Vote For Spoiled Yappy Dog For Congress

Click here to see, hear and interact with Spoiled Snappy Dog's campaign For Congress. Forward the link to this post and become a foot soldier in an incredibly clever viral campaign sponsored by the Ad Council to get out the youth vote in November. Listen to the radio ad for Spoiled Yappy Dog for Congress or download and print out a campaign materials such as a PDF file of Spoiled Yappy Dog for Congress to iron onto a tee shirt.

Listen to the stirring voice-over narration telling us the little known facts behind the candidate, " Born the youngest of 15, Spoiled Yappy Dog made overcoming adversity her first order of business. From day one she's had an agenda to get things done. Protecting our youth and fighting the good bites she's never chased after special interests, only mail trucks..."

If you visit the home page for Spoiled Yappy Dog at www.payattention.org you can also download PDF files of Spoiled Yappy Dog For Congress that can be printed out as door hangers.

And you can also read the latest news from the campaign trail of Spoiled Snappy Dog. This hot item just in from Rochester New York:

Too Gosh-Darn Cute
ROCHESTER, N.Y. - A recent newspaper article accused Spoiled Yappy Dog of making puppy dog-faces and flirting with the press in an attempt to win votes. Spoiled Yappy Dog’s supporters are calling it ridiculous. “Spoiled Yappy Dog is a professional. What does she have to do to be taken seriously around here? I just can’t believe voters are really that superficial,” said Tom Jones of Appleton, N.Y.

A spokesperson from Spoiled Yappy Dog’s camp said, “Her record speaks for itself,” and that “sooner or later people will know that her bark means business.”

Well done Ad Council!

Photo Essay: Of Tugs & Ship Docking

Click here to play slideshow of ship docking photos

After a summer solstice hiatus am back to blogging...

A freelance life is never dull. I took last weekend on a New York harbor docking master, Captain Jeffrey McAllister. Jeffrey is the fifth generation of his family to bring tugs in and out of the port of New York. Photos copyright Stephenie Hollyman 2006.

To take the pix I spent the night on board the Robert E., a Navy tug converted to a sea-going tractor tug. Climbing down rope Jacob's ladders, and up and down ship's gangways with Capt. Jeff, I tried to catch a mini-portrait of tugboat life with my camera.

As one of the first women to break into New York harbor as a tugboat cook some long time ago, I was heartened to find that the Robert E. had a female deckhand, King's Point cadet and Mate at work. They did a great job and seem to be fully integrated into the fleet. It's no big deal for the guys either. It goes to show you that sometimes things do change.

Over the years the years I have been sponsored by captain Brian McAllister to write a history of his family's 142- year-old company, upon which now I am putting the final touches.

Neil's Tip for Better Flash, Burn & Pan Pix

Photograph Stephenie Hollyman

Do sometimes you favor flash, pan and burn photography? If you are like me, you set your flash on manual and use a long shutter speed. Then setting your camera on first curtain sync you pan and blur the back ground. You cross your fingers and pray then check the LCD screen to see if you caught the moment.

I took this photo last week while shooting an event for a major museum. Towards the end of evening after I had taken the " safe" pictures required for any event I stationed myself by the stairway and panned at a 1/15 of a second as people whisked by, pointing my off camera flash to the side, clad with its Gary Fong Light Dome.

Neil Turner maintains one of the most helpful websites, dg28.com I have found re lighting. If you click on Lighting Technique you'll find answers and how-I-shot-the-assignment examples for many of the technical conundrums we all face daily trying to make silk from a sow's ear when a subject isn't that interesting visually.

All of us have played with this. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. We have learned to use this as a " toy", after getting the shot we know we want for sure. Here's a tip from Neil to raise the ante so that your next flash, burn & pan (FBP) shot becomes a keeper.

Neil's Flash Burn and Pan Tip

Neil tells us to keep the flash off camera so the subject has some shadow over which the ambient light can blur. Then he tells us when we pan to move the camera TOWARDS the light. That's how I took the picture above.

You compose the picture and during the relatively long exposure you deliberately move the camera. This one was left to right. You need to move the camera towards the flash in most cases. The ambient light then blurs and the subject is frozen where the flash catches him. It's good if the flash is off camera because the effect is strengthened by the subject having some shadow on him, over which the ambient can blur. This is done entirely "in camera" and requires no photoshop alteration. With a digital you can check what you've done on the screen and alter the light balance/direction of movement/angle of movement accordingly. I originally learned to do this using transparency film and a lot of it! I also tend to explain to the confused looking person that it's a technique to move the camera, otherwise you may have them thinking you're a bit mad!!

Cooking Up a Wi-Fi Range Extender

We all love digital technology. But after assignments, editing the photos sure does take time. I like to sit on sofa with my Mac Powerbook networked via wi-fi to an Airport Express module that also connects to my desktop Mac. But sometimes the signal is weak.

So check this out. No joke. I couldn't believe it when I saw it this morning on the blog for Make Magazine. Here are the instructions for making your very own wi-fi amplifier from a vegetable colander.

Tm36usa writes "Easily receive WIFI signals from far away using a standard USB WIFI adaptor and a bit of ingenuity. This Simple idea requires no modifications to a USB WIFI adaptor or your computer. A simple way to increase the signal strength and range of your WIFI. Plus it works with all USB WIFI adaptors".

On the same blog you can also learn how to make a rodent powered night light or image transfers of photos using solvents on cloth and other non-traditional media.

It's raining out there so get thee to thy workshop and help banish weak wi-fi signals at home. ( and let me know if it works)

International Mix Tape Project: Analogue!

Thanks to ITunes I listened to my CC ( Cool Cat) neice Helen, on Saturday, in New Orleans, as she served as DJ in her weekly radio program at Tulane University. Her voice was as silky as it was smooth. And this production was certainly no Prairie Home Companion in its inception, completly digital instead. So very very hip.

Even Helen's grandfather listened from his I-Mac.

Remembrance of Things Past...Living In an Analogue Environment

But this all set me musing. There's a scene in Praire Home Companion in which a character plays a vinyl record in his dressing room that makes you think " How quaint."

Yes, you have your IPOD and are hip and groovey. But are you a closet digeratti who yearns for a walk along the pathways of a less hectic time? Is a networked life tethered to a Blackberry making you increasingly anxious? Do you long for those days when meetings took place offline where smiles and laughs were real not LOL?

Do you miss analogue technology, a gentler era when music mixes were made with cassette tapes instead of computers and you, (as Daily Candy posts today) passed..." Hours spent astride double decks, fingers poised above the pause button, timing each song (juuust right), with a little MC magic added to the mix."

Fear not. Today's sweet dose from Daily Candy describes a charmingly quaint and retro society of music mixers who trade casette tapes by snail mail. By joining the...

International Mixtape Project, you can tune into a growing community of global headphone hipsters who trade old-school tapes (and compilation discs) via snail mail.

Every month you swap your precious song compilations with music-minded pen pals around the world. Imagine! Your mix prowess heard from Helsinki to Beijing! And it’s just a few stamps away.

At the moment, 30 countries are exchanging beats: Israeli microhouse, Nova Scotia neo-soul, Bay Area hip-hop, and Congolese electro-folk.

Joining is simple and membership responsibilities are few (thank goodness, because summer heat makes us l-a-z-y). Cover art isn’t a must — but hello! — it’s, like, totally the best part.

And it just might save your life.

For reel.

You can find out more about the IMP at BBC Online.

Cisco Videos

Cisco has created a splash page comprised completely of video clips to sell their product Cisco Unified Communications. Visitors to the page can click on one of ten video clips or choose to view a video categorized by...yes, sigh... " solution". Heard that word before?

Web 2.0 Podcast

In a BusinessWeek podcast O'Reilly Media CEO Bill O'Reilly discusses Web 2.0 , and the the architecture of participation. Here where users create the content, design helps leverage the flow of collective information.

There's no buzzword more popular in tech today than Web 2.0. Conceived during a brainstorming session for what became the Web 2.0 Conference now held annually by O'Reilly Media Inc. and CMP Media, Web 2.0 describes the new online services such as the volunteer-written encyclopedia Wikipedia, Yahoo's Flickr photo-sharing site, online marketplace eBay, and search engine Google. Unlike most of the first generation of Web sites, these services have an innate social component, often "harnessing collective wisdom," as O'Reilly Media CEO Tim O'Reilly puts it.

YIKES: Video Vixen Link Not Mine!

VIDEO VIXEN NOT ME!!!!!

YIKES!

I just found that the link to the blog I created to archive my video posts called "Video Vixen" leads to a blog maintained by another Video Vixen, this one named Joan.
The code for the sub-blog " Video Vixen" where I archive posts about video uses a hyphen in its URL. Joan the OTHER "Video Vixen"...NOT ME...does not.

Self publishing without oversight of a copy editor is a life fraught with peril indeed. Even as I post this I am blushing. If you were to check out Joan's blog you would see why.

How Did This Happen?
A while back I changed the template on this blog, Crossing Media and re-tagged tagged the links myself from memory to MY "Video Vixen." Big mistake. I left out the hyphen. Even bigger mistake I never checked all the links after republishing Crossing Media with the new template. DUMB.

Sorry folks! Next time you see something like that...please let me know!

Podcast: Race and NYC Ad Agencies

Ad Age really gets the Cross Media thing. They encode their video for a Flash 8 player which I now think is the way to go. And check out this podcast in which reporter Lisa Sanders talks her story Race and the New York City Advertising Industry An Update on the Human Rights Commission Investigation.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Ad Age reporter Lisa Sanders provides an overview and update of the New York Human Rights Commission's investigation of Madison Avenue diversity hiring practices. Both the Commission and the City Council's Civil Rights Committee are planning to hold public hearings on the issue. In the latest move, the Commission has issued subpoenas for 16 of New York's top agency executives.

Scooterati: Ironbound Rally

Here is another set of photos from Saturday's Scooter block party, as members drive in a rally from New York's Brass Monkey to Newark's Ironbound district.Click on the upper right hand link on the Flickr set page to see the pix as a slideshow.

Brouhaha's Video: The Finals of the Slow Race

Here also is a video shot during last weekend's Scooter Block party by a Scooterati and videodisti You Tubes member who calls himself Brouhahavids. On his blog he says "I'm a lawyer working at the intersection of Internet and travel in New York City." Mmmm.

Don't know about You Tubes? You can read one of my previous posts, NBC Threatens Video Sharing Sites re the viral blizzard it created for a Saturday Night Live skit called Lazy Sunday a few months back.

Video Cip by Jonathan a.k.a. Brouhaha

Brouhaha Blog


PS. Although my pix are " public" on Flickr, all rights are reserved. Feel free to pass the link to this blog to friends. But rights to post pix on your blog or website must first be requested from the photographer...moi!

Scooteratti Pix: Times Square

To view some of the pix from my latest personal photo project, " Scooteratti," click here to go to the Flickr set's thumbnails. Click on the right hand link for slideshow on a page.

Although these are " public" on Flickr, all rights are reserved. Feel free to pass the link to this blog to friends. But rights to post pix on your blog or website must first be requested from the photographer...moi!

Future uploads will include more pix from this weekend's Scooter Block Party, sponsored by the New York Scooter Club who throw a truly great event. Thanks guys! My newest project, four days old, seeks to explore the ties that bond scooter owners. This quirky and independent bunch live for the potholed roads of New York City and the smell of exhaust.

Slivercast Video Content Distriubtion

TotalVid
If you get your broadband from Verizon, have you noticed that little click through ad for TotalVid that is being presented by Verizon Online? I finally succumbed and clicked through today.

Remember a few months back when I speculated in a post that one of the future revenue paths for cross media producers would involve producing video clips for niche audiences to download for a price? Well check out TotalVid.

A frisky start-up this distribution " channel" for slivercast content features video downloads of more than 1,000 titles. A download costs up to $4 and expires after seven days, says CNET. " In a classic up-selling move, consumers can also purchase a DVD and permanent digital version of a movie and have the rental cost subtracted from the DVD buy."

Remember how I wrote that independent content producers might make future profits by producing niche content for example on subjects like.. say... woodworking? Well, TotalVid says that it "has the world's largest collection of the most popular Wood and Woodworking how-to videos available in our convenient download format. For as little as $2.99 you can download one of our top Wood and Woodworking how-to videos and begin viewing in just minutes. "

You can sign up here to have TotalVid consider distributing your content.

CNET CNET tells us that...

Start-up TotalVid, which sells specialty videos for sports and home-improvement enthusiasts, is tapping into growing consumer interest in easily distributed downloadable video.

....The download video service market is expected to grow in revenue from $1 billion in 2004 to about $5 billion by 2008, according to In-Stat. And though that number pales in comparison with the nearly $50 billion in annual revenues enjoyed by the movie industry, the download video market's growth is happening faster.

Weegee:F8 and Be There

Weegee As Blogger?

After attending the ICP opening last night of Weegee's undiscovered photos , I decided to republish this post I wrote in March.


Reading all the tabloid buzz about the rape and killing of Imette St. Guillen, reminded me of Weegee, the photographer who invented a whole new genre for us photojournalists, even as he photographed murders. If Weegee were alive today he would take to blogging like a fish to water...posting his pix in real time. Instead of smoking cigars while souping his prints in hypo Weegee today would probably be found at the closest Starbuck's with a PC, uploading his pix using wireless.

Weegee, born in Poland in 1899, took the name Arthur Felig when he imigrated to New York with his family at nine. This freelance photographer worked out of the trunk of his car which he used as darkroom through the 30's and 40's as he photographed the daily dish of newsworthy images for tabloids and the wire services. Equipped with a police scanner he roamed the city in search of its darker side...its latest murders, fires or robberies. In my previous post I briefly mentioned Weegee's pix of people watching movies, Weegee's World: Movie Goers that this consumate voyeur took in theaters using infrared film, his subjects unaware. The Side Photographic Gallery collection of Weegee photographs includes photos in a slideshow, as well, some of which I have never seen before.





Untitled (In the Movie House Watching "Haunting of Hill House")
ca. 1950, Photo Copyright Arthur Felig

"He will take his camera and ride off in search of new evidence that his city, even in her most drunken and disorderly and pathetic moments, is beautiful."

- William McCleery in Naked City



Sammy's Bowery Follies

When I read about Imette's last minutes at the Lower-East Side haunt the Falls, I thought of Weegee's Bowery Follies, where Weegee snapped pix breaks between photographing murders to catch scenes of humanity. The photos taken at Sammy's,

...was the scene of many of Weegee's most lighthearted and humanistic photographs, a great contrast to what was taking place on the street or curb or just outside the front door. The "poor man's Stork Club" became a refuge for Weegee, a safe haven allowing him to escape the blood and guts that his more salable photographs contained.
-Miles Barth

"F8 and Be There"

"F8 and Be There," Weegee was fond of saying. Using guide numbers for his flash he set the aperture on his Speed Graphic 4x5 press camera to insure enough depth of field to keep everything sharp. Stepping back he measured the space between his camera and the subject. Emotional distance was as important for Weegee as were the actual footsteps he had to take to insure that his pictures were properly exposed.

"His spontaneous, witty, and meaningful work went beyond that of a news photographer. He once said that he wished to show that ten and a half million people lived together in a state of total loneliness," Lee Gallery tells us.

As far as education, Weegee made it through the eighth grade. However, the family needed money and Weegee was needed to help work. He worked a lot of odd jobs: he helped his father with a push cart business, he even worked at a candy store for a while. It was when he had his picture taken by a street tintype photographer that he decided that this was what he was meant to do. Weegee often said that he was, 'a natural-born photographer, with hypo in my blood.' He quickly ordered a tintype outfit from a Chicago mail-order house, and after a few months he got his first job as a commercial photographer. After a few years he left the studio, due to a disagreement on what he should be paid. He then bought a second-hand 5x7 view camera and rented a pony from a local stable. He named the pony Hypo, and on the weekends when the kids were in their best clothes, he would walk around town putting kids on his pony and taking their picture. He would then develop the negatives, make prints, and go back to the families of the kids to try to sell them the photos.
Introduction to The Side Photographic Gallery collection of Weegee photographs

The web-site Weegee's World: Life, Death and the Human Drama was created in conjunction with the publication of Weegee's World by Miles Barth an exhibition at the International Center of Photography Midtown that was up from November 21, 1997 through March 8, 1998. It's worthy of a visit and proof that a web-site insures posterity for a " bricks and mortar" exhibition even after its photographs are taken down to make way for the next one.

Brangelina Sells Toothpaste

Illustration Copyright 2006 Gallery of the Absurd

Brangelina's new baby, Shiloh Nouvel Jolie Pitt? Wow. Now that's a name. Let's hope she doesn't plan on becoming a photographer. That name would never fit under a photo as a credit.

The baby's pix were leaked by bloggers before People and Hola Magazine were able to exercise their exclusive for which they paid millions of dollars for the right to post pix first, writes Daryl Lang at PDN Online in an update...yes an update on this HOT HOT HOT breaking story. Updated: Pitt-Jolie Baby Picture Leaks Online

Evidentally Shiloh's birth sells toothpaste as well as magazines. Crest Toothpaste sponsored this AP video clip online of IVillage of the birth in Namibia of Shiloh.

Feeling discouraged, as a cross media producer that all your earnest and worthy story pitches are going nowhere? Maybe you should throw a celebrity like Brangelina into the mix. Malaria...go talk to Sharon Stone. She donated money for mosquito nets which made it into the press worldwide.

According to this mysterious blogger ,Celebrities are Just Like Sea-Monkeys. Check out 14's great blog, Gallery of the Absurd , Gossip Fueled Art - Updated Weekly, created by this anonymous illustrator who calls herself simply 14, Fourteen.

PDN tells us that....

The supposed prices People and Hello! paid for the photos were quickly leaked to The New York Post. In total, the photos could gross more than $10 million worldwide, widely believed to be the most ever paid for the rights to a photo shoot.

The Post's Page Six gossip column reported Tuesday that People spent $4.1 million for rights to the photos after winning an auction over the weekend held at Getty's New York office. Hello! magazine won the U.K. rights for $3.5 million, according to a Post story Wednesday by media reporter Keith Kelly. The story also said People settled for the North American rights only after offering $5 million for exclusive worldwide rights.

This gifted blogger, " 14" says in her bio

fourteen (14) has been an artist and a keen observer of the human species for centuries. Her irreverent underground art in the form of hand numbered and signed posters has been seen and collected throughout the West Coast for years and yet she has remained gleefully outside the radar of commercial success. She lives in San Francisco, CA.

Lately, she's been both fascinated and horrified by the alarming rise in celebrity culture. She noticed that everytime she flipped through a celebrity tabloid at the supermarket, she would erupt into tears of laughter and everyone standing in line to pay for their groceries would glare at her.

She always wanted to be a comic book artist, and here, in the pages of a glossy tabloid full of stalking paparazzi photos, catty commentary and the exposed bloated excess of celebrity existence, she had finally found the material to amuse and inspire her. And that is how Gallery of the Absurd was born.

The art shown here is created mostly by hand using ink, acrylic, pastels and oils on paper or canvas. Digital enhancement using Photoshop and Illustrator is also used occasionally. Original art is available and for sale. If interested, contact 14 at fourteencelebs@yahoo.com. She promises if you purchase her originals, you'll get a good return on your investment.

What is Podcasting? A Ninja's reply

In February I wrote about the viral blitz of video downloads of the Saturday Night Live clip Lazy Sunday from YouTubes and how it helped launch this video sharing site into the Big Time. Now, if you are over age 12, you can go to YouTubes to learn from a Ninja all about podcasting.

Save yourself a lot of marketing dollars by clicking here Ask a Ninja: Special Delivery 1 "what is podcasting".

This Blogger Half-Naked...

While trolling for links related to my brother Burnes for my last post I stumbled upon these photos of me half naked.

Yes. Only on the Internet. Half-naked, that's right. But before you get too excited you might want to know that I was only a kid and chubby too. So there you go...half-bare but hardly buff. In these pix I'm standing on the beach holding the conch shell that was given to me by a family friend, a fisherman named Manuel, who took us out on his sail-powered fishing boat from Fajardo Puerto Rico, on weekends.

The conch was used in Peter Brook's film Lord of the Flies, a family affair. My father served as director of photography while my brother played the role of Douglas and my mother was casting director and shot movie stills. Unfortunately I only got to play a stand in for Piggy in a test filmed by my father at the beach at the end of our street in Puerto Rico before the film began.

As I was chubby, I eminently suitable to play this part. Running down the beach with my brother I acted out the scene where Piggy discovers the conch shell and then blows it like a horn. Manuel had cut the tip off this shell for me with a hacksaw one time while we were sailing to Icacos, a reef-like islet just off Fajardo.

My father, a still photographer and early cross-media maven had never touched a movie camera before shooting this epic film. Peter Brook gave him nine days to learn. Hence these tests along the beach. In a future post for Father's Day I'll show you the ingenious track my father devised for filming on the beach and a swinging gate that panned with actors's movement.

You can read a synopsis of the scene I am acting out in these pix. In Golding's book it is called " The Sound of the Shell." Or click here to hear Alan Cheuse in NPR's All Things Considered, March 29, 2004 edition,

...review William Golding's Lord of the Flies, 50 years after its first publication. Cheuse says this harrowing tale of a group of schoolboys stranded on a remote tropical island still holds up today.

Online Biz Video

Last week my brother sent me this link to a great promotional video produced by by 2x4 about their multimedia design business. This clip is hosted on Apple's Quicktime Pro site and shows how dazzling the new QT7 codec truly is.

It's also a demonstration of how businesses in the future will promote themselves online. Read my previous post about Google's intention to become a one-stop shop for click-through ads.

Google Video Ads

I'm baaack.

Read this interesting post today on video ads on Ken McCarthy's blog Looking at Video On the Web , an always informative blog that jogs me back to posting on my own blog.


Ken tells us:

As predicted on this blog last winter, Google is adding online video advertising to its pay-per-click arsenal - and it's happening this week.

Wow. So what else are those whiz-kids at Google thinking up? It's a no-brainer that they would begin to host video ads in the future as a one stop shop. For those of us that occasionally upload video clips to hosts for streaming, the user experience on the other end can prove varied as the player wars grind on in earnest.

In a previous post I linked to Google's video site to show a cool video clip about base jumping. Although the quality is funky it's easy to play.

At the time I thought Google's business was only about replicating the success of YouTube's model. No way. If Ken is right, it looks as if Google's video hosting service was the company's test drive for what may well prove to a lucrative venture.

I see a bright future ahead in which businesses promote themselves online with video clips such as this one by Guba, also featured on Ken's blog. What better way to get to know the services a firm provides than by hearing its owners speak on a video click-through ad?

For those of us cross-media producers struggling to support worthy documentary projects, producing video ads may prove a future source of subsidy. I have been dreaming of that day ever since I registered the URL www.streamingmessages.com three years ago.

Here's Ken's post if you're too lazy to click through.

Google pay-per-click video ads

Here's a super-short cheat sheet of what the service is going to look like:

1. It will be based on the winning pay-per-click model
2. The ads will appear as small, static boxes
3. The video plays only when the prospect clicks the static image

And here's the kicker... Google will host the video.

(If there's one group that has bandwidth to spare its the guys at Google!)

Lake Malawi Calendar

Photograph Stephenie Hollyman Copyright 2006
So here is my third calendar, for June. This time it is sized to fit inside a CD jewel case. You can download this file at Flickr and print it out and then display it a nifty re-purposed CD jewel case, as described by Flagrant Disregard.
To download the customized calender created with the photograph I took in southern Africa last Spring of a young boy at dawn along the shore of Lake Malawi, click here and then go to the link above the photo for " all sizes". On the next page, choose " Normal size".

I used the Flagrant Disregard's Photo Calendar Maker to create this customized calendar from this photograph taken while I was documenting malaria for my project " Fever Zone."

Photo Flagrant Disregard Calendar Display Case Instructions

• To display your calendar in a CD jewel case
  
• Obtain a CD jewel case. You can buy empty jewel cases at your local computer store or order them online. Or you can recycle one of your existing jewel cases and store the CD it contained someplace else.
  
• Prepare the jewel case. First, gently remove the door of the jewel case, flip it around, and put it back on
  
• Then remove the cover insert. You can remove the back insert by gently prying up the disc tray.
  
• Print the calendar. Save the calendar image to your computer desktop. Then print it however you normally print images. Print it so that it is 4.75 inches wide (12 centimeters). This is 150 PPI if you savvy PPI. Calendars look best when printed on heavy matte photo paper.
  
• Final assembly. Cut out the printed calendar and insert it into your jewel case.
  

White House Photo Op

Have you ever wondered what it's like to cover the Whitehouse or the United Nations as a photographer? If you think it's exciting, you're wrong.

Play Pete Souza's great slideshow that brings you inside the Oval office with the addition of audio. Hear the cameras clicking.A White House Photo Op , online at the Chicago Tribune, surely proves that when natural sound is added to photographs it brings a story to life.

In my previous post Netizen Poynters Ken Irby Speaks, Kenny Irby of the Poynter Instutute answered my query about the power of audio when used with photography to tell a story.

The authenticity and emotional factors are increased by blending natural sound with still photographs. People are attracted by quality integration of audio and photojournalism. Both audio and still photography are powerful story telling structures, together they are extremely powerful and effective journalistic tools. The combination of a compelling photograph complimented by the natural voice of the individual explaining the context of their situation is arresting.

Of Bearded Tugboat Captains and Lighting

Photograph Copyright Stephenie Hollyman 2006

The bane of any photographer's existence is direct flash. Most of us like to shoot natural light during what Jay Meisel calls the "sweetlight" time of day.

But living in an imperfect world, most often we have to pop in a light or two. We then may have to break out lights, softbox, umbrellas and stands.

Sometimes we don't even have time for that, like in this picture I took last night of Captain Brian McAllister, standing in front of his company's 105 year old tugboat, the Helen McAllister at the South Street Seaport Museum. A real dynasty, McAllister Towing & Transportation is the only family-owned company remaining in New York harbor.

I used a nifty new gadget on my flash to take this picture. This Light Sphere II Inverted Dome Diffuser, invented by Gary Fong, which really does a pretty good job.


But if you're shooting with a Canon, people do seem to turn reddish. So Gary Fong tells you to switch your camera's parameters to:

SETTINGS FOR CANON 10/20D
Gary's recommendation for all Canon 10D/20d for greatest midrange detail and optimum workflow up to 10x15" prints is:
Parameter 1: SETUP:

• SIZE - Medium Stairstep


• SATURATION - MINUS 1


• CONTRAST - MINUS 2


• SHARPNESS - PLUS 2


• FLASH - E-TTL with no exposure compensation


• METERING MODE: Multizone (eyeball with two parenthesis)

Brian likes the way his new beard makes him look like his great great grandfather, James McAllister who arrived from Ireland in 1864 and founded this company with a single sail lighter. Brian's wife, Rosemary, doesn't like his beard.

Brian called me to take this photo before he shaved it off.

Brian's a friend and client for whom I have worked off and one over the years a freelance basis, writing and researching a book on his family's five generations in New York harbor. It's finished now, some 250-pages. In a later post I will give you chapters to download in PDF.

Quicktime What Gives?

Here are two clips encoded on a Mac. Compare this clip Hollyman CNN Story Encoded using Flip4Mac








I am in the process of re-encoding and posting some new video clips on my website. Crunching the clips I just re-encoded this story I did for CNN as a one person team, using Flip 4 Mac. It looks prettty decent except for the color cast. Compare it with the older funky encoded QT clip,against this one encoded two year ago for Quicktime to see how quickly codecs have advanced. Quicktime 7 still rocks supreme as the player war rages on.

But Apple has just programmed in some new predatory code which seems to make Quicktime take control of your browser. So if you want to play a .smil file...you just get that Big Q for Quicktime instead of the Real Player.


Peru CNN Hollyman story encoded with QT5

But Apple is suddenly sitting smug with Quicktime...I just reinstalled Quicktime Pro a night back after it reverted to a basic player, all by itself. Quicktime support was no help, telling me that all tech support for Quicktime is done by e-mail.

Once the key finally took ( you have to quit the player to do so) I suddenly found big Q's within pages on my Firefox browser where other players should have played. Evidentally Quicktime has taken over as my default player without my agreement.

In the old days one could set the default browser manually.

I just spoke with my video host Playstream and they were as baffled as me. They told me that many users were complaining that Quicktime, once installed, now seems to be taking control of their browser.

" It's a war zone out there," the rep told me at Playstream (now renamed Vital Stream). He says that the stakes are now higher than usual along the front lines of the player battlefields. Microsoft is teaming up with MTV to offer an I-Tune-like service for downloading music that can be played on a $50 MP3 player.

Learning Digital Video Editing Online

There's nothing better than the spoken word combined with a visual demonstration to help us process information. Teachers in classrooms used chalkboards for a good reason. Now Powerpoint and white boards take their place.

In fact if you ever are trying to learn a new program by yourself go to one of my favorite sites www.Lynda.com and sign up for one month's unlimited usage of their spiffy Quicktime tutorials. It will set you back $20
but offer a wealth of information. I brushed up on my Final Cut Pro skills this way last Spring, before heading off to Africa and Cambodia to produce my cross-media project on malaria, Fever Zone. Seated on my couch with my laptop I played the Quicktime clips, pausing them to try the lessons for myself in real-time Final Cut mode. Sure beats reading a book.

You can also access Reno Marioni's tutorial on Digital Video editing, here on WebMonkey. Reno describes himself as living in

...jolly ol' London as a technology and digital media consultant. In the past he's worked for Sun's Object Products group and Java-based startup Marimba. He also founded the Adventure Zone Network.

HD Video Cameras Compared

Photo Copyright www.DV.com

Confused about which HD camera to buy or trying to decide whether the time is ripe? No doubt we all will need one by next year.

From what I hear.... New technology needs a shakedown cruise.

DV Magazine tested 4 low-cost HD cameras so click here to read their findings.

On January 11th, filmmaker Barry Green organized a side-by-side comparison of four low-cost HD camcorders: the Canon XL H1, JVC GY-HD100U, Panasonic AG-HVX200, and the Sony HVR-Z1U. Barry was prompted to do this by rampant speculation and widely varying reported performance figures for the various cameras; he wanted to know what the cameras did relative to each other. For reference, he added two "real" HD camcorders to the mix: the Panasonic HDC27F Varicam and the Sony HDW-F900/3 CineAlta.

Rowy Sailor's Ball Pix

Photograph Copyright Stephenie Hollyman 2006 All rights reserved
Here's a mini-Slide show with 20 images from the 198 I posted on Flickr from the Eleventh Annual Sailors' Ball which I photographed last Friday night.

See Yourself & E-Mail Your Photo To Friends...
Click here to view and download pix from the Sailors' Ball set I created at Flickr. You can see the rest of the pix as a slideshow or thumbnail after clicking on the link. If you want to e-mail an image from Flickr to family or friends, click on the photo which will take you to the next page where you will find the commands to do so.


Don't click on the images on this ticker below to get your pictures or you will be transported to a whole other realm..



DON'T CLICK ON THE IMAGES IN THIS PHOTOCAST.... GO TO FLICKR INSTEAD

If you want any photos of yourself taken down from this public set, let me know at blazingcontent@yahoo.com. Give me the file number for the photo and I will remove it from public view ASAP. Money raised from this event goes to the non-profit New York Harbor Sailing Foundation.

To take these pix I donned one of the many hats I wear, this one as official photographer for the Manhattan Sailing Club, to shoot this raucous event. Hosted at the venerable Downtown Association, the black-tie soiree features at least five bars on four different floors. After shooting the pro-forma awards at the beginning of the event, one of the members, a photo rep, kindly suggested I shoot the rest of the evening like a journalist a la Larry Fink". "So I took her advice.

I used long shutter speeds to burn in the ambient light and fired my flash off-camera remote with Gary Fong's Light Sphere. It was fun.

Patrick Kennedy

Photograph Stephenie Hollyman Copyright 2006

I photographed Patrick Kennedy when he first ran for congressional office in Rhode Island some long time ago... was it 1988? So you can imagine how saddened I was to follow the story of Patrick's latest relapse and accident last week and his confession on Thursday that he was addicted to prescription pain killers. He claimed full responsibility for his actions and decided to bring it out in the open. For those of us who have watched friends suffer as they tried to overcome addictions, Patrick's story is so familiar.

" I struggle every day with this disease, as do millions of Americans, " this six-term Congressional representative from Rhode Island told the press on Thursday.

I immediately flashed back 18 years to the sticky torrid day I was assigned by Marcel Saba, then at Picture Group, to spend a Saturday with Patrick as he campaigned for his first term for the office of Congressional Representative for Rhode Island. Backed with a gurantee from Newsweek (or was it Time?) I followed Patrick in Providence, Rhode Island, while he pressed the flesh with voters accompanied by his father Teddy. I covered Patrick's back-yard birthday party that evening. Patrick told me he has severe back pain that day, and was tired. You can catch a glimpse of it in this photograph I took before he jumped into a public pool, this swimming ritual he performed daily as physical therapy.

Respecting Patrick's privacy I have never told this story except to a few close friends. But I feel it is now the time, after reading Patrick's public confession. He's very much his mother's son.

Patrick Kenndy: 1988

I arrived early at Patrick's house that morning in 1988 and quickly experienced first-hand the Kennedys' renowned ability to make members of the press feel as part of their extended family. Patrick put me at ease and we quickly bonded as we chatted about the gaff-rigged sailing boats we had both once owned called Beetlecats, his back pain, and my recent photographic work covering America's displaced homeless. My book, We the Homeless, Portraits of America's Displaced People ( Philospohical Library 1988)was going to press and I showed Patrick its cover. Patrick's mother Joan soon arrived and we were introduced.

The party that evening was going to be Joan Kennedy's first public appearence since she had ran her car onto a sidewalk while under the influence of alcohol, a few weeks earlier. Senator Kennedy had just announced that their marriage was over and that he was seeking a seperation.

Before the party, in Patrick's small dining room, Joan took me aside and told me that she planned to speak to the press about her problems with alcohol, if they attended Patrick's party. She asked my advice and I told her I really had none to offer other than to " tell it like it is."

Her eyes were clear and she was resolute. She spoke of the support she had received from her friends in the " rooms" to go public. Knowing that was how AA folks refer to their meetings I nodded. I really felt quite out of my league.

She then changed the subject, and asked me about what I had seen in Appalachia while traveling to finish up my book. She told me about her trip through the region with President Kennedy and his deep desire to begin breaking the cycle of poverty endemic to that hilly terrain.

Senator Kenndy Arrives

Senator Kennedy left the room as quickly as he had entered when he saw his soon to be ex-wife was in attendence. We moved out into Patrick's small back yard where his neighbors and other family members gathered.

A small band was playing. It was a strained but civil party. I took some pictures. But whenever Senator Kenndy was within the radious of a 24mm lens of Joan, he quickly moved away.

Joan told me that Patrick had insisted she attend. She looked relieved when no press appeared. She asked me to approach Senator Kennedy on her behalf, to request a family portrait.

Senator Kennedy was flushed when I approached him. He embraced me with his arm at first which he quickly dropped when he heard Joan's request. He swore mightily under his breath, "XXXX, she asked that?" breaking away abruptly to storm into Patrick's house. The screen door slammed shot. I looked across the yard and saw Joan quickly turn away from watching. She headed for the electric piano used by the party's band and quickly began playing "Happy Birthday."

Then in a scene only out of Fellini, a cake, Patrick and the Senator emerged from the house. The Senator was all smiles. After the singing died down and the cake was cut the Senator approached me. He put his arm around me again. He was sweaty and his shirt unbuttoned. He apologized for his reaction to Joan's request and said that Patrick had told me all about me. " Patrick told me all about your work with the homeless and even showed me your book. Powerful pictures inside. Terrific work."

There was no book by me in Patrick's Patrick's house. Just one picture from the cover.

Fast Forward

Picture Group began to fall apart for reasons better left alone. I joined Gamma-Liaison. Marcel has already left to start up an agency on his own. I thought Picture Group had returned all my pictures and was completly out of business until I received a message on my answering machine late one Friday afternoon. The William Kennedy-Smith story had just broken and Picture Group told me they had sent the photo of Patrick Kennedy with bath towel to People and several news magazines.

I called them back. They told they had already sent dupes to major publications and were lining up some big guarantees. I said I did not want the photo released as Patrick was not a suspect. This picture with a bath towel could place him in the public's mind on the beach in front of the clan's Palm Beach compound where the alleged rape occurred. I remarked I was puzzled that Picture Group still had the originals on hand.

They reminded me that I was a journalist and I needed to be more objective. I reminded them of my warning upon joing the agency that "I don't do paparazzi". I told them, " You'll just have to call the magazines and tell them the photos are embargoed. "

Career suicide? Perhaps.

Do I regret my action? No way.

Good luck Patrick.

Larry Fink Beneath the Surface

Photo Copyright Larry Fink 2006

Photograph Copyright Larry Fink All Rights Reserved 2006

At the website for Larry Fink's agent, Bill Charles take a look at Fink's Oscar night party pix.
Under The Surface The Stephen Cohen Gallery website also shows some of the photos taken by Larry Fink, whose snooted flash lighting and Dutch tilts transcend the conventions of event photography.

Lurking in the Shadows With Lethal Flash

Photo Larry Fink Copyright 2006

Lurking in the unlit fringe of society functions, Larry Fink captures photographs that can sometimes startle and illuminate. Oh so cruel or just brutally honest?

I leave that for you to decide.

The Stephen Cohen Gallery website describes Fink's work as:

... a thought-provoking social commentary that demonstrates Fink’s ability to reveal the intimate in the most crowded of settings and the flaw in the most perfect of scenes. The images are iconic black-and-white photographs of American VIPs, Hollywood players, boxers, runway models and blue collar workers. In a photo of George Plimpton blowing smoke rings to the amusement of a young Ivanka Trump and her model friends, and in a surreptitiously captured shot of rising starlets just outside the glow of the red carpet, as in all his images, Fink illuminates the private and unexpected moments we would otherwise rarely see. A master of the “snapshot aesthetic,” Larry Fink is in the esteemed ranks of Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand.

Fink reflects on his work,“Some people mistake my work for satire. I don’t object because satire is a powerful force, so if the work is seen that way it serves one function. But I don’t agree. The pictures are taken in the spirit of finding myself in the other, or finding the other in myself. They are taken in the spirit of empathy. Emotional, physical, sensual empathy. This work is political, but not polemical. There is potential for the formation of an underlying theme in how the system suppresses and distorts both the rich and the poor, but it is not Marx who chooses the characters in this book; it is lust, attraction, and destiny.”

Crossing Media: Choose Your Language

Thanks to the benfits of an Avant Guild membership at Media Bistro , last night I was able to attend the premiere North American screening of Snowcake, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It's a haunting indie film, with Sigourney Weaver playing the role of an adult functioning autistic mother. Sounds grim perhaps? Not really. This moving story made me think a lot about language and what medium we favor to express ourselves.

A lot of how we like to tell our stories has to do with the hard-wiring in our brains. Each media we choose to use...video, audio, writing, animations, graphics ... is almost like a seperate language. Perhaps we gravitate towards using the media that best suits our neurological hard wiring. Sigourney Weaver's character, Linda, is dazzled by snowflakes, certain sounds, and flashing lights. Dancing and bouncing on a trampoline is her favored language of expression.

Last week I spent an hour on the phone with a charming and very bright Apple Tech support rep as we attempted to reconfigure my home office wireless set-up. While we waited for modems, Airports and computers to re-boot, we chatted about multimedia story telling and bloggers. He told me he had ADD and that most of the bloggers he knew did too. For these deep-layered and multi-faceted thinkers, blogging becomes a language which allows them to communicate thinking that can not be easily verbalized in a focused conversation.


Bird Motifs: Patterns Become Language

In today's NY Times, reporter Carl Zimmer writes about language and the process of recursion in Starling' Listening Skills May Shed Light on Language Evolution . (While reading Zimmer's story online, scroll down the page to play the multimedia sound files on the same page) The scientists are now studying the ability of starlings to recognize song patterns and develop new " motifs" that are very much their own. He explores Noam Chomsky's contention, in part, that language is a set of rules for stringing words together, linking symbols with meaning, relying on so many other things as well.

Download May Calender

Click here to download a calender for May that can be folded to stand on your desktop like this:



Seal the two yellow flaps to each other with tape.

The calender includes two photos from my ongoing multimedia work in progress on malaria called Fever Zone.

1899: First Wireless Racing Transmission

October 1899











The Marconi wireless telegraph installed on the "Mackay-Bennett" in order to cover for the New York Herald, the international race for the America Cup.

You may have played Edison's movie on my last post of the Yacht Columbia crossing the finish line for the America's Cup in 1898. Most interesting for us wired type story tellers, the next year's race was reported by Marconi wireless telegraph on board the vessel Mackay-Bennett,the first of ship to shore radio transmissions. The radio apparatus was set up in the vessel's chartroom.

October 1899

The international yacht Cableship "Mackay-Bennett" lying near Sandy Hook lightship during the race for the America Cup.

Thomas Raddall writes in this 1951 letter:

In '99, during the international yacht
race off New York, the "Mackay-Bennett" reported the race
by wireless to the Sandy Hook lightship, which was connected
by a short cable to the shore. The idea of putting it on
the lightship was simply to get clear of the tall buildings,
electric light wires and other interference in New York
harbor itself.

The Marconi coherer which was installed in the Mackay-Bennett in 1899.

1899 Edison Film: Yachts Columbia and Shamrock

Edison Collection, Library of Congress
As the Volvo sailors soon approach New York harbor take a look at this early Edison film from 1899 of the Yacht Columbia crossing the finish line followed closely by the Shamrock. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

This race is fascinating to all of us wired folk because the cableship "Mackay-Bennett" was the first to transmit coverage of this 1899 America's Cup yacht race off New York. To read all and more than you ever want to know about international sailing races you can go to this increddiby useful page with links to sailing sites.

From Edison films catalog: The decisive moment in the great International Yacht Races is shown in this picture. Against a background of well defined clouds, the Light Boat is seen marking the finishing line in this great aquatic struggle. As the Columbia crosses the line, followed closely by the Shamrock, we see the steam from the whistle of the Light Ship announcing the well earned victory of the American yacht.

And here's another great 1903 movie by Edison you can play online from the Library of Congress, filmed by The Edison Film Company in 1903. It's a " Panorama water front and Brooklyn Bridge from the East River ".

SUMMARY
This film depicts the East River shoreline and the piers of lower Manhattan starting at about Pier 5 (the New York Central Pier) opposite Broad Street, and extending to the Mallory Line steamship piers just south of Fulton Street and the Brooklyn Bridge. The film begins with shots of canal boats or barges (from the Erie Canal via the Hudson River) docked at and around Coenties Slip [Frame: 0106]. As the film progresses, the New York Produce Exchange located at Bowling Green, Manhattan, with its distinct tower, comes into view in the background [0346]. Between here and the Wall Street ferry, there follows in order of appearance: steam tugs [0308 and 0422], a wooden hull barkentine [1032] with box barges alongside, a docked iron hull sailing ship, probably British [1448], an ocean steamer with yards on the foremast [1748], a derrick lighter laden with barrels docked at the end of a pier [2134], and a fruit steamer [2612]. In the Wall Street Ferry slip (between Piers 15 and 16) there is a Wall St., Manhattan-to-Montague St., Brooklyn, double-ended steam commuter boat [2896]. The ferry is visible immediately before a shot of the large advertising billboards on Pier 16. The film next shows the Ward Line piers (J.E. Ward & Co., New York and Cuba Steamship Co.) [3040], a Pennsylvania Railroad tug [3190], a derrick lighter [3320], and the Mallory Line piers [3692]. A Mallory Line steamer can be seen on the south side of one of the Mallory Piers [3736]. The camera begins panning out into the East River after passing pier 20, catching the fog bell at the end of pier 21 [3922]. A car float is visible passing under the Brooklyn Bridge [4202]. The pan follows the line of the Brooklyn Bridge eastward to Brooklyn Heights, where the Hotel Margaret (tall building in background) is visible just before the end of the film [4464]. This film continues the view begun in the film Sky Scrapers of New York City From the North River. Together they comprise a sweep around the southern tip of Manhattan, from Fulton Street on the Hudson to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Steady DV Video: The Fig Rig

The Fig Rig

Most of us DV video shooters have at least three gadgets buried deep within our equipment inventory that we bought with hope it would help us take moving action shots with a tippy smallish DV video camera like the PD150. Steady Sticks, stabilizers, DV Caddies, you name it.

Check out this newest contraption, called the Fig Rig and watch the movie clip of its inventor Mike Figgis showing how it works. Once you hit the Flash intro page click " skip intro" to get to the video demos of Figgis with his rig. It's like a car's steering wheel to which you can attach a zoom controller, mics, lights etc.

The other night in fact I watched in amazement on South Street as a DV shooter used a Steadi-Cam Jr. to shoot a music rap video while on roller blades. He had a friend pull him along as he rolled in front of a gangstah rap type group. He was cursing the Steadicam Jr. at each break.

Since I can't roller blade the Fig Rig just may have to do for now. I haven't tried it out yet. But after I do I will report on it for you.

Broadcast Engineering awarded the Fig Rig five stars in 2005 along with its Pick Hits Award. Manfrotto manufactures this rig so you can order from your favorite retailer.

I don't know about you but my PD150 sure gets tippy when loaded down with the wireless receiver and Sennheiser shotgun mike I use as standard equipment. The first five seconds of each shot look rocky sometimes as I stabilize myself. Take a look at the beginning of my Nightline story where the editor included my first few seconds of shakey shooting. I asked her not to but she said that Nightline likes that " hand held look"...if it moves it grooves.

Whenever I look at this story I cringe. It looks like home movies, as if I can't hold the camera steady. When I was shooting my multimedia tale last Spring on malaria in Africa and Cambodia, I used a DV caddie as I was also doing photography at the same time. It kept the camera reasonably steady but all at the same height. That spells B.O.R.I.N.G. No one else seemed to think so. But hey I know how " moving and grooving" through the story makes it more exciting.

Maybe this Fig Rig will do the trick, to groove with the moves...