What Photogs Wish They Learned in School

You'll learn all about technique and aesthetics, and perhaps even glean a smattering of history, if you study photography. But what are some of the "real-world" lessons that professionals wish someone had taught them earlier in their career? What do photographers need to know that involves more than just taking better pictures?

That was the question posed by Photshelter to about a dozen of the industry's top photogs.

Grover Sanschagrin compiled the best responses in his blog entry, "The Top 11 Things Photographers Wish They Learned in Photo School"

Here are the bare-bones bits of desired advice, but be sure to check out the blog yourself for the expanded commentary, which you will find invaluable.

11) How to treat others.

10) How to maintain a balanced life.

9) How to maintain an ethical standing in a changing photography business.

8) Where to find story ideas and things to photograph.

7) You don't have to be perfect.

6) How to keep your head up, navigate obstacles, and handle rejection.

5) How to continue to evolve and grow your career.

4) How to market myself, and my work.

3) It's not the camera, it's the photographer.

2) How to price their own work.

1) The realities of photography as a business.

What would you add to this list?

Watch NPR's 'Writer Who Couldn't Read'

Sometimes animation can serve as an important tool for part of a documentary -- especially in instances where it is impossible to capture photos or video of actual events in the past.

National Public Radio (NPR), ironically an audio medium, recently posted a three-minute  animated documentary on its Website -- and it tells a compelling true story entirely in animation.

"In January of 2002," writes the neuroscientist Oliver Sacks, "I received a letter from Howard Engel, a Canadian novelist describing a strange problem." Engel's problem was so strange, I decided to create a short video to let you see his story. Our narrator and animator is San Francisco artist Lev Yilmaz.

What is even more remarkable is that NPR.org additionally offers a seven-minute audio version of the story (as broadcast on its "Morning Edition," below), and an illustrated text version of the story.



All three versions tell the intriguing tale of how a stroke rendered detective novelist Howard Engel unable to read, and yet he was able to regain his able to write. But each version is original and not "repurposed" -- which is to say that the text on the Web page is NOT merely a transcript of the radio broadcast NOR the animated documentary feature. Each version is distinctive, self-contained   ...   and worthy of your attention.

Check them out here.

And think about other instances where animation can enhance nonfiction visual storytelling.

How to Shoot & Edit a Video Sequence

Here's a short video tutorial that demonstrates how to plan and shoot a series of shots and assemble them as a storytelling sequence.



You can find free helpful video tutorials behind the HOW TO tab on KobreGuide.com.

When to Zoom and When Not to Zoom (Part 2)

Here’s a short video tutorial on when to zoom the lens, and when not to zoom, when you are shooting and editing a short video sequence.



You can find free helpful video tutorials behind the HOW TO tab on KobreGuide.com.

Zoom Shots and How to Avoid Them

Here's a short video tutorial on why zoom shots are usually unnecessary and undesirable. It shows to produce and edit a video sequence with and without a zoom shot.



You can find free helpful video tutorials behind the HOW TO tab on KobreGuide.com.

Three Legs Are Better Than Two Hands

Here's a free short video tutorial about when and how to use a tripod for producing a video sequence... and when a hand-held camera will suffice.



Be sure to check out more video tutorials behind the HOW TO tab on KobreGuide.com.

How to Shoot Live Music with One Camera

Here's a short video tutorial on how to shoot and edit a short video sequence of a live music performance using one camera.



Be sure to check out more video tutorials behind the HOW TO tab on KobreGuide.com.

What Is Your Newsroom's Video Vision?

As an advisor to Bill Gentile's Backpack Journalism Project (pictured) at American University's School of Communication, multimedia producer Colin Mulvany recently shared his perspective of the rise and fall and eventual resurrection of newspaper videojournalism -- how we got here, and where we're going.

In his expansive essay Video Journalism at Newspapers, Mulvany concludes:

For the last several years, newspaper video journalists have collectively held their breath. Mass layoffs, newsroom reorganizations and non-paid furloughs have left journalists still employed at newspapers on-edge. The good news is the worst may be over.

Mulvany has been in the vanguard of shepherding still photogs into the video fold. He's generously dedicated his time and energies to educating a generation of videojournalists, and has even co-created a community Website, FindingTheFrame.com, to help novitiates learn from their more seasoned confreres.

Having built a seminal multimedia department for the Spokane's Spokesman-Review, Mulvany's advisory capacity extends beyond tutoring in-the-field practitioners and to counseling editorial management.

"I occasionally get calls from video producers or editors struggling with how to successfully integrate video into their newsrooms," he reveals.

These are the blueprint questions I would ask anyone on a similar quest:

* Do you have an overall vision for video in your newsroom?

* Why are you doing video in the first place?

* Is quality video valuable to your viewers?

* Has video gained traction on your website over time? If not, figure out why.

* Has your paper invested in training that empowers your video producers to be able to tell and edit a story effectively?

* Do you have (need) a web-savvy management structure in place to filter out bad video ideas and is an advocate for video based storytelling?

* If you are producing lots of video, do you have a website that showcases this valued web-only content?

* Can viewers find your videos quickly if they land on a story page and not on the home page?

* Can lower levels of video quality be acceptable if they meet a high news value bar?

* Do your videos load fast, have good, clean compression, and have full screen ability?

* Are you using social media to promote your video content?

* If you’re a small paper with dwindling resources, should you really be adding poorly produced video to your already bleak shovelware website?

For all the bleak economic realities he's encountered -- including layoffs and reductions of the troops he's personally trained -- Mulvany remains hopeful.

I still believe video journalism can generate revenue opportunities for newspapers, especially as the economy rebounds. The Internet is growing increasingly visual. Video, in many ways, is becoming the language of the Internet. Online viewers have steadily embraced video, so it’s imperative for newspapers to be there with compelling, well-edited video content for them to consume. But if video journalism, or backpack journalism, is to grow and succeed at newspapers, it will need a lot more nurturing and support from newsroom management than it is getting now.

Amen to that.

LINKS:

Backpack Journalism Project

Colin Mulvany's Mastering Multimedia blog

Finding the Frame Website

'My Father' Photo Essay: From Blog to Book

One of the Web's most powerful photo essays is now available as a hardcover book.

Photographer Phil Toledano kept a photo journal of his aging father's dying years, chronicling his difficult decline and demise -- from severe memory loss, to loss of control of his own body.

What began as a daily blog soon became an astonishingly melancholy and whimsically humorous Website, DaysWithMyFather.com , that hooks you from the first page and doesn't let you go. Its universal themes of mortality, the cruel passage of time, and inter-generational bonds of love will instantly engage you -- and haunt you long after you have stopped looking. He illuminates the big picture by focusing on specific details of one man's life. In short, Toledano's potent combo of conversational text and intimate images embody the essence of masterful visual storytelling.

DaysWithMyFather.com is still online. For the new hold-in-your-hands print version, try Amazon, where it is a top-10 best-selling title in the health, parenting, and photography categories.

Either way, you will not be able to start following the father-son journey without finishing it, and you will not finish it without being emotionally moved and transformed.

A perfect Father's Day treat, for both fathers and sons.

Video Tips, Tricks, Techniques from a Pro

Bill Mecca (pictured) is a former TV and radio journalist, and an award-winning documentary filmmaker, whose career spans three decades. He's taught mass communications college courses and currently serves as "a one-person video production department" for a state agency.

On his blog, he periodically shares video "tips, tricks and techniques for better video and audio."

Here are his first half-dozen video tutorials. Check out BillMecca.com for more insights.

Quick Tips Episode 1: Lens Filters & Lens Hoods


Quick Tips Episode 2: Free Motion Graphics, Video Backgrounds


Quick Tips Episode 3: Dealing With Plosives


Quick Tips Episode 4: Sound Treatment


Quick Tips Episode 5 : Free Music


Quick Tips Episode 6: Framing & Composition

Collaborative Video Project Wins Knight Grant

The Knight Foundation's 2010 News Challenge awarded a total of $2.74 million to 12 innovative media projects "that use digital technology to inform specific geographic communities."

Among the grant recipients ($200,000) was L.A.-based Stroome, the creation of Nonny de la Peña and Tom Grasty.

Essentially, Stroome is a "collaborative video editing community," meaning that users can upload videos, share clips, and edit them with chosen partners or teams.

To simplify the production of news video, Stroome will create a virtual video-editing studio. Correspondents, editors and producers will be able to upload and share content, edit and remix with friends and colleagues - all without using expensive satellite truck technology. The site will launch as eyewitness video - often captured by mobile phones or webcams - is becoming a key component of news coverage, generating demand for supporting tools.

Theoretically, Stroome participants will have access to thousands of clips and collaborators.

With Stroome, you can:

* Stream content to the site so that it’s immediately accessible to the community
* Grab clips from the largest collaborative, rights-cleared clip pool on the web
* Connect to other aspiring and established content providers, editors, and producers
* Edit and remix your content with your network of friends and colleagues in real time
* Publish those edits and remixes to all the popular social networks

Tom Grasty was head of creative development at Blaze Television, and has a degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a master's from the University of Southern California (USC) program in online communities.

Nonny de la Peña is a senior research fellow in immersive journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. A graduate of Harvard University, she is an award-winning documentary filmmaker with 20 years of journalism experience.

And the name Stroome? They say it's derived from the Dutch word Stromen, which translates as "to move freely, which is exactly what we want our site to facilitate -- the movement of ideas, points of view and content freely between people. We played with the spelling a bit, but the name was perfect."

Can collaborative video work? Can a video story be compiled and edited like a Google document? The Knight Foundation is banking on it, and we're eager to see some results ourselves.

UPDATE (6/17):

Knight News Challenge: Meet Stroome, the collaborative FlickrWikiGoogleDoc for video

By Megan Garber (Nieman Journalism Lab)

Google TV: Game-Changer for Videojournalism?

What is Google TV? It's more than just a search engine on your TV set. It's a useful way of integrating your television with your Internet browser, to create a symbiotic TV and Web experience that is more than the sum of its parts.

Let the Big G explain it for you themselves in this short video below. And then ask yourself if this will change the way people view Internet video... and if this will be the catalyst that will take online videojournalism to the next level.



With the increased opportunity for attracting eyeballs -- on bigger screens, in an improved and enriched environment -- will media organizations now invest more resources to produce higher quality nonfiction video feature stories? What do you think?

KobreGuide & KobreChannel Hit 500

This week KobreGuide and its accompanying blog KobreChannel mark individual milestones.

They've each surpassed the 500 mark.

Launched in October 2008, KobreGuide now showcases more than 500 video and multimedia stories. KobreChannel has similarly published more than 500 blog items -- most of them still surprisingly timely.

You can browse KobreGuide by CHANNEL or TOPIC. If you've got a little extra time, peruse our "GOT AN HOUR?" section for longer videos.

What many don't yet realize is that we archive hundreds of our best stories behind that HALL OF FAME navigation tab.

As always, we invite your feedback and suggestions -- and especially recommendations for excellent videojournalism we can share with our viewers.

Oh, and while we've got your attention -- be sure to join our KobreGuide Facebook Group. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter!

Abby's Quest Ends Prematurely... But Safely

Earlier this year, KobreGuide showcased Sachi Cunningham's Los Angeles Times video, "Abby Sunderland's Quest," depicting the outset of the teenager's adventure to be the youngest to complete a nonstop solo sailing trip around the world, and beat her own brother's record.

Acknowledging the extreme perils she would encounter, the 16-year-old high school junior set sail on January 23 from Marina del Rey, CA. Unfortunately, five months into the trip, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, she encountered mountainous waves and strong winds that broke her mast, preventing her from continuing. She sent pre-arranged distress signals, and fortunately has been located -- calmly and safely floating in her damaged yacht, Wild Eyes, awaiting the arrival of a rescue ship which will probably not arrive until this weekend.

She may not have fulfilled her ultimate dream, but she certainly displayed courage and fortitude under extreme duress, and now awaits her next challenge -- getting her driver’s license when she returns home.

We wish her success in that and all future endeavours.

You can follow Abby's journey, including her impending rescue, on her website or blog.

Take Momenta Workshops in Myanmar, India, Vietnam, New Orleans, South Africa

Momenta Workshops takes documentary photographers all over the world to teach them how to create powerful visual stories.

"We see photography as a communicator of ideas and emotions across a wide human audience. We seek to promulgate visual journalism and the arts as a mechanism of social change and a profitable venture into the future."

Momenta's upcoming slate of workshops includes trips to Myanmar (Burma), India, New Orleans, Vietnam and South Africa:

MYANMAR 2010: THE ART OF THE PHOTO STORY

This year, we'll be traveling to Myanmar during the period of October 17 - October 30, 2010. This period coincides with two major Buddhist holidays. First it is the close of Buddhist Lent. After three months of reflection and low-movement, the country "wakes-up" and takes on a air of celebration, both local and national. This is immediately followed by the Buddhist Festival of Lights.

This festive period marks a time when everyone celebrates after having restrained themselves for months. It's truly a unique time in which to travel the country and something we've literally been waiting over two years to schedule at this particular time.

Level One / Two
Dates: Oct. 17th - Oct. 30th, 2010
Cost: $4895

# One-on-one narrative instruction by our professionally trained award-winning instructors
# Daily mentoring and story development editing
# Regular slideshows and group critiques
# Portfolio reviews with instructors and Momenta staff
# Lectures on narrative storytelling, elements of photography, and history of documentary photography
# Instruction on Photo Mechanic and photo asset archiving and printing
# Final night slideshow & party hosted by Momenta for attendees

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 INDIA 2011: WORKING WITH NONPROFITS

This trip takes us again back to Dehradun to photograph the work of nonprofits in Northern India. Nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, the bustling town of Dehradun offers us a unique location to find Tibetan refugee services, medical and health related nonprofits as well as children and women's programs and so much more.

The workshop will begin January 30 in Dehli with our group orientation and celebration dinner and then we will travel by train through the countryside up North to the Dehradun to start photographing. Daily editing and mentoring with instructors while working hand in hand with your nonprofits will combine with a weekend excursions to a resort town on the River Ganges. Students will work on photo stories relating to their nonprofit partner and have the opportunity to work with more than one nonprofit if they choose. The student photo stories are presented during a group slideshow party hosted by Momenta for the nonprofit staff, volunteers, students and the public.

Level Three
Dates: January 30 - February 12, 2011
Cost: $4550

# Momenta provides all the pre-workshop logistics for nonprofit assignments based each student's interest and goals
# Student work benefits nonprofits in their need to publicize and project their activities to new audiences
# Instruction on Photo Mechanic and photo asset archiving
# Hotels, in-country transportation, guides and meals included with tuition
# Personal portfolio reviews with lead instructor and Momenta staff
# Regular slideshows, lectures and group critiques
# Daily mentoring and story development editing
# Voluntary multimedia instruction for interested attendees
# Lectures on narrative storytelling, elements of a photography and history of documentary photography
# Final slideshow and party hosted by Momenta for all students, NGO staff, general public and members of the photographic community

Other 2011 Momenta trips include "Vietnam 2011: Exploring the Travel Essay," "New Orleans 2011: Working with Nonprofits" and "Project South Africa."

Your Turn to Judge Int'l Documentary Contest

The deadline for voting for the 2010 International Documentary Challenge's Audience Award is Saturday, June 12. The judges have chosen the dozen short films they liked best -- now it's your turn to watch them and chime in. "From eco-friendly afterlife to suburban 'toy' parties to transcontinental trekkers, you're sure to find something intriguing and entertaining to view!"

First, a little background...

The International Documentary Challenge is a timed filmmaking competition where filmmakers have 5 days to make a short non-fiction film (4-7 minutes.) ...The filmmakers are assigned a specific theme ("Dreams & Nightmares") that will dictate the content and direction of their film. The top 12 films (determined by a panel of judges) premiere at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Film Festival in Toronto where the winners are announced.

Go here to see the specific awards that judges have already bestowed upon the 12 finalists.

Now you can watch and rate the documentaries here or here.

We'll be picking our favorites to showcase on KobreGuide over the next few days. We'll be eager to hear what your favorites are ... and why.

Who Are the New Content Providers?

Poynter's online News University is offering a one-hour live Webinar on "The New Content Providers and the Media" on Thursday June 24 at 2 p.m. ET. (Registration entitles you to access an archived "replay" at your convenience.)

The course's focus is on "a new generation of content providers collecting, producing and distributing user-generated stories."

These low-cost, high-volume content distributors have captured the attention of major media players. These organizations, including Associated Content, Demand Media, AllVoices, Helium and others, are growing fast. Learn whether and how they meet consumer appetite for news. What is the quality of the content they are producing? Can writers make a living from them? How are these services filling gaps in traditional media coverage?

This Webinar will discuss these new content providers, their products and how they affect traditional news organizations.

Topics include:

# Who are the leading new content providers?
# What are the costs in developing a network?
# What type of content are they producing?
# Where is their content being distributed?
# How can they benefit journalists?
# Are they competitors or partners?
# How can they serve traditional media outlets?

Course instructor Mitch Gelman is a former Newsday reporter who served as Senior Vice President and Executive Producer at CNN.com from 2001 through 2009 before joining Examiner.com as Vice President, Special Projects.

Tuition is $27.95; free for members of the Online News Association (ONA).

Register here.

Weekend Roundup: Useful Stories & Links

Here's a compendium of recent notes, quotes, anecdotes and other info that's worthy of your attention.

These are only excerpts, so be sure to click on each title to view that entire report.

******
Publishers see signs the iPad can restore ad money
By Andrew Vanacore (AP)

Good news for the news business: Companies are paying newspapers and magazines up to five times as much to place ads in their iPad applications as what similar advertising costs on regular websites.

This doesn't mean Apple's tablet computer will live up to its hype as a potential lifeline for the media industry. Online ads still generate a small fraction of news companies' advertising revenue, and it's an open question whether print ads will return to what they totaled before the recession.

But early evidence suggests the iPad is at least offering publishers a way to get more money out of advertisers. That bolsters the hope that portable touch-screen computers could start turning the economics of digital advertising in publishers' favor.

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How to Find Public Domain Video
By Angela Grant (NewsVideographer.com)

Videos in the public domain are no longer subject to copyright laws, and you may use them freely without permission and without fear of legal repercussions. You may remix public domain videos into new works. When a video creator’s copyright expires, that video automatically becomes part of the public domain. Also, anything produced by the U.S. government is automatically in the public domain. Sometimes videos become public when the original copyright holder fails to complete the necessary paperwork to renew the copyright. If you want to learn more about the public domain, ...

ALSO:
# Determining if a video is public domain
# Using videos with Creative Commons licenses
# Sites offering free video
# Sites offering paid video

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HTML5 and Web Standards
(Apple Website tutorial)

Every new Apple mobile device and every new Mac — along with the latest version of Apple’s Safari web browser — supports web standards including HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. These web standards are open, reliable, highly secure, and efficient. They allow web designers and developers to create advanced graphics, typography, animations, and transitions. Standards aren’t add-ons to the web. They are the web. And you can start using them today....

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Is J-school relevant? (#wjchat)
By Mindy McAdams (Teaching Online Journalism)

Last night I helped to moderate an organized Twitter chat. Robert Hernandez (aka @webjournalist) is the juggernaut behind #wjchat; he’s aided by a cheery posse including @killbutton, @kimbui, and @RobinJP.

SEE ALSO:

List of Twitter Chats
By Meryl K. Evans (Meryl's Notes Blog)

Twitter group chats offer a clever and effective way to meet people with like interests and to share insights into the topic of discussion. Chatters track their conversations using hashtags (#) followed by the name of the chat, i.e. #journchat....

SEE ALSO:

DIY and passion give birth to #wjchat
By Robert Hernandez (WebJournalist.org)

For me, it began with a snarky tweet: #journchat Bad name, good PR.

Apparently that tweet touched a nerve and prompted Web journalists to come out of the Twitterverse to express agreement.

Before I continue, let me define two things:

#journchat is a Twitter chat that is “an ongoing conversation between journalists, bloggers and PR folks” held weekly on Twitter. Created by @PRsarahevans, the first Twitter chat was held Monday, November 24, 2008. While it has “journalism” in the name, it skews heavily toward public relations.

A Twitter chat essentially is a regularly held chat, usually weekly, on a specific topic… tied together through a hashtag. A group of Titterers gather and talk about whatever… blogging, book editing, etc.
Moments after that snarky tweet went out the hunger for Web journalists to network and learn from each other was apparent.

It makes sense.

We’re a community that is constantly evolving, struggling to find the “right” solution for our unique situations… from inside our newsrooms… often alone. Many of us have met at conferences or through social networking, but never regularly.

It was that passionate need mixed with the DIY-spirit of the web that got @lilgirlbigvoice @killbutton @kimbui and myself together to create #jchat within five hours from meeting each other the first time....

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TypeWith.me

A Google Docs-like Web-based utility for collaboratively composing rich text documents.

The document text is synchronized as you type, so that everyone viewing your communal page sees the same text. This allows you to collaborate seamlessly on documents in your Web browser.

Just send the link of your page to a friend, colleague, or co-worker and "watch the magic unfold!"

*****
The Future of VJs
By Deborah Potter (AdvancingTheStory.com)

We’ve all read the stories about the sea change in television news. From the ABC network news division to local stations from coast to coast, VJs are taking over, the stories say. The “one man band” reporter who shoots and edits once was found primarily in small markets but is now common in the top 10. Right? Maybe not.

Research by RTDNA and Hofstra University finds the use of VJs has indeed gone up for the past several years but it hasn’t skyrocketed. About a third of local stations now say they mostly use VJs. Three years ago, it was a little over one in five. And the number of stations that don’t use any VJs has gone down sharply, from 29% in 2006 to 18% today.

But researcher Bob Papper says the real surprise came in answer to this question: Did you use VJs more or less in the past year? Only 12% of news directors said they used them more, while 29% said less. Those numbers aren’t at all what you’d expect in current economic conditions, and even less so given that the survey was in the field during the depths of the recession. Yes, almost half of the news directors who responded said they expected to use VJs more in 2010, but that’s what they always say. “Every year, expected use of more goes up way faster than the actual use,” said Papper.

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iPhone flips the Flip
By Deborah Potter (NewsLab.org)

Idiot-proof, lightweight and compact–the Flip camera appeared poised to revolutionize online video when it was introduced a few years ago. Reporters and photographers quickly took to using Flips or similar point-and-shoot cameras to produce Web-only video blogs and interviews. Sometimes, Flip video even showed up on TV newscasts. But now, it appears the Flip may be flopping.

Smart phones, especially Apple’s iPhone, can shoot decent video as well and they have a big advantage over the Flip. Files can be emailed and posted directly from the device, so you don’t have to download the video to a laptop before sending it. With UStream or similar software, smart phones can be used to stream live video as well, giving them another leg up on the Flip.

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This Week in Review: The FTC’s ideas for news, Apple’s paid-news pitch, and the de-linking debate
By Mark Coddington (Nieman Journalism Lab)

The FTC’s ideas for journalism:

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has spent much of the last year listening to suggestions about how they might change antitrust, copyright, and tax laws in order to create the best possible climate for good journalism, and this weekend it posted its “discussion draft” of policy proposals to “support the reinvention of journalism.” It’s a 47-page document, so here’s a quick summary of their ideas...

Steve Jobs’ proposal for paid news:

The folks from the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital interviewed Apple chief Steve Jobs on stage this week as part of their D8 conference, and Jobs had a few words for the news industry: Yes, he wants to help save journalism, because, as he put it, “I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers.” But if they’re going to survive, news organizations should be more aggressive about getting people to pay for content, Jobs said, like Apple did in helping raise e-book prices earlier this year.

As it turned out, there was something for everybody to pick apart in that exchange...

The Wrap Reviews Print Apps for iPad

As predicted, more print magazines and newspapers are releasing iPad apps. How good are they?

Lew Harris, managing editor of The Wrap, has tested a batch of them, in a roundup review: Print Apps for iPad: What Works, What Doesn't. He says the results so far are "pretty encouraging."

Harris brings to the task the eyes and sensibility of a guy who's been a veteran of both print magazines (Los Angeles, People, Us) and Web-only publications (E! Online, Movies.com).

"The monthlies are doing a far better job of it than the dailies, for obvious reasons – they have the time to invest. And for the most part, they not only look damn good, but some are taking full advantage of the interactive possibilities.

Cleverly, most of the apps are free -- but downloading individual issues costs $3-5 (about the same as their newsstand price, but more expensive than a print subscription -- neither of which includes multimedia features such as video).

Harris walks us through all the tapping and swiping, and provides brief reviews of the top ten, which he ranks in order of best to least impressive:

* Men's Health
* Wired
* Vanity Fair
* GQ
* Popular Science
* Time Magazine
* USA Today
* New York Times
* Wall Street Journal
* The Nation

Which iPad apps have you downloaded and used? Please share your experience and thoughts in the comments section below, or on KobreGuide's Facebook Group discussion forum.

Time's Craig Duff on Videojournalism's Future

Time magazine's multimedia director Craig Duff (left) is the guy responsible for developing the online video strategy for that print magazine. He shares his thoughts here on the future of Web videojournalism with ScribeMedia's Michael Cervieri (right).



Look for Time's best video on KobreGuide's Time channel.

How Low Will You Go?

In this economy, nearly every professional organization is asking its workers to work longer and harder for less remuneration.

The phenomenon applies to payroll employees, who are forced to take pay cuts and unpaid days off (requiring them to then work twice as hard to catch up), as well as to freelancers, who are given "take it or leave it" ultimatums when offered a fraction of their normal rates for assignments that require even more time and labor than before.

Unfortunately, given the increasingly unpredictable nature of paychecks these days, most people no longer have the option of saying "no" to unattractive offers.

We hear lots of outrageous stories about stock photographs that once sold for hundreds of dollars now going for pennies, and shooters who once commanded respectable fees now being asked to turn in edited pieces on spec.

Please share your stories with us. How bad is it out there? What's the worst assignment you've been offered recently? Under what circumstances would you be willing to agree to a rate below your customary fee? How much are you willing to sacrifice to land an assignment -- and what kind of assignments are you willing to accept under sub-par financial conditions?

You can visit the KobreGuide Facebook Group Page, where you can contribute to our Discussion forum. Or please leave your comments below.