bob sacha » photo….video

What Does Justice Mean to You?

bob sacha — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:44:10 +0000

Dwayne Betts tells his story very well and what a story he’s lived.

This is my favorite story from the five videos I produced for the Open Society Foundation,U.S. Programs, Criminal Justice Fellows.

Formerly incarcerated, Betts is an author, poet and teacher.

You can see all Six of the videos at the Open Society Foundations U.S. Programs Multimedia page

digital dreamscape

bob sacha — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:15:22 +0000

This is an interactive portfolio, click on the arrows to cycle through the images (and my dreams).

Every Sunday I’m left as an internet widow by my partner, who writes the wildly popular website Gastropoda. So while she was ranting online about food and politics, I was posting pictures. The site was designed by Audrey Chen and Billie Mandle, making a site that reflected both my dreams and photography in an even cleaner and more clever mode than what I imagined.

Repo Man

bob sacha — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 23:54:56 +0000

I’ve finally moved by old Phlog (short for PHoto bLOG) from Wordpress. Now I can run hog wild on my own site…

If you’d like to see the millions of previous posts, check out my original wordpress site, sacha phlog.

2010 multimedia workshop schedule

bob sacha — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:40:32 +0000

“Bob Sacha taught me to think about storytelling in a completely different, and much more effective, way than I ever had before.” … Chris Linder, photographer, scientist and multimedia producer

“Bob Sacha changed the way I work. His workshop helped me learn how to tap into the emotion of storytelling and the importance of good audio.”… Lauren Hermele, photographer, Fulbright Grantee and translator

Listed below are the workshops I’m teaching this summer. Click the name of the workshop for more info. Hope to see you this summer.

Jewish Museum, Berlin.

Students learn to use all the tools of multimedia more fully. Video b-roll is discussed, more advanced interview techniques, rack focusing, time-lapse and sequence photography is explored along with workflow and story structure. This will be a practical guide to using these techniques in the field.

Far Away Lands

bob sacha — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 05:52:24 +0000

This is short film I made with a point-and-shoot pocket-sized digital camera.

It was the opening piece for a lecture on travel photography at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film in Rochester, NY. The series was called Wish You Were Here.

Poverty in the Face of Resource Wealth

bob sacha — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:14:06 +0000

I know what “transparency” is but mostly from my days as a photojournalist working with color slide film. So when the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) came to MediaStorm to create a multimedia piece explaining what they did, it took me a while to figure it out. In the process, I learned a lot more.

For this story, I had the pleasure of traveling to London. Berlin and Washington to interview 6 people that represented all sides of the issue. Fifty or more countries in the world are rich in resources: gold, silver & oil but more than half of their population lives below the poverty line. This projects looks at why.

Maybe the new paradigm is someone like me traveling with 2 HDV cameras, tripods and mic stands plus my laptop. In each country, I worked with a camera person (Kimberley Williams in Washington, DC, Karveh Shirdell in London and Bjorn Forster in Berlin. We used a single light for the interviews. I edited the transcripts and pictures and cut the piece.

Of course, none of this would be possible without all the amazing photographers bravely working in these countries.

Thanks to all for teaching me so much.

Do 1 Thing

bob sacha — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:39:37 +0000

Do 1 Thing is an initiative started by Najlah Fenny Hicks and Pim Van Hemmen to help homeless teens. Over 25,000 adolescents age out of the foster care system each year in the United States. 40% of these teens will become homeless.

On Valentine’s Day 2009 they organized a massive photoshoot at the Covenant House in several states. Here’s Shaniqua, one girl I met at Covenant House in New York City.

This is also my first very humbling attempt to create a soundtrack using garage band.

10,000 Cups

bob sacha — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:42:56 +0000

Starbucks brought their “partners” to New Orleans, 10,000 strong, for a management conference but also to pitch in for 4 hours each of community service. Yes, that’s 40,000 hours of community service. It was a wonderful thing to see.

I lit and shot the interviews and also shot video and stills in the field but the most fun was shooting and editing the small piece in the middle the this great story where Mary O’Connor and her team try to serve 10,000 cups of hot coffee to every one of the partners in the audience at the same time. Phew, what a race that was.

I had spent a year in New Orleans (pre Katrina) working on a story for National Geographic Magazine so I was thrilled to go back with my MediaStorm colleagues in 2008 to shoot, interview and record this multimedia piece for Starbucks.

Clearing the Air

bob sacha — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:34:19 +0000

Clearing the Air, China’s Environmental Challenge. is a project I produced and edited using some amazing China photos. Plus this project gave me the chance to sit down and interview Orville Schell on camera for 2 hours. Wow, that was a treat.

For me, this was an interesting return to the subject of China, where I spent many weeks photographing two stories for National Geographic Magazine in the past decade. The changes are staggering and the interview was really illuminating.

Check out the Room with a View section also, which shows the quality of Beijing’s air every day viewed from the same spot.

The original website

The state of Beijing's Air

Rock Star

bob sacha — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:39:38 +0000

I used to do a lot of portraits when I started working for magazines in NYC and I remembered those days when I did a fun portrait a while back of Professor E.O.Wilson. He’s the Mick Jagger of Science, often referred to as “Darwin’s Natural Heir” and a genius. He is an amazing thinker, a two time Pulitzer prize-winning author, the man who coined the term “biodiversity” and also a very gentle man. I made this image at the Darwin exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in NYC. After the session, I got to walk through part of the Darwin exhibit with him and hear some stories about Darwin’s family, who he knew. It was one of those moments that made photography the joy it continues to be for me.