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 p.1 #13 · The Future of Photography - What are your thoughts? (Cross post from General Gear Talk) | |
A camera is a tool. Sometimes the best tool is a still camera, other times it's a movie camera / video carmera. I've always been of the opinion the more tools one learn to use the better off one is. The common thread underlying both forms of photography is the goal of telling a story.
I've used both for going on 40 years. Back in 1972 when I was assisting Monte Zucker shooting weddings I suggested also filming the wedding. I did a few using a 16mm Bolex and high-end Beaulieu Super 8mm but the lighting challenges, cut-and-tape editing and lack of A/B rolls for different POVs to tell the story effectively where show stoppers back then, as was tripping the circuit breakers in a hotel ballroom with the lighting 
In the mid-80s I was passing through Tokyo en-route to my job running the USIA publishing center in Maniila just after the Sony 8mm camcorder hit the market and I bought one. The camera, combined with a high-end BetaMax deck and editing console accessory for the camera made it possible to put together some crude but workable short films. I documented the installation of new presses over several months, did a video showing our publications where produced, and some training videos. The fact I could script and shoot different POVs made the final product, while crude technically, more interesting that the typical single POV home movie. As with anything it's not so much the tools as knowing how to use them and work around the limitations.
Both have challenges stills and videos in story telling.
In a still shot you need to compose to move the viewer's eye across the frame to create a dynamic "feel" to the viewing experience. That's what the "rule of thirds" does when applied effectively. Photos that have centered focal points don't "break" the ROT they just create the opposite psychological reaction making the scene feel static. Stills are much simpler to do well when the message is simple, such as "look at my face" in a portrait. They become more difficult to do well as the crop expands and the photographer tries to include context around the face to create a more complex story without it becoming a distraction which dilutes the impact of the focal point. One of the dilemmas of still photography is that close-ups tend to create the strongest emotional reactions, but don't give the viewer the complete story because the lack context.
When composing a film shot of action you'd typically start with the subject walking into the frame to near the center then pan with them keeping them in the center, then let them walk out of frame. For most of the sequence the composition in the frame is "static" but that works because everything other than the focal point is moving. A typical film storyline is created by a progression of different points of view — wide, medium, close-up and cutaway — which has the psychological effect of pulling the viewer in closer to the action and with the "cut-away" shifting the POV from that of an external observer to show what the people in the preceeding or following scene was seeing from their POV. The problem with covering a live event with video is creating those different POVs needed to keep the story interesting when shooting with a single camera. With still the photographer can move around and change POV without worrying about continuity of action and sound, but with video to produce a live performance with good production values two or three cameras are needed. That was a lesson learned in the early days of film making.
The lessons learned from film making can be applied to many genres of still photography. The best advice I've ever read about lighting and it's role in storytelling was an anecdote in a cinematography textbook where it was said that all famous cinematographer needed to light a set was a bucket of black paint. Reading that changed my approach to lighting and composition, making me realize that it wasn't so much the lighting but the contrasts it created which lead the eye in a frame, define shape, and convey mood.
The perceived shape of a face isn't altered much if you keep the same pattern and change the lighting ratio from 2:1 to 5:1, what the darker shadows tell the viewer is that the environment the face is in has changed from normal and safe to dark and scary. Watch the production values in a film critically and you'll see color balance shift to reflect mood. Green biased lighting, which nearly always look unnatural in still photos, are commonly used in film to create dark and moody environments because the green light gives pink skin a dull gray look — what you get with stills shooting under trees with daylight WB. Why does that work in movies and not in stills? The WB in the movies constantly shifts and that seems normal, but when looking at a static still photo the expectation is for the faces to look "normal" in the way your eyes would adapt to the ambient light temp in person and see them.
Landscape, portrait, product or fine arts photographers tend to think in terms of telling the story in a single shot. But wedding photographers and photo journalists, whether they realize it or not, typically use the cinematic approach / formula of telling the story with wide, medium, close-ups and cutaways Some might do it and not realize it or call it "cinematic" because they never studied cinematography techniques or tried shooting and putting together a movie.
Part of the learning curve with still photography is getting past the habit of trying include background context in every shot and winding up with mostly "medium" shots where the background and focal point compete with each other. Last week we stopped briefly in Newport, RI on the way back from a wedding in Boston and I shot this typical but boring vacation shot which was equally boring in person:
http://super.nova.org/2012MAtrip/Photos/newport/NewportRI_03.jpg
So to try to make it less boring I applied the "cinematic" approach of finding medium and close-up POVs to add interest:
http://super.nova.org/2012MAtrip/Photos/newport/NewportRI_04.jpg
http://super.nova.org/2012MAtrip/Photos/newport/NewportRI_05.jpg
http://super.nova.org/2012MAtrip/Photos/newport/NewportRI_06.jpg
Had I been shooting with a video camera I would have used a similar sequence of shots but would have panned the camera left-to-right toward the details in the close-ups. In the still shots the fact they are on the right side and contrast strongly with everything else will cause the viewer scan left-to-right and create the same sense of movement. The second shot creates the question of who is depicted on the statue. The close-up of the plaque provides the "back story" so by the time the front of the statue and name is seen on the base the complete story is understood. If forced to choose only one shot the last one would be the best, but the story make more interesting by creating the context in the preceding shots.
My goals in photography were never "fine arts" oriented in the sense that went out seeking "wall worthy" scenes to photograph. My first camera was a Nikonos II purchased mainly to document my high school SCUBA diving adventures. These shots of dive club members were taken in 1969 at Devil's Lake in WI on the same day Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon:
http://super.nova.org/MP/1968_SCUBA1.jpg
http://super.nova.org/MP/1968_SCUBA2.jpg
I got hooked on photography to the point I sold the dive gear and bought a pair of Nikon Fs equipping them with 35mm and 85mm based on advice I read in a photo-journalism book on telling stories more effectively with wide and close-up views rather than the more "normal" seen-by-eye perspective of a the more typical 50mm lens. I never owned 50mm lens until buying my 20D in 2004, and on that camera it has about the same FOV as the 85mm on the Nikon did.
I bought a new video camera and my first P&S film camera at the same time in 1997 to bring on an overseas trip for a wedding. I discovered the still camera, a Pentax W90, did just well as my SLR for about 90% of the vacation shots I took so from that point I usually left the SLR at home on vacations. I never used the video camera much for the same reasons I found the medium lacking previously. I rarely had the opportunity to shoot scripted scenarios where I could create the type of A/B/C roll POV needed to create an interesting story and the camera > VCR editing tools were primitive.
Digital photography and the Internet changed my still photography. I got on the Internet and bought my first digital camera about the same time in 1994. The quality of the photographs with that .8MP Apple QuickTake100 camera was lacking, as evidenced by this first web page gallery but the ability to take and share photos photo-jounalistically, but it created a new paradigm for sharing photos and for me a motivation to take more of them. A few years later in 1998, back in the US the Philippines was featured at the Smithsonian Folk Life festival and covered a street fair to celebrate the Philippine Centenial like a PJ and created a web site to share the photos, taken on film and scanned from prints, with my Filipino friends around the world.
Last week I went to Boston for a family wedding and brought along my iPad3. I hadn't really used the camera on it much for stills or video but the day before leaving I downloaded the iMovie application. Some of the family members couldn't attend but with the use of a portable hot-spot the father of the groom had brought along I was able to broadcast the ceremony live via Skype. The couple had hired a very good pair of photographers to shoot stills and I explained to them what I was doing and why and stayed out of their way, shooting "behind the scenes" video of the pre-ceremony photo shoot and the reception. The groom's father as who runs is a fishing guide has been using GoPro video cameras and posting YouTube videos and tutorials for years and positioned a couple of them to capture the ceremony.
I was amazed at the quality of the iPad video and how simple it was to create a decent looking, albeit not commercial quality, edited video "on the fly" while shooting. The camera does a very good job at handling focus and WB automatically and the sound quality was also surprisingly good with just the built-in mic. Because the clips and editing application are on the same device it was easy to shoot then assemble and I was able to share the finished results at the reception:
http://super.nova.org/2012MAtrip/Photos/reception/_MG_7797.jpg
The next day we went on a whale watching trip and I shot stills and videos, handing off the iPad to my wife when the whales were spotted, and I had it edited by the time the boat docked.
Back in 2006 the family had a week-long reunion in Estes Park, CO where I had done the same PJ documentation. Then I put the photos together in a digitally printed book in iPhoto and gave them as Christmas gifts to the family. Nowadays everyone has a broadband connection so when I got back home I put together a web site with the stills and links to the videos. Warning: boring vacation and wedding photos.
As RDKirk says above the photos and videos are mainly of interest to the family. But they were the intended audience when shooting them. The motivation for shooting them wasn't so much for immediate consumption by those who attended but to show those who couldn't what went on and so in the years to come when the couple has kids of their own and can share the memories with them. Put on a scale and measured that way the videos and stills have equal value. They tell the same story in different ways some better in stills, others better in video. I didn't shoot any scenic videos. I shot stills of those and imported them into the videos.
The experience last week, which is the first time I shot video in about 15 years has be thinking about buying a T4i or for the about the same price 2-3 GoPro cameras. The T4i will allow me to use my good lenses, but the GoPro2 costs only $300 ea. and can be remotely controlled from a remote control and soon via iPhone app via wi-fi. They are small and can be stuck anywhere. Having a couple of them in stationary positions with a third camera in hand to create A/B/C roll footage would go a long way towards making the edited product more interesting. I think I'll pull the string on a couple of GoPro2s and wait for a mirror-less body compatible with the Canon glass.
If you have an iPad or iPhone spend $5 and get the iMovie app. Then if you can get past the notion that every photo or video you take has to be top notch you can have a lot of fun with video on an iPad or iPhone. You may find, as I have, that experience shooting and assembling video footage into a story a stranger would want to sit and watch will also improve your storytelling skills with a still camera. 
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