From Stills to Moving Pictures

 During my last few years at the San Francisco Chronicle, there was a push by management to drive more readers to SFGate, the Chronicle's website. They wanted more page hits which equals more online advertising revenue. That was great news for us photographers. We now had the opportunity to publish more photos and produce fun, multimedia packages on the web, including video.

But, there was some initial resistance to video among the photo staff. I was one of them. I’m a photographer, not a videographer was my reasoning. I believed in the incredible power of the still image - still do! But as time went on, I realized that I needed to embrace this new way of communicating. It was either jump on the multimedia bandwagon or be left behind.

So, I jumped on and what a fun ride it’s been!

Shooting video is my new passion and it's all because of the new high definition video capabilities of digital SLRs. It’'s opened my eyes to a new way of seeing, a refreshing way of communicating.

What I hope to do with my contributions to this blog is guide you through this new emerging technology. It's an incredible tool for aspiring filmmakers and seasoned film and video veterans. But despite its jaw dropping image quality, it comes with some drawbacks that you need to be aware of.

We'll go over all of that and much more in upcoming posts, so stay tuned.