Next MediaMash London | Monday 29th October 2012 | 7 - 10pm

Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG

Want to chat about an idea, show some photographs you’ve recently shot, a finished project or just come and hang out with other photographers? MediaMash is a monthly event where you can talk to your peers and receive feedback about your work.

The evening consists of photography and multimedia screenings at the beginning, followed by photographers breaking off into smaller groups, sharing and giving feedback on each others work. Its a night for photographers to get a fresh perspective on their projects, talk about ideas and work through problems they are having and to generally network with other photographers.

It’s relaxed and informal, and a BYOB! although there will be wine available for thirsty photographers.

GET YOUR FREE TICKET BELOW 

 See the photos HERE

COMMENTS

‘MediaMash provides a relaxed setting for photographers to get feedback and critic on their work by other photographers. It’s a chance to lay out your prints or flick through your laptop and, in small groups, get peer to peer support on your work.’(Rajan Zaveri, Firefly Photofilms)

'I want to say how great it was and how delighted I am to have found such an enthusiastic group of photographers with whom I can talk about ideas, techniques, events…The discussions at the tables were rich, deep, engaged. The kind that gives you hope in youth and make you want to trust again in the dynamism of some individuals.’ (Julien Frentzel, Photographer and Writer)

'I had a fantastic time over the MediaMash and I think it is a great great way to discuss our work and artistic views. It had a relaxed atmosphere with lots of enthusiasm as well.' (Cátia Sousa, Photographer and Director)

We find ourselves in interesting times. No matter how you examine current Journalism there is no clear answer to where it is going. The continuous, new advances from all sides of the spectrum has made impossible to see how the medium will evolve. Some of these advancements have pushed old forms of journalism in new directions. As the Print vs. Online debate continues, the New York Times has created a pay wall for their online content. The Guardian (in the next few months) is going digital first. Although this does not mean either paper will stop it’s print version, there is a growing focus on the digital mediums over the print.

This move leads to questions of how it will affect current journalists. With newspapers cutting down on staff numbers and taking on more and more articles from digital contributions will professional journalists still have a role in the Digital Age? With the increase in citizen journalism, what are the issues in regards to quality reporting? And by focusing on what is essentially a free market how will Newspapers generate revenue and continue to run?

Digital has also changed the very essence of reporting through social medias such as Twitter and Facebook. The managing editor of the Washington Post said he would not employ any journalist who didn’t have a twitter and facebook account. And although these advancements have made reporting almost instant from anywhere in the world, what steps are being take to verify these facts to make sure the news we receive is accurate and fair.

In his article ‘The Future of Journalism’, Alan Rusbridger compares what the media is experiencing now to Gutenbergs invention of the printing press, 

‘books by the thousand were tumbling off the presses, and scholars were gripped by a kind of fever as they searched for new ideas about how to organise society. In tracts and treatises they furiously debated such issues as the nature of man, the powers of God, and the true path to salvation.’

The historian John Man illustrates Rusbridgers point further 

“Suddenly, in a historical eye-blink, scribes were redundant. One year, it took a month or two to produce a single copy of a book; the next, you could have 500 copies in a week. Hardly an aspect of life remained untouched … Gutenberg’s invention made the soil from which sprang modern history, science, popular literature, the emergence of the nation-state, so much of everything by which we define modernity.”

This leap into digital is a leap into the unknown and the unlimited. Just as scholars at the time of the printing press were overwhelmed by the possibilities and the amount of information available, Journalists are now too trying to come to grips with how they’re role is changing. The difference is that the printing press has kept mankind and Print going since the 1400's the jumps in digital communication, technology and media in the last twenty years have been revolutionary and, unlike the printing press, are occurring almost monthly. It almost becomes a race to keep up with what new form of communication everyone is on. With each new form of communication adopted by a publication or company their chances of increasing the readership numbers increases significantly.  The Guardian for example has just created a Tumblr account with the aim of sharing a selection of stories, photos, video and audio. Giving the public a chance to enjoy a purely media based guardian that they can connect to using their own Tumblr accounts.

Almost everyone now has the ability to broadcast multimedia from a small device that will fit into a pocket. With the millions of camera phones around the world it is no longer necessary for news organisations and publications to have a man on the ground when news breaks to get content. But while all of us have the technical power to report, the majority of us lack the training necessary to report accurately and fairly. The flip side to this of course is that if the story is big enough, such as Japan’s earthquake or white phosphorus attacks by Israel, content captured by citizen journalists will always be more sought after then a report of the aftermath by a journalist on the ground. Big stories write themselves. Journalists are becoming the curators of the information provided through social networking platforms, editors of the most accurate and relevant content.

In his article ‘The State of the Art of News’, Jeff Jarvis discusses what is happening to news.

 “We should be rethinking our definition of what is news — for many people, it’s not stories… and how it should be covered — not necessarily in articles — and how it is spread — that is the role of blogs and twitter — and not be stuck in old measurements. We are also just beginning to see experimentation with the form of news, moving past the articles the study measures. News is becoming more of a process than a product; it is being disseminated in new ways thanks to search and social and algorithmic links. News is changing.”

But where does this leave the journalists of yesteryear? In ‘When no News is Bad News’ David Crouch argues that a combination of the recession, free online content, increase in blogging and Media corporations greed has left journalists in their current situation. 

There is a chorus of predictions that the internet means the end of the newspaper. The rise of “citizen journalism” is given as another reason why journalists should give up fighting for their jobs. One newspaper boss says he can produce a better product “done by enthusiastic amateurs for next to nothing”.

What the blogger vs. journalist arguments will always comeback to is quality and balanced reporting. This is something that cannot be fully achieved by the majority of by user-generated content.  Malachi O’Doherty from the Belfast Telegraph disagrees with the idea that journalists and bloggers are in some kind of battle to succeed each other. Instead he believes that although the parameters of traditional journalism and user-generated content are constantly shifting they still have the ability to co-exist and even benefit one another.

“Blogging aspires to being the new journalism and journalism in the traditional media wants to argue that it has professional standards to defend. But there is one big flaw in the perception that bloggers and journalists are at war with each other; they actually feed off each other. They have a symbiotic relationship – and it is changing. It used to be that journalism was a coherent and well-demarcated profession.”

Using user generated content in conjunction with professional journalism provides a much more solid model to work on.  This applies the best of both to cover the full story. This leaves news organisations with the new responsibility of verifying uploaded and sent content that is constantly increasing. Once again due to the shifting advancements in digital technology and manipulation there is no set way to verify media content. Most publications will print and publish content only if it has been verified from a trusted or reliable source. The affects of publishing altered or manipulated content that is found out can be devastating to the reliability and readership of any news organisation. No one will trust reading news when there is a chance it could be untrue.

This is why the utmost care is taken when verifying the source of the content and why it differs to citizen journalism. Journalists and news organisations can be held accountable for their content, where as user generated content falls under opinion, may not be cited with the real name of the publisher or be completely anonymous.

David Crouch does not attribute citizen journalism as the only factor to why journalists are losing jobs. 

‘as in any economic crisis, the bosses are using it as a smokescreen to get their way. They exploit the dismal outlook to attack jobs, wages and conditions, and boost profit margins. When you look beyond the short-term panic – often being whipped up by newspapers themselves – at the underlying situation, you find that most papers are still profitable. The difference now is that profits are lower than before.’

Jarvis makes the comparison of profit margins between a newspaper corporation that would consider profits between 20-30% as the norm to Tesco which consider 6% as the norm. yes they’re completely different industries but the problem is newspapers have enjoyed huge profit margins for such long time a step down from the norm is just not accepted.

‘Take Johnston Press, for example, the owner of the Scotsman and 17 other daily papers in the regions, plus over 300 weeklies. The company slashed over 1,100 jobs last year alone – over 17 percent of its workforce. Yet its profit margin was 24 percent in 2008, down from 35 percent a few years back, but incredibly high all the same. And still it recorded a loss last year of £430 million. This brings us to the nub of the newspaper crisis – Johnston Press made this huge loss because it was up to its eyeballs in debt, the cost of which has shot up because of the credit crunch.”

Because of these losses in high profits and high debt, media corporations justify a smaller workforce and sourcing content from enthusiasts for free or at a subsidised rate.

Although this may, in business terms, make for a sustainable plan for the future, there are still several major problems. As Crouch puts it, the most obvious issue is the quality of information. 

“Citizen journalism is a fancy name for what readers have always done – provided information or eyewitness accounts. Journalism is a skill. For the voices of ordinary people to be heard, society needs people trained to compile, package and project stories into the mainstream.”

 What you losing by this free market of citizen journalism is a public service essential to democracy. Otherwise what is left opinion over fact, bias over impartiality, this is no basis for fair and accurate reporting.

Nicholas Lemann the Dean of Columbia University School of Journalism believes there will still be a future for publications and journalists. Lemann believes that although the news room team will get smaller the print material will become less perhaps almost exclusive, news organisations will still be able to turn over a profit.

“as a result the daily newspaper will be a more sort of elite product that offers more kind of specialized analytic information. It’ll feel more like a sort of mini New York Times. It’ll be pitched to advertisers as such. On the Internet you’ll have a free Home page that is more sort of general and has a big circulation. And then inside of that there will be what’s known in the trade as verticals or channels that are about very, very thinly shaved, specific interests, and you’ll probably have to pay to enter those”

Although charging for online content is speculated as the future norm for most publications, Alan Rusbridger at Guardian is refusing to charge for online content. 

“If you erect a universal pay wall around your content then it follows you are turning away from a world of openly shared content. Again, there may be sound business reasons for doing this, but editorially it is about the most fundamental statement anyone could make about how newspapers see themselves in relation to the newly-shaped world.”

The Guardian is instead investing in various other digital projects such as ‘Open Platform’ in conjunction with display advertising. The main problem Newspapers are facing is they have tried to apply the same business model in terms of advertising from print to digital. Compare the Google homepage to any newspapers home page. The difference is huge. Google know the best way of generating revenue is not by bombarding users with ads straight from the word go. Instead it uses their search criteria to target specific adverts that are relevant. The paywall is the same as the old model of subscriptions from print. This will only keep a small percentage of already loyal customers returning, instead of reaching a wider or new audience.

I believe that even though we may never settle into a stable system as it once was for the printing press, digital and print will find a way to co-exist. As will journalists and citizen journalists. It is not enough for a news organisation to invest in one form, the advantage and disadvantage of the Internet is that is limitless and constantly advancing. Although traditional methods of journalism still have a part to add in this transformation, they need to take on new ideals and methods that update with the trends of technology.

With each new advancement more people are being reached and more people will contribute. There will still be viable alternatives of revenue for news organisations and they will advance if they can find a way to shake the stigma of the old models they’re attached to. Methods will be developed to somehow cope with and communicate the overwhelming amount of content that is generated users and journalists alike. Traditional journalism is not dead it is evolving, what it changes into will only be revealed over time.

- Rajan Zaveri

Former Düsseldorf Academy student Thomas Struth’s photography work can currently be seen inPhotographs 1978 – 2010 at the Whitechapel Gallery, London. Born in 1954 the show is a retrospective of his work, showing a range of subjects from his black & white empty streetscapes to busy museums to Paradise’s and families around the world.

The Whitechapel being a ‘smaller gallery’ for the show, the selection was cut from 120 works to what appears in the space, apparently featuring a higher proportion of his newer works than previous destinations – like at K20 Grabbeplatz which had more than 60,000 visitors.

I recently attended a talk about his work. Here’s some notes of things I found interesting:

◦ He likes the temporariness of Tokyo.

◦ He had to be decisive at his shoot with Queen Elizabeth II & Prince Philip as usually he can spend all day with his subjects.

◦ He has no current interest in going back to the same place twice – he says he is not documenting as evidence.

◦ In terms of progress he believes that you ‘need to look backward before you can go forward’ and that there are two forms – technical and social-political progress.

◦ The works in his Paradise series were named chronologically – so Paradise 1 (from Daintree/Australia) was taken first.

◦ One of the first things that Bernd Becher said to him was ‘you have to notice who your friends are.’

◦ He had tests of his work done small and large to see which ones he preferred.

◦ He never used Photoshop, but now that he prints digitally he tends to play with saturation, lightening shadows and removing reflections.

Though I love his landscapes I was most captivated with some of his family portraits. It all started with the Johnstons who he stayed with in Edinburgh for three weeks. Another family – the Robertsons – involved a longer process of talking to them over time and showing them contact sheets of other shoots he had done. He finally photographed them after a lunch when he sent everyone else sent off on a walk. One family he photographed again at their request, but he found he preferred the images from that second shoot and that the narrative changes completely. They all fit quite nicely into one of the upstairs spaces.

Also featured in the show is newer work. This work shows his fascination with technology and architecture visiting destinations like the Kennedy Space Center, a nuclear fusion reactor and a submersible rig in South Korea (which he said reminds him of Gulliver from Gulliver’s Travels.)

Following the Paul Graham’s retrospective in the same location, it’s a must-see show with its large prints and a variety of subject matter. It only opened last week so can be viewed until the 16th September 2011. Tickets are: £9.50/£7.50 concessions (incl. Gift Aid donation) £8.50/£6.50 (excl. Gift Aid). Whilst you’re there you can also go and visit Government Art Collection: At Work. 

Jocelyn Allen - www.jocelynallen.co.uk

 
Two minutes.

That’s all you get.

Two whole minutes to change someone’s perception of the world.

That seems like an impossible task, but in a world of fast food, cars and money; people expect their information to keep up. As the breakfast around the table with a cup of Joe and a newspaper is being replaced by caramel macchiatos in rush hour on the way to work, the way of information needs to be quicker… two minutes quick!

As a photojournalist, I have always sided that visuals are a clear and quick way of getting a certain point of view across. This past year, I’ve only confirmed my belief in photography and video as a powerful tool for awareness.

Small Change Fund, a non-profit charitable organisation that supports small and local grassroots organisations all across Canada, had me join their team as the multimedia intern. They had an idea for a campaign called the Seven Small Wonders of Canada and included seven selected projects to be showcased on the website.

The main problem we found with the projects was that a lot of these organisations were very small and did not have material to showcase on the site. Low quality pictures with a couple of handy cam interviews were all we had to put a campaign together. I was then hired in order to visit all seven of the projects in order to really get some good information.

I had the opportunity to visit each project and create videos, take pictures and write blogs about my experience. I made videos for each project which were put on the website in order for people to see first hand the projects they were donating to. The ability to have video for each project was truly special and had a direct impact
on most of the projects being fully funded.

Video gives you the ability to see and experience information from all over the world in minutes. Speed is one benefit of video—you can put a lot of information about an organisation in a video and still have it be captivating to the viewer. But it is not the only benefit. One of the greatest joys of my job is the ability to have people tell their own stories. I believe that having people tell their own story is much more powerful and a real way to evoke empathy in your viewer.

While working for Small Change Fund, one the projects was in the province of New Brunswick. I was on the Acadian Coast where the people are officially bilingual. Literally meaning they will switch from French to English, back to French and then back again to English all in the same sentence! It is very much a part of their culture and their uniqueness. The project I was there to report on was also about their unique coast and how they were going to have to deal with the inevitability of coastal erosion due to climate change. I decided to really show emphasise all these points in my video. I utilised the people that lived on the coast, hearing their stories of floods, friends and romance that the coast had to offer. I heard these stories in both French and English. Only by capturing video of this project were you able to see and hear the unique and corky feel that I witnessed only by coming to this area. It was a very special place and the people had such as great energy that having the video to pair with the project really made people want to donate.

Video can bring a project to life like it did for the one in New Brunswick, but it can also save lives, like the project I did while in the North West Territories. The Revisit to the Berger Inquiry project was a great example of the power of journalism. For a little Canadian history, the original Berger Inquiry was a report that was revolutionary for its time 35 years ago. The proposed Mackenzie Valley Pipeline was to be built in 1974 and was to be the biggest private construction project in history. It was to be built from the Beaufort Sea to markets in the south but before it was to be built a report had to be made on the impact it would have on the North’s economy, environment and people. Justice Thomas Berger was appointed to do this report but no one expected the results he gave. The report ultimately stopped the pipeline from being built and showed that the people of Canada are important. Berger embarked on a three-year mission across the Arctic talking to the local people and what the pipeline would do to their way of life. The hearings that followed showcased the voices of the Dene people and ultimately stopped all plans on a pipeline.

Now, once again the plan for a pipeline is moving forward. The Dehcho Devisional Education Council believed the solution was to educate. They invited original participants from the Berger Inquiry to share their photos, audio and experience of the inquiry with the Dehcho children. All along the Mackenzie River, reporter Drew Ann Wake, photographer Linda MacCannell, journalist Peter Gorrie, lawyer Michael Jackson and creator of maps of Dene land use Elizabeth Hardisty, talked and did workshops with the Dene youth to connect them back to their ancestors and teach them how to active citizens in their communities. The workshops that the students received consisted of radio and print journalism, videography and photography. In this example, video was not just helping the project, but video was a large part of the project itself. It is giving youth all across the Mackenzie River the skills to record their culture, critically ask questions, and ultimately make them more aware and educated about their role in keeping their land pipeline free.

The Small Change Fund campaign was a great way for me to show how much video can help an organisation. The donations rose after the videos were posted to the website and in some cases completely funded! People now could see first hand the land they were helping save, or the youth they were funding to go to camp, or the supplies they bought for the canning workshops. With one small video, the people receiving and donating money are on the same page of where it is going and proof of what it will be used for-- and in the non-profit world that is a huge advantage.

Videos give you faces and voices of the people directly impacted and that connection to the story cannot be faked. As a photojournalist, I strive everyday to help people tell their stories because I truly believe that it is important. So I challenge you to watch a video…

Two minutes

That’s all you get

Two whole minutes to change YOUR perception of the world.

The DSLR film revolution continues to boom. It doesn’t take long on a walk around London before you bump in to another mini film crew utilizing the new found technologies available to them, namely the cannon 5d mkii among others. These  combo photo and film cameras have managed to convince photographers that they are now producers, able to do everything from script-writing to post production. This is all well and good in an age where speed is essential and budgets are low, but it is very easy for those of us educated in one field to not fully appreciate the technical attributes of others.

 My biggest grievance is that born and bred photographers often fail to recognize that sound is a very similar beast to photography; as photography works in the limitations of thevisual light spectrum, sound operates with in the audiblefrequency range.  We shouldn’t regard one as more important than the other. I have heard it said many times that “a good audio track makes or breaks a film”. This is usually the sentiment of filmmakers or soundmen, not photographers starting to branch out to film, but I can’t stress it enough

Technology moves at a phenomenal rate now and it would be counter productive to review every bit of kit that comes out just for the sake of it. However, now and then something comes along (like the 5d mkii) that not only offers people what they need, but also opens up a whole new learning experience.

The zoom H4n is categorised as a field audio recorder but is capable of much much more–in fact, way too much for the purpose of this article. It’s got built in XY axes microphones adjustable from 90 degrees to 120. It’s capable of the basic effects used by most sound engineers during mixing such as limiters, compressors and lo cut filters. It can be used as an audio digital transformer interface (ADT) with your computer, meaning you could used it as a pre-amp direct into your sound editing software. It has a tuner and a metronome built in with all sorts of guitar effects like reverb distortions, phaser and flangers, a multi track recording mode and two XLR / jack inputs with phantom power.

But let’s get back to the point. If you’re a photographer most of that means nothing and your idea of recording an audio track consists of pressing the big red button on the front and just accepting that that’s it. Fortunately this approach with the H4n can actually produce stunningly good results. Lets go back to school for a minute and look at a couple of the fundamental basics of sound. Don’t worry, you will still only need to press the big red button at the end of this and get away with it. But just think what you could produce if you looked at your sound with as much criticism as you would give a final edit for an exhibition.

One big problem with recording a good stereo image is the necessity to record with two tracks, so two microphones are needed. You can equate it to the difference between a telescope and a pair of binoculars. Through the telescope you only have the one point of reference to the position of let’s say, a tree in a field, and therefore are not able to judge its position any more than the fact that you know roughly how big a tree is. Through the binoculars your eyes are able to look at the tree from two perspectives. This is called triangulation and it is what gives us the ability to judge distance.

The exact same principle applies to our ears.

There is another thing we have to add to the equation when recording sound. It’s called phase. You can be in phase (good) or out of phase (not good).

In phase means that the audio waveform of your two stereo tracks goes up and down at the same time. In an out of phase recording the waveforms are offset, so as one goes down the other goes up. This effectively causes the two waveforms to cancel each other out slightly and you end up with a kind of flat, dampening down of the track.

Ok,

So you are about to shoot an interview with your stereo recorder in the same position as the camera, the interviewee stands center frame there for the sound has exactly the same distance to travel to your two microphones. But let’s say that there are other interesting things happening in the shot.  For example a man is busking to the left-hand side of the shot. Because of his position the sound wave  reaches ( on recorder where the  microphone placement is side-by-side) the left hand microphone first and then the right hand microphone. This slight delay between the two microphones is called the lag time, and it is because of this that we get out of phase recordings. In the case of the zoom H4n  the microphones are arranged in what is  referred to as an XY axes, this means that the two microphones are placed one on top of the other at 90° to each other. Because of this arrangement the sound wave reaches both microphones at the same time.  This eradicates the  lag time and produces a stereo image that is in phase.

The XY axis set up is by no means unique to the H4n. It is a standard practice throughout the recording industry, and is as near to the front pages on how to record sound as correct exposure is to photography.  I regard the H4n  in the same way as my first SLR, a new and exciting tool in which to learn and progress to a  higher standard.

In a time where multimedia is the buzzword, we as independents cannot afford to be ignorant of such basic technologies and practices.  It is the understanding and application of these principles  that will allow us to shine out in this incredibly competitive industry.

Andy Ash - www.andyash.com

According to the International Energy Agency’s 2010 report, nearly 1.4 billion people live without electricity. What would it be like to live in a world without this source of power? How would this loss limit one’s experience and development? Peter DiCampo’s latest project, Life Without Lights which was recently exhibited in London, aims to illuminate such a situation in the rural areas of northern Ghana where daylight starts at 6am and ends at 6pm, leaving half the day in complete darkness for 40% of the country. Deciding only to photograph at night, the photographer’s work shows the problem at its most grim; how important parts of daily life are notable to function in a world where light fails.

Suggesting how vital electricity is to maintaining personal freedom, DiCampo's photographsexplore a world in which what people see and do has become limited through a lack of it.Tragically, in a country that is trying desperately to encourage internal growth, not having electricity means that rural villages in north Ghana are not able to attract the teachers, nursesand other essential services that are needed to maintain and build their communities. Inparticular the photographer’s work makes the problems with education poignantly clear: children’s study time is cut short; teachers opt to live in the nearby cities (where there iselectricity) and only come to teach once or twice a week: education and social mobility suffers. For me the most powerful images illustrate the difficulties of the people who try to deal with this issue: in one image a teacher attempts to grade some papers under the light of a single torch; inanother a group of children gather around a light to read the Koran in a mosque. DiCampo usesthe darkness that envelopes the villagers’ lives to highlight their status as a hidden, forgottenproblem: we are told that one village in northern Ghana had power lines installed in 2000 and yet the government still hasn’t connected them to a power source.

 Yet Living Without Lights also promotes solutions to the loss of electrical light. The project includes a very striking portrait series which explores the differences that solar poweredlight sources can make at night by using them as the lights for the portraits themselves. The photographers’ shrewdness can also be seen in the fact exhibition in London was funded bythe sustainable energy support group Ashden, who kindly supplied the solar powered torchesnecessary to see the work in situ (as the exhibition took place in a darkened corridor). However whilst sustainable energy sources do have a clear role to play in addressing the problem, andboth Ashden and DiCampo are playing an important role in promoting such a solution, the factthe energy poor in Ghana are simply not connected to the main grid is the major tragedy that desperately needs to be rectified.

Max Colson - www.MaxColson.com 

 I first came across Nelli’s work at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2010 as part of the reGeneration2 show. Following on from reGeneration the current round showcases eighty photographers, shortlisted from nominations by photography courses around the world.

Born in 1981 in Finland and having studied at Helsinki School, she has her own distinctive style that I was immediately drawn to at the show. When looking at so many works by different photographers it is hard to remember them all, but on seeing her work again at Guernsey Photography Festival I remembered it straight away and was pleased to see a larger selection.

Now with a solo show Else and Viola at Next Level Projects, London which runs until the 28thAugust, you can see her beautiful large scale black and white portraits. One of the great things about her work is that some of them could be mistaken for very old portraits, however some offer clues that help give it away. My favourite for this is Anni Maria at 24 with Donna, which features a young woman and a dog sat on the sofa. She is wearing an old style dress, but her lip piercing tells us that she was either a very rebellious woman for her time or that the image is not as old as it appears.

A nice surprise was seeing a couple of pieces that I had never seen before and with her finishing off a Photography MA at the LCC I look forward to seeing what she does next.

It’s really worth going to see and look out for the final instalment of Midnight Sun: Finnish Contemporary Photography at the same lovely, intimate space.

Some links for Nelli Palomäki:
http://www.nellipalomaki.com/
http://www.aperture.org/exposures/?p=9537– interview with reGeneration2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XE2zKVv6fs&;;feature=related – interview at Guernsey.

Jocelyn Allen - www.jocelynallen.co.uk

Frontline Club in Paddington recently played host to a talk by Brian Storm . He is the founder of MediaStorm, a company that takes Digital Storytelling to a whole new level. In front of a room filled with traditional journalists, filmmakers, photographers and other media industry professionals; Storm gave a brief glimpse into the inner workings of his very successful company.

‘We’re creating a place where people are telling the kind of stories that need to be told, independent media is a great refreshing way to do that because the model is there to do it, the tools are their to do it’

MediaStorm is a company that works together with NGO’s, media professionals and commercial companies to bring to life projects that would otherwise be stuck in one medium. By combining still image, video, audio and even interactive content, MediaStorm don’t just show, they provide an experience. The company has covered many hard hitting issues such as rape victims from Rwanda, the effects of the diamond trade on the Republic of Congo, the impact of the food economy on local farmers in the US and the out of control pollution affecting our environment.

'If we’ve been able to make you laugh and cry in the same session, we know we’ve done our job well'

Storm shared some of the principles and methods he employs in all aspects of a project. Starting from an analysis of how to shoot, some ways of combining audio image and video. Moving to finding projects and presenting them, talking and quoting clients. All the way to monetising completed projects and ways to learn more through workshops and tutorials.

‘We codify what we’re doing and teach other people how to do it, and target it at educators and other people who want to start media companies just like us. We actually give our entire business model away, my advisory board is ape shit over this, and they ask me why am I doing this? And I say I don’t want to be alone in this process because I love this profession and if these guys can take it and further it that’s great. We’re not going to stand still we’re going to keep moving and get better but its not about one company trying to do this. It’s like can we take this idea, package it in a way that it can be replicated and spread’

If your looking to start up in multimedia video and want to get you bearings, head to the next talk by Brian Storm the details of which you can find here: 

http://mediastorm.com/train/calendar