Photography Legends — Multimedia Approach

This is my first attempt on something that I have been planning to do for a while. A multi­media series of photo­graphers, legends of their own time and era… Pictures and stories behind them. Told by the photo­graphers themselves.

I will try to make this into a series — would be pretty impressive to make a series of say 20–30 photo­graphers in this type of multi­media format. I will definitely try to do it — I am looking for some funding for it as well, as anything of this magnitude would require several people working on it.

But, presently I am doing it just like this, by myself… Why? Well, because I feel it is a project which should be done — and somebody has to take the first step. Sort of say by doing it: isn’t this cool, shouldn’t we be doing more stuff like this?

It is also part of the Photo Raw project I was talking about in my previous post — and these multi­media will be an integral part of our new website when we launch it later on.

And yes, this is a Beta — or “Version 1.o” if you like. But even at this stage, I am rather happy with the result. Simple, yet non-linear and intuitive interface. And it works with an iPad — or iPhone, for that matter.

Pentti Koskinen

I chose Pentti Koskinen who couple of years ago retired from Helsingin Sanomat as my first subject. Along the years our paths have crossed numerous times. I remember e.g. shooting from a helicopter together a major train accident in Hyvinkää one sunny sunday morning in the early nineties and the occupation of the Lithuanian TV tower in Vilnius in 1991 — both assign­ments which are hard to forget.

And even though these were years ago — and I am no kid anymore myself — he was working profes­sio­nally already years before I was even born… :-)

I have a very high respect for his career and I had heard him talking about his pictures previously so I knew some of the stories — but I was dying to hear some more. So click here to view the multi­media I came up with — or better: WE came up with.

But a word of warning: Patience — My Dear Reader — Patience. This is no MTV. This is not cut, cut, cut… all packaged into a 2:30 min. with canned music on the background, with fancy FX’s. No: this is story­telling. Real stories, real people — along with some legendary images.

Taking It Further

I already have some ideas how to take this further, how to introduce some more elements into the narrative, but I decided to leave those aside for the time being. He is having a retros­pective exhibition opening in Helsinki tonight, so I have a deadline myself.

I shot the last images yesterday and edited the material as well — to my best ability — last night and it is not at all as smooth as I would have liked it to be. Lots of finesse missing there…

I delibe­rately mention this as I do have a pretty solid excuse. I had some titanium screws and ‑wire applied to my right shoulder last week (yup, getting older is a bitch…) and being right-handed I could not operate the camera as I would have liked to do — and even more impor­tantly and maybe surpri­singly: using a mouse was literally a pain, so I could not make nice transi­tions, fancier keyframing, etc. to make it a bit more animated in the editing stage — because my arm refused to cooperate.

And having done the final edit last night, I cannot presently use the mouse at all… so I am using a separate trackpad at the moment, as my fingers still do move — while my hand does not… and I have an icepack on my shoulder…

But after all this whining… I am pretty happy with the result. No, that’s an unders­ta­tement: I’m real happy and also proud of it, damn it. ;-)

It’s not your basic two-minute visual WOW-thing. No, it’s non-linear and it takes closer to an hour to listen to the whole thing — if you choose to do so. But I’d say it’s worth it. But that’s just me.

My personal favorite? Maybe the seal-hunting story — or then the 1972 Munich massacre, when he was the only photo­grapher inside the athletes’ village. But, you tell me?

*****

I’d really appreciate feedback on this: ideas how to make this better or take it further, etc.