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.

I try my best to not geek out over new cameras when they are released.  Honest, I do!  Unfortunately, I just can’t shut up about the Canon 5D Mark II.  In case you haven’t heard, Canon announced the new camera last week, and photo geeks are bouncing off the walls trying to get all the specs, sample images, and yes, even sample HD video.  The “still” camera shoots 1080p HD video better than most video camera do because it records on a 21 megapixel CMOS sensor with ISO 100 – 6400 range.

Vincent LaForet, a New York based commercial and editorial photographer, has been blogging his little heart out about the camera.  He got his hands on one last week (he is a Canon Explorer of Light – one of the photographers who works with Canon on making better cameras)  and produced a video with the camera.  Now, virtually every photographer on the planet is waiting for the video to go live.  Check his blog for details.  For Canon and LaForet, it is a genius guerrilla marketing campaign.

LaForet has called the camera a “game changer,” with the potential to change the photo industry forever.  I would have to agree.  I preordered mine today.

Without regurgitating camera specs and press release info, I want every photographer who reads this site to know that their workflows are about to change in a very big way, if they haven’t already.  We will record scenes in video clips and fire off a photo when “the moment” happens.  The camera can, after all, shoot HD video and photos virtually simultaneously.    Who cares about wasted video; the camera records to a CF media card.  As we download our HD video footage, we will begin editing and captioning our photos.  After transmitting photos, we will begin editing our HD video.  When the video edit is complete, we will send it to a server that encodes the video in all the proper formats for mobile, web, standard and high definition televisions.  I’m a bit of a workflow nazi, and the idea of using one camera for photos and video makes me want to explode!

You can now say goodbye to:

• Carrying around two camera bags and three cameras.
• Pixelated video screen captures.
• Grainy video in low-light situations.
• Importing your footage in real-time.  What a waste of time.

Unfortunately, we will probably see more:

• Shaky video (handled camera without a tripod)
• Poor audio quality (the camera has a stereo audio-in port…so don’t forget to use it!)
• Jump cuts during peak moments.
• Mics on hotshoes.  Yikes!  That’s going to take some time getting used to!