Pixiq

The last few months have been interesting as I’ve been getting my feet wet in video. Well, not just my feet, it’s more like the full Monty. Now understand I’ve avoided video for many years, always with the arguments that stills are what works for me and that our collective brains are wired for stills. I always brought up the examples of great, iconic still images that we all remember and fixate on, even though film and/or video exists of that scene. Like Joe Rosenthal’s raising of the flag in Iwo Jima. Or Eddie Adams famous execution in Viet Nam. Or Nick Ut’s photo of the screaming girl running naked down the road after a napalm attack. Or Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby. All of these iconic photos have a video or film taken at the same time. We are wired in such a way that the stills resonate more with us than the motion.

Well that was my story and I stuck with it for years. Today, I feel I have to change that tune for several reasons. One is that we have a new generation that has grown up with much more visual stimuli than ever before and I think their brains are evolving and being rewired to think more in a YouTube/Vimeo world. Another factor that got me thinking is the lower cost of displays. The cost of displays and the need to have content will drive more video than any new DSLR or camcorder equipment ever will. Technology has many times changed how we view the world, especially through art. Guttenberg’s press started that, the industrial revolution added on, and the age of silicon pushes it out further.

I was in the Beijing subway going between stations when I saw a series of screens, between the stations, in the dark tunnel, all set up so when viewed it looked like a very short movie ad. It must have been 30 to 50 screens all lined up. I really don’t remember much other than being blown away. In the New York City subway system, the only thing that you see moving between stations might be rats. Seeing this display of displays has me thinking that the cost is coming down so fast (think ala Compact Flash Cards or hard drives) that the screens will be soon ubiquitous. They will multiply like rabbits in heatand be everywhere. And they will want to be fed content. All those screens will need content to keep people interested and engaged. Will it be stills? To a small degree I’m sure. Mainly because they can “move” stills with Ken Burns type effects, to keep it from being stagnant. Video is what will really feed them. So just like that guy telling Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate in the ‘60’s where the future was- “Plastics”, today he’d be saying “Video”.

Seeing what I believe to be the future, I’ve embarked on learning what I think will be the “Photoshop” of the next decade or two- Adobe Premiere Pro. Why not Final Cut Pro? Well, frankly, while FCP is the current gold standard in digital editing right now (unless someone wants to argue Avid), Premiere is much easier to me as a Photoshop user and I think it has a chance of dominating the field. The “much easier” is what got me started. And I have to say, once you get over that initial hump of learning the basics, it’s a heck of a lot of fun and keeps the creative juices flowing. Finding out that shooting video digitally also means processing and using effects are a lot like working with stills in Photoshop. Getting a “look” in a video as you do in a still, is very intoxicating for me. Bumping contrast and exposure with an RGB curve in a video when I’m telling a story, is just plain heaven for me.

So working with my Canon 5D MARK II for some video, my Canon Vixia camcorder for more video, and throwing in some stills from the 5D, and you have all the ingredients to produce a wonderful story to tell in video. Who knows, maybe one day I can make it big, like making the screens between stations on the Beijing subway line.

Watch here for further updates in my new adventures, the videos, like being a fly on the wall at the Greg Gorman Workshop, or seeing the fun stuff in the George Eastman House Museum’s Gift Shop. Being a fly on the wall at some of these places says much more than just a still image and written words.

Future videos will basically be video stories about my still photography world. My worlds collide.