The recently redesigned website of the British Journal of Photography features interviews with seven professional photographers who also shoot motion. It’s a great read, and it also underscores the fundamental fact that technical virtuosity will get you only so far.
“They have to hit a nerve, and make an impact with their film in the same way they do with their photographs,” Olivia Gideon Thomson, founder of the London-based photo agency We Folk, told BJP in explaining why motion isn’t a must for all of her photographers.
Stockland Martel photographer Jorg Badura has been shooting motion for years now, and his videos are very much an extension of his photographic sensibility. His boxer portraits, for example, capture the might of his pugilist subject, while his accompanying motion piece puts you right in that fighter’s face. It’s a vicarious thrill, and you get to keep all your teeth.
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Photo by Jorg Badura.
Click on the image to access Jorg's "Boxer" video.
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But what about photographers whose work doesn’t lend itself as clearly to motion? And how are other photographers approaching motion? These highlights from each of the photographers interviewed by the BJP offer some insight:
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Greg Williams
…His signature approach to still/motion convergence is the format he dubs the “moto”. These “moving photos” use video as you might shoot a still, filming a subject in a static portrait pose, and then introducing movement – from something as slight as a blink to the subject turning and walking out of frame. They have come into their own with new forms of digital media, and for the last Bond film, Quantum of Solace, his motos added an extra dimension bringing Daniel Craig to life on electronic poster sites and online. He also created a series of motos for Esquire in the US, shooting Hollywood stars such as Megan Fox for the front cover, which when seen online are activated and seen as motion.
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Tim Hetherington
“It’s not good enough just to shoot videos – you have to think about what are you doing with them. I’m only interested in video as a technology that can help create a more compelling narrative. Now anyone can shoot footage, and it can be the most beautifully shot footage ever, but you need a concept behind the work. If you’ve got that, you can shoot on your cell phone.”
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Ewen Spencer
“It’s more versatile than the still pictures I make – I can see what’s unfolding in front of me and I capture it.”
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Robbie Cooper
…For Cooper even stitching together text, video and images online is passé. “You need to think outside the box, to think how you are going to deliver the stories,” he says. “The problem with video is that it’s sequential – you have to watch it from start to end. That’s not going to work on the internet. The internet’s amazing – it’s changing everything, the way we think, and it’s the most efficient delivery of content out there.”
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Jez Tozer
Tozer’s films are normally a maximum of six or seven minutes and, as a rule, he thinks fashion films shouldn’t be sustained for much longer than that. “My aim now is to make the films cinematic, to maintain a sense of narrative, but without detracting from the clothes,” he says. “I want them to feel like a small section of a feature film and have a real sense of visual depth – audio is also critical to their success.”
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Bill Frakes
“Video will never replace the still image. … The still image is a beautiful thing and does something that the eye cannot do – study a split second in time. Nothing else does this, not a drawing, a painting or a written story, and certainly not a video. On the other hand, a video does allow you to think about motion, and use ambient sound.
“Stills and video are complementary, they amplify each other. I tend to mix them together and produce multimedia projects. I think you can enjoy the best of both worlds in this way and make a more dynamic statement.”
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Sean Smith
“But the 5D Mk II is a great camera for video – I shot a project on pirates earlier in the year using one. It offers huge creative possibilities, although I find you need to spend as much as you did on the body on attachments and accessories such as microphones, viewfinders, stabilisers and focusing aids. With all this on, it’s impossible for me to shoot stills, so I end up with another DSLR slung over my shoulder. I don’t think this technology is yet at the point where it is feasible to take just one camera body on location and use it for both stills and video.”
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Read the complete article here.
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