The Digital Trekker Blog » Multimedia

Multimedia: The Camel Market of Cairo

admin — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:36:26 +0000

Over this past two weeks of reconnoitering for an Oct 2011, Cairo/Nile photo workshop I was able to see and visit some amazing places. Places, that if I didn’t have the job that I have, I might say were once in a lifetime kind of places. Last Friday was once such place. My ever gracious host, Marco Ryan kept telling me that the Cairo Camel Market or the Birqash Souq al-gamel, as it is known in Arabic, is a great opportunity for the the workshop to visit and shoot. I had some reservations. I figured it would be crowded and confusing and wasn’t sure it would be worth getting up at 4:30am to photograph. Boy, was I ever mistaken. It was amazing. The sounds and textures were fabulous. I hope that this 4 min slide show will give you a taste of what it was like.

A special thanks goes out to Fathy Salama & Sharkiat, as well as Face Music for allowing me to use the track, Camel Road as background music, it really helped make the show. If you are interested in purchasing the album Camel Road you can find it HERE.

By the way, spaces on the workshop are limited and even without solid dates spaces are selling. If you are interested in having a space saved for you please contact Marco Ryan HERE.

Lumen Dei Trophies: Examples of SoundSlides by our Students

admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 07:01:15 +0000

You still have till the end of the day here in Malaysia to enter the SoundSlides Plus giveaway. I will stop taking entries at midnight my time (GMT +8). It’s been fun. Honestly, I’m humbled and somewhat amazed by all the selfless and creative ideas that have been submitted. I guess with my background in humanitarian photography, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that there are so many of my readers that have humanitarian interests and connections with NGOs.

In yesterday’s post, someone noted in the comments that they would like to see more examples. What a perfect lead in, I had already planned on showing you some of the student’s worked from our last Lumen Dei workshop in India and at the Kumbh Mela. Most of the participants as well as Gavin Gough and myself produced a slide show. All the student’s work was all produced using the demo version of SoundSlides. You will see at the beginning of each show a brief splash screen that states it was made on the demo version. Another thing you will notice is the template that each student used was different. Some have a gray background while others a black. All but Paula have titles on their show. Paula’s has simply “headline here…”. This because she didn’t enter the name of her show, yet chose to show the title in the options. I am telling you all this to give you a peek into how the software works and what you can do even with the demo software.

Gavin and I decided that we should each do a show to demo for the students and to show what could be done using SoundSlides. You’ve already seen my essay, Wasim the Sari Maker. Below is the show that Gavin made for the students, I think you’ll get a little a chuckle watching it.

The next example is from our only male participant on the workshop, Kevin Dowie. Kev, (I can call him Kev because he’s from Australia, and that’s the way they talk in Australia) started the trip off concerned about how to approach his subjects . He was amazed at how physically close Gavin and I got to our subjects when we were photographing them. I think you’ll see from his essay that Kevin was able to get over his inhibitions and produce a fantastic piece of work.

The next student’s essay is from Ursula Wall. Ursula focused on one of the four elements, that is; earth, air, water and fire. She focused on fire and did so very creatively. This is a wonderful example how a simple music bed can add so much depth to a photo essay.

Lesley (not spelled with an ie) Fisher took the “every day” of India and made it special. She covered the ubiquitous chai shop. Usually just a hole in the wall that is so unremarkable, you can walk by and never see it. Yet Lesley not only saw it, but made a wonderful essay to show to the world.

Finally, our last essay was created by Paula Bulancea. Paula decided to step out of the box and shoot everything in a vertical or portrait format. For slide show like these it is often best to have everything in a horizontal format. This gives continuity to show. It’s visually jarring to see a slide show proceed from several horizontal images, to a vertical, then back to horizontal images. Yet, by creating the whole show in a vertical format, Paula was able to pull it off. She’d heard that many older people come to Varanasi to live out the remainder of their days and die on the banks of the Ganges. In her research she actually didn’t find this to be the case, but she did uncover an interesting segment of the society, that of the aging residents of Varanasi.

Remember, you have an opportunity to own the software that these people used to create these shows. Just go to the comments of the post found HERE and tell me what story you would create an slide show on if you owned SoundSlides Plus. Check back tomorrow announcing the winner on this blog.

GIVEAWAY + Review: SoundSlides Plus

admin — Mon, 17 May 2010 04:00:49 +0000

This week we will be looking at what it takes to create a well done and communicative multimedia photo essay. I will be introducing you to some of tools it takes to create these effective presentations. We’ll also be taking a look at the type of photos you need in an essay to build the story up and keep the interest of the viewer.

As far as tools go, one of the most effective tools for integrating photos and sound into a slide show is an application called SoundSlides Plus. I have use it on almost all my slide shows. I also give demos of the software out to my workshop and most of the NGOs I coach. SoundSlides is a very intuitive, simple and effective tool for presenting your photo essay or simple slide show to the world. I’m excited to be able to give away a free copy of the full version of SoundSlides Plus to one of my lucky readers. I’ll tell you at the end of this post how you can have your chance to win a copy of SoundSlides Plus. But, before that, I want to give you a quick overview of the application.

When you open the application the first thing you see is a request for you to either open an existing project or create a new one (see fig 1). Let me create a new show just for this demonstration. We’ll title this demo “New Kumbh Mela” (fig 2). SoundSlides then creates a folder and some essential files that it will need to produce your slide show. Now you’re given the option to load your images and sound file (fig 3). Click on the JPG button and navigate to where your images are held. SoundSlides works only with JPEGs. Once you load all your images is now time to load any audio file you want to use. Simply navigate to where your audio file is held and upload it (fig 4). As far as audio formats go SoundSlides works natively with MP3s. After loading the JPEGs and audio files, the main window of SoundSlides opens. Here is where you will do all the editing of your shows timing and image placement as well as other things like captioning.

Believe it or not you’re about 80% done. Now all you need to do is drag and drop the thumbnails of your images into the positions you want them (fig 5).Once arranged like you want, there is a handy little option found under the tools menu that allows you to spread your images out equally (fig 6). If you don’t want your images playing all at the same rate, you can drag the edge of an image in the time line to lengthen or shorten the amount of time it shows (fig 7). At this point, if you wanted to show your slide show you could. Basically it’s done. Easy Peasy, Lemon Squeezy.

Even though your slide show may be technically done, you probably want to tweak it a little more. There are a few more ways to tidy it up and to make it look a little bit more professional. One option is to add captions to each image. If you have captioned your images prior to importing them there is a good chance that the information is in the metadata of the image file and if it is SoundSlides will read it. So extra work on captioning may not be needed. If you haven’t captioned your images before hand, it’s not a problem. SoundSlides gives you a window called “Slide Info” here you can add captions to each slide (fig 8).

SoundSlides provides users with some pretty basic slide show templates in a “Template” window (fig 9) or you can create a custom template (fig 10). The template is really just creates the HTML code for the player and web page for your show. In the template window you have options to tweak the color of the background, the text, whether to have captions showing by default, whether to show the scrub bar or not and many other options (fig 11). The next window to be concerned about is called, “Project Info”. Here users are given space to write in the title of the show as well any credits and copyright information (fig 12). Then, the last window is the “Audio” window. This window simply give you the option reload or delete the audio that you have in the program (fig 13). This comes in handy when you realize your audio is too long or too short or you just didn’t feel like it was appropriate and you want to change it out for a different audio bed.

Up to this point you have only been able to see your show within the application’s main window. But wouldn’t you like to preview it on a big screen, the way others will see it? Now comes the fun part. Just hit the test button (fig 14) at the bottom of the page and watch SoundSlides create a web page featuring your slide show (fig 15). If you like what you see and everything seems to be the way you want it, the next step is for you to publish it. To publish the show all you have to do is hit the export button (fig 16) and SoundSlides will export your slide show to a folder called “publish_to_web”. You will find this folder located within the project folder (fig 17). Rename publish_to_web to whatever you want it called in the URL (I called mine “kumbh_short”) and then just load it to your server and your done. Click this LINK to see the show I produced for this demo hosted on it’s on page. If you are familiar with the shows I produce here for this blog you know I usually embed them into my blog posts. To do that, SoundSlides has provided a page to create a custom embed code for your work. You can visit that page HERE.

What if you don’t want an interactive show like we have created for this demo? What if you want a simple video of your slide show? Well, the good folks at SoundSlides have provided a link HERE for you to upload your show in a zip file. They will then convert it for you for free. You will be emailed a link where you can download a MP4 version of your show.

Like I said, pretty darn easy. Of course being so easy, there are some drawbacks to the application. Things that I hope will be improved in later versions. SoundSlides doesn’t handle subtitles very intuitively. It uses something called “lower thirds” and it is very clunky. If you have to make changes to the length of a slide in the middle of the show it can be completely devastating to any slide that falls after the one you’re adjusting. The time line gets completely messed up. The workaround on is to put the time line navigator bar (for lack of a better term) over the picture you’ve just increased or decreased the time of, then go up to the menu bar and choose the option under Tools, ” Spread remaining images equally”. This is not perfect but it helps.

I’ve been told by the folks at SoundSlides, that an upgrade is coming out soon and it will have the option for creating embed code right in the player. That will be really nice for sharing your work. I would love to know what other options and changes are coming out in the next version.

Okay time to explain the giveaway. You now know the basics of how to create a SoundSlides multimedia show. So now, I want to hear from you how you would use SoundSlides? I would like you to write in the comments section on this page a very short description of a project or story you might tell using SoundSlides. All entries must be posted by Thursday May 20th, at 12 am Penang, Malaysia time ( GMT +8). I will then announce the winner on Friday’s blog post. Tell your friends; Tweet this on the wibiya bar below and tell your FaceBook friends this competition is running. Let’s spread the word!

Multimedia: The Last Hat Maker

admin — Tue, 11 May 2010 05:25:40 +0000

Living in Penang has been fun and compared to Kashmir quite easy. But, the one sad part for me is I feel I’m here just in time to see a lot of the culture that is so rich in Penang disappear. Remember The Last Lantern Maker that I shot pictures of a few months back? I went back to continue the story and he’s gone now. His building has been gutted and nothing but a shell remains. Maybe he set up shop somewhere else, but my guess is, he’s done.

About the same time I was covering the last lantern maker, I was told of a man who makes traditional Malaysian hats and that he is the last of his breed as well. The hats are traditional Malaysian caps called Songkoks. They’re made of stitched paper, satin and velvet. To be sure, there are other Songkok makers in Malaysia, but he’s the last one in Penang. When I went by his shop there was a sign was posted saying he was “Out of Station” in India. His name is Haja Mohidin and he is a Mamak or Muslim Tamil and has been doing this trade since the early 60s. Last Wednesday I was with a friend walking in old Georgetown and noticed that his shop is open. We stopped and fortunately I had my camera with me, however I only had my 50 f1.2 with me. I suppose if you are only going to have one lens on your camera and walk into a 12′ x 12′ shop to photograph a Malaysian hat maker, that’s the lens to have.

It was the first time I’ve ever used this lens. I have to say it does have a significant margin of error, not as bad as the 85 f1.2 but there were plenty of unfocused and soft images after I was done. Of course, that may say more about me than it does about the lens I was using. I went back yesterday and recorded some audio and shot a few more pictures of him with my 17 – 40 f4. I ended up only using one of the 17 to 40 images in the essay, the rest of the images are all from the 50 f1.2. I hope you enjoy this short essay on the Last Songkok Maker of Penang.

Multimedia: Wasim The Varanasi Sari Maker

admin — Thu, 06 May 2010 06:35:39 +0000

One of the assignments we gave our last Lumen Dei workshop participants was to create a short, two minute multimedia photo essay on anything or anyone as long as it was in Varanasi. They were to use Soundslides, but we would provide the audio bed for them. The assignment was to be shot the two days we spent in Varanasi. Gavin and I will be posting some of the participant’s shows in the future. All of them did very well.

This show was the one I made. I found it interesting that though Varanasi is known as a holy Hindu city, it has a Muslim population of over 665,000. The Muslims of the city are often over looked by the throngs of tourist that visit every day. Yet they contribute richly to the culture of this great city. I hope you enjoy.

The Power of The Photograph

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:28:17 +0000

I found this link off a blog I follow, Garr Reynold’s Presentation Zen. Garr is all about how to communicate your vision and story to others. Mainly through the use of presentation software like Power Point or Keynote. Garr knows how to do it right and he certainly know the power of the image. I have been trying to teach to NGOs the this concept for the past year. That was what the whole trip to Iraq was about. Below is a great example of this. I am sure you will be moved by this as I was.

The Last Lantern Maker

admin — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 05:55:33 +0000

Sometimes there are days that nothing seems to get done. This time that day lasted a whole week. I’ve started 100 projects and finished none. By Wednesday, I’d had enough and decided to grab my cameras and just go out and chase an idea I have had for about six months.

There’s an old man that lives in downtown Georgetown here in Penang. He is the last of a dying breed, a paper lantern maker. They say there are only two of them left in all of Malaysia: one in the state of Malacca and the other here in Penang. Back in November, I went with my wife to shoot an essay of the man here in Penang. He was sick and so nothing was happening at his shop. All his supplies were all packed away. His old shop looked as if a slight breeze would turn it all to dust at any given moment, as if some Hollywood set designer had come in and strategically placed cobwebs all over to give an old, forgotten feel. Only, this was real: The layers of dust that blanketed the shelves of forgotten cloth were real; the old tattered lanterns that hung from the ceiling and lay decaying on the shelves were real. The only thing missing were the ghosts.

This past Wednesday, I went back to try again to do the essay. When I arrived, the door was bolted shut and there was a sign posted on it saying he had moved. The building was condemned and would soon be torn down. My heart sunk.

As I was leaving, thinking that I might never find him again, he suddenly pulled up in his old car, full of supplies. He smiled at me, walked up to the door, unlocked it and walked in. He told me he was still sick. Apparently it is his heart. I shook my head and then as cautiously as I could, asked him when he thought he might be making lanterns again. He said he didn’t know, but that I was welcome to come back anytime. Apparently, he is not moving quite yet.

I told him I felt it was important that I take pictures of his work and of him creating these lanterns, because he was a national treasure. He smiled a toothless smile and said, no he was too old to be a national treasure. I chuckled and told him that national treasures were usually old. I walked back into his shop and snapped a few pictures. Nothing had changed in 50 years. Why would it?

There was a few ancient bundles of some objects wrapped in old tattered Chinese newspaper. When I asked what they were, he shrugged his shoulders. They had been there for years and he had no idea what was inside. He had not touched them in 5, 10, maybe even 20 years. For me that seemed inconceivable; for him, they were a shrine or a monument to something long gone.

I have to keep returning to his old shop, I have to finish this quest.

I want to make my own monument to The Last Lantern Maker.

Jessica Courtney

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:31:29 +0000

Yesterday I received a lot of positive response on Hebers Vega’s multimedia essay. Today I want to highlight one more student, Jessica Courtney with the Preemptive Love Coalition. Jessica, along with her husband Jeremy and other staff work hard to bring life saving surgery to Iraqi children. The story is an amazing one and worth listening to in it’s entirety. I interviewed Jeremy Courtney some time back on this blog. You can listen to the complete interview HERE.

Jessica, like most of my students is not a photographer nor did she know the first thing about Lightroom or multimedia production. This was all new to her. Jessica got excited because she found a way that she could help tell their children’s stories. The essay found here is about a baby named Leah. Not only does Leah have a life threatening heart problems, she has Down syndrome. The questions and decisions facing Jessica and the staff of Preemptive Love are not issues I would ever want to deal with.

While I was with them, I was flabbergasted at the many, many times people came up to either Jessica or Jeremy saying they or someone they knew had children with heart problems. We’ve all heard of “cancer clusters”. Areas where pollution, like factory waste, has caused high amounts of cancer to show up in communities. This is similar. It is like clusters of heart related issues in and around the Norther Iraq region. The only feasible explanation seems to be it’s relation to the many chemical attacks carried out by Saddam during the Iraq Iran war (see the Halabja post). Please listen to the short story told by Jessica titled “Leah’s House”. Comments are welcome.

Heber Vega

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:33:12 +0000

Note: There seems to be a bug with the Soundslides Plus player. The first few captions are bleeding past the edge of the screen. If viewed full screen this problem goes away.

To review; I have seen that many NGOs (Non-Government Organizations aka not-for-profit organizations), especially the smaller ones, have less financial resources to be able to bring a pro photographer to fly into their country, shoot images for them for a few days. The funds just are not there. So I came up with this magical idea of teaching the NGO to “eat their own dog food” as it were. That is – every NGO lives by the old adage that “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day or teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime.” So I came up with this brilliant idea to teach NGOs how to fish. I am trying to teach the smaller NGOs (or larger ones if they want) to learn to see their stories, shoot the images and then tell the story through a photo essay that they can post on their own website. This past trip to Iraq was a chance to try this out. I had three teams ready to learn how to do just this.

So the assignment was that each student had to come up with a photo essay by the end of the 5 day course. This was harder than I expected and I learned a lot that I will change the next time I do this. For one, not all the NGOs had their projects in the same location that the class was held. Some had their work many miles away and made it impractical for them to do an assignment that related to one of their projects. So several just picked good stories that they could tell that would give the the practice. Such as Heber Vega with Millennium Relief and Development Iraq.

Heber and his team run an amazing women’s center in Suleymaniye. I wish it had been running while I was there. The building was amazing and the programs seemed well run. But it was closed for several reasons not the least of which was it was winter and the center was not heated. So Heber decided to do his essay on a former Kudish Peshmerga Freedom Fighter he knew in the city. For his first essay I think Heber did an outstanding job. He bit off a huge chunk as he decided to do a essay that used captions. This is not easy to do in Soundslides Pro. But I think he pulled it off. Tell me what you think?

Halabja

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:48:50 +0000

I have made it back home. Back to my wife and my child and my bed. I am going to take a few days to try to reconnect and get my health better. I had rough case of bronchitis the whole time I was gone. Physically this was one of the hardest I have ever been on.

A few quick points. In the next few days I will be posting two of the essays my students made. I know you will enjoy them.

The last day my students; the folks from Millennium and the Preemptive Love Coalition took us to Halabja. My guess is you have never even heard of it. You probably know it, just not by name. Halabja was the Kudish village that Saddam Hussein bombed with mustard gas. Actually three tyes of gas. You probably didn’t know that he gave the gas was fruit scented so that the kids would breathe it in deeply. Experts think that Saddam Hussein’s 281 chemical attacks and experiments on the Kurds of northern Iraq contribute to the high rate of life-threatening heart disease among children in the region today. Enter the Preemptive Love Coalition. Jeremy & Jessica Courtney along with Ruth Simpson and others work to bring life saving surgery for these kids. Jessica made a touching essay that I will be posting in the next day or two Until then here are some quick snaps from my day at Halabja. By the way, Chemical Ali, Saddam’s master mind behind the attacks, was executed just two days before I arrived.

The Digital Trekker Blog » Multimedia

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