Perpetual motion
Demand for multimedia content to use online means you can't afford to sit still, says Daryl Lang
© Dan Chung
To promote his upcoming book, nature photographer Ian Shive produced a series of videos chronicling his journey across the American West. He always intended to publish the videos online, but recently they were accepted for broadcast by cable channel Current TV. Suddenly, Shive has gone from photographer to TV producer. Transformations like Shive's are happening to photographersevery day. But multimedia is evolving so fast that even experts aren't sure where it's going, and offer the same advice: 'be ready to adapt'.
Storming ahead
What photographers describe as multi-media - short presentations combining images and sound, usually distributed online - has been around for more than a decade. One particular multimedia company, New York-based MediaStorm, has even established itself as the most influential trendsetter. The format ought to be nearing maturity. Instead, chaos. Practically every month, some new tool or technology promises to change the way visual communication works. New portable devices, notably Apple's iPhone, are opening new channels for image distribution. Labels and boundaries are only useful until the next upgrade cycle.
When US advertising photo-grapher Alexx Henry took a recent job to shoot an online and poster campaign for the Hallmark Channel, he offered to shoot footage for online use as well. 'At first itfelt like trying to tie my shoes wearing boxing gloves,' he says of the transition to video editing. But the result - a still image of actress Cybill Shepherd that suddenly comes to life in what Henry calls a 'moving one-sheet' - won over his client. 'It's important to over-deliver for every job,' he says.
That ethic is driving many photographers these days, as budgets dry up in media and advertising, and jobs grow scarce and competitive. Meanwhile, technology is making multimedia cheaper and easier. Camera engineers have turned digital SLRs into high-definition video cameras. Ten years after its introduction, Apple's Final Cut Pro video editing software is ubiquitous. Flash-powered video sites now let anyone share high-definition video clips for free. 'I see 15-year-olds making outstanding work on YouTube, with 15 million hits,' Shive observes.
Not for profit
Two years ago Shive helped launch Aurora Novus, a multi-media production studio run by Aurora Photos. He has since reduced his involvement to a project-by-project basis. Like other multimedia producers, Shive found nonprofit organisations to be reliable clients. Many nonprofits would never have considered hiring a video crew, due to the prohibitive expense.
Instead, they are contracting multi-media journalists to produce presentations for their websites.
Geri Migielicz, executive director of the new multimedia studio Story4, is hoping her company can tap that market. 'As the traditional media structure breaks down, they (nonprofits) feel it's really important to get the message out,' she says.
Migielicz, formerly the director of photography for the San Jose Mercury News newspaper in California, has assembled a team of ex-newspaper photographers to produce multimedia stories full-time. The team works with clients to develop an outline, shoot the story, and produce a video. One recent project, for the Californian organisation Big Sur Land Trust, was shot by Richard Koci Hernandez, another former newspaper photographer. The 14-minute video premiered at a gathering of donors, appears in segments on the organisation's website. In terms of quality, it looks a polished as any pro video production. 'It's really exciting,' Migielicz says. 'I've spent a career already in this, and instead of being weary, I can hardly sleep.'
British photographer Dan Chung has also started doing multimedia for nonprofit organisations. He picked up some training at The Guardian, the newspaper where he still works part-time, but says the news-papers aren't backing multimedia so much these days. Like Migielicz, he's instead turning to nonprofit organisations for support, and recently created a presentation for Oxfam International.
Chung points out that, once an organisation has agreed to cover the travel expenses of a still photo project, it doesn't cost much to add on multimedia. 'You can keep getting exposure, and still feel like you're doing the right thing by the world and by your bank balance,' he says.
Breaking convention
As photographers like Chung try to make multimedia work as a business, polite debate rages over the conventions of the format. For example, how big a role should still images play into a production that's driven mainly by video? What's the proper length of an online multimedia story? 'I actually don't believe there is a format, people get tired of formats so quickly,' says Chung. But he adds: 'I think shorter and shorter works better.'
Like most photographers interviewed for this story, Chung eventually gets around to Brian Storm and his production company, MediaStorm. 'We don't agree on everything but we agree (multimedia is) the way forward,' Chung says, adding that Storm 'is full of encouragement. He's looking for competition'.
Migielicz credits Storm as an early supporter of Story4: 'He said, there's room (for competition),' and Shive also credits him with being a 'pioneer'. But he's also slightly critical, arguing that MediaStorm presentations feel 'a little bit like journalists telling journalists stories'.
Launched four years ago in Storm's Manhattan apartment, MediaStorm recently moved to a new space across the river in Brooklyn. Inside, the open-space office smells of fresh paint. A half a dozen producers wearing headphones focus intently on large monitors that display video editing timelines and lines of computer code.
MediaStorm is primarily a production studio, selling its services to media outlets, companies such as Starbucks, and organisations such as the Council on Foreign Relations. It also runs its own online publication at mediastorm.org, posting several multimedia stories a year. The company has collaborated with many respected documentary photographers including Ed Kashi, Danny Wilcox Frazier and Jonathan Torgovnik. Sitting in a soundproof studio that doubles as a meeting room, Storm says MediaStorm is so busy that it turns down work. 'We put a product out and people responded to the product,' he says. 'I've never made a sales call.'
Lately, though, media jobs have been scarcer. The Rocky Mountain News, one of Media Storm's former newspaper clients, shut down, while another, the Los Angeles Times, is struggling as its parent company tries to emerge from bankruptcy. Even so, Storm remains optimistic. 'I think there could be 100 companies like us,' he says.
Storm, a former multimedia director at MSNBC.com and later a vice president at Corbis, is also an industry evangelist, speaking at conferences and offering workshops with his staff. He says he spends 150 days a year on the road. His mantra is that story matters, and he adds that audiences crave high-quality online productions. 'I could turn the (mediastorm.org) publication into a very profitable enterprise if I wanted to,' he says. Instead, the company posts its stories advertising-free. 'We're a purpose-driven company, not a profit-driven company,' he says.
Storm sees the future in broadcasting and mobile and one product in particular excites him. 'Every single project I've done is in my pocket,' he says as he produces an iPhone. 'It's in this thing.'
Apple eyed
In his enthusiasm for the iPhone, Storm has plenty of company. Outside cameras themselves, few products have ever caught on among photo-graphers with such fervour. And while most use it mainly for communication, a few innovators are testing it as a vehicle for selling photo books.
US photographer and software engineer Matt Freedman is developing a platform he calls 'coffee table books for the iPhone', for example, through his programming shop Monkfish Labs. He's already published one collection of his work as a $3.99 iPhone application.
'There are, of course, many other iPhone e-book platforms, but none that I've seen are optimised for photography like mine is,' he writes by email. He hopes to offer his application to other photographers in exchange for a share of sales.
Given the pace of innovation in multimedia and mobile devices, the next big platform may be something nobody has even imagined yet. It seems only a matter of time before someone releases an e-book reader along the lines of the Amazon Kindle with a photo-quality colour screen.
Change, then, is the norm for multimedia photographers. 'The internet is so fluid that unless you're totally adaptable, there's no way your multimedia is going to succeed,' says Shive.
