Page 120 - Convergent Journalism an Introduction Writing and Producing Across Media

DIGITAL STILL PHOTOGRAPHY

Positive and Negative Aspects of the
Multiple-Medium Photographer

A growing number of still photojournalists are either going into video
photography full time or are augmenting their still coverage with video.
Technological advances, mainly in the reduction in size of broadcast-
quality digital cameras, have made it feasible for a single photographer
to carry still equipment and video equipment to a shoot.
One of the first well-known still photojournalists to switch to video
was two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Stanley Foreman. He ended a
newspaper career at the Boston Herald-American and began working
for television. For most photojournalists, the switch is more gradual.
Newspapers across the country have video components attached to
their Web sites. Content must come from somewhere. David Leeson
of the Dallas Morning News has been a newspaper photojournalist for
more than a quarter century. Since late in 2000, he has been a full-time
“digital video photojournalist.” He asserts that the photographer of the
future will no longer use still cameras, but will photograph everything
110 with high-resolution digital video (DV).
Photojournalism veteran Dirk Halstead of Time and Tom Burton of
the Orlando Sentinel invented the term platypus for the new breed of
DV photojournalist. The metaphor of the creature that looked like
it was put together from parts of birds and mammals is apt for
a multifunctional role that combines the skill of still photography
with animation, audio, and video production. Halstead has run DV
workshops since 1999 advocating a documentary style of video pho-
tojournalism that is heavily dependent on the structures and styles of
still photojournalism.
Editors who made selections from tens of pictures in the middle of
the 20th century, and hundreds of images in the still digital age, will
have tens of thousands of possible selections when resolution in digital
video matches that of still cameras. They also will have the option of
running the video on the Web site or co-owned television station.
One problem with one photographer trying to make images for more
than one outlet is the conflict between capturing that frozen fraction
of a second and fulfilling the basic needs of broadcast news. Still images
are dependent on that iconographic key moment that tells the complete
story. If the photographer is looking away trying to get a cutaway shot
for the video report, the decisive moment might be missed.