When the kitten decided to rip open Little Sitbonzo’s duvet I was cross. Then the thought came to me that we could use the resulting 3 bin bags of feathers for a bit of fun. No, not with the children.
Some days later I found myself in the woods with 2 other photographers, 3 bags of feathers, 3 bags of flashguns, a leaf blower, some smoke grenades, a bride and a woman due to give birth to her first child.
Why? just a bit of fun to let us get our creativity going. Was it fun? You bet……

Feathers. 21st Feb 2009 from Sitbonzo on Vimeo.

Ian and I spent Tuesday afternoon and evening shooting promotional videos for Testing 123, the battle of the bands that takes place all this week.

I started the edit of 12 videos on Wednesday morning and, after far too many hours to be healthy, (left the office at 3-30am Thurs!) have 12 videos which I feel are pretty good work.

Testing 123 final is on Friday and is my natrual late shift.
Despite my inclination to just cover it for the print edition, allot less work and sweat, I think I may well video it as well.
There is one big problem these days and that is where to find the time? Time to shoot and time to edit. A 2min piece of video can take 2-3 hours to edit .

I can forecast that I may have to miss yet another lunch break but it seems a little unfair that its always the shooter that ends up paying the price.

Snow. Feb 2009.

A colegue from far away contacted me to talk about multimedia and stuff. They had a few questions that I am of course more than happy to answer. Learning how do soundslides, gathering audio, shooting enough good pics and developing interview techniques to the computer side of the whole thing is not easy when traditionally local news photographers have only really had to worry about getting 2-3 decent shots for the print edition.

I take every opportunity I get to eulogize about the benifits I have got personally and profesionally from making the transition and have been trying to get a course set up so that I can help other photographers develop.
I’ve always been a photographer first but, working for a news operation means we are also journalists. Only change is that now, I am a multimedia photojournalist.

Yes, it takes allot of hard work and many hours, mostly my own time, to get to somewhere nearing getting to be alright at making multimedia. I think I have made pretty good progress but there is a long road ahead.

Is it worth it? A difficult question. If you are self motivated, if you can take the decision to occasionally have put many hours work in the bin, if you are prepared to make the effort to get your brain into gear and biggest of all, if you can identify what will make an interesting piece of MM that the readers will find engaging. then I guess the answer is a solid yes.

How much longer will I be able to, or can afford to carry on developing? who knows. The core tasks of a local newspaper photographer are to shoot stills for the print edition anything else requires more work. Multimedia is hard to do and we all like to be stroked once in a while.

yeaterday was certainly a challenge. digging the car out at 0545am and getting stuck about 0546am. roads quiet but snowy until i got off the motorway. then the 3 hour = 5 miles kicked in. I was only able to take pictures from my car as there was nowhere to stop and this lost me the golden time as it got light and people started walking to the stations and bus stops. I managed to feed the web with some ‘car park’ pics but little else. By the time I eventually got into town I had had my fill of sitting and only did a cursory swing round planning to get out later for some sledging and kids snow fun photos and video.

I know now I needed to stick to plan A which was to dump the car and walk through town to the local sledge park and then walk back. But, being the only photographer able to make it in I had quite allot of office stuff with helping download others pictures.
(Impressed those fellas made it in with one coming from Luton, others walking the 5 or so miles in office shoes! I mean fellas, get some sensible footwear!)
By the time I was out again there were some jobs booked in and I got to those and tried the live broadcast thing which worked ok. Editing the video when i got back to the office at 5 took much longer than it should have done and I got home late and tired. Managed to drive right off the edge of the driveway and get stuck. So, I pass the baton to Dan who I am sure will do a better job than my very poor efforts yesterday.
I hang my head with the poor performance.
One photographer I know walked a good 10 mile round trip to get some pick up pictures of a major fire. I don’t know why he could’nt get them emailed?

Live trafic and weather loop from Sitbonzo on Vimeo.