Ethics continued.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
In my last post I wrote about an ethical mess.
Mr. Thompson has since gone back and reworked his moon photo. Here’s the previous version of the photo.
Of the changes he writes:
(Update: 08/06/07: I went back to the image and backed the enhancement off three levels and also updated the explanation on what was done. A more complete explanation can be found here.)
He also wrote more about the revision in the comments on my previous post:
What is different is the final image. Because of the debate, I went back and looked at each of the files and layers that were used during enhancement. I tried backing off three levels of enhancement and the image that now appears on my web site is, I feel, a more accurate portayal of the moon. It is still a photo illustration and is identified as such.
I’m still left wondering why he’s trying to make an illustration of a general news/feature assignment.
Doug has since restored the original thread that displays the before and after photos and his thoughts on ethics. Thanks for that Doug.
The last few comments on Doug’s photo raised by Allen Kurth and Mr. Thompson’s response to Allen is worth a read.
For a lesson in why we as journalists have to make sure we uphold ourselves to the highest standards read the comments on one of Doug’s recent photos. Cause the general public won’t.
Another discussion on this from the photojournalism perspective on SportsShooter.
In a comment to my first post Doug wrote:
Was this a learning experience? Yes, it was.
I have written a clarification this week that says the photo failed to state that it was an illustration. The editors tell me they are satisfied that I was honest with them but I doubt that I will ever dabble in photo illustration for news use again.
Thank you.
I was wrong and take responsibility for the way it was handled. I have said so on my blog. But I have to ask that why no shooter who has criticized me here or elsewhere took the time to call or email and ask for details?
Did Doug screw up? I’ll let you decide that for yourself. As for why I highlighted it in a blog entry rather than a email? For the same reason that Doug posted the work on his blog. To start a discussion on a topic that isn’t a simple black and white issue. Hopefully it was educational for everyone involved.
Doug what I find most dis-heartening is when I read the about page on your site. You seem like a decent guy who has a storied background in journalism and someone who shares that with up and coming journalists.
Despite his work in new media, Thompson remains a newspaperman at heart and lives by the creed that it is the role of a newspaperman to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
He returns to Washington once a year to speak to journalism students at the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism
So I’m left scratching my head as to why Doug did what he did.
Tags: journalism, photojournalism, Uncategorized
Production, Post and Online Distribution for Hometown Baghdad.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
You may or not be familiar with Hometown Baghdad. It’s a video series that brings you into the lives of everyday Iraqis who attempt to live a normal life during the war.
Check out the Q&A on the series at Studio Daily.
A few highlights:
And we began to realize that we would have more freedom and a bigger potential audience than we could have ever hoped for on TV. Once we realized that, we never looked back and have been happy that we didn’t go to TV first.
There’s a paradox for you. We had to go online because TV didn’t want us but because we went online, TV wants us now.
We posted to YouTube because YouTube was built for viral potential. It also has the biggest audience of any other site…. It’s also on some other sites like veoh and dailymotion. And lastly, it’s on Joost. So there are high quality alternatives.
And we shot about 120 hours of footage. And then our editors went through the footage, found the stories and pieced them together. And as you can see, sometimes the stories weren’t so linear. We often found that it was more interesting to show a few different scenes on the theme of losing power in your house than it would have been to just show Adel in his house, losing power and then turning on the generator.
You can view videos from the series at their website Hometown Baghdad.
Tags: Uncategorized, video
Nothing runs like a Deere.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
An audio slideshow show I shot and produced: The John Deere Shuttle
And a few thoughts:
A recent assignment had me camping at a musical festival called Floyd Fest. It was the kind of story I love to work on. You know the kind where you’re asked to focus on everything but the main stage? One of my photographic inspirations, William Allard, (a MN native) states that the best photographs often happen on the perimeter of an event. I couldn’t agree more.
Away I went, with my eyes chasing the light and ears on full alert. Shortly after the sounds of a bullhorn drew me in.
I was talking to the writer minutes earlier about wanting to find something different for the audio slideshow. My hope was to find something more than the standard soundbites of “Floyd Fest is great because and I love camping because and so on.”
The man behind the bullhorn was my ticket to just that.
Here’s the audio slideshow.
On a side note the assignment became another lesson in finding a balance between life and work.
Being an intern I feel there’s a lot I have to prove. (The list is long and worthy of a separate post.) I’m sure all interns feel that way. As an intern you need to be working harder than anyone on staff. If you’re not you should be. Not all that hard to do considering when you’re interning you’re only there for a brief time and came there with a very defined purpose.
I was out in San Fran all weekend for a wedding. Earlier in the month my girlfriend and I talked about the importance of finding a balance between work, our relationship and life.
Here was I was zippin across the country trying to get this piece produced in-between connections and overpriced smoothies, while working against the seconds ticking away on my MacBook’s battery.
The battery won out.
I was able to get a decent amount of the audio clips logged and an edit of the tracks done, but still needed to sequence the story.
Back on the ground in SF I spent what was suppose to be a night with my girlfriend and her friends throwing together my story. I felt bad knowing my work was getting in the way of us spending time with each other for the first time all summer.
By 6am, my time, I had the piece finished. For you OU grads it felt like another all-nighter down at the grad lab. Except instead of sleeping on the grad lab floor I was able to fall asleep next to a very understanding girlfriend.
Thanks Jenn. 
A couple images:
Tags: audio, internship, photojournalism, Uncategorized
My 2nd video. Quad Racing.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Here’s the second piece I shot since picking up a video camera and much like the first video it was another learning experience. I went to a local track where I found Christopher and his family. Here’s what worked and didn’t:
Picking a story that lends itself to video is a no-brainer.
The level of noise these quads create made it a must to consistently monitor my audio levels. It meant a lot of adjusting on the fly as the quads raced closer I’d have to compensate and likewise when they’d race out of my frame. My headphones were useless with the machines around.
My final shot in the piece I don’t have any B-roll audio from because I ran over from shooting the end of Critter’s race and had my audio levels dialed way down so it wasn’t blown out from the sound of the quads and forget to dial it up in my haste to capture the moment. Luckily the A-roll I got from Critter’s dad worked along with it. With time hopefully forgetting something like that won’t happen again.
Interviewing out at the track was impossible. The sound of the quads and bikes drowned out any hope of getting a clean track. Ever try setting up a tripod in a truck? I don’t recommend it.
Interviewing kids can be hard. Christopher didn’t have much to say on tape. I tried to interview him on three different occasions even letting his dad have a crack at it, but nothing really worked. So in the end I had his dad drive the story. For some kids and even adults it might be better to do informal interviews as they’re doing their thing.
The video camera is slowly starting to feel like my still camera meaning I’m thinking for it versus it thinking for me.
All the dust led to a head error, but luckily it disappeared.
Finding one character to drive your story is a great idea.
Anticipation is key and even more so than it is with stills especially in searching for what Mr. Leeson calls the extended moment. You always need to be thinking ahead for your next shot. (On a side note, David, even through video iChat can still give a hell of a presentation.)
I was tripod free for this whole piece except the A-Roll. I’m learning to make use of whatever might be around for stability and that mobility helped me capture things I would of missed had I been using a tripod. With the speed of the machines I would of been eating dust as I was still trying to get the first tripod leg down. By working tripod free I was able to run around the track and shoot the racers at various points on the track. For each lap I was able to shoot from atleast 4 different positions. (My technique improved since the first piece where I was all about the sticks.)
And finally my dodge ball game needs work. The little fella handed out a whooping.
Have a look for yourself and let me know what you think.
Tags: Uncategorized, video
My first video at Roanoke.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Today I was reminded how small the community is we work in.
First I read Daniel Sato’s blog and one of his recent posts where he talks about the same idea of this small community. He happens to be interning in Saint Cloud, MN. The paper I delivered as a kid. (Nothin beat the days my dad would drive me around and I’d act like Barry Sanders with each stop servin’ as a new down. I’d jump over snow drifts aka linemen to get the paper delivered.) Daniel knows Kainaz who goes to grad school with me at Ohio University.
Later on I was watching the videos Mindy McAdams linked to on her blog about newspapers shooting video. In Chuck Fadley’s portion of the presentation he talked about The Roanoke Times and their use of video; the paper I happen to be interning at. He was talking about the different approaches papers take to doing newspaper video and used Roanoke as an example. Seeing as I’m here for the summer I have my own perspective on things so I was curious to hear his critique.
Before I’m done watching the videos I tab out(short attention span) to check Google Reader and find Chuck had updated his blog with an apology about what he said in his presentation about Roanoke and their use of video.
It also happens my first story/video for the paper ran yesterday on Tony, the circus clown. I wrote the article too. Scary I know.
Here’s the video (turns out you can’t embed Brightcove videos with Wordpress so instead click the image below to see the video):
And a jpg of the section front:
Tags: internship, journalism, photojournalism, Uncategorized, video
Tweens.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Hung out with a babysitter the other day for a story on tweens. Tweens if you didn’t know are kids that are at the in-between stage of being a kid and a teenager. My vote is to stay a kid as long as possible. How could you possibly go wrong with afternoons filled with Scooby Doo and Captain Crunch? Being old isn’t fun kids. Trust me.
Tags: internship, photojournalism, Uncategorized
Looking to Hitchcock for video goodness.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Some techniques used by Alfred Hitchcock and something we could easily apply to our own work. I found these few especially useful:
Frame for Emotion
Emotion (in the form of fear, laughter, surprise, sadness, anger, boredom, etc.) is the ultimate goal of each scene. The first consideration of where to place the camera should involve knowing what emotion you want the audience to experience at that particular time. Emotion comes directly from the actor’s eyes. You can control the intensity of that emotion by placing the camera close or far away from those eyes. A close-up will fill the screen with emotion, and pulling away to a wide angle shot will dissipate that emotion. A sudden cut from wide to close-up will give the audience a sudden surprise. Sometimes a strange angle above an actor will heighten the dramatic meaning. (Truffaut)
Hitchcock used this theory of proximity to plan out each scene. These varations are a way of controlling when the audience feels intensity, or relaxation. Hitchcock compared this to a composer writing a music score - except instead of playing instruments, he’s playing the audience!
Always use the camera as more than just a camera.
Instead, carfully chose a close-up of a hand, an arm, a face, a gun falling to the floor - tie them all together to tell a story. In this way you can portray an event by showing various pieces of it and having control over the timing. You can also hide parts of the event so that the mind of the audience is engaged.
Remove all extraneous material and keep it crisp. Each scene should include only those essential ingredients that make things gripping for the audience. (Edit tightly my friend.)
Make all of your characters the exact opposite of what the audience expects in a movie. Turn dumb blondes into smart blondes, give the Cuban guy a French accent, and the criminals must be rich and successful. They should have unexpected personalities, making decisions on a whim rather than what previous buildup would suggest. (Something that applies to all good stories.)
Pull the audience in one direction and then another, trick them, and keep them from knowing what’s really going to happen. You must make the audience think they know whats coming next, and then you pull the rug out from under them. It must never turn out the way they expected. (The surprise we all look for in stories.)
via: kottke
Tags: Uncategorized
Homemade Modest Mouse video
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Fine example of using multiple mediums here.
Myself and a couple have friends have entered the above into the Modest Mouse video competition. Using green screen footage provided by the band we cut a simple music video. We then degraded the images and printed out each frame sequentially. (all 4133 of them) We then nailed each “shot” of 50-100 posters to various structures and posts. Then using a digital SLR camera with a long exposure we frame by frame shot each poster. Oh, and theres a little video projection (again, frame by frame on the SLR) just to mix it up. There is no compositing, no shortcuts, just lots of blood, sweat and tears, and a huge Kinkos bill!
Tags: Uncategorized, video
Insight from Salgado. Pouring ketchup. And a little eye candy.
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
Fellow grad student Jim Korpi shares this quote from Salgado he found and I love. Looks like he finally added a RSS feed too. Thank you sir!
A person who creates something, he has a way to do it, he has not two ways to do it. As a writer when he writes — he has his style, he write in a way, he don’t write in two ways: one ugly for the ugly people and beautiful for the beautiful people. Photography is the same, no? It’s not that I went to the poor places of the planet and tried to make them beautiful. I have a way to photograph. You work with space, you have a camera, you have a frame, and then a fraction of a second. It’s very instinctive. What you do is a fraction of a second, it’s there and it’s not there. But in this fraction of a second [he snaps his fingers] comes your past, comes your future, comes your relation with people, comes your ideology, comes your hate, comes your love — all together in this fraction of a second, it materializes there. I speak like this, I don’t speak in another way. No? You can put the question why I went there, but if I am there and I make the picture, I can make only this kind of picture, I cannot do two different kind of pictures.
You can read more of the interview at the LA Weekly site entitled: Sebastião Salgado’s Search for the Pristine.
I didn’t know there was a right way to pour ketchup? That’s right there’s a better way than using a knife to get that bottle started. This might be a life changer for some.
Thanks to Miguel Garcia-Guzman’s blog Exposure Compensation I came across the work of Kalpesh Lathigra. I especially enjoyed the Lost in Wilderness series.
Lost in the Wilderness by Kalpesh Lathigra
I don’t anyone who doesn’t enjoy the work of Trent Parke and recently I stumbled across some work I haven’t seen before on the Stills Gallery website. Also check out the work of Narelle Autio on the site.
Trent Parke
Tags: photojournalism, portraits, Uncategorized
Miss Virginia? What’s in your bag?
Posted by Tim Gruber | Filed under Uncategorized
I guess Cosmo has a feature that peaks into the bags of celebrities to see what’s in their bag? Here’s a look at what a few of the Miss VA contestants keep in their bag. Thanks to the girls who were all great sports about it.
Update: Big thanks to my co-workers Kyle Green and Jared Soares who were messing around with these images back in the office and found a square crop increased the playfulness of the images. Kyle’s a Photoshop guru who was kind enough tone to these images for me as he showed me his Photoshop workflow. Check out his latest work he did for the Athletes of the Year. It’ll blow you away.
Men’s deodorant.
A photo of Bill Clinton.
A lucky piece of lettuce.
A cellphone she uses as a mirror.
A bag of banana chips.
Tags: internship, photojournalism, portraits, Uncategorized
