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A Slow-motion Music Video on a Digicam
Evenings with Arnie is a music video where I follow my nephew Arnav during his playtime on one fine overcast Summer evening at our home in Bangalore city. This is as simple as I can get with the description of this video 
.
Now I’ll get to things that are simple, but are often thought to be complicated – producing low-budget/no-budget videos and short-films!
Very mention of a video project brings into mind the visuals of a huge production crew. I have never been part of those big projects, but I have single-handedly executed quite a few multimedia and video projects on my own. It is difficult but achievable to handle a video project on your own or with a small crew.
It has been nearly two years since I made my first short-film with a 2-member crew. When I first started producing multimedia projects, I embarked on journey to find low-cost cameras, software and accessories that will aid independent film-makers and multimedia journalists like me. Initially, I found Soundslides on which one could produce beautifully crafted audio slide-shows. My project Fistful of Dreams was produced on Soundslides. Later, my continued search had led me to Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 15, a video-editing software from AVID that had the capability to edit directly the raw video footage from my Canon EOS 5D Mark2 Digital SLR camera. Since, then I have produced quite a few multimedia and video projects on Pinnacle for my clients and also as independent projects.
In my previous posts, I had written on how I have discovered compact cameras and mobile phone cameras as best alternatives to my bulky Digital SLR camera for personal, travel and street photography projects. My current toy is a Canon PowerShot s100 compact digital camera. Earlier, I had written and shared a series of images produced on it. But, s100 can do lot more than still photography. s100 lets one record Full HD videos (1080p). But, its best feature is the ability to create slow-motion videos (but, at a lower resolution). I instantly fell in love with the slow-motion footage that I was capturing on it.
This entire music video was filmed handheld on a Canon PowerShot s100. The super slow-motion setting of this tiny camera gave me access to 240 frames/second speed for capturing motion, but at a lower resolution of 320p. The resulting video files had frame-rates of 30 fps.
Post production of this music video was performed on Pinnacle studio. The background score is a free soundtrack provided by the Scorefitter tool present in Pinnacle Studio, and the soundtrack is called Great Divide. Pinnacle Studio in its repository has the ‘Magic Bullet’ plugin which gives your videos the look and feel of popular films and TV shows. This video’s look and feel has been enhanced to popular music video styles using the Magic Bullet plugin.
Over all, I like the surreal look that slow-motion videos create. s100 does a decent job in capturing slow motion. The only drawback of s100 is that it shoots slow motion videos at lower resolutions and not at HD quality. But, as technology evolves further, it will hardly be a matter of time when low-cost digital cameras with HD slow-motion videos will be a reality. And no prizes for guessing if I’ll buy such a camera!
Also posted in Education, Multimedia
Tagged canon powershot s100, cinematographer bangalore, DSLR film-maker India, magic bullet, multimedia journalist india, multimedia producer bangalore, multimedia project, music video, pinnacle studio ultimate, slow-motion video, videos on digicam
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A Week with Point-and-Shoot Camera : Canon PowerShot s100
In one of my earlier posts, I had mentioned how I had inclined to Mobile Phone cameras for personal photography. Over a period of time these tiny devices have undergone as many advancements as the beast – Digital SLR camera – has undergone. Technology has been a great leveler in the field of photography. Today, the camera and the craft have both been democratized. Entry level barriers to owning a D-SLR camera don’t really exist anymore. There seems to be a D-SLR camera available to suit everyone’s budget. I constantly get queries like ‘suggest me a good D-SLR please’. In the D-SLR euphoria that has gripped everyone, it is easy to forget that compact digital cameras or commonly known as Point-and-Shoot Digicams, have also undergone advancements like the mobile Phone Cameras.
I always ask people to give a thought to investing on a good Point-and-Shoot camera instead of going for an entry-level D-SLR. Sometimes, Point-and-Shoot fits the need of the buyer. Especially, if one wants to do a lot of travel or street photography, then these lightweight cameras can be of great advantage.
I have stopped carrying my Canon EOS 5D Mark2 on travels unless there is a professional assignment in it. My personal trips are a break from regular work. I prefer to travel light-weight with as little luggage as possible. I am a sucker for stories and stories-telling images. It is an instinct to reach out for a camera and photograph a frame that tells a story to me. Till recently, mobile phone cameras had been a companion during my journeys. But, then I decided to invest on more horse power in tiny cameras. I bought a Canon PowerShot s100 Point-and-Shoot digital camera.
I think the popular term Point-and-shoot is kind of misnomer today. Canon s100 and a lot of other compact cameras of the day have most of the features of Digital SLR cameras. Complete manual controls, wider apertures, faster shooting speeds, HD video, on-camera filters, RAW mode, and so on, are packed into s100 and cameras in its league. It must be noted that I bought s100 almost a year after its official release. In other words, a lot of newer compact cameras have more advanced features than s100. Exciting feature missing in s100 but available in newer compact cameras is the feature of inter-changeable lenses. But, with a zoom lens from 24mm to 120mm focal lengths (35mm camera equivalent) s100 suited most of my requirements for travel and street photography.
So, I decided to put it to field test. I gifted this to myself in advance as my 30th birthday present. It was the last week of my twenties and circumstances led me to travel to Mumbai city as a last-minute plan and spend the week there with my fiancée. So, in her company I welcomed my thirties. And off-course I also bid farewell to an eventful decade of my life – my dear twenties. No regrets from it. I cherish every moment of it.
My s100 traveled along with me to Mumbai and back, as I documented the situations that spoke to me during the last week of my twenties. I have present here some of the images I made during the trip on this camera. This in no way is any definitive or comprehensive visual guide to Mumbai city. The city is vast and has countless stories to tell and places to visit. This is a snapshot of my life in relation to the people and places I visited over a week.
Goodbye twenties. Hello thirties!
Dear life, bring on the roller coaster. I am ready for another uncertain ride.
(Note: If you like my work, then please do share the link to this website with others. Also, if you’d like to support me in my projects, then feel free to Flattr me. Flattr is a social micro-payment system. Alternately, you can even buy my Books/E-books. Or maybe even buy a fine-art print.)
Also posted in Personal, Photojournalism
Tagged canon digital camera, canon powershot s100, compact digital camera, mumbai street photography, photojournalist bangalore, point-and-shoot camera, street photographer bangalore, street photography, travel photography, visual story-teller india
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Photo Books and Weddings
There is one question that is very relevant to present day photography – Do people still print the images from their digital camera?
Industry might pull out charts, graphs and all sorts of figures to show sales of photographic prints to a consumer market. The Art World might speak about an increasing trend of people buying Fine-art collectible prints. But, do we see people around our immediate surroundings making prints out of their digital images? Forget others, let us ask ourselves how many prints have we made out of the images shot using our own cameras? Compare these numbers with the total number of images we open, edit and upload on photo-sharing websites and social networks, and what do we see?
I see an imbalance. At least in my case, I have made fewer photo prints of personal images. And I have made archival quality prints only when clients wanted to buy them, or for display in print exhibitions. These days even exhibitions have digital screenings and slide-shows.
Things have changed a lot from the time I was at school. Back then, I used to have a suitcase full of Photo-albums with images preserved in sleeves. Image sharing (showing-off) then meant displaying the physical album to visitors at home. Today, image-sharing has undergone a paradigm shift and it simply means pressing a ‘share button’ on the web which would push your digital album to all your friends at the same time. Image-sharing and Visual Communication have found newer mediums apart from print. This does not mean print-making is obsolete. It is just that the purpose of print-making is no longer the necessity of image sharing.
What then is the purpose of making photo prints?
I cannot possibly pin-point one reason. It could mean different things to different people. For some it is still the joy of traditional process of making photographic prints. But, in most businesses even print making is mechanized. Also, they say that there is an increase in the sales of digital photo frames!
Hence, it would interesting to know what determines an individual to go for photo prints. It could be an individualistic reason to go for a print. But, there surely is some joy in holding on to a tangible photograph in your hand than just seeing it on a tablet PC. I still get excited every-time I hold a photograph in my hand, even if the photograph is from a photo-booth at a mall.
One important observation is that it is a small percentage of digital images that we print when compared to the total amount of digital images we have in our memory(cards). So there is some specialty that people attribute to certain images which could be just one of the driving factors to go for a print. It could be that an occasion, an event, a place or a person that was photographed means something special to somebody. It could be anything…
Today, the medium of a print has gone beyond traditional photo-papers to coffee-mugs, posters, postcards, calendars, T-shirts, photo-books, and so on. This is an ever-expanding list of items. I once received a non-photographic gift but it was inside a gift-wrap on which were printed images from the special times I shared with someone.
Photo-books seem to have emerged as a nice alternative to traditional photo albums. As an independent photojournalist & documentary photographer, I prefer to distribute my photo stories through photo books. My project, “Fistful of Dreams ” is available as a Photo-Book and as well as an eBook.
Photo-Books (also commonly called as Coffee Table Books) have improved a great deal in quality in the recent years. There are many players in this business that tap on to the Print-on-demand market. For Fistful of Dreams I used US-based Blurb.com . Apart from creating photo-books for personal projects, I create photo-books for my clients too.
Since the day I went independent as a visual story-teller, a large part of my non-editorial clients have been from the weddings (apart from a spurt in the number of clients wanting multimedia projects). Today, wedding photography in India is seeing renewed interest and recognition. Especially contemporary wedding photography that involves documentary/photojournalism style of photography has garnered interest from young couples. I have been shooting weddings for clients by donning the hat of an embedded documentary photographer. And it feels good to have been recognized in the mainstream media for it.
For most of the weddings projects that I document, the clients are usually in India and Blurb is not a feasible option to make photo-books for them. The reasons for this are the over-head shipping costs to India and the long turn-around time (usually two weeks) for Blurb to process the order and ship a book to India. Hence, I had been looking for an alternative photo-book player in India.
Recently, I tried the India based Canvera, for creating photo books. I tested it by creating a 6×9 landscape Photo-book with a custom cover and I used their Free-life Art paper to make the pages. I was impressed by the quality of the Photo Book that I received. Also, since it is located in India the turn-around time (couple of days) at which my order was processed was fast. I think I will be use Canvera as one of the options for making photo-books for my clients in India. What I have shared above is a slide-show giving an overview of the design of the first photo-book I made using Canvera. I have used images from my own engagement for this sample book.
P.S: The end result is that my fiancée is impressed!
Mobile phone snapshot of my Photo Book's cover page as I opened the shipment.
(Note: If you like my work, then please do share the link to this website with others. Also, if you’d like to support me in my projects, then feel free to do it via Flattr , a social micro-payment system. Alternately, you can even buy my Books/E-books. Or maybe even buy a fine-art print.)
Also posted in Education, Weddings
Tagged blurb, canvera, coffee table book, india wedding photographer, photo book, photo book maker india, photography book, wedding album, wedding photo book
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Revamped My Photography Website Using Photocrati
Screenshot of my new homepage revamped using Photocrati WordPress Theme
Regular visitors to my website would notice a change in the look and feel of entire site. This is because I completely revamped my WordPress powered site. A huge change was switching the WordPress theme. Earlier, I had used a customized, older version of free theme, F8 - created by Graph Paper Press. Now, I’ve switched to a paid and premium theme - Photocrati WordPress theme.
Below, I share the reasons behind the switch and some of the notable features introduced on this site using various WordPress plugins along with the Photocrati theme. Hope this information be of help to other independent photographers and artists who maintain their own websites.
One thing I must mention, this isn’t the final look. The site continues to evolve.
Keeping up with the change
Nothing is permanent! Change is the only constant… clichéd but true. And especially in technology changes are rapid. When I started my online presence years back, it was on Blogger. Later, I switched to this WordPress powered site and migrated all the content here. I made the shift because WordPress offered better blogging tools, and went beyond the conventional blog look with its rich themes. My site began to look like a Portfolio+Blog site.
That was the beginning of my journey on WordPress. I selected F8 free WordPress theme created by Graph Paper Press and began creating content on my site. Over the years I did a lot of tweaking to it. But, WordPress evolved a great deal since then and my theme was obsolete to use the latest features of WordPress. Either I needed to upgrade F8 or get a new theme. F8 is free, so it had its limitations. This is where I started thinking of investing in a paid theme.
Focus on real task: Photography
Lot of my time was getting used up in tweaking the code of the theme to customize it. I was looking for a better (and faster) way to customize the theme such that more of my time could be devoted in creating the actual content that went into my website – photography, multimedia, blogging and so on. The theme I had to buy needed to have an User Interface which could help me save time.
Gallery Management
There wasn’t any uniformity with the galleries that I used in my posts. Galleries ranged from SimpleViewer galleries to Soundslides projects. My existing theme did not have its own gallery management feature. This was a vital need to maintain coherence in my blogs.
Experiments with E-Commerce
Last year, I went completely independent and freelance with my work. So, there were newer avenues and business models that I needed to embrace for continuing Visual Story-telling as a profession. During this period, I self-published my first book, and subsequently an E-book for tablets. Learnings from this exercise is that the future of independent photography needs channels where you can directly share your stories to your audience without necessarily depending on media houses and old business models. The new channels should allow the photographer to earn a livelihood by directly reaching the audience without inter-mediation. So, I needed a theme where I can build strong E-Commerce platform for future. Would need to offer the audience various ways of owning copies of my work : books, e-books, prints, and other derivatives of my works.
Drop Down Menu Navigation
Drop-down menus have helped better navigation in websites. It has also allowed archived content to have better readership. New WordPress platform supported custom drop-down menus but my old theme could not make use of this new feature. The updated version of the free theme claimed to support the Drop-down menu system. But, on testing it, I found it to be cumbersome.
Widgets
The free theme I was using had one major draw back – all the widgets appeared below the posts. So my web pages were bottom heavy! Very bad design. Readers of my blog failed to see these widgets. I didn’t have the time to dig through php, HTML and css to rework the entire layout. I needed a theme where widgets could be placed on either left or right side of the web pages. So, this requirement ruled out my old theme straight away. It indeed was a time for some good-bye!
I found Photocrati for 89 USD
After months of research I narrowed down on handful of premium WordPress themes. They all had their Pros and Cons. Cost was big deciding factor in the end. Majority of them were way too expensive. Graph Paper Press had many premium themes but I found it to be slightly over my budget. One of the themes that fit in my budget was Photocrati. It has a good internal gallery management system. It gave an easy UI to customize the look and feel of the website. I didn’t need to get down to changing CSS , HTML or PHP codes for majority of customization needs. It made use of the latest WordPress features including drop-down custom menus. Also, for the fee that I paid I was guaranteed tech support and updates for an entire year. And the latest version of Photocrati provides E-Commerce support by making use of PayPal. E-Commerce of Photocrati needs to evolve. It still is a long way before this theme has an end-to-end E-Commerce system. But, it indeed has given me a starting point for direct selling. At time of writing this blog I still need to implement this feature.
SEO
There have been many instances where a publication, NGO or some other client located me via search engines. I am not alone and there billions of independent photographers, journalists, artists and small businesses for whom being found on Google or any other search engine is a game changer in earning a livelihood. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is vital for the websites to be found. My website design was miserable when it came to SEO. To streamline it, I have added a WordPress plugin called All in One SEO Pack. The free version of this plugin does most of the tweaks that one would need while starting of with a SEO plan for their website. It seems to be working as this website is receiving many hits from search engines. Also, the rankings of my website on search engine for my target keywords have improved after installation of this plugin.
But do remember one thing. SEO along can’t do the trick. It needs to have a website with strong content. So, do not sit back with just SEO plugin on your site. Keep the good work going.
Contact Form
Spam mails are a nightmare for website owners. Earlier, I had publicly listed my email on the website. There was considerable amount of SPAM email I was receiving due to this. Hence, I decided to implement a Contact form and hide my email-Id. Visitors to my website could now directly contact me using the Contact Form provided on the site. There are many Contact Form plugins available for WordPress, but I have used the Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin. The Contact form still needs to be made stronger by adding CAPTCHA or text verification plugins.
Related Posts Plugin
Every time a visitor to the website reads a post till the last word it means he/she is interested in a particular subject. Why not offer them archived posts which may be related to their subject of interest? This not only provides visitors with more content, but it also allows readership to your archived content by bringing them back to life. Earlier, I never had a such feature except for a widget that showed last five posts. Hence, another addition to this website has been a Related Posts Plugin. There are many such plugins in the WordPress repository. But, for a photography website, it would be ideal to have a plugin that can show thumbnails of images from the related posts. I found the answer in nrelate Related Content WordPress Plugin.
What you see below this post is the implementation of this plugin. (Temporarily the related posts plugin has been disabled)
Also posted in Education, Personal
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Another $10 Discount on Fistful of Dreams
The cover of the book "Fistful of Dreams: An Adopted Girl's Journey"
There is a good news for others who haven’t yet been able to buy my book, Fistful of Dreams, during the last discount sale by Blurb, and/or have had some issues with the pricing. Blurb.com - the printers of the book are again offering a $10 discount on the book for all the orders placed in the February month (orders placed on or before 27th February).
To get the 10$ discount, please follow the below steps.
- Visit the link www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/2318235 to preview the sample pages from the book and to buy it.
- Chose between Soft-cover and Hardcover version of the book and proceed to checkout.
- Select the Shipping address and options and continue to checkout page
- At the checkout page use SAVE10 as the Promo/Gift code ( SAVE10 in uppercase letters only).
- And click on Apply Code to get 10 $ discount on the bill.
- And complete the payment process
Alternately, below is the preview of the book. Click on the Shopping cart symbol at the bottom. And then follow the steps 2 to 6 mentioned above.
(Note: Offer is valid till February 27th, 2012 only.)
Fistful of Dreams project was originally realized as a multimedia that went viral over social networks . To reach an audience beyond social network, I self-published Book version of Fistful of Dreams in year 2011. Later, I released a low-cost offering of Fistful of Dreams E-book for people using iPad, iPhone and iTouch. I thank the online community and patrons of social documentary photography have supported me in their humble capacities all through this journey.
(Note: If you like my work, then please do share the link to this website with others. Also, if you’d like to support me in my projects, then feel free to click the ‘flattr’ button at the bottom of the post. Flattr is a social micro-payment system. )
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