Photo Traveler

Bob Krist’s Travel Photography Blog

Tango Audio Slide show

Audio, Destinations, Events, Photo Techniques, Travel, multimedia — February 15, 2010

Don't click this, it's just a screen grab!!!

I posted an audio slide show about Tango in Buenos Aires….I think NG Traveler will have it up on their site too, but not sure where. This was originally going to have an interview narration with a Tango anthropologist and was going to be more educational, but then my editor said just do it a lot of dance pictures and snappy music, and I thought, why not?

Ordinarily, I HATE going out and shooting nightlife. First of all, it all starts too late (don’t you people have something to do during the daylight hours????). Secondly, everybody’s having fun, and you’re the nerd with the camera and the lightpole and no life and everybody would just prefer that you go away….

But…I loved documenting tango. I actually looked forward to getting up in the middle of the night to go out. It’s such a beautiful, passionate dance, and the Portenos were so warm and welcoming to my presence. I was blown away by the artistry of the dancers, whether the pros on stage during a show, or folks at a neighborhood milonga.  It’s the real deal, it’s a lifestyle.

And I was privileged to have been a close witness to it. That’s why, despite all the bullsh… about our business lately, it’s just so cool that this camera gives you entree into so many different worlds.

Everything you need to know about shooting the news….

Audio, Career issues, Events, Ironies, Photo Techniques, Technology, multimedia — February 8, 2010

Forget journalism school, here’s the secret formula…..

YouTube Preview Image

Prides cometh before a fall….

Audio, Destinations, Ironies, Photo Gear, Photo Techniques, Technology, Travel, multimedia — February 3, 2010

Sleeping prides are no problem to pick off with your DSLR video rig.

Okay. You name the parable, metaphor, or simile that involves overconfidence and overweaning ambition combined with lack of experience, and you can put it in the lede of this post about my foray into being a fulltime videographer on my recent safari through Tanzania.

By day two, I had visions of myself in a second career as a cameraman for Wild Kingdom. I pretty much went through the week like that…until I got home and really looked at my work. Ay carumba! What can I say….those were just delusional dreams brought on by the strength of the sub-Saharan sun!

Oh sure, I could harp on the fact that video-enabled DSLRs have a long way to go in convenience and handling before they become viable machines for documentary work (if you have actors who can do several takes of every shot, the image quality of the video from these machines completely overshadows their handling shortcomings).

And there’s nothing like multiple takes to help cover a myriad of handling mistakes, too.

It’s no mystery that the videos Nikon and Canon are using to promote their video-enabled SLRs are more like short movie features or commercials, with multi-man crews, rather than documentary projects. As Hilary says, “it takes a village” to raise a child. To that I’d like to add that “it takes a crew” to make great video.

But if you have baboons who don’t take direction, or lions who march to the beat of their own drummers, you are in deep doo-doo if you have only one chance to capture this video action on the move with a DSLR.

Hit the jump for a rundown of the things that plagued me, and why I won’t be giving up on DSLR video anytime soon! Read more…

On Haiti and Health Care

Audio, Destinations, Events, Travel, multimedia — January 20, 2010

Photo by Evan Vucci/AP

I first went to Haiti in the late 70’s when I was still a photographer on the staff of the Hudson Dispatch in Union City, NJ. My wife Peggy and I were so blown away by the culture, people, and the poverty that we sponsored several Haitian children’s educations for many years, until the NGO we did it through folded up during one of the really violent spells a while ago.

They have a saying down there, “beyond mountains, there are more mountains,” which pretty much sums up what has happened to this nation in recent history. Every time they seem to be getting over the hump of one problem, another bigger and more serious one raises its ugly head.

I don’t see how this current problem could get any worse, and they need our help. We like to give through both the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders. They seem to be efficient with getting stuff done. Although efficiency in the face of a total collapse of infrastructure is definitely a relative term.

On the home front, we’re going to be facing our own earthquake, one that was started in the faultline that shook up yesterday’s Massachusetts runoff.

No, we don’t need no stinkin’ health care reform. Our system is just fine. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at this brilliant multimedia from the AP’s Evan Vucci.

The sad reality is that you don’t really have to look as far as Haiti to see neglected, desperate segments of a population struggling for basic healthcare. You can stay home and see it right here.

No passport required.

Tailor-made Multimedia

Audio, Career issues, Technology, Workshops & Seminars, multimedia — December 29, 2009

While the tips for the camera bag contest keep pouring in, and the judges continue with their evalutions, I wanted to point you to a cool little multimedia  project about George de Paris, tailor to the last six or seven American presidents. This site not only gives you the behind the scenes stuff, but also has some clever interactive flash games where you can “dress the president” with different suits, etc.

This multimedia package is a  project from a bunch of students in the American University masters program in Interactive Journalism, my middle boy Brian, who works as an online editor for documentaries, being one of them. He sure is having fun, and in his spare time, he’s trying to teach an old dog (me), new tricks (Final Cut!).

We’ll be announcing the bag winner on New Year’s Day, but not too early, so party hearty and have a good and safe one!

Keeping on your Toes, Philadelphia-Style!

Audio, Destinations, Events, Photo Gear, Photo Techniques, Travel, multimedia — December 14, 2009

Picture 1

Photo © Bob Krist

I just posted an audio slideshow about the Pennsylvania Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker in Philadelphia and boy, did working on this really put me in the holiday mood. You have to love the dedication and the skill levels of professional ballet dancers…if I ever get reincarnated with a body more like Rudolph Nureyev than Homer Simpson, I would love to move with such power and grace… but as far as this life goes, all I can say is, “D’oh!”

I was impressed with the talent and discipline of the kids in the cast as well….what a cool childhood memory they’ll have working in this gorgeous staging by the Pennsylvania Ballet at Philadelphia’s beautiful Academy of Music.

For tech stuff, It was done with 2 D90’s and a D300s, ISO 800-1600, Automatic White Balance, and 12-24mm f/4, 17-55mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8VR, plus a little 35mm f/1.8, 10.5mm f/2.8, and 85mm f/1.8.  This show is running, in a smaller size, on National Geographic Traveler’s Intelligent Travel blog too.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go have a doughnut and practice my plies and jetes!

Kinobe!

Audio, Destinations, Events, Ironies, Travel, multimedia — November 20, 2009

Picture 5

www.kinobemusic.com

My assignment this afternoon was to document the visit of Kinobe, six incredibly talented musicians from Uganda, to the Creative and Performing Arts High School in Camden, NJ, where they gave a concert and workshop for the music kids in this inspiring school.

It’s a program sponsored by the Jonathan Krist Foundation, and the kids really seemed to enjoy it and get a lot out of it. Kinobe seemed to have a good time too.

We brought the guys back to our house tonight for a spaghetti dinner and a place to crash before they hit the road again tomorrow  (these are true road warriors—-they make me look like a stay-at-home Dad….they haven’t been home in 9 months).

What a wonderfully talented, friendly, and well-traveled group. I can’t remember the last time we’ve had dinner guests with whom I could swap stories about the best places to pitch your tent during the music festival in Timbuktu, or the ins and outs of the world music scene in Paris.

They are all Mac enthusiasts too, and we’ve spent some good time trying to figure out the cheapest way to soup up basic Mac laptops for audio.

Now, I’m not going to dwell on the mistakes I made in my second or third time out as a documentary videographer, other than to tell you that during one of the key speeches, I was doing this super creative pullback from the keynote speaker’s image in a mirror to the  speaker herself (genius!) and I thought I was recording when I was just on preview! But I was running my Olympus LS-10 Audio recorder (something I know a little better than my Panasonic camcorder) the whole time, so at least I got audio.

But so far, as a videographer, I make a very good spaghetti chef.

Check out Kinobe—-their music is guaranteed to make your weekend!

Amazon Audio Slideshow

Audio, Destinations, Travel, multimedia — November 17, 2009

Picture 3

Well, I bit the bullet and just spend the whole day (4:30 am—jetlag wakeup—to 7:30pm and did my audio slide show of my recent Amazon trip in one day.  Believe it or not, that’s a new record.

I’m getting better at the audio stuff (the picture editing takes, um, about 15 minutes. The audio takes anywhere from one day to three months!).

Here’s a list of what I learned from this, my most recent stumble foray into multimedia.

1. I don’t want to be a wildlife photographer. I will hold my buddy and colleague Ralph Lee Hopkins‘ coat while he shoots wildlife (and I have a glass of wine in the other hand), but geez, how can you work with friggin’ creatures that can’t take direction and stand so far away?

2. Folks who can speak well and tell stories succinctly are rare treasures. A good narrator or interviewee can make you or break you in the audio slideshow racket (and I’ve been broken a lot lately).

I hate to resort to doing the VO narration myself or running long text slides (hey, it’s called multimedia. If they wanted to read something, they’d be buying enough of the magazines in the first place so that all of us old dogs wouldn’t have to learn these new tricks!).

Fortunately, I had two gems on this gig. Jorge Davila could be the first naturalist I’ve met who could just as easily make a living doing stand-up comedy. And Expedition Leader Jorge Salas has a voice so rich, he makes James Earl Jones (“This is CNN”) sound like a castrato.

3. Video Sucks. Okay, that may be a little harsh, but honest to god, I had a lot of clips that represented moments I should have been shooting stills or catching audio (Yes, I know I can extract the audio, but it’s a pain), and what can I do with them?  Thankfully, Fotomagico can now handle video along with stills (but alas, not Soundslides Pro yet) so I don’t have to learn  Final Cut (not enough lifetime left for that). But I still haven’t figured out how to integrate the two without having it look clunky and home movie-ish.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think video has its place. In fact, I’m shooting a mainly video gig for my capo di capo, Peggy, later this week. I’ll be documenting an event sponsored by the Jonathan Krist Foundation.

But I just have to shoot it, and one of Peggy’s cadre of video-genius volunteers will put it together in a nice MTV-like presentation for the foundation website on a pro bono basis. Now, I’ve tried to cut a deal with these guys, and while they’re smart enough to realize that I, too, function basically as a non-profit, they also know that I’m nowhere near as worthy a cause!

Stills AND Video, Stills OR Video, (and what about the Audio?)

Audio, Destinations, Photo Gear, Photo Techniques, Travel, multimedia — October 14, 2009

Hindu goddess Durga is well equipped to handle the demands of multi-media journalism. Photo courtesy

Hindu goddess Durga is well equipped to handle the demands of multi-media journalism. Artwork by sound-hindu-god-photo.blogspot.com

One thing that is really throwing me about trying to become a multimedia journalist is the fact that I’ve only got two eyes, two hands, and one slightly-damaged, but still functioning brain.  However, it seems to me that the Hindu goddess Durga in the above illustration, is much better equipped for multimedia journalism. I’m realizing that you need more like 6 hands, 4 eyes, and multiple brains to do multimedia…

Let me explain. I’m a travel guy, and many of the things I witness that would make cool audio slide shows are events—festivals, dances, rituals. Or situations, as in my recent visit to the Lipizzaner Stud Farm in Slovenia, where you have a very limited (in this case, 2 hours) time to do your work. This was brought home to me a couple of days ago here in Buenos Aires, where I attempted to cover the Feria de Mataderos for an audio slide show treatment.

As any experienced shooter knows, it’s hard enough to capture peak moments with your still camera when you’re covering a one hour dance festival, or a horse race, or any event with a start and a finish. But what is throwing me is this:

How do I know when to shoot video, when to do audio, and when to just take some “pitchers?” Read more…

Sleepless in Buenos Aires

Audio, Destinations, Lighting, Photo Gear, Photo Techniques, Travel — October 8, 2009

_DSC9670

Photo © Bob Krist

Well, I told you it was going to be slow, and now that I’m almost a week into the assignment to shoot this incredible city, I can say it may be slow for my blog, but for me, it’s been a whirlwind.

As I mentioned (and confirmed with my editor), I’m contractually forbidden to share the pix I’m shooting here in Buenos Aires until after National Geographic Traveler publishes the story.

BUT, I’m not forbidden from sharing a production shot or two, like the above shot, of my fixer Bernardo (a great guy and a wonderful photographer) holding my “SB 800 on a stick” to shoot the action at Salon Canning tango milonga…taken at about 2 am on a freakin’ Tuesday night!

Yes, the Portenos tango to a different drummer from this old Norte Americano.  I like to go to bed at about 11pm. By midnight, I’m a pumpkin.

But this is my schedule here: Up at 9am (yes, I hear you calling me a lazy S.O.B., but just read on) Download, caption and backup until 12 noon. 12 noon to 8pm=shoot the restaurants, shops, hotels, sites, street scenes, twilight scenes, required for the story.

Eat dinner and try to lie down at about 9:30pm. Try to sleep…until midnight! Then get your old Norte Americano keester out of bed and go out at midnight….and shoot tango, jazz clubs, dance clubs etc. until 3-4am. Then go to bed for real, and start the whole cycle over again at 9am the next day.

Oh yeah, it’s a glamour profession…if you’re 19-year-old lounge lizard!

BTW, that pole Bernardo is using is a RODE mic boom. It’s not as easy to use as the paint pole that the Strobist and McNally folks have been raving about (it has, like, 5 sections) BUT, and this is a big but, it breaks down to under three feet, as opposed to just over 4 feet of the painter’s pole.

That means it will fit into normal sized rolling duffles. The 4 foot model requires oversize baggage, and that means excess size and charges, and that means less money to spend on tango shoes! I’ll keep you posted….

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