Week 8

FIELD NOTES

This week, 5 of the 6 multimedia pieces posted were video! Photographer Gary Reyes is making a concentrated effort to become comfortable with video and shot three of his assignments in video. For two of the those assignments, he pulled stills from the video, and in the other, he shot stills as backup, which I think he did because the situation was more visual and he preferred to have higher quality stills. Pauline Lubens also is continuing to work with video and produced a Menlo Park Art Marketplace story. She uses a “stills style”– steady frame, interesting compositions in a montage format, which is similar to the intro of her Hollister Biker’s piece.

Menlo Park Art
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/07/15/art-in-menlo-park-2/

Santa Cruz Beaches
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/07/13/rural-santa-cruz-beaches-to-become-state-park/

World Cup Fans
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/07/09/world-cup-fans/

Mumbai Vigil
http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/07/16/mumbai-train-bombing-vigil/

In a discussion after the Santa Cruz beach story, Gary said, “Now my mind is racing before the shoot – which tool do I use – audio, video, stills – do I do a slideshow or video… it used to be use a camera and get the job done.” With the new tools and formats, the photographers, can choose a medium that offers the most compelling way to tell the story. But, at this point, Gary basically wants to get some video practice for the future when it may be critical to use. He doesn’t want to be in a situation where they ask for video and he has no experience doing it.

For the Cupfans story, Gary and Nhat Meyer, were able to export the video as a quicktime from iMovie and post it to the site using our Wordpress blog setup by themselves using the instruction sheet that Richard provided to everyone. I didn’t really have time to help much as I was solo on the editing shift that night. But the process was easy to pick up and on subsequent days, I went over export settings with Richard. For the Vigil story I was able to help Gary smooth out some of the video editing transitions, since there was another picture editor on shift. Gary had shot about 12 minutes of footage which was narrowed down to :45 second.

Karen Borchers was requested to shoot video at a small interview with Steve Westly, the democratic candidate for Governor that was defeated in the primary. Usually photographers are given a choice, but this was more of a favor to the writer of the story, who’s helped write and record narration for some of our more extensive political slideshows for Dai.

Other Multimedia Issues:

We sold our 1st Banner ad on mercurynewsphoto.com Someone in Advertising sold the ad on the site without realizing that had never done that before. Richard is trying to figure out how that will work. He said it’ll be unobtrusive.

When pulling stills from video, the imaging department has to process them slightly differently – I think they uses Noise Ninja to help reduce noise. I’ll have to find out more details.

All the photographers received more equipment: Sennheiser shotgun microphones with Beachtek boxes coming, wide angle adapters for the video camera, and new Edirol/Roland sound recorders.

Since we’re producing a good number of slideshows, Geri went over the picture story editing process checklist (from MPW and Fundamentals) with me, Elly and Maria Avila, the latest photo hire.

Work Issues:

The 2006 San Jose Grand Prix is coming up and we are discussing technical/style issues, logistics, and story ideas.

Had a discussion with Elly discussion about how to work more effectively with some of the more senior designers, who sometimes don’t consult us about photo usage.

Weeks 6 and 7

OPEN FOR BUSINESS: San Jose’s Fair Swim Center provides cooling relief for Kaitlynn Lee, 3, center and her sister Rebecca Lee,1, lower left, on Thursday. Evelyn Guevara Morales, lower right also enjoys the popular pool built four years ago. (LiPo Ching/San Jose Mercury News.)


Another pool centerpiece… I’m now the official pool photographer.

FIELD NOTES 6/25/06 – 7/8/06

4 days of editing and 3 shooting assignments.

Interesting Issues:

The designers. There was one instance where a designer (Janet Kim) came up with a nice concept for the photography on a story about and organization sending gift baskets to U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Instead of a one or two picture illustration, she set up a three picture series that showed the story as a process, which I didn’t think of. On the flip side, For a 4th of July promo, a designer/editor enlarged the promo to the extant that it altered the normal masthead and made it seem like a news picture rather than a file photo. There was no caption or credit. Unfortunately I let it slip by, because the designer had a lot of experience and it really didn’t register as prominently on the computer monitor, than it did when it was printed and folded in half. But when I saw it the next day, I thought it seemed like it was shot the previous night in San Jose, and I knew that it wasn’t (it was file photo from Japan). So the next day, Geri, set us (the two photo editors on shift that day) straight – we’re responsible for all photos.

The July 4th fireworks paper, also had one other interesting issue, which was that two photographers were given the same assignment for two different locations. They were to shoot a pre-fireworks feature picture for the 1st edition and a fireworks picture on a later edition. I had the task of choosing the pictures and ended up using both from the same photographer, which was sort of tough to do.

Early in the week I noticed a PHOTO OF THE WEEK (from The Santa Clara International 2006 Swimming Grand Prix Series) post on our multimedia site:

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/06/20/photo-of-the-week/

Richard mentioned that when there’s a slow week of multimedia postings, it’s good to get some new visual content up this way – just so people can see the site is active. Meanwhile, Geri also commented on a missed opportunity to make a picture-only slideshow of the Swimming Grand Prix (June 22-25), which she thought would get a good amount of hits, compared to some of the others that were posted. I’m assuming they would be less relevant a day later (June 26), so it was skipped.

In the past two weeks, there were a good number of multimedia projects posted and I also got a chance to speak to Geri (on 7/5/06) briefly about some multimedia issues.

For now, there’s really no formal training planned for multimedia forms or production. Photographers will get to experiment for a while and there’s no requirement to do multimedia. Geri even said that some of our photographers will probably never do any multimedia – they’re completely focused on the process, execution and form of the still image. They’ve sent some 4 photographers to Platypus, but didn’t like that they were using some broadcast methods in their workflow (set-up situations for B-Roll). Geri’s more interested in looking for a more unique way of using multimedia. The other issue that was discussed was the possibility of using teams to produce longer-form and more in-depth projects. Sometimes audio or video requires a lot more focus and concentration that may take away from capturing the necessary still photos, and Geri would possibly consider using a team for a project. In another film analogy, Geri mentioned that a picture story is like the storyboards for a film.

For now, it seems like Geri offers both general or specific comments to help guide the photographers in multimedia. For example, one prominent issue in slideshows is the length of time the photos play. Geri stresses that the stronger and more relevant pictures should be given more time than the transitional or marginal pictures.

Here are some of the more interesting slideshows done in these past two weeks, and comments on relevant issues:

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/06/28/historic-decision/
Historic Decision
The San Jose City Council voted Wednesday to ask Mayor Ron Gonzales to resign.
June 28, 2006
Photographers: Dai Sugano, Jami Smith
Editors: Elly Oxman, Anne-Marie McReynolds
A well constructed story of the event using the audio from the participants. This felt like a complete story and had some drama. It’s a little bit of a mystery as to who’s speaking at first, but has a nice reveal. The mystery works in this case because of how it’s executed.

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/06/29/in-memoriam/
In Memoriam
A community says goodbye to UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Denice D. Denton.
Thursday June 29th
Karen Borchers/Anne-Marie McReynolds
Again, a nice representation of the event and the organization and presentation of speakers is clear. I like the larger titles that introduce the speakers.

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/07/01/bikers-roll/
Bikers Roll
Bikers roared into Hollister on Saturday for their annual gathering.
July 1, 2006
Pauline Lubens
Editors: Richard Koci Hernandez/Elly Oxman
Interesting to mix a video introduction with stills, which I thought worked because the video used interesting compositions and seemed like moving stills. I think I would have liked some sort of written intro explaining the story, which I believe was that the city cancelled the event but many of the bikers came anyway. This wasn’t explained in the piece. Also, in the paper, the still's quality from video was not high -- looked a bit soft and muddy, and I wonder if that has to do with shutter speed of the video.

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/07/04/heritage-sport-in-silicon-valley/
Heritage sport in Silicon Valley
Junior rodeo thrives in Woodside event
Pauline Lubens/Anne-Marie McReynolds
July 4, 2006
Solid piece on the event. What’s notable is a small sequence with a hat – adds some linear movement to the piece. Pauline said that often she'll do a voice herself introducing the people rather than the title on picture, but that in this case, she didn’t have the time to do that.

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/07/08/plug-and-play/
Plug and Play
Alternative fuel vehicles take to the road in the first-ever road Rally that runs a 117-mile course from Santa Clara to Sacramento.
Richard Koci- Hernandez
July 8, 2006
Following Geri’s ideas, this piece plays with form a bit, which is fun and effective and it’s also a good example of how letting some of the stronger pictures play longer than others really helps the pacing and feel of a story. I'll have to ask Richard how he did the car at the end was shot and edited.

http://www.mercurynewsphoto.com/2006/06/30/sea-mass/
Sea Mass
Father Joseph Duong Phan celebrates Mass onboard container ships.
June 30, 2006
Karen Borchers
What I like is that Karen intros the video with 2-3 sentences that set up and give context to what follows. Some of the pieces posted really needed this type of intro to give the images and voices more relevance. Again, I think Karen did a solid straightforward job with the video storytelling. It looks like there were some issues with video quality though – problems with compression?