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Thursday, May 24, 2007

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled job description


I love high school sports.

Great opportunities, amazing access, and the players are (usually) happy to see you.

Here are two shots from the Apex women's soccer team's 5-0 win New Bern in the NCHSAA semifinals Wednesday night. Mix in a humane start time of 7 pm and some ridiculous backlight (flying sweat looks really good when it's backlit) and you really can't lose.

For you technical types: shot with a Canon 1DM2, 400mm, ISO 400, around 1/1000 at f/2.8.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

A better job than I could ever do

Want the short form on how to get started producing your multimedia magnum opus?

Florida professor Mindy McAdams of has posted an one-page "No Fear Guide to Multimedia" tutorial on audio, video and Soundslides from a talk she gave at the National Writers Workshop in Witchita, Kansas, on May 19-20.

Have at, and enjoy!

Monday, May 14, 2007

Reality Check (or, Multimedia for the rest of us)

God bless Brian Storm (Mediastorm), Dirck Halstead (DigitalJournalist) and the other multimedia journalists who are showing the way into the future. They have unlimited skills, unlimited imagination and a seemingly unlimited budget. However...

Well, let put it this way. On Friday I spoke to a group of mainly community journalists from across North Carolina. I was the final presentation of the day. Earlier, in the first session, Mike Noe of the Rocky Mountain News spoke to us about his paper's multimedia commitment, and played excerpts from two absolutely mind-blowing series, Final Salute (a Pulitzer Prize winner in print), and The Crossing. Striking, stirring and everything you could ask for in an online feature. Mike talked about staffs of 10-15 people, months of planning and reporting, and budgets in the thousands of dollars. Truly, the stuff dreams are made of.

My multimedia staff at The Cary News? Me. My equipment budget? Don't ask. And I have to get up in front of a room full of people and follow that? Oy.

But you know what? YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEND A BAZILLION DOLLARS TO CREATE COMPELLING MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM.

No, really. I know that you could make some rockin' projects with the kit listed above, but it's really not necessary.

(I should stop right here to thank David Hobby of Strobist.com fame for inspiring me to talk about this. David [who has no idea who I am] is a photographer at the Baltimore Sun who has created a cult cadre of photographers dedicated to proving that you can light like a pro without having to go bankrupt. I'd like to try to do the same thing for multimedia. Thanks, David!

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blog.)

I could spend $400-$600 on a recorder, $1500-plus on a video camera, and who knows how much on the extra stuff that always sneaks up on you and kills your budget. But the reality is that this is going on the web. It's going to be crushed, crunched and compressed, and unless you're producing hi-def documentaries for PBS, the big kit is just overkill.

(Would I like to have the big kit? What do you think?)

Here's what I "make do" with:

Olympus WS-300M digital recorder, street price of about $80. Available online or at any electronics store such as Circuit City or Best Buy. Available in silver or pink for those who like to match their gear with their wardrobe.








Nady SP-4C microphone. $10. Really, $10, and according to Mindy McAdams, multimedia guru of the Teaching Online Journalism blog, a great quality mike for the price.




Canon PowerShot S3 IS, a hybrid still/video camera with stereo microphone pickups. I shot a concert with this camera and was amazed at the sound quality. Around $320.







The Flip: this must be the cheapest DV camera EVER. USB, comes in 30 minute ($139) or 60-minute ($169) flavors. I haven't even seen one, much less used it, but it seems to get the job done. As an added bonus, the video downloads directly to your computer, instead of importing, which can be a big time difference on deadline.







So go out, spend a (very) little cash, and see what you can do. Check back in a day or two and I'll share some information about free or inexpensive editing software. Or, if you're in an all-fired rush to start editing, check out the multimedia resource blog I created.

Friday, May 11, 2007

UNC/NCPA Newspaper Academy


Thanks to Louise Spieler, the UNC School of Journalism and the North Carolina Press Association for allowing me to come and speak during today's annual Newspaper Academy, a day-long training session for N.C. journalists.

My session was "Multimedia on a shoestring," geared to helping folks find the least expensive way to get the necessary hardware, software and training to start producing multimedia projects for their papers. You can download a QuickTime version of my presentation here (15MB). I've also created a blog listing of equipment and training resources.

I plan to blog on all of these topics individually in the coming weeks.

Thursday, May 10, 2007


The June issue of Tar Heel Monthly magazine is here. Big ups to UNC pitcher and fifth-year senior Matt Danford for going with the flow and getting into the cover shoot. The young'uns on the staff gave him an "All-American Grandpa" shirt (a not-so-subtle dig at his "advanced" age), and we bribed convinced him it would be a great prop for the shoot.

I'm standing on a small ladder, and Danford is lit by a single Alien Bee monolight with a 10-degree grid. Shot in the infield grass to give a clean background. We tried about 20 frames of him tearing open his jersey to reveal the shirt underneath. Shot with a Canon 1DM2 and 17-40 lens.

I showed him the whole shoot on the back of the camera, and he seemed pleased, which is a good thing. As a general rule of thumb, never irritate a man who can throw things at you at 90+ miles per hour...

As mentioned in an earlier post, many thanks to Jeff Camarati for his assistance, the loan of his Alien Bee 1600 unit and his never-ending willingness to answer my stupid lighting questions.

Picture of the Day-Watching, Waiting


Some photographers don't enjoy shooting golf. I do, but I think the best pictures come from the quiet moments lurking just off of the putting green or tee box. Here, Green Hope high school golfer Kyle Sonnday waits for his turn to tee off on the third hole during a recent tournament.

Golf shooters live and die by the backgrounds in their images. Go check out Getty Images photographer Scott Halleran's work to see it done right. Here, I'm standing ankle deep in what I hoped wasn't poison ivy to clean up the mess of carts and houses behind Mr. Sonnday, and shooting backlit to even out the exposure. Shot with a Canon 1DM2 and a 300mm lens.

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Pitcher Perfect


It's a bad pun. Get used to it.

Mix two high school softball pitchers, a coach who wasn't warned I was coming and a five-minute window, and what do you get?

If you're me, you plagarize a shoot from earlier in the week, and you down't feel bad at all when you do it.

Lighting guru and best bud Jeff Camarati (I'd link to him, but he's too lazy between web pages right at the moment) helped me set up the Matt Danford photo at UNC's Boshamer Stadium two days earlier, so I borrowed the technique of a single strobe, high off-camera to the left, at full power to knock down the background as much as I could. Of course, an Alien Bee 1600 punched out a lot more light than an SB-80, so the results aren't quite as striking, but that's life as a newspaper photographer.

Fortunately, freshman Darby Pearce (left) and junior Beth Ann Kleekamp were great sports who were easy to work with, willing to let me interrupt their pre-game preparations, and they didn't laugh when I laid down in the dirt to get just the right angle for the shot.

And I hope I had nothing to do with the fact they lost 3-2 in 12 innings...

Picture of the Day-RailHawks Earn First Win


After three games, and in a pouring rainstorm, the Carolina RailHawks finally notched the franchise's first win. Carolina's Philip Long, above, celebrates after scoring the RailHawks' first goal in the 2-0 inter-league win over Chivas USA at SAS Soccer Park.

(See a slideshow of images from the game.)

Considering the fact that my rain gear was at home, I was soaked and I was shooting with a (borrowed) (Nikon) 400, I'll call it a win.

(Thanks, Jeff. I'll make sure to dry it out before I give it back...)

Who am I, and why am I here?

So it seemed like a good idea to actually post a picture (see below) before getting deep and philosophical about why I finally started a blog, but all I've got is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

In my day job, I'm the newly-minted Director of Photography and Multimedia at The Cary News, a weekly community paper in the Triangle area of central North Carolina. We're one of four community papers owned by The (Raleigh) News & Observer, a McClatchy paper. In addition to shooting pictures for the paper, I'm now helping to train our staffs in multimedia storytelling. That's only a problem when they ask me how to do something I don't know how to do, which is down to only 3-4 times a week now-a-days.

In my spare (!) time, I'm the Photo and Design editor for Tar Heel Monthly, a glossy magazine covering sports at UNC-Chapel Hill, and I freelance for Getty Images.

With any luck, I'll post up some fun pictures, and maybe pass along some tips on how to make multimedia at a community newspaper with no money a limited budget.

Any feedback is welcome.

Long time lurker, first time blogger

Matt Danford

UNC supersenior Matt Danford is the grandfather of the Tar Heel pitching staff.

Shot as part of a feature package for the June 2007 issue of Tar Heel Monthly magazine.

For those of you who care about this sort of thing, it was shot with a Canon EOS 1DM2 camera, 17-40 lens, and lit with an Alien Bee 1600 monolight at full power with a 10-degree grid. The photographer (that's me) was lying on the ground to make this particular frame.