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.
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.
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.
I’ve started to establish a new standard for editing images and video and I’m calling it the “jaw dropping” moment form of editing.
If my jaw drops open when I see it, I tag it and keep it. Or if I exclaim, out loud in the office, “holy X&!#!” I usually mark and keep that frame or section. (Lucky for me my colleagues put up with my id.)
I did a lot of jaw dropping and exclaiming when I was producing and editing my most recent MediaStorm piece for the International League of Conservation Photographers. The photography is amazing and the video by James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey made my jaw drop and caused an expletive. Balog and his team have turned what’s going on with climate change into stunning motion.
As usual, I learned some new things. One of them is that great photography and video stops you in your tracks, and when it’s connected with important issues, it has the power to engage and hopefully motivate people. This project also reminded me that everything in our world is connected.
The video is a “run away” but I’m sure the folks at ILCP will fix that soon.
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 state of Beijing's Air
I’ve had a great summer travelling and teaching. I wanted to share a bit of what the workshop experience is like for me. This workshop, The Spirit of People, was held at the Tuscany Photo Workshops in August 2007.
Here’s a selection of the photography I published in National Georgraphic Magazine, on assignment for more than 20 years.
How fast time flies…
Thanks to Pamela Chen who wrote the music.
My thanks to everyone who contributed to this wonderful birthday video and for celebrating with me in May
Thanks especially to the three cohorts who produced this: Zach Wise, Chad Stevens and Meagan Smith.
When I decided to come to Ohio University as the Knight Fellow last year, I generally received one of two reactions: envy or head scratching.
Why did I do it? Well, to create work like The Soul Of Athens which launched today. I produced the content for the creativity section.
I shot and edited The Art of Coal Country about how Nelsonville, Ohio was saved by art. It’s my vision of how a typical newspaper feature story can look on the web.
Soul of Athens is our attempt to look at where “merlot meets moonshine,” an multimedia examination of Athens County and our small University town in the foot hills of Appalachia.
This is a class project, totally created by students but the brainchild of the amazing Zach Wise , the 29-year-old visiting professional who has guided it, kept us on track and constantly tweaked and prodded us into the best we could do in 8 weeks.
Zach pretty much allowed us to generate and create and build every bit, from concept to design to code to content to text to viral marketing. Another web guru, Brian Storm flew in from NYC to be our second guiding light.
What was most interesting for me was to be involved as a producer and generate pieces that I did not shoot myself (though I did edit them all.)
For Harmony in Two Parts , a story on the creative process between 2 musicians, I generated the idea and worked with M.K.Smith, who photographed and recorded the piece. I made the edit
For PassionWorks a story about an eye-opening art studio for developmentally disadvantaged adults, and The Carver of Coolville Ridge, a story about David Hostetler, an internationally recognized sculptor who lives nearby, I found work already in progress and matched it to ideas I generated. So I have now also learned the fine art of begging and pleading for rights and cooperation. I re-edited the pieces for the web.
And it’s pretty much what I came here to learn. I couldn’t be happier. Love to hear what you think.
Bob Taylor has been passionate about the hard work of shearing sheep in Athens County, Ohio for 51 years. These days he makes most of his living delivering huge bundles of the Columbus Dispatch to distributors around the region.
His dream is pretty common: to retire and travel with his wife. But he wants to spend the rest of his life shearing sheep. When I told him I thought most people want to spend their retirement taking life easy, he just laughed. I spent some time with him on Ladd Ridge in Athens, Ohio.
