Toning

All images need to have a true black and a true white. If printing in a dark room, this is one of the first elements you will be searching for. All digital images require toning. A big reason for this is the digital photography does not have the tonal range of film. Until we have digital cameras with true 64mega pixels (Although, I’ve heard it said that megapixels are a lie. I don’t know. This is the quick guide.)

Basic toning then, is giving a true black and a true white. I start this process by increasing the brightness and the blacks in my Raw Processing stage, but when I look again, I never find what I have done sufficient. So I go into my curves. And increase the blacks and the whites. I tend to do far more with the blacks than the whites. The curves themselves tell you where to go.

See where the curve starts on the left hand side? That’s the beginning of the blacks. You have to move your tonal marker here. See where the curve ends. That’s where the whites end. Thus, to have a true black and a true white, you need to have the photo’s curve begin at the beginning of the whites, and end at the end of the whites. I do like to crush the blacks a bit – go a little further, to make the image even richer and counteract the washing out effect of the web. I also tend to pull down at the center point a little to give a bit more contrast as well.

Saturation

The web desaturates your images and videos. To counter this, it’s a good idea to boost the saturation of your images. Many of the best photographers do this regularly, and even to extreme. It’s a common contest related complaint that all the images are oversaturated. Those who win, however, tend to be oversaturated. I don’t know what to do with that. I’m noting it here but not worrying about it. Maybe it’s just the same as using Velvia. I say do what you think is right and don’t ever forget about your subject.

Regardless of the controversy, you, with your images and video on the web, will need saturation to even make things look right.

Images in Final Cut and the Web

Color profiles are incredibly important. You need to use the correct one for the color space in which you are going to be in, or you will lose all the beautiful adjustments you have made. When printing, nearly every paper type for each different printer has it’s own specific profile. That’s how important profiles are. There can be slight shifts in color and toning (very minor) when you make the transition, so if your image has only one destination, you should change the profile before making toning and saturation adjustments.

For Final Cut, you need to be in Apple RGB.

For the web, sRGB.

You can change the color profile by going to Edit > convert to Profile. Then you must select the appropriate profile.

You can also set the profile as you are Raw processing in Photoshop. The option is located at the bottom of the Raw dialogue box, where one is able to set the image size settings. Apple RGB is not an available choice here so you will have to convert later or investigate as to whether there is a way to add that to the options. (I’m guessing there is, but have never attempted).

Mac vs. PC

Mac’s have lighter screens than PC’s. This means your work will be lighter on a Mac than a PC. Thus, for a Mac, you’ll have to do more saturation and have more contrast (contrast is what you create with toning.) I would hazard to say the majority of people in this industry use Mac’s. The overwhelming majority of the users in the world, however, use PC’s. I’ve never seen anyone do cross platform testing with their videos or photos. I guess the question is, are you creating for the general public, or the multimedia/photographic community?

Another photo that I would like to share

The below was the first example I worked on. To be fair, the Canon 5d MKII, in good light, has incredible tone and saturation, especially coupled with a polarizing filter, which means this made a poor example to try to explain a fault of tone and saturation. I would still do all of the steps noted, but to a novice, it would be hard to understand why. This was taken on the now closed train route between Mendoza, Argentina and Los Andes, Chile. Nacho and I played a lot of pass the camera that day, so neither of us can say definitively who took it. It is undeniably beautiful.

Final Note – Expect More

There will be a part two to this post in the coming weeks. It will feature video color correcting screen shots from Final Cut, save for web and other instructional elements.

Here is a link to a very long discussion talking about tonal ranges with lots of graphs and charts comparing film to the now ancient 10D (my first camera.) It makes me feel guilty for crushing blacks, but Ansel Adams made huge prints for galleries and walls in homes, not the World Wide Web.

The general flow of advice > freelancer > income > passive > stock. The idea is that one takes all of one’s scraps and puts them into the stock marketplace, sits back, and waits for the cash to start rolling in.

The stock model isn’t for photojournalists, however. The job of the photojournalist is to document the human experience. To document the human experience, one needs to have humans in the frame. In stock, in order to sell one’s images, one must have a model release. As a fashion/advertising photographer, model releases are standard, and the photographer can have the complete rights to every frame he or she has taken and can sell them to others for any purpose they desire (ie – advertising).

While the photojournalist has the rights to his images, he does not have the right to resell someone’s image for use other than journalism (editorial). Certainly one can walk around demanding that the people one photograph’s on the street sell their images and the photo has been taken, but one probably won’t get it. Even if one does, it seems manipulative.

Additional point, the material taken by staff photographers is generally owned by one’s paper. In the rights venue, if you use your boss’ camera to shoot, the images likely belong to him.

Launching in, I didn’t have material for stock photography. I did, however, have material for stock video. Nice for me, it was all HD, which fetches a higher price. I’ve heard of a number of sites to sell stock. There are tons. I have a cousin in the ad business. Somehow she is working with video mock-up’s of commercials, something like that. I don’t really know. I wrote her and asked her where she gets her stock. She said istock or Getty (they are linked. Getty is the more upscale version.) I knew Getty was more difficult to get into, so I applied to istock.

I got in. They told me quickly. After the acceptance, I uploaded videos (5 or 6 in the span of a week) and waited, perhaps two months. One was accepted, two were rejected, and two were somehow missed. I applied for exclusive status (that means the clips you submit have only been submitted to that service.) I was denied because of a vimeo account. (They don’t like that people can download videos free from there.) I deleted my vimeo account, and became exclusive.

So, now, I’m sitting back watching all that passive income roll in.

Or, not.

I kind of forgot about the account. I figured if something happened, they’d email me. Then, last week, I went to istock to look for an illustration for a website I’m working on. When I logged in, there was money in my account. It wasn’t a lot. Pretty little, in fact. I, however, was tickled to death that someone had bought my video. On three different occasions. I wouldn’t have to pay for the stock illustration I needed. Instead, I could just convert the money already on istock into credit. Peaches.

I’m guessing that is how my relationship with stock is going to continue. Little surprises when I need to buy something. It’s nice. I doubt it will ever be a significant portion of my income. I’m not investing enough time into it. The work involved is hardly passive.

That said, it is feasible to do really well in it. Istock, in particular, seems to be a good place to be. They have heaps of tutorials, and if they reject you, they tell you why. Obviously, key words are crucial (as they are in every web enterprise.) They have a post up in their community section about some Canadian Graphic Designer who started in 2004 who kept taking feedback and improving and used herself and her boyfriend frequently in her photos, and today is on her millionth download. The resources are there to be the ideal stock shooter. I’m just kind of busy with other things right now.

They are thorough in training. I will reiterate the important points here. Releases – recognizable person – always, recognizable location, probably. No logos or brand names. No bad video. They go frame by frame. Compression issues will get you. Not listed in the training – the wait for review takes a very long time. The 5d shoots beautifully. Without releases, one is limited to inanimate objects without visible brand names – there’s a lot of competition in that area.

Really, really fun example from the world of stock. One political party in Northern Ireland (DUP) used a stock image of a woman for one of their ads for MP, with the ad reading, “I want an MP who answers to us, not to the Tories.” Their opponents (UCU) found the source of stock, and used another image of the same woman in a billboard opposing the other party. The tag line is “Actually, on second thoughts, I want my MP to be at the heart of the Union.” Found that via a vised’s tweet.

When communications fail it’s really hard to deliver your material to your contractors. Yes, digital media helps in capturing and editing material far faster than traditional media, but also consumes an enormous amount of power (laptop and camera batteries) and requires a steady data connection in order to transmit, which was non-existent at the time.

(Photos at the end of the post)

When communications fail it’s really hard to deliver your material to your contractors. Yes, digital media helps in capturing and editing material far faster than traditional media, but also consumes an enormous amount of power (laptop and camera batteries) and requires a steady data connection in order to transmit, which was non-existent at the time.

Power, if you need it, beg for it.
There’s always someone who’s been cautious enough to have a generator.

Just look for the only light on in town, head that way and explain them. Here’s why they will let you, probably no one has been able to send info or material to their editors, because no one in the rest of the country knows how that area is doing, and so getting that info ASAP could mean faster help to that town.

Power, saving battery life while editing
I love my Macbook Pro. It’s not the latest model, but the battery is supposed to last for 3 hours.  You probably know that’s not true, especially when editing video.

So, a few tips:
- Turn off your Wi-fi (if on, it looks for connection, wasting a lot of battery), dim the screen light, remove any peripherals you don’t need, turn off keyboard lights and make your fans go off when your computer really needs them (using Fan Control)

- When editing your interviews, turn off the video layer, just listen to it, since your shot is on a tripod, you don’t need that. When editing B-roll, don’t play it, just scroll through your material or hit on different spots of the timeline, you’ll get enough info to do the cuts.

- Rendering. It’s a bitch. Avoid any effects or multilayering to avoid it. If you have to render, turn off your screen to save some juice, same as when exporting. Just listen to your computer, you’ll hear your fans slow down when done exporting or rendering.

Photos (I love my Iphone, Part 1)
As I said before, having no cellphone coverage sucks. But here’s the thing. When coverage fails, sometimes data still works. Don’t know the reason, but sometimes it does. Also, looking for high spots, might give you a bit of coverage, enough to do the following:

- Ingest your photos in your computer, process them and save them in your pictures folder. Plug in your Iphone, open Itunes and turn off all syncing options BUT the picture folder. Sync it and you’ll have the photos in your phone, Itunes optimizes them and makes them 640X480. I know, small, but you know what? Files are really small and your editors will have those photos before anyone else.

Once done, select them all and email them. The minute you get some sort of reception, your files will be sent.  I spent almost 3 hours in Talca and surroundings looking for coverage until I got EDGE network at around 4am.

Remember that cellphones use radio waves so, a clear night and no interference can help those waves get further. I went to the same spot later that day and got nothing.

Be sure to have your Iphone configured to send BCC to your email, that way you’ll know if it arrived to its destination

Audio (I love my Iphone, Part 2)

I’m fully surprised. The iphone mic rules. Quality is superb even for getting ambient audio. Conduct your interviews, spell the subject names and that’s it. Just be sure to look at the timer, because the phone has a 2 minutes maximum per clip to be sent over cellphone. When done, email it or ingest to your computer, edit the material and follow the instructions for the photos and voilá. The minute you get coverage, your email will go on its way.

NOTE: Be sure to keep your phone in airplane mode when doing this, just turn it on when looking for coverage or in a point where you know there’s coverage.

Data

Graphics people need it. So gather as much as you can, streets, exact addresses, area affected, length of , for example, the earthquake, how far did the wave reached, how tall it was, etc. This would be enough for them in order to create a map. Google maps can be used to look for the addresses and find exact places.

Again, write an email with all of it, when you get coverage, it’ll be sent.

Free Wi-Fi

One night I was lucky enough someone had set up a free antenna. Ask the Police, Fire Station or Radios, even people in the street.

But remember, what once worked, doesn’t mean it will be there again.

Ethics

Please, please, please, follow the rules. Respect people above all. Believe me, they will cooperate, they want their story told. The faster and better it reaches the media, the more help they’ll receive because eyes will be on that community.

Toning Images: I got disgusted when coming back home and seeing over-toned photos, for example, bringing earth tones up and removing shadows and adding light. Really, your job is to report and submit ASAP in order to inform about the situation. Be fair with the people. It’s already dramatic to lose your belongings and sometimes lives of people you love, believe me, you don’t need to add “drama” to your photos.

Report accurately: You owe it to the people. Don’t over dramatize. Just heard in a video a reporter say that “the smell of death” was starting to be felt underneath the rubble in Talca downtown. I was there, in the exact same street where he did his report and no one died. In fact, no one died in several streets around. I’m not completely certain, but I’m almost sure no one did in Talca’s downtown.

So please, don’t exaggerate and report properly. Can you imagine having your family living in the area and watching a video that mentions that “you can smell decomposing flesh in the air”?

My primary focus has been documentary storytelling.

I LOVE spending time with people I don’t know anything about and telling their stories.
It’s a great satisfaction to be able to get immersed in an unknown world and be accepted as one more in their lives while taking photos and video of their daily activities.

But sometimes, I find refreshing taking pictures of nature. I enjoy those times when you don’t have to be putting people on every frame you take.

While on vacations in the South of Chile (one of my favorite places in the world) I just grabbed my camera and starting pointing at things.

It’s just incredible how nature amazes me sometimes. We are slaves to light situations when shooting and try constantly to find the perfect light and sometimes, we don’t succeed.  But sometimes, light finds us and there’s nothing much to do than just grab your camera, point up and shoot.

What model is it – 5d, 7d or rebel? The video on all three should be super beautiful. Nacho has the 5d and shoots almost all his video with it. Because it uses a true camera lens, you have a depth of field that only the most very expensive cameras can do. I don’t know if normal video can even do it.  The above is a clip from Nacho’s contribution to Hold Out showing the depth of field.

That being said, taking video with it can be very difficult. Try to use a tripod. You should use manual focus (good rule for all video.) you may have to update the firmware so as to allow you to use manual and change the ISO instead of using auto exposure. You can use the auto but the results are far better manual. Whichever you do, do take a solid day to learn where the settings are and what they do. Here is a link to the firmware. It contains instructions for making the update.

Focusing: You’re going to be looking at the image on the display screen.  The best way to be absolutely focused is to zoom in 10X by pressing the magnify button next to your right thumb.  It’s the button on the very, very top right.  One press gives 5x.  Second press, 10X, Third press, back to normal.

Another issue is that the sound is not super. What is ideal is to plug a mic into the side – it takes a mini plug (with any camera, it’s better not to use in camera mic.)  Here is a soundtest of three popular microphones.  Nacho has the Rode VideoMic Directional Shotgun Mic w/ Mount.  The price is super reasonable, and I’ve used it with both the 5d and my Sony video camera, and it’s always given me super sound.  You have to be careful to turn it off.

Others, like Vince LaForet and Zach Wise claim you should record sound separately, with say, a Marantz.

Video format and editing. See how whatever program you will be using (Canon software (if it exists), iMovie, etc.) handles the files. Final Cut has some issues because it thinks the video is 30frames per second, not 29.97. Super goofy. It can cause some problems – mostly everything goes slow in editing but will work, with lots of time-eating rendering. MediaStorm has created a very thorough guide to making the footage usable for Final Cut. It is the proper way to do it, but takes a heap of time and memory.

Advice: use the camera. Don’t let any of this intimidate you. Watch a video or two of Nacho’s.  Roping the Wind is the best example, also Hold Out. See how he puts scenes together. Both were filmed all with Canon 5d.

If manual operations are too hard, switch to auto. Try to keep it under 3 minutes – people get bored fast. For the interview, have a list of questions. When you leave, the answers that stick in your mind are probably the ones you want.

If you are going to be handholding the camera, use a light lens. Heavy ones are super hard to hold steady.

Final Issue – video eats memory with the Canons. You need to have lots – I would say a minimum of 16gb if using the Rebel. According to Canon, 12 minutes of recording in HD takes 4gb of memory. Again, give it a go and see what happens. [Specific to the project proposed by my friend - If you start at his house with him getting ready, you can copy the card over on the way to the site. (Although you'll probably want some car imagery for transitions.)]

By the way, all of this was typed on my iphone.

Nicolás Alcalde, from my second presidential project, and I met at the paper at 7, and arrived at the bus stop at 7.30.  We began to search for someone going from there to the end of the future metro.  We found an individual to follow fairly quickly – a middle aged woman. However, upon reaching the second leg of the travel, the woman informed us that she was actually going to see family in the other direction, and later proceeding onto the proscribed destination.

At this point our option was to find someone else or return to the beginning.  We decided to find someone else as returning to the beginning would leave us at the short end of rush hour.  We found a woman traveling from nearly where we began, to past our proscribed final stop.  She was amiable and the bus was full, full, full.  I photographed her and decided that she could be a subject, if we needed, although she did not fit the image I imagined.  She’s not exactly from the area of the first stop, and prefers the bus to the metro, plus she didn’t have time for an interview.  We took her number and I think of her as a reserve.

I decide to go out again.  This time, I am going with Paula Tala, an infographic artist and designer from La Tercera.  Any graphic artist worth their salt will tell you that they should see and experience the route/object that they are creating a graphic about.  Paula is going to be creating the graphical elements for this project.  I wanted, she wanted, Jorge wanted, that she accompany me.

This time I got permission from the metro although contingent on this permission was that we could not shoot before nine.  We went to the metro at 8.30 to confirm the station manager knew we were allowed to shoot.  We didn’t want to start following someone only to be stopped upon reaching the metro, and then be forced to start again.

Confirmation of this permission took an hour, and we reached the starting bus stop at 10.  No one was going where we wanted them to.  No one.  We waited for an hour, asking roughly 30 people (everyone who came to the stop.) And then, we decided to just take the route ourselves and capture what we find.

An earlier concern was that the video would be too distracting for someone to watch and pay attention to the graphics.  I’d been thinking of going the super visual route anyway.  On this second trip, I tried to pay attention to what one notices while riding a train, what one looks at.  I stuck to mostly photo, using my video camera only to capture ambient.  Video in vehicles is tough stuff (without an awesome suction cup like this bad boy, which figured heavily in my Powering a Nation “Down the Lines,”  and I didn’t see how I’d go about using it in the public transport.)  I decided to shoot lots of timelapses.  These samples here aren’t perfected, but that will come later.  I just wish final cut had an onion skin option.

I investigated and planned, discovered that in the field my earlier plans didn’t work so well, all the while thinking that I needed something incredibly visual.  I feel like I’ve found an accidental success.  We’ll see how it all turns out, and I’m still on the hunt for someone who can talk about his or her experience, but I think this flipbook video experience might be best for working with the quantity of information I want to convey.

These sequences here are just mockups. I will be making the actual flipbooks with Final Cut  If you are wondering what I used to do these above, first I did a quick raw process to jpeg. I named the photos in a sequence, then when to quicktime, where I opened an image sequence (it’s in the file menu). You have a choice of frames per second. I used 2 fps for the girls and 6 fps for the others. An important thing to remember is that quicktime is used to dealing with square pixels, whereas video are rectangular. Thus, it gets elongated in quicktime, and to counter this, I exported at the true dimensions (3/2). Basically, this is the inverse of what you need to do to convert a freeze frame from a video into a pure still. You can see Tracy Boyer’s instructions here.

Santiago’s Metro is expanding.  The government opened three new stations (conveniently, days before a tight presidential election) and announced about a week and a half ago that they would begin building an entirely new line, which will connect a heavily working class area of the city with a heavily middle and upper class section.

I was given the assignment of doing a story on someone whose life would change as a result of this new metro line.  As the transportation system exists now, those taking public transit take a twenty-minute bus ride to a metro station on an existing line, then taking that metro practically to the other end.  One can also take a bus, but the bus follows the same route.

Firstly, Nacho suggested to me that we add a clock to the experience that shows time ticking by.  And I agree that’s an awesome idea, and I decided to add a locator map too, that shows the progress.  I realize that what’s important is the comparison of time between the current route and the route that will be finished in 2014.  So with Jorge Cortés, subeditor of the infographic department at La Tercera, I decide to add another moving map and timer.  (Originally I had thought to do an overlay when the actual timer and map stopped.)

The question then becomes how it will look and what program to use.  I want that when someone moves the timeline on the scrubber, the map and clock will move correspondingly.  I talk with Vicky Martinez, (Infographics and Design at La Tercera) about how this should all be laid out.  It’s a lot of elements in a small space, with the true time and map needing to be clearly related to the video, but yet the two maps and clocks needing to be easily visually compared.  We look at the Quenching Las Vegas’ Thirst and Climbing Kilimanjaro.  Although Vicky has concerns about the quantity of information, I say that the video will not require alsolute attention. I intend to have an interview track, but I say that the video will be far more visual than anything and as the other elements are simple, one should easily be able to glance between them.

Initially, we talk of using Flash.  It is what most of their interactive graphics are made in. Myself, I don’t know flash programming well enough to know how one can link all of these elements.  If we use separate SWFs for different elements, then I am certain they can be coordinated to start simultaneously, but I’m not certain they will move unified all the time.  Putting the video as frames in a SWF would take forever to load, she warns. (this is the way I would know how to do it, but the infographics team is going is planning to put this together for me.)

The final rough mock-up by myself with Vicky's advice.

After some thinking pause time, she suggests After Effects.  After Effects is new to the newsroom.  Everyone I’ve encountered wants to know it, but I think only a couple have a grasp of it.  I have some experience with it.  I’ve done two projects with it (the second will be posted sometime this week.

“That should work, right,” she asks.

My mind begins to run possible scenarios.  “It should,” I say.  “I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t.  I’m almost positive it will.”

And the more I thought about it and the more I dove into the second After Effects project (a presentation for the UAndes Communications Department,) the more I am certain it will.

Plans laid.

I have a new project published in La Tercera. It is part two in my exploration of issues in the presidential elections in Chile. In this part, I examined access for people with disabilities, public transportation and access to affordable housing (vivienda). All of these stories were done with the production help of my collegue Nicolás Alcalde.

An interesting fact about Chilean elections is the candidates can put their signs wherever they want.  Whoever gets to a pole or a spot, gets that position.  My story for the first topic featured Francisca Mardones, a champion wheelchair tennis player, who finds it difficult to navigate Santiago due to poor accessibility. She showed me around her neighborhood, pointing out many of the points where access is difficult, particularly for someone who is not as strong as her.  You will see in many of the photos of her, signs with candidates’ faces in the background. The other curious component to this is that a certain number of days before the elections all of the candidates must remover their signs or face fines. Thus, for four days before the elections, there was no advertising of the candidates. This is to insure that the candidates remove their signs because the lawmakers suspect that if they are required to do it after losing an election, no one will clean them up.

For the topic of vivienda, I spoke with two women who had or were living in a campamento.  The first woman, Ema Uribe, the woman whose interview drives the narrative, had lived in a campamento for nearly 30 years.  She arrived there as many do.  She was young.  She moved to the city from the countryside and first lived with relatives.  However, after a short period of time, they could not afford to keep her and she moved to a campamento.  Her children and grandchildren were born into it.

A campamento is what people of the US would think of as a favela, although the images of constant violence, as in City of God, are not accurate here.  They are informal living structures build on a piece of unutilized land, typically in urban areas.  The houses tend to have access to electricity, although this can be cut.  They do not have running water.  Water is trucked in, and stored in any available container.  Uribe did not speak of crime – which is frequently cited, but she did speak of garbage and filth.  As well, she spoke of the kinship amongst the inhabitants.  “You are never alone,” she said, whenever you need something, everyone runs [to help you]” What she spent the most attention on was stigma attached to those who lived in the campamento.  She knew of a woman whose daughter was to celebrate her birthday, but didn’t invite any friends.  When asked why, she said it was because no one would want to come to the campamento.

Uribe, with the help of Un Techo Para Chile, has been relocated to a house whose construction she planned and oversaw.  Rosa Reyes, the second person I met for this story, is in the beginning of this process.  She has been transferred to a smaller campamento, with the assistance of Un Techo Para Chile, and is planning for her own home.  She has two adolescent children and a bright personality.  She showed me how they cope without water and, with pride, the little store she has opened since her move to this campamento.

For the story of transportation, Nicolás Alcalde and I interviewed a city bus driver. He spoke of the changes he’s seen, the importance of the system, and how for him, driving a car is more nerve-wracking than driving a bus.  This is the story with which I have the most reservations.  I wonder whether it could have been done more dynamically.  It shows the bus system, which has many problems, but perhaps I should have spoken more with the users.

Initially, I had planned to give the video camera to Nicolás and have him ask people what they thought of the public transportation system, but, upon boarding the bus, I realized that the noise was horrible and movement doubly so when the bus was moving.  I worked for a while trying to capture the perfect footage of a person boarding the bus, and passing their bip card by the sensor to pay.  In one instance, after taking footage, I explained to a woman that I was working for La Tercera, looking at the public transportation system.  She asked me what I wanted to know.  I asked her what she thought about it.  She gave me a very lovely answer, that was all but unusable with the noise, and decided I would stick with a single subject.

I find that I have the noise issue often. I was taught by one of the multimedia greats, Jim Seida, the importance of absolute silence.  He described the tactics of Brian Storm who goes as far as to unplug refrigerators.  I know the rules – rooms with soft surfaces, no ticking clocks, no televisions, no radio, no traffic noise, avoid tables, rolling chairs are a nightmare (so are chairs that squeak), no air conditioners, etc.  And, if it’s on video, make it look beautiful.  Enforcing these in the field, I’ve found, can be a bit more challenging, particularly finding the balance between beauty and silence.

And why is that title not SEO optimized?

The photo is from the third story in my next La Tercera series. The story is about living conditions or housing. This was taken in a small campamento in an area of Santiago called Renca.  I will discuss the campamento and the story in a later post. Today I am interested in discussing titles and work.

I get asked frequently here whether I am a journalist or a photographer. This distinction unfailingly confuses me. It’s like I’ve been suddenly transported back to photojournalism’s predawn, with all those camera chimps running around, creating illustrations for articles. I always say that my degree is in journalism (true) and that I tell the stories with images – whether still and moving (also true).

Often this question is posed by fellow journalists. I can’t fault them. It’s a different way of conceiving of the use and creator of the image.  My understanding is that in Chile photographers are trained as photographers, and they may find their livelihood in newspapers, or elsewhere. If anyone has any further information on this, I would love to hear it.

Clifton Edom coined the term photojournalism. It was meant to describe the marriage of words and images that could tell a story in itself, in the same way written journalists used text. He held the pursuit of truth to be the absolute goal and rule of photojournalism. Even through the 70’s, photojournalists in the US were still battling to be called photojournalists, a name they felt was more accurate and gave them and their mission greater respect. I think it’s an important term, that I plan to work on importing.

But, I’m not just a photojournalist either. It’s rare that I take only still images. I use video. I use audio. Both of which add a world of additional technical details from levels to compression. I am expected to know some programming. These days I am reading mashable and copyblogger like they’re going out of style. I want my work to be seen and social media promotion is an added value Nacho and I can offer to work we produce. Facebook is the second most checked site in Chile. Youtube is the fourth. I’m aware that I’m not an expert, but I know more than most people in general industry, I know where to find information, and I have more time than many.

My portfolio stills need to be updated and videos as well. This means compression, basic html, and wordpress. I need to change the name of this blog – domain purchase, registration and possibly migration. I worked on another set of stories for La Tercera. While I had a great deal of help with the programming of the first collection, the woman I worked with is quite busy and I am going to try this week to manipulate menus and make clean html – Dreamweaver and Flash.

To call myself a multimedia journalist brings in the trouble with the definition multimedia. Is it just video or photo or is it graphics and design too? Sometimes I use visual journalist, but it’s not exactly a common term and I doubt the translation would be recognized in Spanish as an entity.

I need to know heaps of things, and as I learn these new things, I start to feel spread thin. I went into UNC wanting to study photojournalism. I was quickly introduced to the world of multimedia narrative storytelling, which I love. I love the way a narrative (when edited properly and tightly) makes visuals come alive. A few weeks ago, I was watching a series by the LA Times about gang violence. The first few stories had audio tracks. Then I entered slideshow land – no audio. It was just so terribly flat, after having heard initially the voices of the community. I love multimedia storytelling. (I do not love multimedia storytelling with a narrator, a trend I am going to discuss in a further post.)

Everything I learn, seems to require that I learn something else. Early on in my Master’s career, I had to make a choice between programming and storytelling. I chose storytelling because I like being in the field and telling stories. I’ve heard stories of people who only shoot video and others edit it for them. I don’t know that I would want that but I don’t feel like I know enough now. Maybe what I want is 2 more years of university so I can do and understand absolutely everything. Or maybe I just wish I was a glorified chimp with a camera shooting on film.

I am doing another series on issues in the upcoming presidential elections.  This time, the issues are people with disabilities(Nacho’s killer photo from yesterday,) living conditions, and transportation.  Today I went to a bus depot at the far end of town.  With a colleague, Nicolás Alcalde, I interviewed a bus driver.  Then we rode with him on part of his route.

In Santiago, I’ve had to rethink the gear I bring with me or how I bring it.  I am in the safest city in South America.  Yet, I hear stories, constantly of theft.  People walking down the street in central have gold chains ripped off their necks.  A colleague’s brother had his headphones stolen on a bus while they were on his head.  I don’t bring Nacho’s 5D MarkII with me if we are not together, going to a known location.  I carry only one body.  It’s heaps harder to grab something when it’s in one’s hands.  I only bring my 70-200 if I’m certain I’ll be in a situation where I can use it.  I’ve ripped the Canon logo off my backpack and taped over the brand and spec markings on my video camera.  A piece of advice I got from a photojournalist with La Tercera was stick with the crowd of photojournalists when you’re shooting.  But the things I am covering don’t have crowds of photojournalists covering them.

I honestly don’t know how dangerous it is.  But, I’m not at a point where I can afford to lose any of my gear and I’m not going to take unnecessary risks.  Today, I traveled light. I brought the Canon 5D with a 16-35, my Sony Handicam (HDR-SR11), a gorilla pod, a set of headphones, and a stick mic, in an old blue, Iberian Airlines small messenger size bag.  I didn’t even bring my phone.  I didn’t know where I was going to be. In fact, the bus was traveling through one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in the city.  When I would focus on stills, Nicolas would kindly offer to stash the other camera.  When we departed with crowds all around, he said that I should put the cameras away.  But, I needed some images of the crowds at the bus stop.  So I took it the footage I needed and then stashed the goods.

I don’t shoot with a 16-35 often.  I worry that this makes me a bad photographer.  It does have to be admitted that the 16-35 on a 5D is full frame wide.  I began shooting in Patagonia with Nacho’s 24-70, and I find this more comfortable.  I have greater reach and I’m able to give my subjects more personal space.  Knowing that I’d be on the bus, I decided to use the 16-35.  It was 100% the right choice, as most of the time, the people were packed in and I was standing on assorted bus ledges.  I also really enjoyed the look.  I think I’ll be revisiting it in the future soon.