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Project: Marathon BTS

    Here it is! Finally, after more than a month of preparation, shooting, editing and not only, my project is over (sort of). I still have to share it as much as I can, but the images themselves are done. Here is just a demo picture, the rest are on flickr at this link: www.flickr.com/photos/spizdi/sets/72157644476912825/
    I prefer to put them on flickr for the added qualiy and for flickr's lack of compression. Hope you enjoy the images!

People's mentality on photojournalism

    First of, I want to start this post by saying that this is my opinion, you may think different. This short writing was determined by an accident I witnessed in the city.

    To give you a short description of what happened, a 40 ish year old man was cycling on the bike lane on Hero's Boulevard (Bulevardul Eroilor) in Cluj-Napoca, when he hit a car's mirror and crashed. The car was not moving, the fault was 100% on the cyclist. He landed face first, but he had no helmet. More people, including me, jumped to help him, turned him right face up, but at first he would not respond to what we were saying. A lady called the ambulance immediately, and after 5 minutes or so it arrived. Before it did, people were trying to keep the man still because he wanted to take his hand to his eye, but he had some glass around the eye from the car's mirror. Honestly, I think I saw the same man a couple streets ahead when he was getting on his bike. He seemed to stumble, and needed the whole width of the road to get on his two wheeler, but then he carried on.
   
    But I don't want to talk about the accident, this is not the point of this blog post. Five minutes after the paramedics arrived, I went away, like some more people did. Than I heard a couple of ladies saying "And those guys just sit there and film him, look at those jerks!" (I did my best to translate the phrase as accurate as I could in English). Going back to the accident, a guy with a video camera showed up. He probably was a journalist, because normal people don't own such a big and professional camera. He came to the scene after the paramedics arrived and the medic told everybody to stand back. Basicaly, he could do nothing to help. He didn't get into anybody's way, he was respectful towards the event.

    This old ladie's statement kind of made me ask some questions: Is what the guy did right or not?

    Here comes the part where I have to specify again that this is MY opinion, it may differ from person to person. As a photojournalist, your job is to capture the world around you as accurate as you can. And we all know this same world is full of both good and bad things. In such a case, I think that if you have the ability to help someone you should go and help him, forget you have a camera while you can still do something for that person. But, how I see it, since he could do nothing more to help the man, since the paramedics told everyone to back off, it's ok that he, basicaly, did his job. He captured images of an accident that has happened, and I don't see the "jerk" part in this.

    I think this mentality of calling people who document other people's hard moments "jerks" is wrong. Actually, for example, what this man did could help people realize why wearing a helmet is so important. We have to accept bad things happen and let the people who capture theese things tell a story from which we  can learn something for ourselves. I never agreed to stay away and photograph a bad moment if you have the oportunity to help. Just to prove this, some may know the famous picture of the eagle and the child, an image that won the Pulitzer Prize. (If you haven't heard of it, just google "eagle and child pulitzer prize") The author of the image left the scene right after taking the photograph, and then ended up regretting it, as his journal said. After all the critics he received, he comitted suicide some months later.

    This proves that helping a person in need is crucial, but I think that if there is nothing you can do for him/her, taking images, doing your job, is not a bad thing to do, and if it can help other people that see the images or video, why not? If this guy in the accident had a helmet, I bet he could stand up back again on his foot. People seeing this might realize how important the helmet is, and it might help someone in need.

    This is just my opinion, be free to leave yours in the comments below.

Cityscapes of my home town

    A couple months ago, after finishing shooting some landscapes, I walked through the city home with all the gear and, with a moment of sudden inspiration, I decided to take some night-time street images. This post ain't too much talking, I just want to showcase my work and get your opinion on it. You can find the higher quality images in here: www.flickr.com/photos/spizdi/sets/72157640416484185/

This is an image that's a bit different from the ones I took from the top of the hill, but I managed to save it in post, since the exposure difference between the sky and ground level was huge. It's different in the way that it's the only image from the hill which was not shot with a telephoto lens.

Light trails were not my goal, but in a busy city, at night, they are inevitable.

The same spot, just a different angle. I don't understand why people use star filters on their lenses, when you can get the same effect in camera at the right aperture.

Finally, I got pretty close to oncoming cars, I could feel the vibrations in the road as cars were passing by. This is the last image in the set, some more street shots are coming soon to the blog.

Thanks and don't forget to check out my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/tudoraxr and the      full res images on flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/spizdi/sets/72157640416484185/

Edit: I've got no idea why there are those white borders around my images, I'll sort them out soon.

Taking on a challenge

    Taking on a challenge can sometimes be a breath of fresh air. This is exactly what I'm trying to accomplish with a project I just started. I'm trying to get out of my routine and create something different, something that can make my mind think more.
    To be more specific, my cycling team is organizing a marathon called "Maratonul Fagetului" (link: http://maratonfaget.ro/index_ro.html). Normally, I would have been really determined to participate. It is a great track that any mountain biker would enjoy. But I had this idea of photographing the contest from a different perspective. At first, it was just a thought, nothing too serious. Later, the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. Until last week, when I decided I would drop participating in the marathon to accomplish this thing I've been thinking for a pretty long time.
    What exactly is the "thing" I'm trying to do? Every photographer at an event like this will try to get an image of every rider, the start, the finish, portraits of the winner and the end where the top 3 receive their prizes. They will try to catch the atmosphere, and the atmosphere is determined by the participants. The thing is, having experienced what organizing such a contest is like, I feel that sometimes the people behind the scenes don't get the credit they deserve. For example, there was a conversation on a forum one year ago about the fee being too high. Somebody complained and said they don't want to pay 50 lei (15 USD) for a shirt and a bottle of water they were going to receive in their starter package. The thing is, most people don't realize they receive so much more. In the end, somebody has to go out and mark the course at least one month before the contest, manage the website, search for sponsors, find somebody to do the timing, plus the overwhelming amount of decisions you have to make in the day of the marathon and the list goes on and on. I feel like these people don't get enough appreciation for their hard work.
     And here we are at explaining my project. I'm tying to do a photo story from the eyes of an organizer. I'm trying to capture the marathon in a way most people don't get to see, going behind the scenes and immortalizing meaningful moments, moments of happiness an joy or moments when you just want to give up. It's not going to be any longer than 100 images, even though I'm trying to keep somewhere in between 50 and 80 photographs.

     WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR IN AN IMAGE?

1. Let's take a typical image. A cyclist goes up to a feeding point and takes a glass of water while still riding his bike. That would make a pretty interesting sports picture, but that's not what I'm looking for. What I am looking for, instead, are the volunteers that arrived 3 hours earlier to set everything up and prepare the food and water for every single contest. That's some hard work these people do in order to help, and I plan on showing that to everybody.

2. Let's take another one. This one is a real classic. The winner crosses the finish line with his hands up in the air. Once again, it could make a great sports picture, but that's not what I want. What I would capture, instead, is the winner shaking the hand of the organizers, congratulating each other for the hard work.

3. Last example. Let's take a typical ultra wide image of the start-finish area, lots of people in the shot, plenty of activity. That's true, there is plenty of activity, but what most people don't think about is the effort of the people behind the scenes after the prize ceremony ended, when it comes up to gathering things up and cleaning the place. It's a really SLOW process, and the effort of staying from 5 AM to 2AM the next day, while working, is imense. 

    You see, this is what I am trying to focus on with this project. I want to tell the story of the organizer, and show people the pure hard work that has to be put in order for such an event to happen. I've been lucky to see this effort, so I want to share it with others, hoping that the people who complain about fees or minor issues would realize the time and energy invested in such an event is huge, and maybe give the people behind the scenes some credit for their work.

Are "old" stuff obsolete?

    If you watched my Youtube channel lately, you might see that my last 2 videos were focused on using old gear for getting the job done. To me, the biggest reason anybody would do that today is price. Old things get cheaper by time...(exceptions: Leica cameras and vintage stuff). At the same time, technology evolved so that, theese days, you can manage an entire Youtube channel from your phone. Just imagine... Film a video at 1080p on your smartphone, edit in, you guessed, on a smartphone, upload it and interact with your community from your smartphone.

    In the video above I'm comparing two cameras, mostly focusing on what an older camera (year 2004) can and can't do. Now think about this. You're in 2004. The first iPhone came in 2008, so we can't really talk about smartphones. If you wanted to show somebody your images on the go you had to allways carry a printed book with your portfolio, or be at your computer. The workflow was just so much more complicated back then. 

    Going back to the overall "theme" of this post. Theese old things I'm talking about won't make your job easier. Not even close. For example, in the video below I see how does an old microphone help your video production. To actually get to the point where you have the audio in your editor you have to: get batteries, turn it on, select the recording mode, plug it into a PC or Mac, open a sound recording software and then you finally have your audio track. Let's take a smartphone... Unlock smartphone, start an audio recording app, you're done! I don't think I have to say which is faster. 

    Theese days, the quality of almost everything has decreased. This applies from food to, why not, content. Technology helped more people produce content, but that doesn't mean it's quality content. Take google play store, for example. 85% of all apps in the play store are crap. Sure, the rest 15% is great, but compared to the crap apps out there, the quality ones are just a few. This is the exact situation of Youtube, but google's video sharing service has much more crap then the Play Store. And if you have two videos saying the exact same thing, the person watching it behind the screen will allways choose to see the one that has better audio/video quality.

    This old tech might help you produce more quality content. I really think theese days, in order to get noticed, you have to do quality stuff, not just stuff. Of course, technology advancements, lets say in the audio recording area, helped a lot of people create better content. But one thing that still keeps people from using that technology is price. If you look on it on paper, a ZOOM H1 costs 100 dollars. Might not seem much, right? If that was your only and most important expense, that audio recorder looks quite cheap for what it can produce. But many people can't justify 100 bucks for something like that. Here comes old technology.

    At its time, the microphone I present in the video above, probably costed a couple hundreds. Now, you can get it for 10 dollars. Now 10 dollars is way less than 100, right? This is a product that more people can afford and that helps improve content by a lot. 

    This was a clear example, but the same formula can apply to many more domains. To me, theese old devices can help improve quality. While the workflow will get slower, the bump in quality is huge. Of course, if you're a company producing this content you'll allways want to use the latest and greatest, which is perfectly justified. But if you're not, like most of us, you have to find ways to improve, no matter by how much, what you're doing in order to aspire to be the best at what you do.

If you liked the videos, please give a try to my youtube channel.My Channel

Thanks if you got it through the post, leave a comment to let me see what you think about this subject...

Filming a music video

    Ok, so it's not exactly a proper music video, but it is a bass cover of my friend, Stelian Saracut, doing this thing (with the bass of course). It has been great fun filming and editing it, especially because I learnt a lot in the editing domain. I feel more confident in editing my videos now, mainly because I did learn some new basic things.
    I was thinking of putting out a behinds the scenes type of video, but I'm not sure I have what to make it from. I was thinking of creating it from a timelapse we did while we were there and a series of "drwaings" to explain where were the lights placed and all of that... I mean, we'll see, who knows, maybe I'll do it...
    By the end of this week I'll be putting out my video about old DSLRs for new photographers, talking from my own experience of learning on a Canon 20D. But that's another video.
    Please check the video below and tell me what you think about it... Thanks and "see" you soon!