Interesting article on the future of photojournalism on Dirck Halstead’s digitaljournalist website. In summary it says that stills photography is dying, being replaced by high quality stills taken directly from HD video footage and also by more feature rich content available using video and audio. As a relative newcomer to the photojournalism game this article makes a lot of sense. I’ve only ever shot digital as a professional so I’ve no real attachment to the old analog film and print world. Despite my age I’m a product of the internet and see it quickly taking over the traditional hardcopy newspaper in terms of immediacy and visual possibilities.
I’ve done a couple of stills/audio slideshows to explore them as vehicles for good storytelling and have been pleased with my early results. This one focuses on the Melbourne Victory FC supporters. In only the second year of existence, the Australian league has taken off dramatically with Melbourne Victory picking up audiences of up to 50,000 people. This slideshow aims to convey the emotions and chants of these new crowds. It’s a bit rough, with the audio taken off the back of my 1DmkII – good enough for proof of concept though.
In many ways these slideshows seem to provide a better forum for stills photography, with the ability to use a series of images to tell the story,a method used in the early days of photojournalism with Time-Life photo essays which has been squeezed down to a single image in todays publications crammed full of advertising. The addition of audio adds a new perosnal dimension to the story that I am really excited about. Dirk’s article pushes the video angle which is the next extension of that idea. No matter what, I see this as the future for storytelling and photojournalism and intend to expand my skills in this area over the next few months. You only have to look at the organisations moving their photographers into this space to see that its time is here. A great place to look at this new style is at mediastorm.
