These panoramas were shot on assignment for USA TODAY inside and around the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor.  The trek to the top of the statue, which has been closed since the 9/11 attacks, reopens to the public on July 4, 2009.

The last panorama, shot inside the crown of Lady Liberty, was the most technically difficult panorama that I have ever shot.  I knew beforehand that I wanted to allow viewers to see out of the windows.  After all, without the view from the top, the small room at the top is really quite uninteresting.  The exposure for the interior was about 1/2 second at f8.  The exterior was about 1/250.  Bracketing was obviously required so that I didn’t “blow out” the windows.  Because the camera lens was about 4 inches from the edge of the window at times, parallax became an issue, especially with the final shot required to complete the panorama:  The down shot, a.k.a., the nadir.

The video above is part of a six-part video interactive produced for USA TODAY that explores the life and legacy of Michael Jackson, as well as reactions from L.A., D.C., and N.Y.C..  View the interactive at www.mj.usatoday.com.  I’ll post more about this developing project soon.

Religious identities interactive

This interactive report produced for USA TODAY combines a data visualization and video to show the shifting religious trends in America.  USA TODAY received early access to research data that revealed that Catholics are fleeing the northeast for the south, a growing number of Americans identify themselves as having “no religion” and that more and more Americans are exploring new religions, like Wicca.  As the project’s producer, my role was to work with Flash design/developer William Couch and video journalists Rhyne Piggott, Garrett Hubbard, and Denny Gainer to create the interactive.  I shot video and photos in Charleston, S.C., where an increasing number of residents identify themselves as Catholic.  Click the image above to visit the project.

Earlier this week USA TODAY released a seven chapter documentary about the Inauguration of President Barack Obama. It was a very, very long week for everyone on the documentary team. For myself, the week included a night sleeping under a desk at the downtown Washington, D.C. office, multiple 12-13 hour work days, and a diet of roasted pecans and half a cup of water on Inauguration Day.

3D Photo Animations
I’ve been waiting for the right project to use a visual technique that I refer to as 3D photo animation. The concept also helped to drive home the theme of our project: To document the individual journeys to the inauguration as well as the journey that we, as one nation, have made in our history. The 3D fly-throughs were made using a single base image and cutting out multiple layers of foreground, middle ground, background in Photoshop. I added the layered Photoshop documents to Apple Motion, spread the layers apart in 3D space, and walked a camera through the digital scene. Textures and vignettes were also added in Apple Motion.

Steve Elfers, video director at USA TODAY, and I decided early on to not mix content from multiple images. The 3D animations allow the viewer to see the scene from an entirely possible perspective, had he/she been present in the photograph. The trick was to essentially hide each duplicated piece of the scene by flying the camera around and through foreground and middle ground elements. Without these limitations, the possibilities are endless in terms of 3D scene depth and layering. These ethics made the animations very difficult, but it was ultimately worth the trouble.

Canon 5D Mark II
This was my first major project using the Canon 5D Mark II as my primary video camera. The camera has so many positives that the negatives seem trivial. The image quality is astonishing. The flexibility is unparalleled. I was able to shoot HD video, still photographs and capture 360 panoramas using one camera. Last year, that would have required three cameras.

I used a Sennheiser transmitter and receiver combined with a Tram lav mic for all interviews and natural sound. While the audio is one of the major things holding this camera back, I found the combination of using the Senheisers and the Tram lav mic very acceptable. Obviously, the fact that the 5D tries to normalize all audio levels can create problems, especially during interviews.

24 Hour Inaugural Day Timelapse
I knew early on that I wanted to document the entire inauguration day using timelapse photography. The problem was, locations with quality perspectives of Pennsylvania Ave. were limited. Josh Hatch, a fellow multimedia producer at USA TODAY, milked some of his connections at the Newseum and secured a prime location for the camera pointing east at the U.S. Capitol. We crunched some numbers and decided one frame every 15 seconds would be suitable to capture at least one frame of Obama’s motorcade in the foreground of our shot and also provide ample image to create the timelapse. I used a pocket wizard as the intervalometer, plugged the camera into an AC outlet, mounted the camera on a magic arm and teethered the camera to a laptop inside the Newseum. You know the drill. I wrapped the camera in bubble wrap for insulation and weatherization and taped a hand warmer pack onto the pocket wizard so the battery wouldn’t freeze overnight. God save the hand warmer.

Earlier that week, I wrote a script that would automatically copy, resize and automatically FTP the images in real time back to the USA TODAY servers for virtually live posting on our Web site. Everything went according to plan up until the teethering. Apparently, the 30 feet of USB cable carrying images from the camera outside in 20-degree weather simply didn’t have enough power to reach the computer. So, we ditched the teethering approach and inserted a large memory card.

Props
I worked with some amazing folks on this project and I can’t wait for round two. Rhyne Piggott followed an intimate story about a Tuskegee Airman. Garrett Hubbard documented a million-dollar benefactor who purchased 300 hotel rooms overlooking Pennsylvania Ave. for the less fortunate. Rhyne, Garrett and Steve were amazing to work with. We had above a dozen video journalists who contributed content for the documentary. The full list of credits appears at the end of chapter seven.

About this project

This remote control time-lapse captures the Douglas County, Kansas Fair. Images were captured using a Nikon D300 in intervalometer mode stabilized by both a Meade telescope head (rotating images) and a Bogen magic arm (static images). Audio was captured using an Roland Edirol recorder. Software: Photo Mechanic, Quicktime Pro, Final Cut, Garage Band.

Cheesy fair music courtesy the fair’s carousel ride. Hit me up if you want a version for your iPod!

“For the second year in a row, LJWorld.com has earned the Associated Press Managing Editors award for online convergence.” – Source

Our winning entry consisted of this interactive retrospective of the season comprised of photos, panoramas, time-lapses, stories, videos, wallpapers, audio, and reader-submitted content. Richard Cornish did a brilliant job pulling all the pieces together for the final online design and presentation. Our entire tournament coverage can be found at KUSports.com.

We also published a book on the championship season, including photos by myself, Nick Krug, and Mike Yoder, text by Tom Keegan, Gary Bedore, and Ryan Greene. The designers really took the book design to the next level. Get one if you want.

In August of 2007, I packed up headed out to Phillipsburg, Kan., home of Kansas’ Biggest Rodeo. The resulting story, audio slideshow and photo gallery show were produced for www.ljworld.com.

The story

PHILLIPSBURG, KANSAS

The baritone voice of John Wayne reverberated throughout the arena reciting “America, Why I Love Her” to the thousands of denim-clad cowboys and cowgirls.

A discord of smells, including manure, hamburgers and sweat, wafted overhead as the announcer’s microphone screeched sharply into focus.

“Are you guys ready for some rodeo?” chirped the announcer, bouncing wall-to-wall sound in an overhead booth.

Since 1929, rodeo fans nationwide have transformed Phillipsburg, a small northwestern Kansas town, into a bustling, unpredictable city. Home of Kansas’ Biggest Rodeo, Phillipsburg, about 60 miles north of Hays in Phillips County, is an anomaly in western Kansas, where the state’s population is declining and aging, and communities struggle to find a voice in contemporary America.

“It’s probably what’s keeping this town alive,” said Terry Gitchel, a Phillipsburg resident and past amateur bull rider.

“There would be a lot less money coming into this place, I know that.”

The population of Phillipsburg swelled to three times its normal size Saturday as an estimated 6,000 people flocked to the annual rodeo. The town’s two motels were booked six months in advance. Long waits at the local restaurants were expected.

The event attracts the biggest names in rodeo, including past and current world champions, homegrown Kansas talent hoping to make it big, and even Frenchman Evan Jayne, a bareback rider from Marseille, who shared this year’s bareback title with Chris Harris, of Itasca, Texas.

“This rodeo has turned into a community event,” said Rod Innes, president of the rodeo. “Class reunions are held on this weekend. Family reunions are held on this weekend. Everyone comes home for the rodeo.”

The rodeo, it seems, is intrinsically linked to life in Phillipsburg.

Peyton Baldwin, a Kansas University senior from Gardner, was busy selling custom ropes, hats, spurs, boots and belt buckles in her family-owned and operated mobile western store. Baldwin and her family travel the country each summer hitting the professional rodeo circuit and state fairs.

“For a little town like this, it’s a big deal,” said Baldwin as she counted change in the mobile storefront parked on the rodeo grounds.

Beneath the stands, rodeo cowboys taped their arms, tucked their Wranglers inside their boots and stretched, preparing for the first and most physically demanding event of the evening: the bareback ride.

Dressed in neon and doused in makeup, Greg Rumohr, a bull fighter from Rio Vista, Texas, entertained the crowd with daring encounters with 2,000-pound bulls in the arena.

“I’ve had my ears tore off,” Rumohr said. “The worst one I took was when a bull stuck a horn on the inside of the cheek of my butt. It didn’t go into my intestines so I was able to fight bulls the next night.”