SnapperTalk

US Photographic equipment retailer B&H have put together a useful guide aimed at those considering buying one of the new generation of Digital Audio recorders.
There’s a lot of good models out there now, so choosing the right one for your particular needs isn’t so easy. Places to look for good reviews of such equipment include Brad Linder’s digital home and Transom. Also see this previous post. Hat-tip to Tewfic for alerting me to this quide.

Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris has posted a lengthy examination of one of the Abu Ghraib photographs - from a photographic viewpoint.
The nearly 12,000 word (!) analysis of this image has much of interest to photographers and those seeking to better understand the interaction that takes place between reader and photograph. Read “The Most Curious Thing“

A new quarterly current affairs journal has been launched, called Dispatches. Edited by Gary Knight of VII and Mort Rosenblum, you can read the journal’s mission-statement here.
They say it will focus on one crucial topic in its full context per issue - the first is titled “In America” and the second issue is titled “Beyond Iraq”.

FFFFound! is a dynamic website generated by users posting and sharing their favorite images and designs of any type found on the web.
That all sounds very Web 2.0 and so-so, but it seems to be almost constantly updated with a remarkable selection of weird and wonderful photography and graphic design, so if you’re looking for a creative fix take a look. The site is invitation-only for posting images, which is probably why the quality-ratio is fairly high, but anyone can view.
The image above is just one that caught my eye.

I came across this really beautiful photo by Mauricio Alejo in the latest copy of Wired magazine, used to illustrate a story about health. It’s a stunning image, also seen here in a different version. Wired generally uses very high quality photography and graphic design, though I hadn’t heard his name before. This brief biography indicates he’s from Mexico and appears to be represented by the Bransch agency.

3072 x 1728 pixel images at 120 fps (180fps burst) from a handheld device powering a sensor named Mysterium X?
Welcome to the truly terrifying innovative future of photography….. You can leave your Leicas at the door.

I made a trip to Iran in December and had a multimedia piece about Iranian Bakhtiari nomads published by the AP, to accompany a story. Iran really is an amazing place to visit - if you ever get the chance to go, take it.
You can see the slideshow by clicking on the image below.

As usual it’s all created in Soundslides but this time it wasn’t me who edited it so I don’t have many technique details, except to say the audio was captured on a Samson Zoom H2 using the onboard mics.

All works are © Copyright 2007, The Associated Press.

Tewfic el-Sawy noted that the new beta version of the ubiquitous multimedia creation tool Soundslides Plus 1.9 includes a rather nice full-screen playback mode. Moving beyond its multimedia mission, it’s turning into a pretty good tool for producing image-only slideshows as well.

Well, it’s been a long, long time since I posted anything but hopefully I’ll find time to get back into things. Since the last time I posted (err… back in November, is it really that long?) I visited Iran, spent 6 weeks covering the Kenyan crisis earlier this year, and then somehow it’s just been busy ever since. I hope to get around to making a slideshow of the Kenya pictures but until then here’s a few things of note I found on the web:

David Viggers of Reuters posted a thoughtful article on disaster coverage. Choice quote:

“When I finally got to sleep my nightmares were full of people but my pictures were not. They showed wreckage and desolation but failed to give it a face. In the misguided belief that I needed somehow protect what shreds of dignity the victims had left by not exposing them to wider scrutiny, I not only completely missed the point of my being there but also let them down …. In such circumstances if you are not doing your job you are just in the way”.

Absolutely true and very well put.

Sion Touhig created “Blingapore” - a great little multimedia piece on Singaporean streetlife shot entirely using a Canon Powershot G9 recording timelapse video at one frame per second, then edited in Final Cut Pro. Nicely shot and edited, and an interesting example of how new technology can be used in different ways.

I stumbled across one of the best uses of the multimedia format that I’ve ever seen - Your Greenham. I’m not sure how significant the words “Greenham Common” are for people these days, especially to non-UK readers as I guess it was primarily a British affair, but growing up during the cold war with that nuclear missile base a few dozen miles from my house wasn’t quite so relaxing shall we say. Actually, as a child I remember hearing of the effects of nuclear fallout and having nightmares about it.
The Greenham Common base quickly became the site of a permanent women’s peace camp for over 10 years and was the scene of many confrontations between the protesters and authorities. In current times I think we’ve managed to rather quickly forget how during the cold war the threat of nuclear war was ever-present and how we lived under its shadow.
Film director Beeban Kidron and GuardianFilms produced the website looking back at the history of the camp and the people who lived and protested there. Even if all this sounds a bit hippie to your liking, the execution of the multimedia is superb and the site is well worth a visit.