Back from the Galapagos

For the past month, I’ve been bouncing around the islands of Galapagos helping teach University of North Carolina students during their multimedia documentary class. Last year’s class produced a beautiful website, www.andamanrising.org, and this year’s students will undoubtedly have created an even more impressive site: www.livinggalapagos.org. (Note: the livinggalapagos.org site is scheduled to launch in mid-august)

So whenever I had a free moment, I took a few of my own photos along the way. Most impressive were the huge marine iguanas and the sea lions, which, btw, are quite stinky. I’d have to say the most fun was snorkeling with the giant sea turtles, sea lions and even sharks. The sea lions were so engaging and seemed to enjoy swimming with the humans as much as we were enjoying them.

I tried to pack light for the trip (much lighter than if I were on assignment). I took only one body, the 5D Mark II, and the 24-105 f/4, 70-200 f/2.8, 300 f/4 and 1/4 tele. I did shoot a little video along the way and hope to post it soon. But until then, enjoy a little slide show from the trip.

Quito and the Galapagos Islands – Images by David Stephenson

Is the 5D Mark II a 30 fps still camera?

So are you dreaming of shooting sports at 30 frames per second at 1/4000th shutter speeds? Well now you can with the Canon 5D Mark II and the updated firmware 1.1.0 which allows for manual exposure control in video mode. The tough part will be finding the balance between using a high enough shutter speed to freeze the action and trying to keep your video smooth which is accomplished at the slower shutter speeds. But what if you don’t care about the video and only want to frame grab? Might be good cases for that. Like maybe the backswing of a golfer? Tennis? Baseball (at the plate)?

What else might this be good for? You can’t count on the auto focus tracking a subject while shooting in video mode, so I wouldn’t expect football, soccer or basketball to work well.

Ah, but it’s cheating, you say? I say no. It’s using a tool. If a Mark III could shoot 30 frames per second, I’m betting no one would complain.

I shot a little test video of my pigeons being released in my backyard using two 5D Mark II’s shot at slow and fast shutter speeds. Hopefully you can see the difference in the video quality: The higher shutter speed producing jumpy, flickery video and the slower shutter speed providing a smoother look.

Canon 5D Mark II frame grabs at high shutter speeds from David Stephenson on Vimeo.

You can download the frame grabs to see the difference up close. They were captured in Final Cut Pro.

Immersion Wrap Up

It was, officially speaking, a bad-ass week.

I just got home from six days of the 2009 Multimedia Immersion and NPPA Convergence held in Las Vegas. It was exhausting, exhilarating, inspirational and humbling.

We coached 45 students from around the country on how to produce multimedia storytelling. We used gear from our sponsors, Canon, Think Tank Photo and Roberts Imaging, and along the way we tried to instruct and inspire the students so they could go home and spread the multimedia goodness to their friends and coworkers.

And we ate a lot of noodles.

At some point, all of the handouts that the coaches provided will be available as downloads on the Multimedia Immersion website. I made up a tip sheet for the 5D Mark II, as more than 15 of the students used that as their only video camera. And on Thursday at the NPPA Convergence, I gave a presentation on Photoblogging geared to the beginners. Both of those can be dowloaded from my blog.

Make sure to check in with the Immersion website to see when the participant’s videos are posted – there is some bad-ass work in there!

The General

The General from David Stephenson on Vimeo.

The day after it was officially announced that I would be “voluntarily laid off” at the Lexington Herald-Leader, I received an email from Craig Duff, a multimedia director at Time.com. The timing seemed more than coincidental. My primary profession post-Herald-Leader would be that of photojournalism advisor/coach/cheerleader/pot-washer at the Kentucky Kernel. But to keep my shooting appetite whetted, I plan to ramp up the freelance and work on some selected projects that have been rattling around in my head for some time.

On my to do list among many other things: Start networking the national news outlets – the ones I’ve worked for in the past, and a whole slew of others – to let them know I’m available and looking for some shooting and multimedia work. So imagine my delight at seeing an email from a multimedia director from Time.com. Craig had seen the Turtle Man video that Amy Wilson and I had produced and wanted to talk about it. At the end of his email, he mentioned a possible interest in a piece previewing the Kentucky Derby. Doubly odd about his timing was the fact that I had that very day posted the Keeneland Blossoms video which previewed the spring meet and Keeneland Race Track.

After a brief discussion with Craig, I decided I would attempt a video based on the outcome of the Blue Grass Stakes race at Keeneland. So I spent the day at Keeneland focusing on the favorites. Naturally, they didn’t win. An underdog named General Quarters, owned and trained by Tom McCarthy, won the Blue Grass Stakes and was headed for the Kentucky Derby.

After the race, I made contact with Tom’s son and asked if I could come back for an interview in a couple of days. Three days later, Amy and I were at the stall of General Quarters on the backside of Churchill Downs. We shot Mr. McCarthy working through his regiment with the General, which took about four hours. The horse wasn’t ready to go out to the track that day, so I came back a few days later to shoot the General on the track.

Amy did a great job of writing – as usual. Our goal, whenever we work on a piece together, is to be as complete as we can in the time we have. While our videos tend to be a bit unconventional, I like them for that. As I’ve become more and more accustomed to working with the 5DMKII, I’m realizing why I like it so much. It is allowing me to “see” much the same way I looked at things when shooting stills.

Only now, the photos move.

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Some technical stuff about the video:

All shot with the Canon 5D Mark II

70-200 f/2.8 with 1.4 teleconverter

24-105 f/4

300 f/2.8

Interview mic was Sennheiser wireless lav

Ambient sound from the track and bath was recorded with the Sennheiser MKE 400

Gitzo carbon fiber tripod with Gitzo 2180 fluid head

Glidecam 2000 HD steady cam

Really Right Stuff plates allowed quick switching between tripod and steady cam

Neutral density filter

Edited in Final Cut Pro

Keeneland blossoms into spring

Before the sun is up, horses are on the track. Riders in thick jackets and leather chaps ease them up the stretch and gallop them back down, around the turn. Hooves pound. Puffs of steam pour from big nostrils. The grandstand casts a giant shadow, holding winter’s last chill.

READ TOM EBLEN’S FULL COLUMN HERE

This video was shot with the Canon 5D Mark II on a beautiful morning before the Keeneland Race Track 2009 spring meet was to open in Lexington. I used the 24-105 f/4 IS and the 70-200 f/2.8 with the TCEII teleconverter. All shot with a Gitzo tripod and 2180 fluid head – with one exception: there is a brief shot where I used a Glidecam 2000 steady cam. First time I’d used it – need to practice!!

I love shooting at Keeneland – who doesn’t, really? This was the first chance I had to shoot at Keeneland during a race meet with the 5D Mark II. Weather was good, light was nice, time was right. I got out at the track before sunrise with no intent other than to just shoot and see what came out of it. I shortly ran into HL photog Charles Bertram (no big surprise there – he was working on a daily piece for the paper to preview the opening day of the meet).

Not long after that, I spotted HL columnist Tom Eblen shooting photos. He’s a darn good photographer and shoots his own photos to go with his column. After he gave me the general idea of what he was doing, it seemed to fit perfectly with what I was shooting. A few hours later at lunch time, I recorded him reading his column. I kept the beginning and the end as they were, and spliced up the middle to fit my clips and for brevity.

The Road to Recovery

In February, reporter Amy Wilson and I took a day-long road trip into Western Kentucky to see how folks were coping two weeks after what was perhaps the worst ice storm in modern history.

It’s a bit of a departure from what I usually produce on a news assignment. The editors came to Amy and said “Take David and go to Western Kentucky and do what you do.”

We weren’t exactly sure what that meant. But we decided that the drive, the people, the journey would be the story, no matter what we found – the story would present itself. And it did. It’s an unconventional piece for a very unconventional day.

Shot with Canon 5D Mark II, 24-105 f/4 and 300 f/2.8. Audio was recorded with the the Sennheiser MKE 400. Edited in Final Cut Pro. I was very happy with the MKE 400 microphone that day.

Below are some frame grabs from the day. The photo of the white house and the storm clouds was published six columns inside and was beautiful.

Using the Canon 5D Mark II for news

It’s been about three months since I traded in my Canon XH-A1 for a Canon 5D Mark II. I was spellbound by it’s shallow depth of field and gorgeous quality, but admittedly hesitant about how it would perform in a run-and-gun situation or for news.

After getting used to the camera and it’s video limitations, and after getting a Sennheiser MKE 400 mini shotgun mic, I’ve become much more likely to shoot video on daily news assignments. I thought I’d show three examples here.

Here’s one of the best things I love about this camera: I can make a decision on the fly about whether or not to shoot video. I try to keep either the shotgun mic with me or the wireless mic – they are pretty easy to have in a fanny pack along with my Olympus LS-10 audio recorder.

In the first example below, I was already more than a mile away from my car when my boss sent me a text asking if I would shoot some video of the mountain top removal protest I was about to shoot. Normally that would have created a problem in that my video camera would have still been in the car. But since I had the 5D Mark II, it was a breeze to shoot video. Fortunately I had brought my mic with me. I shot still photos along the way since the march was so long. I didn’t need to pull any frame grabs. After sending in my photos, it took me about two hours to edit and post. If you’re like me, I like knowing what kind of viewership newspapers are getting out of their videos – so I’ll tell you. This video has had more that 3,000 views. A separate, short clip – just a segment of Judd’s speech which I posted for a separate but relevant story – has accumulated over 4,000 views so far.

If you want a chuckle – or to see the 5D Mark II in action, check it out at about the :40 mark in this video from the Winchester Sun. *

We recently had an Amber Alert in our area which fortunately resolved itself without anyone getting hurt. At the end of my shift one day last week, my boss asked me if I would work OT and cover the mother returning to the Lexington airport after picking up her daughter in Mexico where the child’s father had taken her. I waited at the baggage claim for their return and decided to shoot primarily still photos. If she stopped to talk to the media, which was very uncertain at the time, only then would I shoot video. And that’s exactly how it worked out. Again, it took about two hours to edit and post. This video has been viewed around 700 times so far

This third video (below) is another example of how I decided to use the video on the 5D Mark II on the fly. We had a terrible ice storm in late January. I was shooting a cattle farmer for one of our daily stories and thought I’d give some video a try since I had some time. I turned in my stills, shot, edited and posted the video in under four hours. The video has over 3,000 views.

By no means do I think these are my best videos – they are not something I would generally want to put out there for my peers to critique. But I do think there is value in sharing with others how this camera can be used for photojournalists.

This for sure: I’m more at ease now knowing that I can get by with the 5D Mark II in some breaking news situation and not just for feature stories which I have more time to shoot and more time to produce.

iPhone App: QuadCamera

[Updated with more photos]

On another tip from Justin, I took another leap of faith and actually spent money again on an iPhone app. Now after the less-than-satisfying experience with NightCamera, I was a bit hesitant to try QuadCamera from the same company. But I only hesitated for about 2 seconds, ’cause the description and sample photos were so intriguing.

I think it was long about THE FIRST IMAGE that I took with QuadCamera that I decided it was well work the $1.99. The app uses the iPhone camera and takes 4-8 photos in sequence and makes a grid-like single image out of all the images. It’s part of the ToyCamera line of iPhone apps from Takayuki Fukatsu You can customize how many images you take and the interval at which you take them. The app also applies a Holga-ish vignette and desaturation to each image.

The first few images I shot, I used the default interval between images, which is pretty fast. Moving subjects or moving the camera helps in this case.

Then, I tried slowing down the interval and shooting photos that when combined would appear like they were stitched together.

Ah, but wait! There’s more. Head to Fukatsu’s website and you can download the QuadAnimator. After loading an image taken with QuadCamera, it makes it into an animated gif.

This is going to be a fun app. Thanks Justin for the tip.

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Lessons in life and basketball

Update: Coach Sallee passed away today, Jan. 23, 2009. I will try to think of his positive message as often as I can.

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East Jessamine Coach Ralph Sallee, while battling late-stage cancer, kept teaching lessons in life and faith while bringing his girls’ basketball team closer.

This is the second video I’ve shot and produced using the Canon 5D Mark II. It started with reporter Mike Fields asking the well-known and much-loved coach if he’d be willing to talk to us about his fight with cancer. I thought it might make for a nice video and I knew I could get good frame grabs for the paper.

I lit the interview and recorded it using the 70-200 2.8 IS on a tripod. The light was a single White Lightning 800 with a large softbox. The modeling light was the source, so I set the white balance to incandescent.

We arranged to shoot his next practice for some b-roll and so I could interview some of his players. This all was happening right around Christmas break, so I couldn’t shoot a game for nearly three weeks. The third time I photographed coach Sallee was during his team’s rivalry game against West Jessamine.

Each time, coach let me put my Sennheiser wireless lav on him which worked out quite well for the audio. In the loud gym during the game, it peaked out a few times, though.

Production in Final Cut Pro went very smoothly this time now that I have all my settings worked out.

Overall, I think the video came out pretty well. I’m happy to be able to give Coach Sallee a voice and to document a place and time in his life that I hope they will cherish.

The full story can be read on Kentucky.com.

Many thank-yous to coach, his wife and family for letting us tell his story.

Covering Obama’s Inauguration

I arrived in D.C. Sunday night to cover Barack Obama’s Inauguration for McClatchy, the parent company of the Herald-Leader. It was a long drive through treacherous, icy roads and once we got to Washington, the traffic in the city was insane. It took two hours to get to the convention center to pick up credentials, and then to the McClatchy bureau.

I also learned today that my primary assignment on Tuesday is from the south window of the top of the Washington Monument. How cool is that? There will be nine photographers allowed up there and we will rotate every few minutes before having to come down.

Walking about town Sunday night, I shot a few frames of some of the imagery of Obama that I expect I’ll be seeing a lot of in the next few days. I’ll add more of some of my favorite images to this post over the next few days.

Update: Here are a few more shots from Monday. Most of my day was spent walking, but I also had to shoot an assignment for the Idaho Statesman. While I was looking for the Idahoans(?) I stumbled on the Frankfort High Schoolers – good mojo there.

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