Gersh Photo Post | Max Gersh | Multimedia Photojournalist

Like I said in my previous post, I enjoy the challenge that comes with newspaper photojournalism. There is something different to shoot every day and I am obligated to make it visually appealing.

Earlier this week, I was given the task to photograph two high school swimmers that made it to the state finals. The reporter was meeting them at the beginning of their swim practice. I think he was under the impression that I would come and take a standard environmental portrait.

I decided to try something a little different.

When I was thinking about an environmental portrait, I came to the conclusion that their environment was in the pool, not at the pool. I wanted to take an underwater portrait.

I can’t afford an underwater housing for my camera so I had to improvise. One 10-gallon aquarium later, I was ready to go.

I set the camera longways in the aquarium with a 24-70mm lens attached and set at 24mm. The camera was triggered by a Pocket Wizard which in turn fired my 550EX Speedlight flash.

Because I was uncertain how the water would scatter my light, I wanted to do my best to directionalize my flash. I attached a Gary Fong PowerSnoot which turned my flash into a high-powered spotlight.

After a little experimentation, I got a shot I was satisfied with.

New Castle swimmers Aimee Haddix, left, and Hannah Espiritu pose for an underwater photo at Parkview Pool. The two swimmers are competing in today's state final. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010

Is this perfect? Not by a long shot.

The biggest problem is just what I expected. The lighting. I feel that I probably needed at least one more light. It would also have been preferable to have those lights underwater somehow. That would require making a much more complex rig but might be something I try in the future.

The least of my worries was having my camera go underwater. The aquarium was so buoyant that it was actually a little difficult to keep submerged to the top of the lens. I had the writer that was with me apply a decent bit of pressure to keep it down.

I will consider this first attempt at an underwater portrait a success but I can’t wait to try again and put some new ideas to the test.

So that was one situation this week where I tried something a little different. The other is a little more practical.

The paper is doing a story on the St. Anne Catholic Church. A few years ago, an arsonist burned the church down. It has taken three years to rebuild. I was granted a sneak peak and I wanted to show everyone what the inside looked like.

It would have been easy enough to go up on the balcony and take a wide angle photo and squeeze as much in to the photograph as I could.

A view of the new St. Anne Catholic Church from the balcony. (C-T photo Max Gersh) ©2010

Even in this image shot at 24mm, there is so much of the church that is unseen.

I went out to my car and got my tripod. From the back row of pews, I started panning and tilting, taking incremental photos - 24 total.

I took those 24 separate photos and stitched them into a panorama that covered more than 180 degrees laterally.

The interior of the new St. Anne Catholic Church is seen in this photo illustration showing approximately a 180-degree view. The image was composed from 24 separate photos. (C-T photo illustration Max Gersh) ©2010

This photo will be running six columns across the page on today’s paper.

In an effort to maintain journalistic credibility, I do list this image as a photo illustration. Since this isn’t a capture of one moment in time, it has to be that way. Otherwise I risk compromising my ethics by misrepresenting a scene.

Part of my job as a photojournalist is to show you something you might not ordinarily see. That might be changing angles or getting somewhere you can’t. I think both of these images do that.

Let’s hope I don’t run out of fresh ideas. Any suggestions for what to try next?

Have you ever wondered what the St. Louis Gateway Arch and its surroundings would look like if it were its own planet?

Probably not…But I did.

Today, I went down to the Arch grounds with the express purpose of making a 360 degree panorama and warping it into a two-dimensional globe. I only had a vague idea of what I was doing.

Just like any panorama, it is best to set your camera on a tripod to get equal and level rotations. I set my Canon EOS 1D Mark II on the tripod and took pictures in a full circle with the camera leveled. I then made a second and a third pass, one with a high angle of view and one with a lower angle.

This was tedious. I had to make sure there was some overlap so the photo stitching would be easier. It wasn’t long before my friend, Gavin, had a better suggestion for capturing the angles.

He recommended putting my camera in full motor drive (8.5 frames per second on my camera) and just spin it quickly while running a circle around the tripod. This worked like a charm capturing at very even and overlapping intervals.

After capturing 89 frames, I rushed home to see my finished product.

I opened Photoshop’s photomerge program and set it to auto. I figured that I could fine tune the problem spots by hand.

An hour later, my straightened 360 panorama was complete.  One step remained. Stretch the image so it is equal in height and width and then run a Polar Coordinates filter on it.

After all that work, I was tremendously disappointed.

Photoshopped version of the 360 panoramic of the St. Louis Arch grounds. Photoshop left sloppy merge lines and caused significant distortion. ©Max Gersh 2009

That is when I decided to edit it a different way. I had read about a method of 360 photo merging called stereographic projection. In essence, it is a way of wrapping the images without distortion around a circular (almost spherical) plane. That yielded much better results.

Stereographic projection of the 360 panoramic of the St. Louis Arch grounds. All merge lines have vanished and the distortion is so minimal that you can even clearly see my friend sitting on the grass meditating. ©Max Gersh 2009

One St. Louis themed Little Planet / Wee Planet / Stereographic Projection down. The rest of the town to go.

There are many videos linked in this post.
All of them are in HD and will take some time to load.
If the video is laggy, pause it and let it load before you try and watch it.
They are all worth the wait to watch.

A few months ago, multimedia photojournalism was revolutionized. Canon released the first ever full 1080P HD video camera that was integrated into a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) body - the EOS 5D Mark II. It is a terrific tool. A photographer can utilize this camera as a 21 megapixel still camera or as a high definition video camera.

It wasn’t long after the release of the camera that beautiful videos were hitting the web. The first and probably most famous yet was Reverie shot by Vincent Laforet. It showcased the cameras abilities by shooting at night with Canon still lenses ranging from Fisheye lenses to a 500mm lens and even a couple perspective correction lenses. It was not photojournalism nor was it intended to be.

The next video that caught my eye was that of German photographer Julian Stratenschulte. He did two videos on cyclists. They were unique because he was able to attach the camera to the bikes. One of his videos was called Backflip and the other was called Nachtfahrer. To view them, click on the movies link on his site. The last two videos (the ones sponsored by Canon) are those two.

At this point, everyone in the photo community was blown away by the abilities packed into this small camera. It was still yet to be seen how it would be used for photojournalism.

That is when I came across the work of David Stephenson, a staff photojournalist for the Lexington Herald-Leader and the photojournalism adviser to the Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s student paper. He put it to the test for a photojournalist. Here is the video:

David Stephenson wrote his review of the camera on his blog.

Now I don’t bring this video to you to argue its technical execution or use of light and lenses. I think it was shot beautifully. My concerns come with the way the story was told.

With the advent of new technology in photojournalism, journalists have to be more careful than ever to maintain objectivity.

If you look at any of my multimedia pieces, you will see that I let the subject tell the story. Narration or title slides are sometimes necessary but I try to avoid that. My way isn’t the only way and it is probably not the best way. But it is an objective way.

David Stephenson did a great job of gathering beautiful shots. The problem is that most of the video was narrated by a reporter. While I’m sure unintentionally, her tone was one that makes you sympathize with the boy and his family’s story. It worked. That should not have been the job of the story.

Photojournalists are there to inform. Not to take sides. We are used to carefully crafting pictures and words to meet a strict objectivity guideline. Slight changes in tonality and word spacing in narration can change the connotation of the message.

I don’t think any damage was done with this video. It is a happy story with beautiful imagry. It just makes me think about how video and multimedia will evolve photojournalism and if advocacy journalism is on the rise. My good friend Lanz Bañes hopes so.

I decided to hop on board with Podcasting.

After setting up my recording area, I had to think of what I wanted to talk about. The only thing on my mind right now is looking for a job and staying motivated while doing so. Therefore, my first Podcast is about staying motivated even with the gloomy cloud over the journalism industry.

** Please keep in mind that this is my first Podcast so I might have some kinks to work out. Let me know if you discover any problems.

Since I’ve been working at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I’ve had many opportunities to produce multimedia pieces. I have been required to do stills, video and audio slide shows at different points of my internship. I have even had the opportunity to raise the bar on my time-lapse skills.

While all of this work has been made over the last four months or so, it was only available on the Post-Dispatch’s web site. I decided that I better post it on my own site for you all to see.

If you go to my website, click on the multimedia link. There you will find a list of my projects. The pieces range from sports, feature, spot news (breaking news), etc. I’ve nearly covered the gamut.

Check them out and let me know what you think. All of the pieces are very short. Let me know which ones you like and which ones you don’t. If you have any suggestions for improvement, mention those as well.

Now go get your popcorn, turn on your speakers and get to watching! Enjoy.