craft improved, but a troubling gap in understanding basic video fundamentals, weakens the majority of videos produced at newspapers. The art of good storytelling is missing in many videos I’ve watched this year. I continue to gather inspiration from a few in TV journalism that are allowed the time to tell a great story. Learning to script and voice narration should be a goal for most newspaper video storytellers in the coming year.
For 2010, I see a bumpy road ahead as publishers continue working to bring expenses and revenues back in line. While they’re doing that, some interesting changes will begin to disrupt their plans and the print industry big time. Tablet computers will be released this year by not only Apple, but by a half-dozen other big manufactures. Digital content, expressly made for these devices, will start putting pressure on print products late in 2010. It will take some time for these enhanced digital readers to gain traction, but when they do, my prediction is that it might be game over for many struggling print newspapers. Whether the content these publications produce survives in a digital form will be dictated by how much publishers invest in transitioning advertisers and subscribers to digital delivery.
Whatever happens, 2010 is going to be an interesting year. Hold on tight…
Mastering Multimedia 