'After Staff': Life After Photojournalism

Miki Johnson's Resolve blog is designed to be an "international online community of photojournalists, documentary photographers, and photo industry professionals working to keep visual storytelling economically feasible and socially relevant."

I’m sure we don’t have to tell anyone that there are fewer staff jobs — at newspapers, magazines, and wire services — than there used to be. And in the face of even more cuts, we’ve been impressed to see former staffers adroitly shift gears to freelance editorial, commercial work, collaboration with NGOs, and the fine-art and wedding markets. We decided to do our part too, by developing this online home for resources, stories, and discussion about this sea change for photojournalism and photography in general. Although no one has all the answers, together we can find them...

All last week, Resolve featured the theme "After Staff" -- interviews and advice from photographers who’ve left, or been laid off from, a staff job.

We met newspaper photojournalists who, mostly through necessity, morphed into wedding photographers or even art photographers -- even a respected art photographer who, to support his family, became a distiller.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Leeson, who last year left the Dallas Morning News after 30 years of shooting for newspapers, was among those featured.

[T]he further I get from my life in newspapers, the more I realize that the best I can be is to be who I have always been, a small voice hopefully providing something of value to my world. In many ways, little has changed in my life. The day I knew that my career as a newspaper photojournalist had reached the end, I told my boss (and friend), the director of photography at The Dallas Morning News, that I had never been dedicated to a newspaper. Rather, I had always been dedicated to the ideals of photojournalism: through credible and ethical image making, we can bring needed change to the world.

I did believe I would likely retire as a newspaper photojournalist at The Dallas Morning News. But understanding that I am still in active service to my profession, even though I am no longer on the DMN staff, has softened the blow. The loss of a title did not change who I am.

Bill Owens is known for his seminal photography book, Suburbia, which stemmed from his work as a staff photographer at the Livermore Independent starting in 1968. But he gave up photography decades ago for a career as a distiller. Now he says he shoots mostly for fun, and has turned his attention to shooting video.

On cameras:

People always ask, “What kind of camera?” I say, “Whatever camera fits in your hand.” It’s not about the camera, it’s about having an idea in your head and an eye. If you don’t have an eye, go have lunch.

On video:

You’ve got to be making film. It’s film that sells. People can’t take their eyes off of videos. I can put up any kind of film and they’ll stand there and watch it all the way to the end. But if it’s a still photograph they’ll glance at it and walk away. I’m going to take some of my digital films that are up on my website — and thank god I never posted them on YouTube — and I’m going to turn them into DVDs and try to sell them at MoMA and art museums as a DVD collection.

Read more from "After Staff" here; Resolve Blog here.

Moving Movie Posters, Living Mag Covers, Frame Grabs, and the Big Red One

The Red One digital cinema camera, which costs as much as a car, enables you to grab crisp high-resolution still frames from video, blurring the distinction between moments and motion. Its 24-frames-per-second 9.4-megapixel capability eclipses even the fastest motor drives.

Alexx Henry created a series of living movie posters with one, and documented the process (below).

"I really believe this is the future and I’m super thrilled to be a part of the revolution. If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s very cool if it’s done right. What begins as a still image suddenly comes alive when the characters move, perform an action, and then resolve back to the poster frame. If you thought the portraits and newspapers from Harry Potter were the future, then look no further."

... and here are the results of that shoot:

“Teacher’s Pet”

“Diplomacy!”

“Students Have No Class”

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Though the Red One is (at least for now) too big, not to mention too expensive, for in-the-field videojournalists, Canon, Nikon and Panasonic have all developed hybrid cameras that enable you to shoot both high-quality stills and video. A camcorder's ability to produce high-res frame grabs are an important consideration, since it cuts in half the amount of equipment you need to shlep to bring back video and stills from an assignment. But it carries with it ethical, aesthetic and philosophical considerations.

Henri Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment" is no longer frozen in time, but now one of a series of points on a timeline. This may sound inconsequential, but in fact relates directly to the contrasting considerations of a video and a still shooter. At the most basic level, when you're shooting video, you're not trying to find just the right image, but rather the right sequence of movements, events, interactions. You want to follow your subject from point A, through B, to C. If you get lucky, one of those thousands of frames will distill the essence of your story -- but not necessarily!

We probably know better than most how infrequently even the best videos contain even a single still image that embodies the whole, since for every video story we post on KobreGuide, we actively search for one image that best represents it. And yet how elusive those single images are!

For "Turtle Man," to use but one small example, we wanted so badly to show you a still that encompassed both the subject's big toothless grin AND a closeup of a snapping turtle he's caught. The videographer did a terrific job by showing both -- but, except for long shots, never in the same frame! Ditto for other video stories we've showcased about dual subjects -- teachers and students, doctors and patients, and so on. A still photographer would have captured both in the same frame, but a videographer is more likely to pan or cut from one to the other, and is not looking for that one quintessential, balanced, harmonious microsecond.

For a single subject, however, there are instances when frame grabs do have an advantage.

That photo portrait of actress Megan Fox on the cover of this month's Esquire isn't a photo at all, but rather a video frame -- courtesy of shooter Greg Williams and a technique he's dubbed "Motos" (moving photos), again using that magical Red One.

According to the magazine:

"It allowed her to act," Williams says. "She could run scenes without being reminded by the sound of a shutter every four seconds that I was taking a picture. As in still photography, a lot of it is capturing unexpected moments. This takes that one step further." He then went back and pulled out the best images, which you can see in Esquire's June issue. Plus, there's a fantastic by-product: Even though we made the film to get the stills, we were left with ten bewitching minutes of footage of a beautiful woman. We edited it down to a mini movie, which is now available right here.

(Caveat: Be forewarned, this is not strictly videojournalism, but rather "loosely scripted footage with Fox — getting out of bed, rolling around on a pool chair, eating BBQ." You get the idea.)

On a more serious note, Harvard's Nieman Labs incisively analyzes the "frame-grabbing" trend, and offers these helpful considerations (with underlying explanations):

+ Frame grabbing works better on a camcorder with a “progressive” shooting option.

+ Frame grabbing works better at higher shutter speeds than would be used for shooting video.

+ Frame grabbing might require a video light rather than a strobe in low light

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We've come a long way technologically since David Leeson (who recently left the Dallas Morning News) returned from Hurricane Katrina extolling the virtues of frame grabs from a HDV camera, but his subsequent observations were prescient:

Today, we still call them frame grabs. Tomorrow we will call them what they really are – photographs. The end result is that we do not have to sacrifice our legacy of still photojournalism simply because the medium has changed. We can move forward to a new era of storytelling where the demands of rich content in a digital age do not subjugate the decisive moments of life to obtain the "extended moments" waiting for us in motion and sound.

Is There Life After Videojournalism?

Newspaper photographers who've made the leap to videojournalism with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success are now wondering if all that technical training was worth it, now that papers in their death throes are cutting back on video and laying off staffers.

We've asserted all along that those who possess both solid visual storytelling and journalism skills should pursue assignments from non-profits and corporations who need their stories told online -- and can afford to pay for it.

And now the Photo District News backs us up with an excellent report by David Walker, "Multimedia Journalists Discover Life After Newspapers."

As layoffs continue to decimate newsrooms all over the country, a pressing question for staff photographers is, what is plan B when the pink slip comes? How do you translate your photojournalism skills into some other means of earning a living?

A handful of former newspaper photographers with strong multimedia skills and some entrepreneurial drive are reporting at least one promising lead: the growing demand for story-driven video production from non-profits and corporations trying to build brands and markets through the Web in particular.

Examples abound:

• Former Virginian-Pilot staff photographer Chris Tyree has launched a multimedia production company called Weyo with Stephen Katz, who is still a staff photographer at the paper and won POYi Newspaper Photographer of the Year honors in 2008. Clients include Physicians for Peace, Resolve.org, and the Samaritan's Purse Canada.
  
  
• Geri Migielicz, who was the San Jose Mercury News's director of photography, left in February to start Story4, an independent multimedia production company serving primarily non-profit organizations. Former Mercury News videojournalist Richard Koci Hernandez and Dai Sugano (still with the paper) are Story4 contributors. Clients include Big Sur Land Trust and the Women's Foundation of California.

Some videojournalists are going it alone, including Pulitzer prizewinning photog David Leeson, who took a buyout from the Dallas Morning News last year, and has since gone on to produce videos for the engineering department of Southern Methodist University.

But what about established video production companies that corporations and PR companies usually hire for video? Don't they already have a lock on the big-bucks clients? Turns out that a videojournalist's storytelling skills can be a big plus in this market.

And how about the pay?

PDN reports that fees are all over the map -- but, generally speaking, corporate and even non-profit marketing budgets easily put newspaper budgets to shame. Fees range from $5,000 to $15,000 for a video -- and that effort might also entail providing stills and even an accompanying Website. Bigger projects can draw six-figure pricetags.

MediaStorm president Brian Storm acknowledges that the corporate work he does for clients such as Starbucks pays multiples of editorial gigs, but helps foot the bills for those do-good journalism projects that are closer to the heart.

So staff videojournalists who are looking to augment their dwindling and uncertain salaries, or to build an exit strategy, would do well to read PDN's report on how some videojournalism pioneers are putting their skills to profitable use.

David Leeson Video Workshop

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Leeson is offering a workshop, "From Still Photography to Videography," in the Bay Area, Jan. 24-25.

David Leeson was already a seasoned photojournalist when he began shooting video in 2000 for The Dallas Morning News, thus his experience gained through photography heavily influenced his approach to video. Over the next eight years he developed a methodology that incorporates the skills of the still photographer into a world of motion and sound.

In this workshop you will learn how to transition the skills you already have as a still photographer to the skills needed in video.

You’ll also learn how to better utilize the key elements of motion and sound through video. Leeson’s curriculum will teach you how to better utilize motion and sound in your daily story telling and includes time saving tips for better editing. You’ll also learn how to make stills from your video that rival the quality of a 35mm DSLR. Leeson pioneered the use of frame grabs in high definition video and will provide you with all the information you’ll need to begin producing great still images from your videos.

You can learn more about the workshop here. You can see David's videos here.