Before the introduction of drones, it was possible to suspend a camera over a movie set, or over a political rally, or whatever the scenario may be that a producer or photojournalist wanted to be able to cover from a different angle that presented more of a bird's eye view. Most people that are familiar with digital photography technology these days know that most high-end movie sets or newspaper agencies will have cranes that are specifically designed to lift cameras high over everyone's head in order to give a different angle to a president's speech or high-speed car chase in an action movie.
As Jason Boche states in his video Drone Photojournalism Interview Extended Cut NAB 2014, how drones will replace cranes in terms of photographing or recording from the air: "If you're a broadcaster you know the logistics involved in some big wide shot. It usually involves a crane, it invovles a much larger crew, and it limits how quickly and how readily you can deploy to some remote area. It's definitely going to make journalist's lives easier. It's very difficult for a crane to be deployed purely for a camera."
Photo by: Zachary Bednarczyk
Above is a photograph my friend, Zachary Bednarczyk, took with his drone above the American International College main campus quad. He captioned the photo eye in the sky, which is a perfect caption for what this picture represents.
The process of using a drone to photograph or videotape various scenarios is quite simple, especially these days. My friend Zachary simply went out and bought a $500 drone known as a Phantom, it is one of the lowest end models available to the public. Attached to the bottom of his Phantom is a 10.4 megapixel camera that came with the purchase of the Phantom, which he can operate through is phone by way of an app. The app allows him to view what the camera is seeing, as well as to obviously take pictures and even record videos. The app will also tell him the altitude the drone is flying at, what direction on a compass it is facing, and it even allows him to give a command to the drone which will cause it to automatically fly back to him. To do this the drone simply hovers directly overheard at whatever altitude it is at, then slowly lowers itself until it touches the ground next to the operator which it locate using GPS.
One great advantage that the digital age photography and drones uses is the ability to upload the captured images to the internet, which can either be as the photographs or recording are taking place, or it can be done later after editing and other sorts of creative measures have been applied.
In this video, Working in the Digital Age Part 2, Professor John Nordell talks about the advantage of being able to transmit digital photography to the internet and how it helped move the industry forward entirely: "You'd be at a hockey game, with your digital camera and the wireless transmitter, sitting right next to you you could have this little portable WiFi hot-spot with your cell phone plugged into it. And so you take a picture and the transmitter would take the digital image and send it to the cell phone, which was connected to the WiFi hot-spot and it would send the image back to the newspaper."
Comparing this photographic digital technology to the technology used during the Civil War period, when Mathew Brady was taking his now-famous pictures of the Civil War, which was the wet plate collodion process. The wet plate collodion process, to put it short, was a very long-winded process in which the exposure time was ten times as long as it is today when taking digital photography, it involved harsh chemicals in order to produce the proper result, it involved a plate glass which had to be just about 100 per cent free of defects and ridges otherwise the photograph could be compromised, and this all had to be done in a dark room because the light could also ruin the result. Furthermore, the wet plate process could only take pictures in black and white and not color. While black and white pictures have a pleasing aesthetic of their own, color is often times more desirable with today's standards.
One of the biggest issues with the wet plate collodion process is the need for the dark room, which is required otherwise light will ruin the exposed film. In this video, The Wet Plate Collodion Process, Quinn Jacobson describe how he bought a van specifically to be able to use it as a dark room: "Last year, I bought a 1990 Dodge Caravan, and put a dark room in the back of it. This has allowed to me take wet plate on the road and do portraits outside of the studio. While this is exciting, it presents a whole new set of challenges for me, and makes me appreciate the photographers of the nineteenth century even more. The biggest challenge I have is the technical aspects of the process, I have no running water and it's much more difficult to control the light outside of my studio."
Photo by: Will Dunniway
Image Source: http://www.alternativephotography.com/wp/photographers/will-dunniway-a-man-with-a-mission
To further highlight the amount of difficulty that was uplifted off the shoulders of photographers when the technology came along that allowed for images to be exposed and processed all within the camera itself, Professor John Nordell shows in his video, Before There Were Pixels - Part 2, the change by way of photograph and camera: "...imagine making the shift from out there with your van, your big wagon, to using a camera like this... they use very small rolls of 35mm film, so with one roll of film you could take 24 or perhaps 36 pictures."
In conclusion, the advent of the digital age, and pixels, helped photojournalists and the photojournalism industry as a whole be able to document, whether by picture or by video, instantly and be able upload the content instantly as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment