Coffee is nice

Less a photo of the day than an object of the day. Love this mug.

Just before taking this photo I had sludged up the stairs using surely my very last bit of energy. All I had in my near future was dunking my ouma (if you don’t know ask a South African), drinking the coffee and going to bed – maybe even snatching double digit hours of sleep.

Two hours later I haven’t moved, heavy eyes and limbs gone, tapping my feet, completely and hopelessly out of time, to my new Tinariwen album (see below).

Other than the coffee, here’s what’s kept me up:

Wired.com is posting a step by step “.. almost-real-time, behind-the-scenes look at the assigning, writing, editing, and designing of a Wired feature.” A pretty cool insight for anyone interested in any of the above mentioned steps. And its about Charlie Kaufman’s new film, so that makes it even more interesting.

This is a very clever PR exercise, getting a whole lot more value for a single story than ever before. It is indicative of an interesting new approach to journalism and in particular, photography, brought about by an increasingly connected, internet savvy, blog reading, information sharing world and audience.

We get to hear from the writer, the editor, the photographer what they were thinking while they were working on the piece; something that has never been available to us before. We are given more insight into the story and very importantly, are better able to identify the subjective perspective from which the story was created.

Ideas like this promise a new world of in-depth reporting which so many people pronounced the digital age to have killed. It was all doom and gloom, instant photojournalism – news happens, the photographer rushes to the scene, gets the shot and transmits it within minutes if not instantly back to the editors who rush it through to get it on the website / newswire before anyone else. No depth, no insight, no time.

More than likely, the ‘behind the scenes’ in-depth reporting will be the domain of monthly online magazines who have the time and the budgets, but then you only have to look at Newsweek’s very tasty Olympic offerings – which is the ultimate, ‘get the best picture the fastest’ news event – to have hope.

One guy who is taking the lead in getting the audience behind the scenes is Chase Jarvis, a advertising photographer; his blog regularly features ‘Chase Jarvis Raw’ video clips where he shows you the innards of a commercial shoot in all its glory. His latest features Kung Fu and good music, silly to miss it really.

As usual, National Geographic has joined the fray with blogs and ‘field notes’ from their writers and photographers. (I haven’t been able to check out the NGM blogs because for some obscure reason nothing hosted by typepad will open here in the UAE. No ideas why.)  Here is one such from photographer Brian Skerry for one of the latest stories on the Right Whales. Personally I would like more detail, but that is always the way of things.

Another website that has drawn me in tonight has been the portfolios of Amy Toensing, found through Verve Photo. Lovely stuff. I particularly love this picture:

Its an elephant, grinning. Brilliant.

This is, if you’ve been paying attention, the first time I’m putting up someone else’s photographs. I hesitated before because I was undecided on the ethics of it – photographers everywhere are fighting to get properly paid for online usage by the media who commission them. Its easy enough for the magazines and newspapers to calculate online advertising costs, so why the big struggle to calculate online usage payments one has to wonder. However, after reading this post from the, how often do I say this, always excellent A Photo Editor blog by Rob Haggart, I’m reconsidering. It seems most folk out there agree that if properly linked and referenced, its free advertising, so why object.

Finally, and the one that’s been most titillating, the release of a sample short film shot on the brand new Canon EOS 5D MKII by the brilliant Vincent Laforet. (Who, incidentally was part of the Newsweek blog mentioned above.) Its no cinematic masterpiece, but hotdamn its pretty. I mentioned the movie making still camera from Nikon recently, but from all that I’ve read, Canon seriously seems to have stepped up here with its HD 1080p shooting camera – even if it is going for quite a bit more – about $2700.

The immediately obvious applications are for photojournalism, but what will the end result be? More pressure on the PJ’s (doing both video and still well would be incredibly difficult) and an increased bombardment of often unnecessary information or wonderful, well rounded in-depth pieces..? Here is a good level headed response from (again) A Photo Editor Rob Haggart. Comment #68 also weighs in with a good few cents.

Nevertheless, lots of fun and surely lots of good work will be done. I’m looking forward to all this.

-g-