Signed and Released: Side Projects Are So Good
Common thinking in the photography industry is to always have a side project going in addition to your main job. Work, even photography work, is tough. You've got to have a personal project going to keep you sane.
Turns out having a side project can lead to some really good work too. Just ask Google about their 20% rule.
After a long time of not following this sage advice, I am now fortunate enough to announce two.
The Vancouver Project
A good friend of mine, Andrew Burton, and I have been talking for a couple of months about the rise of DSLRs with video capability and what it the implications for sports photographers.
Andrew had the foresight to see that this new technology would come to head in the very near future – namely the coming winter Olympics in Vancouver. Exploring thought, we also realized that this Olympics would be the first since the rise of the real-time web, live video broadcasting from cell phones, Google Wave, and, and, and.
Our realization lead to a plan of action which we're calling The Vancouver Project. Stop by and check us out.
Shameless plug: if you're in a position to help by spreading the word to the right people we'd love to hear from you.
Linked Photographer
In other news, I'm writing a book.
That is a very weird sentence for me to write. I write posts, tweets, cutlines… not books. But, apparently, that's happening :)
An excellent friend of mine, and phenomenal fashion photographer, Lindsay Adler, approached a few months ago saying that she was looking into writing a book, would I be interested in co-authoring?
Today, I signed the contract. We'll be writing a book that's got the tentative title Linked Photographer. It will be part treaties, part howto, and part reference on how photographers can use social media for business. It's a bit more than a for-dummies book, but
We'll be launching linkedphotog.com soon, so stay tuned!
LINKS | Down With the AP?
- Image via CrunchBase
There's been a growing feeling that the AP is not our friend in the media industry, but this week, that feeling seemed to bubble over. We've got some rough numbers to show that they're not helping us, and with the rise of ESPN local sites, the AP is rapidly loosing it's marketplace.
I don't know if I'm ready to sign their death sentence yet, they do seem to have some smart people working for 'em (I look to the New Model for News study and their iPhone app). Yet, it's painfully obvious (after the youtube fiasco) that the AP is a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.
These are my links for April 14th through April 18th:
The AP is outdated and increasingly irrelevant; so are Printies
AP thinking of future:http://www.ap.org/newmodel.pdf - Interesting 'atomization of news' but still top-down publishing model. –@GregElin on March 23
-
- Image via Wikipedia
Daily Kos: State of the Nation: Newspapers make up 20% of the sources for The Daily Kos, but blogs make up near 13%, the second most. The AP? Less than 1%.
-
“On the other hand, I will be gleeful when the AP goes out of business. I’m actually shocked at how little we depend on those jerks.”- Daily Kos: State of the Nation
- Hanging Tough: Financial Page: The New Yorker: This is the mindset the media industry needs to have: take risks, experiment. Either you’re going to fail, or come out on top. Non-risk isn’t gonna make you succeed.
- Why top-down syndication is broken: This is it: the newswire isn’t going to be top down, but bottom up. We’re crowdsourcing news, that means you can’t control abundancy. Take that AP.
- Garca Interactive: How ESPN Chicago sticks another nail in the newspaper coffin 26 and what to do about it: Common sense on what to do about saving your niche before someone scoops it up from under you. My favorite: fire the management. They’ve failed, bring someone new in.
- Journalism Online Just in case you were wondering what a plan for failure looks like…
-
“A strategy is a product of a big vision of the market and where it’s going. It’s about abandoning some markets to concentrate on others. Newspaper companies don’t have a strategy. Newspaper companies have tactics, things they do to respond to other people’s strategies. Until newspapers get a strategy of their own that helps them decide what to do and what not to do, they are doomed to see all the high-potential market strategies owned by everyone else. Which leaves newspaper companies to grumble about unfair everything is and not much more.”- García Interactive: How ESPN Chicago sticks another nail in the newspaper coffin … and what to do about it
-
“Let me be the first to tell you that saying you aim to be a “world-class platform-neutral news information provider” just tells me you haven’t got a clue about the future, are too scared to make a guess and are hoping someone else will get it right so you can copy them.”- García Interactive: How ESPN Chicago sticks another nail in the newspaper coffin … and what to do about it
-
"Instead of feeling diminished by the Huff Post's excerpts, more publications might want to pre-empt the site by serving distilled versions of their own articles. That's right: Even the Post and the Times and the Journal can learn something about how to serve readers from the Huffington Post." –Hey, journalists! Stop getting all huffy about the Huffington Post's "lifting" of stories. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine
Numbers
- Measuring user engagement: Lessons from BusinessWeek: It’s a good breakdown of how to measure user engagement on a story. This is a valuable metric, that we really need.
Engagement is high, now we just need to harness it.
[/caption]
Lest there be any doubt, the internet is used by all age groups.
LIVE | NPPA Photo Workshop
I'll be livestreaming the Syracuse University NPPA photo workshop at 4:00pm EST. Click the link to watch here, or go straight to the Mogulus channel at mogulus.com/cutline.
LINKS | Generation Y Has Inherited the Media
“Maybe, just maybe, the existing model for generating, distributing and monetizing content could benefit from a Ctrl-Alt-Delete reboot.”- Can the Statusphere Save Journalism?
It's been two weeks since my last one of these, which is in part due to laziness, and in part due to my wanting to get a good list going on a contentious topic: Generation Y needs to take over the media.
I'm increasingly convinced that the 'old media' model is broken largely because the old folks just don't get it. Not to say that there aren't people in 30s-70s who don't get 'it,' just that there are too few, too few in a position of power, and too few who get 'it' enough.
These are my links for March 29th through April 13th:
"You blew it"
- 'Star Tribune' Withholds Select Print Content From Web: Talk about Baby Boomers not getting “it.”
- Print is still king: Only 3 percent of newspaper reading happens online: There's a lot of fuzzy math done here, and reliance on numbers that may or may not be accurate. (readership is 2+ per copy!?) (avg. person reads 24 pages/day in print!?) Maybe I'm too genY, but I just don't see how this is possible.
- CIRCLE - A nonpartisan research center studying youth civic engagement and civic education. College Students Talk Politics: It's a valid point: GenY might not really pay attention to news b/c they feel like it's not relevant to them. It's largely just talking heads yelling at each other. Argues against Infotainment and for the masses being smart.
- Streisand effect: “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”
- "NCAA: Greet the 21st century" : The Editor's Log : Blogs : News-Record.com : Greensboro, North Carolina: NCAA is trying to prohibit people from expressing opinions on Facebook!? They need to get over themselves.
- 1. Solve journalism's data problem. 2. Kill the AP. 3. Invest in the next market. BuzzMachine: Jarvis calls for the disbanding of the AP. In light of how backwards they have been, I’m for it.
- NYTimes-turned-NPR Exec: "Not Very Bullish on People Paying for News Content" - mediabistro.com: WebNewser: CEO of NPR in the news for the second time this week with details on how Times Select was a failure despite making 10 million/year.
- The speech the NAA should hear BuzzMachine: I love a good rant, and Jarvis delivers. I think I’m still hoping he’s wrong – that newspapers still can be re-tooled to work online, but I fear he’s right.
- Google's Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It: A good, old fashion, smack-down of the old fashion old media. “Robert, I’ve been creating original content on the internet for about 12 years longer than you’ve been editor of the WSJ. Shut up. Seriously, shut up. To say something like that simply indicates you really do not understand that all blogs are not echo chambers. I mean echo chamber? Sorry, that’s the mainstream media, too.”
- Google a 'Tapeworm:' WSJ Exec: Here’s more of the ‘old media’ mind-fuck.
LINKS | Generation Y Takes on the World
Things our grandkids will never understand.
Last week has lead me this generalization: Generation Y fundamentally understands the internet, and therefore the current state of the world, in a way that older generations just never will.
It's a generalization and not a maxim, because as folks like John Bryne, Bryan Murley, and even Steve Jobs remind me that us youngin's aren't the only ones who get it, we're just in the majority.
These are my links for March 21st through March 27th:
Generation Y, X, BB…
The following are excerpts from #editorchat from John Bryne of Business Week. I'm throughly impressed with his insight. It gives me much hope for the older generations.
“There will be many Born to the Web enterprises over the next few years that will teach the mainstream media a thing or two. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
“They think that some day online advertising will offset the print decline and help support a broken print model. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
“Online readers also earn more than print readers and are more likely to be female. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
“Of our total audience, about 38% are online only; 31% magazine only & 31% are both online and print. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
“There’s overlap in our print and online readers3 but generally our online users are 10 years younger and more highly educated. #editorchat”- Twitter / JOHNABYRNE
- On the other hand, the following is a tweet sent by a Syracuse University student during a lecture by Ryan Sholin on 'new media.'
“@ryansholin I’d prefer that we have fewer citizen journalists. You don’t see me trying to be a citizen software engineer or citizen waiter.”-
Twitter / benjgcPut this up there as Generation Y not “getting it”
- 2020 vision: What's next for news: A fantastic bit of futurism on the journalism business.
• Industry will shrink/re-make itself
• The semantic web plays a huge role and datamining becomes key
• Collaboration among local news sites for ads and info
• New business models like endowments, non-profit, etc
• copyright law needs a re-think
• The idealist unbiased journalist dies, starts reporting for interest groups - Newspaper ownership and the fourth generation syndrome | yelvington.com: Steve argues that the current generation of newspaper owners are more interested in spending money than their own business.
-
“When I got my first computer back in 1984 or 1985, it was a Mac and there was this program called Hypercard by Bill Atkinson. In a very basic way, Hypercard teaches you the basics of how computers [and software development on them] work.” Being who I am, this obviously struck a chord. I wondered if he has hit upon a simple truth about the evolution of computers… and their users. Early on, the software and tools that were available to users were more about working with the capabilities of the machine than what you could get done with it. That lead to every computer user innately understanding the architecture of the machine. Of course, it also lead to scaring many people off, but for those that stuck around, to this day we all have a very true understanding of the what, why and — most importantly — how a computer can (and can’t!) do the things it does.”- At SXSW Michael Penn Talks iTunes, Film, Music, and Hypercard! - The Mac Observer
- Newspaper Execs: Still Sleepless in Seattle - ClickZ: Vin speaks from personal experience about the staff and history of the Seattle PI. In Vin’s opinion, the staff is top notch, but the Hearst Corp. has shackled them.
Journalism Business Models
- Nonprofit journalism: It's in the numbers: Presents numbers dating back to 2006 on the average number of bylines, pages, and sections in the local paper. It’s not really good news.
- Md. Senator Proposes Nonprofit Status For Newspapers - Baltimore News Story - WBAL Baltimore: Current rules don’t allow print media to report on political issues (apparently). A senator has stepped forward and suggested that we allow them to do so.
- A scenario for news BuzzMachine: Think of this one more like a “Jarvis Manifesto”
- “The most profitable newspapers have tended to be monopoly markets with circulation of 20,000 to 100,000 readers. These are not sexy papers like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, which have historically have significantly low margins.”- One Banker’s Plan to Save the Newspaper Industry - Deal Journal - WSJ
- Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet: Controversial post by a UPenn Prof. He refers to his own research on how people interact with ads. Most interesting: the break downs of what and how you can sell online.
“The problem is not the medium, the problem is the message, and the fact that it is not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.”- Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet
- A fantastic quote from rev2oh
“The wonder of the web is that it gives readers more and more control every day over what information they consume. Fighting against that trend is futile. Trying to improve the banner ad is like trying to motorize a horse.”- RevenueTwoPointZero » Advertising on iPhone
Just plain nifty/WTF?
- The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine gets a new data center: Apparently the entire internet can fit into a shipping containter. 4.5 petabytes, 1TB RAM, and 63 servers.
- The 13 Most Essential Plugins for WordPress - Nettuts+: Totally fantastic list.
- What Happened to the Land of the Free?: Very long, very detailed piece arguing that the government has become too powerful. Well researched, well opined.
- BBC NEWS | Americas | US high school 'held cage fights': WTF!? A Dallas school was holding cage fighting matches, with students!?
- Goodbye Google | stopdesign: Google’s top designer quits ostensibly because Google doesn’t understand good design. Here’s the thing: they’re still successful. They don’t have Microsoft levels of shitty design, so what’s the…
For the Photogs in the house…
Amy O'Leary is a multimedia producer at the Times. This interview was taped on March 22, 2009, at the Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism, where O'Leary was a speaker.
Lightroom or Aperture?
Image via Wikipedia
This gets filed under the old news category, but I thought I'd share a demo I did on Lightroom several months ago. (oh, and that's my first submission to slideshare!)
LINKS | Micropayments Don’t Work, but Everyone Has a Better Idea
Somehow, I missed the links from the latter part of last week, and have been bookmarking like crazy this last week. So, ya'll get a ton of links. Apologies for the long, long list, but I've broken it up with some good videos — and I've edited down! These are the cream of the crop from February 10th through February 20th:
Journalism Business Models
Hulu's Superbowl Ad and the Boxee Fight - O'Reilly Radar: “I’m sure Hulu is totally pissed. They pretty much said just that in a somewhat more stilted way. The real insult, though, is calling the people who made them cut Boxee off “content providers.” They…
- Why I dislike micropayments, don't mind charity, but really have a better idea Network(ed)News: What a fantastically simple idea for a journalism business model: charge for interaction with the content creator. Donate some money to the site, and the chances of your comments etc being responded…
- Walter Isaacson: You've got it all wrong | Musings of an Anonymous Geek: Theodor Nelson writes the equivalent of a very long blog post as a response to Walter Isaacson’s use of his name in his argument for micropayments for news. Essentially, Nelson wants to use a…
-
Interview: Wired's Chris Anderson on the 'free' business model | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com: Chris Anderson, author of Long Tail, discusses the Freemium business model.
- Tech Tools Day 1: Tomorrow's Journalism and Journalists - The Next Newsroom Project: “Readers have never been willing to support this industry economically,” Fine said. “Her advice for anyone in the news biz was direct: ‘I know that not everyone wants to be an entrepreneur,’ Fine…
- DigiDave | Communication is Key: Journalism Beyond Newspapers - Don't Become Nonprofits - Work for Them: Dave Cohn makes a good point: journalists can market their services toward non-profits who need the press and often can’t get their message out there.
- Forget Micropayments -- Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizing Content: Steve Outing endorses Kachingle, a micro-payment service for websites with one distinct caveat: paying is still optional. The user decides on how much they want to pay for their news, and all the…
- Will paid content work? Two cautionary tales from 2004 Nieman Journalism Lab Pushing to the Future of Journalism: Good look at the failures of the Paid Content model: LAT, and the Albuquerque Journal. End with a reminder: just because Editors think that they are entitled to make money from content, it doesn’t…
- Op-Ed Contributor - You Can't Sell News by the Slice - NYTimes.com: A New York Times op-ed on why paid content won’t work. Oh, and that even if it did, the revenue wouldn’t “save newspapers.”
- What does engagement mean for newspapers? - Eat Sleep Publish: A good summary and batch of links on why engagement on sites is important.
Top 15 of 2008: The leading regional newspaper sites shuffle their ranks Nieman Journalism Lab Pushing to the Future of Journalism: The top regional newspapers have seen a significant increase in pageviews.
- lectroid.net Blog Archive Newspapers could actually try online: Really solid advice on how to evolve your print newsroom into a real, online newsorg. Topics include: Staffing, web design, and workflow.
- Reflections of a Newsosaur: How to charge for content. Theoretically.: Alan Mutter jumps on the micropayment bandwagon as the most “logical way” to make money online. He makes the wrong assumption that “Consumers might not like being micro-nickled and nano-dimed for…
Web Journalism
- The Doc Searls Weblog : Saturday, March 24, 2007: Fantastic list of things that newspapers should do on their websites to make them more relevant to users (read: user friendly)
- How an NYT developer built a new way to read the news online: The ‘new’ interface is a great move for the Times. It does distinctly reminds me of http://newser.com and I think corrects one of the major flaws of current online newspaper design: the lack of…
Links | “Journalists Are the Biggest Terrorists”
These are my links for January 19th through January 22nd:
- PhotoScavengerHunt — recent flickr upload
Night. -
- Journalism.co.uk :: 'To succeed online student journalists must collaborate outside their own university': Greg Linch gives a good overview of the current state and goals of CoPress
- “Whitney is an accomplished Times veteran whose work I’ve admired over the years. But this memo sums up some of the very reasons why so many believe the mainstream media is doomed to irrelevance.”- ‘The New York Times’ Facebook problem | Coop’s Corner - CNET News
- Journalistopia » Tinkering | Danny Sanchez -
- Barack Obama's inauguration speech ... crafted by 27-year-old in Starbucks | World news | The Guardian: The Guardian (of all newsorgs) has a great profile on Obama’s head — 27 y/o — speech writer.
- UI.Layout Plug-in - Home: jquery plugin that allows for ajax layout of massive proportions.
- Journalists are biggest terrorists: Zardari - PakTribune: “Journalists are the biggest terrorists,” —President Zardari
A showreel of work from the Guardian’s Dan ChungViews:
318
2
ratings- Inside the Transition: Technology, Innovation and Government:
Members of the Transition’s TIGR team explain how technology can bring reform and transparency to the… - Photographing the President: A look from 2 TIME photogs on covering the Bush White House.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_c.png?x-id=972e8811-aecd-4e96-9c0d-00cabce6f665)
Why the Nikon D3 Sucks (and What the D4 Oughta Be)
I love me the Nikon D3. It's the first camera that I've used where I feel confident going into any situation. The high ISO performance, huge LCD, dual CF card slots, 9 FPS, and 12MP files are amazing. Safe to say, Nikon hit a home run with this camera.
That said, I've got some complaints. Call it a wish list if you will. But after using this camera for about 6 months in a wide variety of situations, it's pretty safe to say that the tool isn't perfect.
With the release of the D3x, I've come to realize that Nikon is advancing technology, but is clearly holding out for the next release to do anything drastic. I might/probably am too late to get into the D4 product cycle, but nonetheless…
What could be fixed for the Nikon D4
The D90 gets the OK button right. Why can't the high ends cameras that came out after it follow suit? (Looking at you D3x)
The OK button is useless. There are two ways to confirm a command in the menu system: hit OK, or hit the center of the 4-way dial. However, most things only require you to hit the 'right' button on the 4-way dial. The OK button, aside from being repetitive, is out of the wa
I'd like to see a repeat of the D90's solution. Replace the 'push the center to confirm' option of the 4-way control with the OK button. This reduces clutter and makes menu navigating a more one-handed operation.
Links for January 8th
These are my delicious links for January 8th from 13:18 to 13:49:
- China's Electronic Waste Village - Photo Essays - TIME - Wish TIME would start doing some video or at least audio with these stories. Nonetheless, this one has some fantastic imagery and journalism.
- Commenting survey results - Invisible Inkling - Informal survey says: comments are less civil on news articles than on blogs. Hypothesis: disproven.
- BBC NEWS | South Asia | Swat diary: 'Taleban rule now' - It's short, but it's really good journalism. It's proof you need feet on the ground to report.
If anyone knows a good way to get wordpress to display tumblr links instead of delicious via postalicious, lemme know!
Links for January 6th
These are my links for January 6th from 00:38 to 02:52:
- Blogging, a new journalistic genre ? | Monday Note - Pretty strong argument that blogs are a great new form of journalism.
Problem: they don't make money. Adverts don't value them and they just don't generate the pageviews an article does. - What is literacy? BuzzMachine - If online journalism is expected to work, the audience must be able to do the following:
Media literacy, then, must embrace all those activities and skills, not just reading but:
* knowing how to focus on a need for information and express that by crafting a query to find an answer;
* knowing how to judge the relevance and reliability of sources - including the PageRank-like skill of judging sources on sources;
* knowing how to create (and remix) content across all media types;
* knowing how to collaborate;
* understanding the impact of facts on perspective and perspective on opinion;
* understanding the impact of identity and anonymity;
* understanding the relationship of pieces of information that make up a larger story via links;
* understanding how to make and find corrections - On The Media: Transcript of "You Are What You Is" (November 28, 2008) - Jeff Jarvis makes a good case for convergence. The media is now a singular: no longer do jounos choose, video, print, photo, whatever. We're cross-medium.
- Twelve months of top journalism blog posts in 2008 Christopher Wink - Title says it all. It's a pretty darn good list of the top posts of last year. Worth reading through the list at least.
- HuffPo Worth $200M? Em, More Like $2M - Business news | Newser - Sounds like the $25 million dollar investment that HuffPo just got may have inflated the value of the blogging newspaper. Instead of the $100-$200 million the investment was based on, it might be worth closer to $2 million. Ouch.
- Reflections of a Newsosaur: Newspaper share value fell $64B in '08 - A look at the stock prices and market cap. of the major newspapers in 2008.
- The Turning Gate / TTG iPhone Portfolio - iphone friendly photo gallery direct from Lightroom: Cool!
- Lee Enterprises: A poster child for the ownership crisis | yelvington.com - Steve Yelvington breaks down the economic crisis for newspapers:
1. The internet means long term changes, newspapers weren't ready.
2. Global economic crisis = less adverts = less income.
3. Newspapers borrowed when the borrowing was good, and are in the same place as everyone else in this economic crisis. They debt they can't pay back.
Death Valley Photos
I've got my Death Valley trip photos up on flickr. Not too bad on the time too! Took me 6 days to work up the courage to sort through the nearly 1000 photos I shot, cull, edit, caption, and keyword them all.
No GPS on this trip, so Geotagging is out. Bummer.
Aught 9
A happy aught 9 to ya'll. Several quick items:
I'm obviously back from Death Valley. I'm through my first round out culling— 1000 pics down to 134. I'll get them up soon~ish.- Check out my most recent blog post at CoPress. It's a direct response to our first public criticism that took me too many hours on New Year's Eve to write.
- Happy New Year!
- I decided to stop auto-posting my Tumblr to my Twitter account last week. Today will be my first blog post covering the 'best of' posts.
‘Backpacker Responder’
I've officially set gmail's 'vacation responder.' I'm off for a week of backpacking in Death Valley – the lowest altitude in North America!
It will be a much needed break from the internets. I've been dying for a backpacking trip for months now, and I can't recommend it enough to all of us who spend our lives living and dying by wifi access.
To celebrate I'm (finally) publishing part of my take from my last excursion on flickr – which I've now adopted as my means of publishing photos. Combined with the flickr export plugin for Lightroom, putting up photos immediately after a take is really easy, and the online interface rocks!
Fair warning: uploading through the plugin failed on me for the first time on this take. …Meh, I'll deal with it when I get back.
One other note: I've been working a lot (and officially taken over "Business Development") with CoPress recently. We're working very hard to see to it that college media has a future in this internet evolution. Please come check us out!
I'll end by saying this: I've been trying to check more and more items off my seemingly endless todo list, and finally got around to compiling this monstrosity. Try not to laugh at my poor sense of 'nifty' or hair too hard.
Newspaper Clippings Time Lapse from Joey Baker on Vimeo.
I've got a new year's resolution to get back to blogging more, so expect to see less of this stupid I-feel-obligatied-to-post-this-housekeeping-BS-just-to-have-something-up-there. And more real content.
I'm working on a piece that has the working title: "Print isn't dead, It's a luxury good."
Merry New Year's!
The World Is Our Studio
-NEWS! - Nikon announces D3X digital SLR
Alright… so the megapixel war is old and worn. It probably doesn't really matter too much anymore, but it sure is amazing to see some of these new cameras. 24 MP is a boatload of resolution. Bringing down the base ISO to 100, a really smart move for studio shooters. But, if the rumors are to be believed, this will be a $8000 camera - aimed at medium format shooters.
Makes sense… the ease of use of a SLR is really convenient in a studio. Digital backs are really hiRes, but are equally as hard to work with. Not to mention, you can use the Nikkor lens system.
It's a bummer that they didn't change the layout of the buttons a bit. I like the D300 method of putting the OK button in the center of the command dial.
I'll most likely go back and edit this post soon, but for now, I'm exhausted from a 8 hour marathon to finish a Knight News Challenge grant for CoPress.
Update: click here for sample of the D3x at high ISOs. (thanks to Trusted Reviews)
Red DSMC
The Red EPIC, configured as a still camera. (I think)Well, someone finally did it. You can finally build your own camera. Cobble together all the parts you want with Red's new Epic or Scarlet systems and you get a custom configured video/still camera.
It's a shame the thing is so darn expensive. As far as I can see:
Pros
- Dynamic range: 11+ or 13+ stops!!
- FPS: 30+!!
- Unless you go real low end, you'll be getting really good resolution.
- You can use Canon and Nikon Lenses!
- If you've got the money to put into accessories: configure your 'brain' as a still camera one day and then a video camera, the next.
Cons
- Price, you're gonna have to spend a boatload to get a decent setup. ($7000 to use Nikon or Canon Lenses)
- Judging from the configuration above, this is gonna feel like a medium format camera – the fast and light of a DSLR might be outa the question.
- The earliest we're gonna see anything is Spring 2009, and most likely won't see the whole line until 2010.
Things I still wanna hear about
- Storage: 24MP at 30FPS is gonna add up fast. Are we storing on harddrives, huge flash drives, what?
- They claim this huge dynamic range: trust, but verify.
- Will there be an optical viewfinder?
- How much do accessories like the DSLR grip cost?
- What about flash? There doesn't seem to be a hotshoe.
The Power of “the Fourth Effect”
If you haven't seen it yet, take a few minutes of your time to view this amazing example of the "fourth effect".
The 5D Mark II
Vincent LaForet has said it the best: "Something very interesting is coming…both to this blog and to our industry."
Check out DPreview's review here.
‘New Media’ Chaos
I have too much going on in my life right now. I'm back at school and shooting a ton. Not only shooting, but I'm back to editing.
I have created/taken the position of "Exponent of the Evolution" at The Daily Orange, my student newspaper. I had previously served a year as the photo editor for the paper, and has sort of assumed that my time there was up.
Little did I know that the opportunity would arise to use a lot of the knowledge that I've linked to and talked about on this blog in the 'real world' (however real an independent daily college paper is).
As the Exponent of the Evolution, I have 3 areas of responsibility:
- Promotion and advocacy of 'new media' at the paper. Blogging, audio slideshows, video, podcasting, video podcasting, etc.
- Establishing and expanding the paper's online precense. This can be simple, like promoting the website in print, or publishing headlines on twitter, to more complicated things like the creation of a new CMS for college papers.
- Monetizing. I serve as an advisor to the business side of the paper for online ads. Best online ad practices, new revenue streams, etc
The good news is this: this job has never existed before, and it desperately has needed to. It is critical for the survival of newspapers in the internet age to adapt to the new, online world. At this point, no newspaper has done it successfully.
Papers like The Guardian, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, have made leaps in the online realm, but none of them are able to sustain their operation entirely off revenue from the online side of the business. If print is dead, it is critical that newspapers, as the sole remaining journalists, figure out a revenue and distribution model that can maintain them.
Since this is already a bit of a disjointed, stream-of-consciousness post written at 6am out of pent up guilt for not writing a real post for so long. Let me provide a list of what I have done for the DO:
- Twittering of all headlines @dailyorange. Our popular sports blog gets special designation for it's posts (as do videos).
- Establishment of Final Cut Pro as our go-to video and audio slideshow editor. The result, as a movie, has a superior quality over soundslides or slideshowpro.
- Our sports section has been publishing 'graphics' prior to games that give details on players, what to look forward to, who to watch, etc. We're trying to move this to an interactive, online, format.
- I've developed a hypothesis: the lone reporter/photojournalist is dead. Instead, reporting will be done in teams that function like (pardon the analogy) terrorist cells. They will be largely autonomous, have a mission (a beat), and be comprised of a small group of people who have unique skills.
TV media has been doing this for a long time – they always send out at least a camera man and a reporter.
These teams will consist of 2-3 people (with an editor back in the office) who need to have 5 skills between them. Those skills are: 1) video 2) audio 3) photo 4) writing 5) 'personality. The last is a poor term for describing the person who is the 'on camera personality' – the person who is the front man for the team – recognizable to the public. These skills can be divided in any manner among the 2-3 members of the team.
I've been working on this 'hypothesis' for months now, recognizing that in this new world it is impractical to expect a single reporter/photog to be able to deliver a complete multimedia piece. Non only is it impossible to shoot video, sound, and photos at the same time, but it cannot all be complied on deadline. Having a team of people working on the same project allows them to deliver a complete multimedia package for every story – on deadline.
The point: I've decided to test the hypothesis: I have a 3 person team (who's beat has yet to be determined). At this point, they're producing a video a week on a chosen topic. We'll see where this goes. - Our sports section now has 2 video podcasts: On the Beat and Just Le Jus. Publishing 3 times a week, I'm hoping that this sort of thing will spread to other sections of the paper (working on Opinion).
- I'm the front man for the DO at coPress, a collective of college newspapers who are developing an opensource, custom, content management system for college newspapers. I've written the first blog post of coPress here. This is a move to get our paper off College Publisher, and onto a more workable CMS – a critical goal for the long-term sustainability of our paper.
- I've hired a couple of web developers (well, had hired, looks like I'm going to have to fight the board on this one) to help develop our CMS. This marks the first time the DO has hired someone specifically to develop code for our site. The sports graphics are a good example of the power that this brings.
- We are now using vimeo for all of our videos. It's a flexible system that allows HD content hosting. We'll have our own branded player eventually, but for now, this is a great, turn-key solution.
- Google ads don't make a ton of money, but they are something, and provide great filler for when we can't sell local ads.
- In order to figure out who is visiting our site (and how), it's critical to have a good suite of analytics software. We're now using Google Analytics.
- Our sports section has been live blogging for about a year now from games. I'm trying to get this work ethic expanded to other sections.
I think that's the list for now. We're/I'm working on doing more. I was just approved as a full time hire, but I'm still doing the job of more than one person, and could really use additional staff to make this all work. I'll end by sharing a very rough audio slideshow I did for a local walk for cancer.
Light the Night from Daily Orange on Vimeo.
Business and Coolness
I've been super busy lately – I've started working at my school paper again. Even though it's a part time job, it's really a full time job. My new title is "exponent of the evolution." I will write more about that soon – there's a lot to say. For now I'll just leave it at: I do a lot of new media.
If you haven't seen it yet, check out Jeffrey Friedl’s Blog: Nikon D3 Shutter Release in Super Slow Motion. It's really well done, and very cool to watch.
More soon!
Drooling: RED DSLR?
I'd really like a Nikon D3
. It's a shame my budget can't afford it right now. The D3 is an amazing, break through camera – for a variety of reasons. It's the camera that has some photogs regretting their switch to Canon (translation: Folks not shooting Nikon are kinda jealous right now).
As amazing as the D3 is, I'm starting to feel pretty good about not having one right now.
See, if I owned a D3, then I wouldn't have a justification for purchasing a newly rumored RED DSLR.
I'm literally drooling over the prospect. If RED can do for the still camera industry what it's done for the video, we've got a heckuva camera on our hands
.
Reading between the lines, and applying a little RED history 101, we expect to see a stripped-down still camera with modular add-ons, a very sensitive and film-like full-frame sensor and some crazy shooting speeds due to the RAW compression.
-RED Takes Aim at DSLR Market, Photographers Salivate | Gadget Lab from Wired.com
My speculations on features:
- 20+ FPS
- 12mp
- video capablities
- able to use the existing RED glass
Following Obama
The New York Times has a really nice piece on Barack Obama's campaign. Check it out here: Photographer’s Journal: Following Obama - The New York Times
I especially like some of the unique perspectives shown – and the interesting insight, that despite his lack of hair, Obama actually has a very unique profile, and is easy to silhouette.
Nikon D90: I Thought This Was at Least 5 Years Out
-Chase Jarvis Blog: Chase Jarvis RAW: Advance Testing the Nikon D90
I'm an happy Nikon fan-boy.
I've been saying privately that still photography will be dead in 10 years. It will simply be easier to shoot video and take a frame from the capture after the fact. Cameras like the Red ONE (and soon, the Red EPIC) are revolutionizing the video capturing field. With 12mp capture at 60fps and really good dynamic range, the stills look fantastic. As soon as storage in the field gets figured out (trust me, 12mp video files are huge) this camera becomes a snap for photojournalists.
But…
Now Nikon has gone and tackled the problem from the still image end. The new D90 shoots video – 720p video, and apparently it does it fairly well. You get all the advantages of the D300 sensor (that's right, it's high ISO video time baby!), and the awesome depth of field of still camera lenses.
This is the revolution! The D90 is a phenomenal camera that every PhotoJ is going to need to have in their bag – though if you're on a budget, I'd wait a while, seems like Nikon's rate of innovation (that seems like it needs an acronym) is increasing – I'd bet we get a higher-end model that shoots video within the next 15 months.
I do have a coupla questions:
• can you attach a mic to the camera? Do we have to wait for a higher end model than that?
• how much does the GPS suck battery life?
• 720p video is huge – how much can you fit on a puny SD card?
• what's the lag time for setting up video on the camera? Can I switch between video and still easily?
• can shutter speed and aperture be adjusted while the camera is shooting?
• how much does shooting video drain the batter?
• Jarvis shows the D90 with a vertical grip – are we getting vert. grips on the prosumer line now too!?
Signing off,
– a very happy New Media photog (and Nikon fan-boy)
Update
Nikon has posted some sample video. Nothing ground breaking but interesting to see. Things worth noting:
• there is no autofocus in movie mode (not too surprising, but a bummer)
• The high ISO performance is outstanding
• I'm excited to see the D400 (with movie mode), heck, the D4 (with movie mode)
• still don't know if attaching an external mic is an option (doubtful)
Some Photogs Can Write
I am a very lucky man. I've spent the last 24 years at the Los Angeles Times as a photographer and a photo editor. I can tell you what it's like in the eye of a typhoon, in a firestorm, under an offshore oil platform or the wrong side of the green line in Mogadishu. I know what a whale feels like and I've buzzed icebergs. I've had lunch with rock stars and seen President's sweat. I've tried to get Carolyn Cole out of jail, even.
When I die, I hope I have a bag of popcorn, because if my life flashes by, it's going to be a hell of a show.
Best of all, I've had the pleasure of your company. I can't imagine a more engaging, talented and dedicated group of people anywhere. Years ago, I was cooling my heals at some news event next to a New York Times reporter who had worked here. She said, "Oh! The Los Angeles Times! The New York Times is warm on the outside but cold on the inside. The Los Angeles Times is warm on the outside and warm on the inside."
Civility. Kindness. Fairness. Intelligence. These are the qualities that pervade the Los Angeles Times. Stay here for a while, and it get's in your blood.
Those folks who pine for the demise of the gatekeeper media don't know squat. What people really want out of the news business is a fair shake. We do that here. We worry about the truth and getting it right the first time.
There were 1,200 of us, but now there are a little more than half of that. I like to think that the Los Angeles Times is not so much diminished as dispersed. All those folks who have left the building still carry the Los Angeles Times spirit around with them. It's my turn to join them.
I am a very lucky man.
Bob Carey
-Laid off LA Times photog, Bob Cary, via Tell Zell: Bye Lines, LA Times
