New cameras shoot video - why?

Well, the issue is - it seems to me - that most images will now be viewed on computer, TV, iPod, PDA or whatnot screens. Some will still be printed, some will still be matted, framed and displayed on walls. But the opportunities of ways to tell stories with images have increased dramatically. They can now be produced in numbers unfathomable in our younger days and be manipulated, combined and presented in ways that still boggle my mind. Now they can even come alive (through the magic of video clips). Trees can actually wave their leaves and streams can flow and sparkle, and there is that other thing that goes along with video - sound. You can hear the leaves rustle, and the stream gurgle, the waterfall fall, all along with birds singing and coyote yippings and so on. So the trick is how you want to tell the story. Now you have another way.

Photography is moving into the world long reserved for writing or music, those arts which are sequential and flow from one point to another, very unlike the paintings and photos in which the elements don't move. So if the mainstream of "photography" is moving more into the world of the author, where does this leave those who still wish to shoot the old-fashioned thing called "stills"? Not really in a very different position than they have been. The art of making a good photograph or painting is even more firmly now dependent upon the art of attracting the viewer's eye (imagination), and leading that imagination through your picture as you want it to understand your story. To me that means still photographers are even more firmly in the niche which has really been theirs all alone which is the the art of composing and telling their photographic story as a work of poetry rather than prose. The prose part of photography is the work of the videographer.

My current outlook on the still/video clip issue is that we photographers now have two good ways of telling the same story. The still picture, like the this one, above, is complex, structured to lead the viewer's eye through partial images which become symbols - the wrinkled face, the wisp of white hair, the bowler hat on the trumpet player's head - and closer up on the larger photo the look of tenderness in the trumpet player's eye as the 85-year old couple dance to the "Blue Skirt Waltz". The bottom video clip contains far less information. but with the movement and audio and changing images, it tells the same story but in a different way. And notice how it transcends its "limited information" to bring in information about the surroundings and the event, especially through the use of sound. And - oh yes - the top image was actually pulled out of a video clip - a "dispicical" trick which my photo-journalist step-son calls a "frame grab". So that's another option. I like frame-grabs as long as the final picture is no bigger than about 4 X 6 inches.