Gersh Photo Post | Max Gersh | Multimedia Photojournalist

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.

I’m pretty addicted already…AND I’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN!

I decided to try more time-lapse today. Well, tonight. I attached my camera onto my car. I hooked up hard power via a power inverter to both my camera and my laptop. There were also steel safety cables just in case something went wrong.

I wanted to shoot at two or three frames per second (fps) but my computer’s intervalometer only allowed me to shoot down to five fps.

I started in my drive way, turned out onto a main street and just drove. At one point, I decided to stop at a McDonalds. I wasn’t really hungry; I just thought it might look interesting in the final product. I then turned onto another main drag and eventually got onto the interstate (yes, I was going 60mph with my camera attached to the outside of my car).

When I got home, I was anxious to see what I got. I rendered it out as 30fps video (standard video) and since I was only able to shoot five fps, It was REALLY fast.

I then slowed the playback down to 20fps. It was still too fast. I didn’t want to slow it down too much more because it would start to look choppy. A humans persistence of vision is 16fps. In other words, if you saw a sequence of images played at 16fps, your brain would interpret it as fluid motion, however awkward the speed may appear.

To get it slow enough, I broke persistence of vision and set the playback to 12fps. It definitely looks a little choppy but it gives each image a little more time on the screen so you can see what’s going on…kind of.

There is definitely more to come. I might try one with people in a more populated setting sometime this week. Maybe even tomorrow. Anyone have any suggestions? I might try the comment left by Gavin on the last post — use a slow shutter speed to virtually eliminate people from an urban setting. I wish I had a really powerful battery backup or solar power source to take my gear into rural areas. I could also use a nice intervalometer that’s not built into a computer. Where’s my winning lotto ticket?

Yesterday, I decided to try time-lapse photography.

I tried to figure out the best place for my camera where I would have power and decided to aim it out my front window.

My camera was on a tripod with a hard line for power. It was tethered to my laptop via Firewire. My computer essentially became the dashboard for my camera. I set all of the settings on the computer screen.

After I was content with my capture settings, I went into the time-lapse (intervalometer) settings. This allows me to set the intervals between pictures and how long I wanted it to shoot. I set it to shoot one picture every 30 seconds for 1,200 frames. That’s ten hours of recording images.

So I let it run. I watched a lot of TV. Thank god there were movies on!

About eight hours into it, I decided that was probably long enough since this was just a test anyways.

So after 900 frames and some heavy compression, here is what I ended up with:

Now I have to go find more things to time-lapse! That is if I’m patient enough!