Earth Hour Sequences

Boston.com's Big Picture blog has collected a series of time-lapse photos from Earth Hour. Most of these come from Reuters, and I have to give them credit for coordinating this idea - very thoughtful. (Some of the images came from other places, too.)

Click on each image to watch it fade, click again to watch it come back.

Grimm Infographics

It's not a typo - it's Little Red Riding Hood done as a Flash infographic.

Building Your Web Site

Over on the Photopreneur site is a post on "How to Catch a Photo Editor's Eye." While not aimed at the journalism realm, there is a lot of good info in there - particularly on letting the images shine, not the web site. 

Personally, I think Flash is a fantastic tool for interactive design. But it can also be slow to load and often the designers using it try to wrestle too much control away from the site's viewers. Don't do that. Let your pictures carry the page.

Juggling on Assignment

Adam Westbrook, a reporter for a British radio station, talks about balancing the needs of audio, stills and video while on assignment. (Thanks to Koci at Multimedia Shooter for the link.)

Flash Day in DocPhoto

Pictures with Purpose Workshop

FYI ...

The 2nd annual Pictures with Purpose workshop will be held again in

Oak View, California, about 70 miles north of LosAngeles, 30 miles
south of Santa Barbara.

This year's workshop will begin Sunday, July 12, at 2 p.m. and run
through Sunday, July 18th. We cut the days in half and lowered the
price.

This year we will be focusing even tighter on advocacy and
intervention photography.

Tuition $795.00

A $200.00 deposit is required to hold a spot

Workshop is limited ot 12 students
8 spots left as of March 18

David LaBelle

For more info write to:

labelledave@gmail.com

On Audio Slide Shows ...

I love audio slide shows. They are wonderful journalistic creations, able to mix the depth of still images with the power of a subject's voice. I teach all my students how to do them - and they do them well.

The wire services have started to push them out, as well, which is fantastic. There are so many stories that can be told so well this way.

But ... and you knew there was a but ... not all of them succeed. It is not enough to just do one anymore because they are easy to build with programs like SoundSlides. They have to be crafted, they have to be shot for this reason and they need to have a story.

Take, for instance, Brian Synder's foreclosure auction piece on the Reuters site. Snyder, who I've known for 15 years, is an amazing photographer - and the images here prove that. Good variety, strong technical skills and great moments.

But the audio - of one auction, start to finish - doesn't tell us a story and it doesn't match with the photos very well. During our workshop last week, one of our editors was showing me a few audio slide shows his staff had done. Thirty seconds into one of them - one which was beautifully shot - I stopped the player and said I couldn't watch anymore. There was no connection between the photos and the audio. There was no sense of synchronization, there were really good photos AND really good audio, but they weren't working together. The timing of the transitions didn't make any sense. Even the types of transitions didn't make any sense.

It's time we stop playing with audio slide shows and start telling stories with them. It's not enough to say, "Gee whiz, that's cool!" when one finishes watching. You need to have a deeper understanding of the story.

And I feel the same way about video ... when did we decide to abdicate storytelling and just play with technology?