10,000 Words and Photojournalism

There's some fantastic links in this blog post of the best places to find the best photos.

Happy viewing.

MTV's Gideon Yago putting the smack down on Journalism

Gideon Yago worked with The IFC Media Project to create a series about journalism and how news sausage is made. Should be interesting. Hopefully it's available online!

Testing your awareness, again

I posted a link a while back that the Transport For London did to test your awareness while watching a situation. The campaign is in an effort to remind motorists to look out for cyclists.

Well, I got an email from the creator of the videos and they made a few new ones. I'll admit, the first one I watched, I failed miserably. Dare you to take it yourself.

One more great use of online video and the ability to convey a message. Brilliant work.

This will be fantastic, 10 million times.

Google scores one for their "good" column in my book – though their "bad" column in my book has been franticly growing. In Google's quest to dominate the planet and the moon, they have secured 10 million images from the LIFE collection owned by Time, Inc. to be hosted on their servers.

Only about three percent of the collection has ever been published. Can you imagine the photos that you will be able to see there? From all the greats? I may have to set a timer to limit the amount of time a kill just looking at the greatest visual record of history.

Minority Report meets 2008

Very interesting video showing physical computing and design. And we all thought Tom Cruise was living in a futuristic time.

Anyone have $30K I can borrow?

RED's Scarlet has been unveiled. As were several other versions of the high-end digital video cameras. It will be a few months before the culmination of video capture rates at pro-DSLR resolution goodness arrives on shelves. But I don't care, I just need to find someone with some investment capital.

There's a lot of possibilities coming very soon. Very soon...

A good pair of shoes and...

Alec Soth sent an email to the entire staff of Magnum asking two questions: 1. When did you first get exited about photography? and 2. What advice do you have for young photographers?

There are a lot of responses all over the map, but in the end there is definitely a consistent thread of passion, curiosity and need to be self-motivated regardless of the consequences.

Good find from an up and coming photog herself. You can also download a pdf of the responses here.

The real version of Man on Fire

A photo gallery on NYTimes.com about bodyguards in Mexico. Some good images in a sticky situation. Not only the chances of getting caught up in a shootout but not being able to visually identify the "principal" or his family.

Let the bottlenecking begin!!!

So one of the Fox and NBC stations in Philly are going to "pool" the video operations of the two news organizations in an effort to cut costs. Brilliant!! Lessen the scope of journalism even more. The newsrooms will be independent of each other in how they edit or use the footage.

The ever growing notion of doing more with less in journalism.

Mr. Wallace added, “We see no downside on this.”

Only that showing the exact same content on two competing stations will dilute your audience even more, thus weakening your advertising base further. Nope, not a single downside. Nor the jobs that can now be eliminated to reduce costs.

And the fat cats in the corporate offices wonder why their market share is only shrinking ever more rapidly. How about producing unique content that no other news org has? If you are the only one with it, where are the viewers going to have to look for it? I guess on your competition's 10 o'clock newscast.

Laforet and power of the web

Mr. Laforet is trying out a new widget from Photoshelter to promote his print sales and generate money for a student scholarship. As more aspects of business move to the web being able to capitalize on technology is the key to success. I think he's going to make this one works as well as the Reverie video.

Christopher Anderson and Objectivity

Great interview with the Magnum photographer talking about his role as a photographer versus a photojournalist.

Timelapse web watch

Here's a sweet video brief showing the progression of the NYTime's homepage during election night. The crazy kat that had the skills to time it to the music deserves a quality drink. Bravo

Umm, WOW! That's a lot of viewers.

NewTeeVee put together an interesting post about the volume of people consuming information on the web during election night. The numbers are staggering.

Check it out.

Tell me people don't enjoy looking at photos

Some serious numbers of photos being uploaded to a couple social networks. Flickr and Facebook are hosting over 13 BILLION photos.

And that's just two of the several popular social networking sites.

Convergence and an election

Here's a good NYTimes article about how the various platforms of media collided while following the presidential election.

After this is all over –thankfully– it will be interesting to compare the results of the American votes to the investments in the various media platforms used to campaign.

We all know Barack Obama was able to build a media empire with his dozens of sites, YouTube channel, Twitter, Facebook as well as applications within FB and others. McCain did as well, but not nearly to the degree of his rival. Did all of the media platforms and the mainstream media outlets play as much of a role in generating interest in the election as the challenges that our country face?

I guess we'll have to wait and see and give all the talking heads a day or two to find new things to fill all those channels with the next big story.

Experiential multimedia

I'm a skiing nut. So when I was looking at my daily digest of New York Times headlines I noticed a little box highlighting a multimedia piece about how to ski the most treacherous downhill course in World Cup skiing.

The Hahnenkamm in Kitzbühel, Austria, is a torture fest of skill, speed and human limits. In an effort to explain how and what it takes to ski this ice glazed course at 80-plus miles an hour they recruited a former downhiller to be the voice for a multimedia experience.

This is a fantastic way to present information and data about a unique topic. The limitations are falling away in ways to share information and educate. So many more ideas are bouncing around in my brain now. Including wanting to take a couple of runs on the course.

Breaking the rules

Fifty People, One Question: New Orleans from Benjamin Reece on Vimeo.

A fantastic idea that destroys all the limitations of rules in documentary and journalism to create a unique piece. I really want to see the camera setup. A Canon HV-20 with a Nikon 50 f/1.8.

I'm still thinking about what my answer would be.

The dominoes are starting to fall

Once the campaign advertising dollars stop flowing in by the truck-load, the majority coming from the Obama media machine, the advertising dollars will dry up like the lakes east of Los Angeles have.

Let's face it, we're in the midst of a recession. Advertising dollars are the first to go from budgets. Advertising is the rocket fuel for newspapers in print, whereas the ad dollars from the online version resemble the concoction of two-stroke motor oil and unleaded gasoline. You don't see NASA using two-stroke to get the space shuttle into orbit do you?

That recession is going to prevent many from spending too many ad dollars for the holidays, let alone some general advertising. Newspapers are beginning to topple before the election has even come to a close. The first quarter of 2009 is going to look like a scene out of the movie "Saw."

The question becomes: Do we cut off integral parts of the paper in an effort to free it for possible growth online? But if the recent digestion of data is any clue, cutting all the aspects of each newspaper might not work.

The first few dominoes have started to fall, how far will they go?

Making Media work for you

Here's a great story about a guy who found a niché and made his own possibilities with digital media. Entering user-generated ad contests he's nearly made a living out of it. Though he did start off in a rather bleak situation.

It's just another case of finding possibility and capitalizing on it.

InSight America

Magnum photo agency is doing a running project up to the election with some of their top notch photogs. Their objective?

Who are the people of America? What are we thinking? What makes us angry and frustrated? What gives us hope? Are some of us really all blue and some all red? Or are we mostly shades of purple?

What is the American Dream today?

Could be another interesting series to keep an eye on much like Hard Times.

Found via APhotoADay