Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
In 1993, while working in television, I taught select groups from our audiences to use small digital video (DV) cameras to tell their own personal stories for self-shot TV series.
In 2007, the advent of the iPhone was another game-changer. It became apparent, at least to me, that mobile technology, like DV cameras, would redefine the way we produced TV, even the way we did investigative video journalism. It was a lightbulb moment.
Once you have decided whether your phone is mojo-friendly — enough speed, power, and memory — you might consider the following mojo tools.
One of the first questions I’m asked during my training workshops is, “Can I do mojo on my phone?” “Not if you don’t have memory!” The next often asked question is, “Okay, which phone do I buy?”
Android is like a coalition winning the race on numbers, while iOS is a rich boutique shop going it alone. Are the cheaper Android phones any good? Absolutely. But do you need a new phone? The simple answer is if you can use your smartphone to produce your mojo story — shoot in low-light, run good camera and multi-layered video apps, and it has lots of memory — save your money. If not, you might need a new phone for mojo.
More than three billion smartphone users use more than six million apps to create and upload 500 hours of video every minute. Journalist Charles Feldman calls this 24/7 convergent clickstream an “information tsunami.” I see it as an opportunity and so does Sennheiser who has developed the series of mobile-friendly microphones featured in this series of articles on how to mojo.
Productions culminate in a shoot — a shoot results in the assets. Assets are delivered and badabing-badaboom a job well done. Professional photography in a nutshell, albeit oversimplified by a thousand degrees. Along the way are people, tools, and a ton of work. Amongst the must-have tools is the Production Book, a consolidated document of all production elements. If your shoot were a play, your PB would be its script. If a meal, the PB would be its recipe. If an IKEA dresser, the PB its instructions (but better).
The photo trickery of a levitation shot has been around for ages now, and is a great way to create a compelling image and get in a bit of Photoshop practice while you’re at it!
One of my favourite things is light painting with fire, and the idea of combining levitation into the mix was a fun challenge that was well worth the effort. Read on, and I’ll walk you through step by step how I pulled it off!
Hi, this is Jay P Morgan. Stop shooting on manual. This is when you should use auto ISO. That really comes into play when I’m doing sports, I want to stop children, I want to stop something that’s flying around really fast I go to auto ISO.
As a child during the 1980s, I grew up with a weekly diet of TIME magazine and the evening news. The famine in Ethiopia during the decade generated an endless stream of news filled with images of Black bodies, so much so that my entire conception of the continent was built off the tragedy of a single nation. To me, Africa was a desert wasteland of starving people – a thought conceived through photos.
Of course, Africa is hardly that. The second-largest continent with the second largest population boasts beaches, deserts, mountains, fertile farmland, pyramids, and wine country. And yet, images of abject poverty – particularly those of children – continue to perpetuate visual stereotypes of a place that inherited the racist moniker of “the dark continent” in the 19th century by Europeans seeking to justify imperialism and slave trade.
Keeping your pack as light as possible while documenting your adventures can be a real challenge. But with the newer GoPro cameras, as unbelievable as it sounds, considering their size you can actually capture awesome cinematic footage by simply changing some settings and filming like the pros.
I’ve posted a few natural light setups and techniques recently and although this setup isn’t as tricky or as involved to achieve as those, this is a nice little idea to play with if the occasion arrises. The good news is, you barely need any kit to make this work and truth be told, I was actually packing away my lighting gear when I saw this natural light pattern form on my scrim after a shoot. I quickly asked the model back and decided to grab a few frames as the naturally formed dappled light background looked amazing. Here’s how to get the same look yourself…
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