I have been thinking about this for a couple of years.
My background is over ten years of still photography experience and only a couple in video/multimedia.
After seeing all the assorted multimedia applications with so many bells and whistles, this "kid with the camera", who had never put it down, did just that. I moved from Tennessee to Maine and enrolled in a video/multimedia production Associates program because I felt behind and limited in technologies, which I was. Began an internship with a CBS affiliate two weeks into it. Was hired after my first semester. Hardly touched a still camera in Maine. Very odd for me. Was like shedding part of my identity.
I remember being out on a news shoot, one of my mentors out there was introducing me to another news shooter and the topic of stills VS video came up. He was also a still shooter who went to video. He said "it's just like stills, but with sound".
Did not say anything at the time, but I disagree. That would be like saying a dressmaker and a shoe maker are almost the same. They are two different crafts. Telling a thousand words in a stream of moving video clips and telling a thousand words with one still 120th of a second are NOT the same.
One would think that using video and sound and text together, even making some of it *interactive* of all things, that MUST be more powerful and take more talent than a click of a solitary cannon EOS or 20D, right?
I'm not so sure.
In a general media production class, our instructor had one of the best video shooters in Maine come and speak and show some of his award winning work. The "kids"(most were much younger than me) sorta listened, but were chatting and looking around at each other. Not really interested.
Then, the teacher started talking about still photography images. He showed some classics of war and news and life. Not a sound from those kids. They stopped and stared, entranced in what was being shown. REALLY taking in what they saw and patiently waited in anticipation for the teacher to get to the next image. They were far more moved by single fragments of time than a hundreds or thousands of frames with nat, VO, and captions.
The stills were more powerful. At least they were when the images are some of the classics by people with talent who honed their eye and craft and studied their discipline of still photography for years.
Fast forward, I am now the Production Coordinator for a corporate media production department and work in about 15 design applications on three operating systems.
I started this post because I was just on the MSN radio page, where they show images of featured musicians. There are photos of The Meat Puppets and assorted other current artists, and of Ella Fitzgerald. Who has the better images? Guess? It made me think about stills again.
We have so many more images, of such poor design quality now. What passes for imagery in magazines, print ads, and mainstream web is apauling for us who know the difference. What will the classic images be in 50 years? Will they be as beautiful and telling and composed by someone who knows light and how to capture expression as well as aesthetic? Or will it be the image from the writer sent out to a big interview with a pocket digital camera, or from the cell phone camera of the person who happened to be there when the bomb went off or the celebrity passed out?
Aside from denegration of imagery...What about this stills VS video comparison? Do I have it wrong? Are they just tools we choose, and not necessarilly at odds? I bet the new recruits to media production schools don't even give this a second thought. They probably think of stills vs video the same as they think of AE vs 3D Studio. Just tools at our disposal.
I've been thinking about producing some documentaries and commercials with sound (VO, interviews, music, and nat) and STILLS. Not as a compromise because I don't have the skill to use video, but because I'd like to explore in more depth, the power of stills.
