melanie burford
On April the 3rd here in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Kodak sponsored a talk by Pulitzer prize winner Melanie Burford. Melanie won her Pulitzer upon the work of Huricane Katrina. She is a New Zealand native who has been working for the last seven years with the Dallas Morning News.
I went to the talk to Learn how a Photo Journalist works, and her point of view how the industry is changing.
Her talk was a lot about her experiences about how she got into the industry, how its changed. She showed a lot of examples of her work either by video or via slide shows.
In the last two years she talked about how the industry has changed by her perspective that much that she rarely shoots with a still camera now, but now with a video camera, and grabs still images from the video for the print edition or the web page. Video has added extra work and pressure now, due to the extra work to review, edit video, than with still images.
She mentioned during her talk that SBS would be going more towards video, but as one man crews, instead of the three people it took as a crew. She believed this would help SBS cover the news more, and give more opportunities for videographers, sound guys, who would like to become reporters also. The days of the post production team back at base camp are disappearing, or will be gone altogether soon. She sumed it up as the one person would handle all aspects of the job from beginning to end.
The Dallas Morning News is finding hard to make the transition to the internet as the revenue model is not there like traditional print media. Print media is also delining at a set rate so far each year. This is due to the younger generation are more a online generation than a paper print generation. In regards to the revenue model, how do you charge when other outlets, give the same information away for free. Youtube is a problem from the Dallas Morning News perspective, a challenge problem to them. Melanie did not explain why.
90% of all images shown on the Dallas Morning News website are now in a slideshow essay, than a individual image. Audio is also integral to the slideshow now, as it is online. She see’s this as a very large part of the future for Photo Journalist. Individual images are more for a print article or to compliment the article also upon there website.
In the video world, Melanie mentioned, the greatest problem she see’s photographers making the transition, is that they need to understand audio. Video is all about the audio. Audio adds another layer of storytelling. Videos and slide shows should not be more that two to five minutes.
Another revenue model the Dallas Morning News is experimenting with is using the footage from there work to create documentary movies. atwarfile.com is there first attempt at this model.
David Leeson is the Chief Photo Editor at the Dallas Morning News. Melanie mentioned his name many times during the talk.
When Melanie spoke about the amount of equipment she uses during the course of her work. She tries to be minimalistic as possible. She does her audio recordings seperately, than from the camera. This provides her better audio.
One good thing I liked out of Melanies speech, was that sport photographers would not be replaced anytime soon, due to video equipment, could not capture fast enough to create a still from the video. But she believed in the next ten years this will change thou.
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