2012: THE YEAR OF THE DRAGON from JONAH KESSEL on VIMEO.

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NOTE FROM JONAH: This post was originally written for Dan Chung’s DSLR News Shooter blog.

The plan was simple: to one-up ourselves.

One year earlier friends and filmmakers Paul Morris, Kit Gillet and myself decided to make a short video documenting some of the fireworks in Beijing as China celebrated the Lunar New Year.

In fact, I even wrote about the experience on this blog here. Exactly one year later — we decided to do it again. However, this time — we wanted to go bigger. Much bigger.

This is a really interesting experiment: to come back to a video you made exactly one year later and reevaluate its strengths and weaknesses, and then try again. I believe this experience is a good check on your progress as a film maker and makes you step back and evaluate everything you do from shooting, to workflow to the art of story telling itself.

After we screened last year’s video we all agreed — it was kind of a stereotypical DSLR video with no real narrative. Pretty pictures, not enough of a story. There are a lot of these on the web.

This year, we wanted to tell the story of Chun Jie (Chinese New Year). However, we wanted to do it in such a way that would require very little dialogue. We wanted images to tell the story, but still have some voices in the piece — with the goal of keeping our own voices out of it. We wanted it to be cinematic but at the same time — real and unrehearsed. And while last year, we had no imposing deadlines, this year we would need to turn the video over in 36 hours to the New York Times. Now the experiment became — how to tell a story better than we had last year, shoot, process, translate and edit the footage — and transmit on China’s dodgy internet connections in less than 36 hours.

As we planned for the story and began to factor in the chaotic nature of China — we decided to bring in some more friends. Shooters Jim Fields and Keith Bedford would join our team, allowing us to be in multiple locations at once showing a wider variety of images from the celebration. We crafted a schedule, shot list and found an old man who via an interview we would setup as the story teller of Chun Jie, allowing us to dip out from narration.

To help to visually enforce the man as a story-teller and not just some old guy off the street, we put a pretty strong grade over him. We added about 15 points of sepia, added a vignette, desaturated, added contrast and sharpened a small bit. The hope was to visually represent the traditions that go along with this holiday for Chinese people by making him a bit more historic looking.

We encountered some of the same difficulties we did last year. The rolling shutter issue being a big a relatively unsolvable issue. While DSLRs are great for many things — for fireworks, they are simply not. We did some tests and while we know we couldn’t stop it from happening, we did find ways to mitigate. We found if fireworks were exploding at a fast enough pace to cause the rolling shutter, it would show up significantly less if the angle of the camera was in a relative perpendicular axes to the exploding object. Pulling further away from the object also helped a lot. But in general, if you are using a DSLR and information is being recorded across the sensor in a horizontal motion, and your subject happens to be exploding at an extremely high speed — you are using the wrong camera.

Nonetheless, we avoided it as much as possible and restled with the other innate problems of shooting fireworks such as exposing for something that (a) hasn’t happened yet and (b) you don’t know what will happen. Dealing with quickly dying batteries in -15 C weather and trying to be setup in time to capture someone setting off a firework without telling them what to do.

After 13 hours of shooting we all reported back to begin the editing process. We would have 23 hours left before deadline — however, there was much work ahead. Proress-ing, translating, grading, creating the script and because of China’s transmitting times, we would have be done with at least 2 hours spare for a slow upload. This meant no sleeping, a lot of junk food, fast food and when things became painful, some beer. Days later, I made visual representation of this relatively comical 36 process to get this short film out.

When we hit our deadline everyone was sleeping except me. Minutes before I was about to pass out, the video posted — and it posted front and center on the Times’ home page.

It was an amazing bit of timing and in one moment — the pain of the past day in half was gone and for just a brief moment, the world got a glimpse of an ancient Chinese tradition.

Happy New Year — 新年快乐

Jonah

Follow @jonah_kessel

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. A Helping Hand is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part V of this series takes place in Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan with Gong Changxiang, a mentally disabled man working in a vocational center.

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. “Hello My Name Is …” is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part IV of this series takes place in Fuyang, the small city of 10 million in Anhui Province with Yuan Weiwei who was born with Cerebral Palsy. This video is a bit different and focuses on the family of the subject. This is also my favorite of the series.

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

Part IV of this series was the hardest of the videos. It also turned out to be my favorite.

The task immediately became a bit daunting when we found out our subject who we were meant to be profiling — couldn’t talk much.

While Weiwei was not afraid of the camera, his speech and dialogue were not developed enough to get entire sentences out of him. He also was not the most mobile of our subjects. He had trouble getting around, which made our filming locations limited.

However, even given these limitations the story developed in front of us into a rather heart warming story. The camera ended up turning to his mother to help drive the narrative, while Weiwei would maintain the visual story.

After a couple different versions of the script, we finally settled on the version you see here. After this we went into post production where the hardest decision was the music.

From an audience perspective, or film makers perspective, I’m not sure if people realize how hard it is to pick the correct music. It will instantly change the mood of your film and can even change the message. In many ways, I think the music is just as important as the images.

Our choice here, which came from stocksound.net, is bordering on cheesy — or too much. The story in itself is actually quite sad. However, the mother’s continued support and optimism is pretty inspiring. Given the dichotomous nature of those two feelings, it was very tricky to decide if we were bending the story toward an unreal truth with this music. There are a couple other versions with completely different songs, which won’t see the light of day, but they did truly change the mood of the film.

When we settled on this music, the images and pacing of the story were cut to fit and the product ended up being my favorite of the series — including the main movie.

Three weeks after these videos published on the premier of a Youku Channel, we got word that a local NGO in Anhui saw the video and actually approached Weiwei’s family to help. As a journalist and film maker this is great to hear. That our documentation of a live may have helped a family. Hopefully, more details on this later …

For now, enjoy “Hello, My Name Is …”

Jonah

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. China Doll is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part III of this series takes place in Hefei, the provincial capital of Anhui with Jiang Yuqiu — who has brittle bone syndrome

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. Working Dreams is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part II of this series takes place South of Beijing with Li Chao — a mentally handicap chef.

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

Although he appears serious during a couple moments of the film, I can assure you — as soon as the camera would stop rolling he was smiling and laughing. This was really nice to see — regardless of any of the hardships he had faced, he continued to smile his way through life.

Support from his family and coworkers was also great to see and I believe the result of the compassion people have shown him, has resulted in a normal life for Li Chao.

He goes to work. He is married. He hangs out with his family. Really, there was very little difference between this man and any other, despite his disability.

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In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back. Blind Ambition is one of five video profiles from subjects interviewed in “We Are Different, We Are the Same.”

Part I of this series starts in West Beijing with Han Yao — a visually impaired stenographer.

To learn more about this series see this post.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population. The video gives a snap shot of disabled persons living throughout China.

Her husband was also a big help. He joined us for the day and interestingly enough, he is also visually impaired. Perhaps more interesting is their combined interest in photography.

At some point in the video we show them taking pictures but had we had more time, we would have gone deeper into this. Both of them enjoy the art of photography. You might think this hobby would not be the first choice for people who can’t see through the camera, but from this shoot, I learned this is a bad assumption.

While the couple does have limited vision (what was described to us as “about the width of three fingers”) they take pictures based on other senses. Its a very interesting process to watch.

The subject’s interest in photography made it a little easier for us to photograph her. Some of our other subjects were not nearly as comfortable around the cameras — but Han Yao was completely used to it and the effect was shown on the video.

I think Hao Yao’s confidence and accomplishments are to be admired by all. Especially in the physical and mental environment of China, to achieve so much is very impressive.

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Using a fat Chinese man, a large backpack, a baseball cap and the hood from my sweatshirt I attempted to hide myself.

I was hiding in between the beefy man and a 35 kg f-stop Satori camera bag on the back of the fat man’s motorcycle. He drove me down a dark dirt road in the middle of the night near the uniquely autonomous village of Wukan, Guangdong Province.

I was hiding from those that might not want attention drawn to this small village of about 13,000 people.

Earlier in the week, pissed off villagers had over thrown their leaders and in mass numbers forced the police out of town. When the police came back, they setup barriers and created a stronghold around their fishing community, only letting in sympathizers.

The New York Times’ Edward Wong described it as:

The outsiders had come to see how furious residents had transformed their village on China’s southeast coast into a temporarily autonomous zone. Their anger focused on two issues: what they called illegal land sales by village officials, and the death on Dec. 11 of a village advocate while he was in police custody. The villagers chased out Communist Party officials, repelled an assault by police officers and barricaded all roads leading into Wukan with tree trunks. The two police stations in the village stood empty. So did the headquarters of the Communist Party committee.

This was not a new conflict nor is it unusual in China. The villagers were protesting illegal government land grabs. And after a village representative was killed in police custody, they had simply had — enough.

Within one week of the Telegraph’s Malcome Moore breaking the story — the stronghold had drawn media attention from all across the globe and eventually landed me at what would be the tail end of the conflict. The international media gave the small village the ability to rage “a propaganda war.”

And while I certainly missed the hot part of this story, I think I may have witnessed the strange part.

It makes perfect sense to me that people would be mad about government land seizures and certainly over the death of a villager — however, what didn’t make sense to me was the “end” of this story.

My video journal above for the New York Times gives a brief outline of what happened, but to me it seemed not much was resolved — given how mad everyone was days earlier.

Minutes after the protest ended life seemed to go back to a pretty normal state pretty quickly.

During my last interview with reporter Edward Wong, the crowd was dispersing from the town hall meeting. While people slowly drifted away, a pancake vendor frantically shuffled his cart out to the crowded street to capitalize on the mass numbers. This was the China I knew. Someone had to take advantage of the opportunity and make money.

The pancakes were delicious …

Ed and I walked down to the ocean to see the fishing port. Fisherman were getting their boats ready and some young kids played on a dock as the sun set over the small town that had made global headlines.

The “ending” to me seemed to abrupt. Its hard to believe it could end so peaceful and so suddenly after what had occurred. And as one villager put it — ““I’m afraid they might come and take people away … The local government always says one thing but does another.” I hope for the sake of this village, this man is wrong.

But for now, it seems the book has been left open …

Video Journal

My video goes along with a written journal by Times’ reporter Edward Wong. See Ed’s journal here.

This package comes out today on nytimes.com and is a bit different than the reporting that has previously been done on the incident. While we give the news, our assignment was for both of us to give a more personal story of what it was like to come to the village and the process in which we watched the news unfold. This falls into the “journal” category of news rather than a traditional “this is what happened” type report.

From a reporter’s perspective this was a bit a media circus. Toward the beginning of the video I show one shot of reporters almost being run over by a minivan with a village leader in it, as one example of the amount of media there.

To see how this story unfolded check out Timess staff earlier reportage on the event:

• Canny Villagers Grasp Keys to Loosen China’s Muzzle
• Demonstrators Who Took Over Chinese Village Halt Protest
• Officials Meet With Protesting Chinese Villagers
• Wukan Protesters Seek Return of Xue Jinbo’s Body
• Wukan Revolt Takes On a Life of Its Own

While I was shooting video for this assignment, I kept a camera attached to my hip with a Blackrapid RS 7-Strap. The photos from this post are mostly taken with one hand while holding a camera rig in the other.

BREAKING NEWS & DSLRS

Although this video is pretty straight forward, on the technical side, if was hard to produce. The video journal (top video) was produced Thursday night/Friday morning Beijing time in between 12:00 am and 5:00 am. However, I had made a news clip one day earlier for TimesCast that also had tough deadlines. Working DSLR’s and breaking news can be very tricky with workflow, especially with file sizes and transmitting times. The news clip above was actually edited from the back of a crammed car in the middle of the night. Transmitting from this type of remote location slowed data rates down to about 15 Kbps which forced me to convert all video down to 720p and quality to below 50%.

One reporter I saw at the scene had a proper microphone attached to — just a cell phone camera with a tiny steady cam on it. Compared to caring around tons of weight, glass and a shoulder rig — this is amazing. Given that the information needs to get out as quickly as possible, if you are put in the scenario where the files will be compressed anyway, this almost makes more sense. It allows reporters to be extremely mobile and transmit and much faster speeds. However, the down side would be if you actually wanted your footage to look good post event …

With my normal workflow, all files out of a Canon DSLR get immediately re-codaced into Apple ProRes to make editing easier and export quality better. This step really slows down your work flow so for the news clip directly above, I skipped it and the main journal at the top of this post, was re-codaced.

While the quality you can get from DSLRs is great, I think they are less than ideal for stories like this that need to be turned around as soon as possible … otherwise, you might find yourself getting very little sleep.

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In the fall of of 2011 I was approached by Save the Children to help tell a story. This story would be an ordinary story — a snapshot into the lives of five different people. However, those five people were not exactly ordinary. The subjects all had physical or mental handicaps.

But what was ordinary about these people — was their desire to live life to its fullest. They wanted the same things all other Chinese people wanted. They wanted jobs and financial security. They wanted a husband or wife. And they wanted to be treated equally and with dignity. While their lives were a little different, they were in many ways the same as all other people.

“We Are Different, We Are the Same” is a web documentary created to help break down barriers and stigmas surrounding China’s large disabled population.

In China today over 80 million people have been born with or have developed a physical or mental disability. In some cases their disability has stopped them having access to standard education and employment, but mostly it is the assumptions others have about their abilities and the discrimination they face in all areas of life which holds them back.

Through contributions from Save the Children China, the European Union and Kingfisher — friend and journalist Kit Gillet and myself got the opportunity to help create short videos to help show this ordinary side of China’s disabled population. We didn’t want to portray these people as heroes or create sympathy. Instead, the idea was to show the actual reality of their lives — and minimize superficial and sensational ideas surrounding them.

Toward the end of the main feature Li Weihong, Vice Chairman of the China Association of the Blind says:

“I think disabled people can participate equally in normal life and through their efforts help others. I think having a disability is not bad luck but simply an inconvenience. We can do a great job and be involved completely and equally, as long as we are provided with a barrier-free environment and help in overcoming our disabilities.”

This quote summed up a big part of our goal. While showing the ordinary side of these people, we also had to show the different side — as well as the challenging side.

We wanted to make an integrated video package which would allow a big picture view — but also give the opportunity to see the individual peoples lives. With the help of Save the Children we found five subjects in Beijing, Anhui and Sichuan who we could spend some time with filming their daily routines. After filming them we found a couple experts to ask about issues surrounding China’s disabled population. This accumulated to about 1 TB of footage which we split up into six videos. The first, embedded above is the main piece titled “We Are DIfferent, We Are the Same.”

This 10-minute feature gives an over view of the current situation for disabled people living in China. After piecing this together, we made five additional short four-minute videos that show the ordinary aspects of the people’s lives seen in this film.

The video profiles include a visually impaired stenographer in Beijing, a teacher in Hefei with brittle bone syndrome, a mentally handicapped chef outside of Beijing, a boy with cerebral palsy in Fuyang and a ping-pong playing, car washing man in Chengdu. We talked to their families, their spouses and their friends and coworkers. We saw their daily triumphs and hardships while at the same time, saw how society was viewing them as they went through their daily routines.

I believe the situation for disabled people China is immensely better than in was in the past. However, the population still faces great hardships and barriers to having normal lives. Many of these hardships come from China’s infrastructure and environment.

Li Weihong, goes on to say:

“The biggest problem, As I see it, is to form an environment where the blind can see, the deaf can hear and where the physically-handicapped can get around. If that can happen then the disabilities of those with handicaps will be gone and they can live a life like any other person.”

I Believe Weihong is talking about more than a physical environment here. And while it is easy to look at China as a developing country with issues that need tending, I think many of these same issues still exist in the West.

Please enjoy “We Are DIfferent, We Are the Same” and help share these videos with people of all countries to help create greater awareness of issues facing disabled people around the planet.

Barriers and stigmas can only be broken with dialogue and awareness.

Check back throughout this week for the five shorter video profiles.

Jonah

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Murong Xuecun is one of the least boring people I have ever met.

He is energetic. He is dynamic. He is impressively clever. And in the last year, he has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of censorship in China.

However, he is a writer.

And when New York Times’ correspondent Edward Wong first mentioned he was writing an in-depth feature on Murong, I initially doubted an accompanying video component would help add much value to the package. I did some background research and found articles with pictures of the young writer. Nearly every single one showed the author looking at a computer in some form or another, 3 out of 4 being a silhouetted picture of the back of his head with the computer out of focus or him at an internet café.

The still images I saw were far from inspiring. I imagined a video full of talking heads, with sequences of static imagery that would inevitably go on for too long and drive viewers to click away.

But right before I decided it wasn’t worth making the video, I read this speech Murong had recently given. Words started jumping off the page:

This is castrated writing. I am a proactive eunuch, I castrate myself even before the surgeon raises his scalpel. Our language has been cut into two parts: one safe, and the other risky. Some words are revolutionary, and others are reactionary; some words we may use, and others belong to our enemies.

And just like that, I was hooked. This person was clearly an outspoken agent calling for change and reform in his society. All of a sudden Murong turned from a writer into an incendiary subject on a hot topic. I jumped on board and got to thinking — how do I make a person who is visually boring interesting? And my first inspiration came directly from the same speech. Toward the top of his speech, Murong said:

From my many years’ experience in writing and publishing, I could compile a Sensitive Words Glossary, in which you would certainly find the words “system,” “law,” “government,” as well as a large number of other nouns, several verbs, quite a few adjectives, and even a few special numbers. The glossary would also include all names of religions, all names of important people, all countries, including of course China, and also the phrase “Chinese people.”

On the backend of the speech, the author continued:

If there really were a Sensitive Words Glossary, I hope that it could be published; in this way at least we could all save a lot of time, and reduce the possibility of unwittingly committing “word crimes.”

Sitting in a small airport in Burlington, Vermont on my way back to China I thought — maybe I can help him publish this list of sensitive words. I dreamed up a bunch of scenarios of how I could visualize a list of words and eventually came to the conclusion that I should let this man say the words that ordinarily he can’t say.

This train of thought continued to a greater concept on voiceovers vs subtitles. While most international news videos get a voiceover treatment, I started thinking it would be completely ironic to mute the man, when he is in fact, talking about words which he can not use. I decided subtitles were more appropriate which then opened up more doors for cinematic storytelling and made it a little easier to justify adding music to a news piece. Although I was excited to make the piece, I was still a bit worried about keeping it moving and wanted the music to keep the piece from drying up.

Now, regardless of the man’s profession, I had a hot subject and an idea for a snappy intro. I had music to help move the piece in a rhythmic narrative and a logic behind how I would represent his opinions visually.

And while I knew I had to shoot him writing or at the computer, I also knew I wanted to get him out of the context where we are used to seeing writers. When you get stuck shooting a “boring” person (or one, who doesn’t do anything visually exciting) I think this is a great exercise to find a new physical environment. Simply, get them out of the physical environment where they normal are or where we expect to see them. It doesn’t matter where — just someplace else. I wanted to see him interacting with people, and when I found out he was going out to dinner with some journalists and human rights lawyers, I was ecstatic when I got the invite to tag along.

This was the trickiest part of the video — both visually and narratively. How to link the home interviews, the writing visuals and a bunch of guys at dinner. With some thinking, it was easy enough to have narration lead the story into the restaurant, but shooting this was much more tricky.

There’s a Zoom H1 hidden on the table near the bear drinking, cigarette-smoking intellectuals. I have a 60D switching between a Gorilla Pod, a tripod and the in-table lazy susan. In addition, I had a 5DMII on a shoulder rig. And while I didn’t leave a camera rolling the entire time, I did leave the audio rolling. When I got back, I synched all of the audio with the video clips I had, and although I had tons of great dialogue, in the end I just grabbed one meaty quote that allowed me to jump from frame to frame anachronistically. Had I used multiple quotes or too much back and forth dialogue, I would have been forced into using more real time footage. Using just one quote allowed me to use some of my favorite visuals from the entire night.

With the intro set and multiple environments in the bank, I just needed to shoot the interviews. Knowing that I was at risk of having a boring video, I kept two cameras rolling continually during the interviews so when it came time to cut, I could keep all my frames short and bounce between a Canon 50mm f/1.2 and a Canon 24mm f/1.4.

With the credit roll, intro and title sequence, the video came out at 4 minutes and 20 seconds. Keeping voiceover out, adding music, using multiple environments and multiple cameras rolling during interviews, I hope I succeeded in making a visually “boring” person interesting.

And while I can’t answer that question for you, I can say the greater lesson I took away from this project was the potential assets we gain from simply researching what our subjects have to say, have said and what they might want to say.

MORE ON MURONG XUECUN:

• Read Edward Wong’s story “Pushing China’s Limits on Web, if Not on Paper”
• An Excerpt from ‘Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu’
• More on Murong: Words We Can Use, and Those We Can Not

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NOTE FROM JONAH: The following blog post is a guest lecture I am giving to the International Multimedia Journalism MA in Beijing, Wednesday night. The course is based in Beijing, and is a collaboration between the Beijing Foreign Studies University and the University of Bolton in the UK. The course leader is Dr DJ Clark.

DISCLAIMER 1: Dear Biel Calderon, Stephanie Thiedig, Mark Esplin, Joseph Djima, Dirk Claus, Jeff Kennel, Lui Chen, Tracey Shelton, Michela Orlandi, Olga Papakonstantopoulou, Yi Song, Lee Ryan Perkins, Chen Mai, DJ Clark, Sharon Lovell and BFSU social media and photography students,

In talking about online promotion for photographers, there is no correct answer. There are certainly best practices, things to avoid and techniques to help, but the information that follows this note is simply my quasi-guerilla (social) warfare technique that I employ to promote me, my photography and my business. The online atmosphere for #togs is constantly changing and in many ways, to stay up to date with the blogosphere, microblogosphere and visual communities — would be a full time job. While we have other full time jobs already, doing every step below, every day, is simply not always possible … but we can sure try.

DISCLAIMER 2: Yes, I am promoting myself, by talking about promotion.

WHY SHOULD WE PROMOTE OURSELVES?

The first question we might ask before we get into how I go about promoting myself, might be — why should we promote ourselves?

We are currently living in an over-saturated photographic world. Nothing says this better than the latest iPhone update. While the phone has improved a small bit, the big push from Apple this round was a photographic update. For $399 mobile phone users now have an 8MP camera and a video camera shooting 1080P at 30 fps. Apple’s attention to this detail (over some more practical things) is certainly a testament to the world’s current obsession with photography.

Given that the average meathead has at least 8 MP in their pocket, and thousand of talented graduates come out of J-school, photography school or multimedia programs like yourselves every year, it becomes increasingly important that we as professionals not only separate ourselves from the general amateur photo community, but also within the professional community.

By promoting ourselves efficiently we gain two things. First and most importantly, we gain eyes on our work. Second and also most importantly, we gain income. While some will disagree, our work is heavily based on technology that is constantly changing and improving. To keep these toys in our hands, we need money. Increasing our revenues to keep up with technology is important (as is money to live comfortably while tackling this competitive world).

While no one will put a knife to your throat saying “promote!!!” there is a great risk in not promoting because everyone else will be doing it. This has a semi-swing effect for photographers who don’t have web sites, have no Google klout or place in online social communities. At least from the public perception and online eye, you could become buried under those who do. For some this is very tough. I have plenty of friends who truly dislike social media and online promotion — but who are great photographers. You can chose not to play the game, but given the online environment for #togs, you are walking a slippery line.

PREPRODUCTION AND ENTREPRENEURIAL JOURNALISM: YOURNAME.COM

When I was going through J-school I was always told — if you are looking for money, you might want to try the business school across campus. Post univisity, in my first years as a staffer at newspapers I was paid the equivalent of peanuts by Swift Communications, a chain of newspapers in America’s west.

While you probably won’t become a millionaire by being a photojournalist, for the entrepreneurial journalist there is a world of financial opportunity out there. To get a piece of this, you need to think about your images, as your business.

Freelancers often think about themselves as independent contractors going from job to job. This is true. However, what you are really doing is creating a business. So whether you sell cupcakes, lemonade or photos — you should have a plan. Brand yourself as your business. Branding is essential to any business.

The first step to this branding, is creating a web site. And the first step in creating a web site is creating a name for your web site. I see a lot of questionable decisions at this early stage of the game.

Do you want to brand your name or some other abstract title? For example, you might have a portfolio site that has lots of breathtaking photos form Asia. You want a web site to show case this work and call it “asiaphoto.com.” Now, let’s say this site becomes popular. The average person will now know asiaphoto.com instead of your name (.com). I see this very often with nascent production companies and individuals who chose a name which makes them look like companies. In the much more likely scenario that the business doesn’t succeed, you’ve also wasted time branding a business that doesn’t exist anymore, while you as a person, photographer and business — will always exist.

My first web site was called kesselimaging.com. This site branded “Kessel Imaging” which was actually just me. After a couple years I decided to pull the plug and stop wasting time promoting an ephemeral brand, and instead brand me (a real person … I think) and moved my branding efforts to jonahkessel.com.

• For more on entrepreneurial journalism check out Steve Buttry’s post “Jonah Kessel and Carmen Sisson discuss entrepreneurship and photojournalism” here.

STEP ONE: YOUR ONLINE BACKBONE

The backbone to my online presence is my web site (not to be confused with my blog, photoblog, microblog, etc.). First, in no way does Facebook “cut it” as “your website”. Neither does Flickr, Picasa or some other photo sharing site.

I meet photographers almost daily who don’t have personal Web sites. Many of these folks will have Flickr pages or Facebook pages — but don’t be confused, these become largely invisible to the public eye, expanded social networks and bots who will be your friends in getting visitors, clients and eyes on your work.

While bots are increasingly indexing social media, by hosting your works on these sites, you end up promoting them, sometimes more than yourself. They gain traffic. They gain Google status. And perhaps worst off,they can gain the rights to your media. On an subconscious level or psychological level, hosting your content exclusively on a social media site such as Facebook or Flickr, can create an unprofessional association with your work.

BEST PRACTICES FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS CORE WEB SITES: The top five concerns I have with my site, and also the top four problems I see with other photographers’ sites are: usability, compatibility, search-ability, share-ability and load times. Let’s quickly go through these elements:

• USABILITY: On a basic level, your web site should be easy to use. In fact, it should be so easy to use — an idiot should be able to navigate. For the busy client who is checking dozens of photographers’ sites, fancy and hidden buttons can turn mean a click off or closed tab.
• COMPATIBILITY: Your web site should function not only across all browsers but all platforms — and for all users. jonahkessel.com may look like a flash built site, but there’s more than meets the eye backstage. Underneath the flash site is a mirror HTML site for users who don’t have flash as well as for bots who are indexing content. There is also a site for mobile users, a site for tablet users and another site for disabled users.
• SEARCH-ABILITY: Photographers who simply have one flash built site lose a tremendous amount of traffic because bots can’t truly search the content of the site. Every image on jonahkessel.com has: (1) file names specifically labeled for SEO, keywords specifically labeled for SEO, titles specifically labeled for SEO. While this information is not contained in the flash built site, it is contained in the HTML site. When bots cruise the Web they see this information, index it and then make it available for users and potential clients browsing. Then when they click the link, the images forward to the flash built site. If your content is not searchable or findable, its almost as good as it not being there.
• SHARE-ABILITY: I’m assuming you are all children of the 21st century and understand the power of sharing. A viral video or a photo can take off putting millions of eyes on your work. Let’s hope that content links back to you — but in the meantime, let’s make sure there is a sharing button accessible ALL OF THE TIME. By not having these buttons easily accessible, or accessible at all, you are simply loosing out to potential traffic, eyes and income.
• LOAD TIMES: Unlike print journalists, our media unfortunately requires some space. It is critical to keep file sizes on videos and photos down to the smallest point possible. A long load time can be the difference between a click off and view. You could have the best content in the world, but if it takes too long to see it — no one will.

There are about a thousand choices for web sites. For the past three years I have been a client of Livebooks, a company who makes web sites for photographers. For the most part, I’ve been very satisifed. The company has lots of options including custom options. Might site is custom built off of my own functionality and front end visual design.

The company allowed me to give them the blueprints of how everything should work and look, and then they build the back end. The back end (in screenshot above) has a graphic user interface that makes managing the web site extremely simply, easy and fast. When I update the GUI, it updates the site and all mirror sites (including mobile and tablet sites). While this isn’t free — I couldn’t imagine updating 6 web sites manually every time I make a small change. The money spent on the site surely is made up in productivity time later.

In my continued efforts to brand myself as a business, the details of the site will also cross into the upcoming topics. Fontography, color schemes, link functionality and logos will be cross-branded across all of my web sites. Although these are small details and are largely ignored, the subconscious effect of branding continued out over multiple platforms turns you as an individual — into a brand.

You can sell a brand. Selling yourself is much more difficult … or illegal (in most places).

STEP TWO: YOU HAVE A SITE, NOW WHAT?

After creating jonahkessel.com, my goal was to create a continued traffic stream to it. While there are a number of ways to do this, we can split it up to a couple key categories: the blogosphere, the microblogosphere and social media communities. By engaging in these three keys elements, you will bring direct traffic to your site, while creating a Google ranking that will bring clients to your doorstep.

• BLOGOSPHERE: The site you are currently viewing is my blog, hosted by Wordpress. This site, named “Nomadically Curious Visual Thoughts” (note visual branding/attention to myname.com over title in logo) is dedicated to long form blogging and details images I take from traveling, as well as commentary about work I do. The general topics are journalism, photography, technology, video, China and travel. In an active month I will update it eighth to ten times. In a inactive month (which probably means I’m too busy to even sleep) I will update it two or three times. Since I am always working or traveling — there is never a shortage of items to blog about.

  The Wordpress community is often a more mature community and technically sound one, than some of its counterparts (i.e. Blogger, Tumblr, etc.). People who use Wordpress generally know HTML (at least enough to update a blog) and in general, the professional blogosphere is found here.

  I also host a photo blog called “Good Light and Good Luck” hosted on Tumblr. The Tumblr environment is very very different to that of the Wordpress community. In general demographics of users seem to be much younger. Narrowcasting seems to be much greater in the Tumblr environment as well. While in the Wordpress arena we see blogs on China or technology for example, on Tumblr, topics are widdled down to a much more specific level. Some of my favorite examples of narrowcasting on Tumblr include Kim Jong-il Looking at Things, Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Beiber, Fuck Yeah Girls on Bikes and Awesome People Hanging out Together.

  I do believe a monkey could use Tumblr. Its extremely simply, extremely efficient and requires no knowledge of HTML. While I target a general audience with my Wordpress, I am targeting a younger demographic with the Tumblr blog. However, my Tumblr account is linked directly to my Twitter account and Facebook account, and these are updated simultaneously to a Tumblr post.

  The photoblog I update (at least) every day. However, this process is automated. About once a month I will update the blog for the next 30 days. I program the system to release one picture a day that includes a large caption with some backstory about the photo. I initially started this blog as a simply traffic fishing device that required little effort; however, over time I have come to like the community and its ability to focus on very narrow subjects.

  My Google Analytic report for last year shows my Wordpress blog as the eighth largest traffic generator toward my mane site, and Tumblr coming in at eleventh.

• MICROBLOGOSPHERE: While my blogs rank eight and eleventh in traffic generators to my main site, microblogs are ranking much higher, coming in at third, only behind Google and direct traffic. When I talk about microblogging I am primarily talking about Twitter. I believe Twitter is the single greatest tool we have for promoting ourselves as photographers; however, without the assets listed above (site, blogs) it becomes a much different beast.

  Twitter is something that has become integrated not only into my work but my life. It is always on. While I have backed off a bit compared to where I was at about a year ago (in terms of time actually spent watching Twitter feeds), it is still an intrigal part of my life. It connects me people who see and view my work. It gives me the opportunity to let those people who do follow my work, do follow it as it develops.

  From posting cell phone photos during shoots, to talking about the process as it happens from shoot to edit, Twitter helps me create transparency in what I do. People ask me questions daily about photography, technology and the stories I am working on. As a journalist I believe transparency in our work creates exponential value to our content. When readers, viewers or users have a connection to both the content and journalist, this becomes a lot easier.

  Making Twitter an effective tool for promoting is not as simple as just placing a link to your content when it becomes available. In fact, per article you publish you might have a specific roll out plan just for Twitter in how to best promote your work. But first, you need an active community of followers and aggregators to help spread your links around. And this means actually being part of the community, helping to promote other journalists and photographers works and engaging in dialogue.

  If you have 100,000 followers, but you are not active with them — the tool will be much less powerful. However, 200 active followers can be a huge help in getting your work into their networks.

  Here’s a couple things I keep in mind when using Twitter to promote my work:

  • TIME ZONES: Your followers most likely follow many people, and probably exist in many time zones. Therefor, if you post something once at 9:00 am its probably unrealistic to think Sahid in Qatar, Jaques in France and Chen in China all see the link. This makes it necessary to post things for different audiences in different time zones. Now look at times during the day when people might most likely be online.

    Right before lunch, when desk employees are killing time before they can take off. Right after lunch, when people don’t want to do work cause they are tired and full. Maybe 45 minutes after people arrive at work and are finished checking their work emails and thinking about how long till lunch. 30 minutes before the end of the work day is another great time when the Twittesphere becomes very active.

    If you post during those times and based on different time zones, you’re sure to get a little more attention.

    However, if you post the exact same Tweet twice, or Tweet too often, you’re followers will likely be annoyed with you for clogging up streams with content they’ve already seen. There is a fine balance between tweeting often enough, but not too often to be annoying.

    To give your followers more than just your content its important to stagger tweets linking back to your content, with tweets leading elsewhere, or commentary on other people’s works. If I put out a big piece that I thought could really go viral, I would link out to it every four hours for a day, and in between link to other things. With an article that was not as important, I might do it twice in a day (once for the Eastern hemisphere and one for the West – usually separated by 12 hours exactly).

  • TIMED TWEETS: You may be thinking … well, that seems like a lot of work. And it is. However, you don’t need to be sitting next to a computer the entire day waiting for 4:30 to roll around in every time zone. Instead you can use tools to automate Twitter. For example, right now, I am talking to you; however, I have programmed Twitter to automatically send tweets out during this lecture every 10 minute pointed at one of your Web sites.

    Having a presence on Twitter during all time zones will create a bigger following in more places. So take advantage of technology and tweet while you are sleeping.

  • SEO: You only have 140 characters, and Google is watching, so make them count. Just like writing a good headline, writing a good Tweet will make be clip or pass over.
• SOCIAL COMMUNITIES: Beyond Twitter and the microblogosphere, other online social communities are critical in creating traffic to your sites. Last year, Facebook ranked fourth (only behind direct traffic, Google and Twitter) in generating traffic to jonahkessel.com. In the last six months of this year, Vimeo ranked eight, with stumbleupon, YouTube, Google+ all also ranking in the top 20.

  Social communities can build your profile independently of your web sites as well. Today (November 23, 1:52pm), I had 2,300 views on Vimeo alone. This doesn’t count YouTube, Youku and Toudu where I also host videos.

STEP THREE: BANG FOR YOUR BUCK

So far, we’ve discussed the basics of online promotion. This is the bare minimum. However, if you want to excel I believe with each article or project you produce you can have a promotion plan and weasel your content into more places. Let’s take a couple examples, going from simple to some more complicated methods.

THE TEASER: If movies can have teasers, why can’t you? As cinematic journalism increases you’ll probably see more of this. I’m currently working on a project for Save the Children documenting disabled people around China. On December 1 a series of six videos will release on a new channel on Youku to promote the NGO and the channel. The videos are funded by the European Union as well as Save the Children.

The client requested a teaser to help promote their screening as well as the upcoming online dissemination. This can be a great money maker because, hey, its easy. Most of the content will already be ready to go: edited, color graded, codec-ed, etc.

THE REEL: In the past, it was normally just cinematographers, cameraman and movie people making reels. However, in the realm of cinematic journalism putting images with music can create a great self promotional tool. Having a reel ready, also opens up the doors to working outside of the traditional journalism fields. While I am largely video based now, in the past I would still make an annual reel made up of still images.

Creating a reel can be effective and fun. However, there are many things to think about when creating one. See this post “The Science of the Reel” for more thoughts on journalists using a reel as a promotional tool.

THE GUEST BLOG: Alright, so you have a blog, a photo blog, a microblog — now its time to guest blog. I guest blog on a number of different sites, one of my favorite being DSLR News Shooter. This community is mostly film makers and visual journalists, but plenty of audience members too. The video above, which was made mostly for the fun of it — has received over 5000 views, just on this site. For taking 20 minutes out of my day to write a blog post, I would say this is worth it.

Guest blogging also opens up the door for community members of that blog, to find your blog, increasing your core audience. On all major articles I produce I try to write at least one guest blog talking about what went into the production or some type of backstory, on top of creating content for my own blog. Here’s a couple examples:

Video above, guest blog post here:CHINESE NEW YEAR GOES WITH A BANG FOR SHOOTERS JONAH KESSEL AND PAUL MORRIS WITH CANON DSLRS

PRODUCT REVIEWS: Reviewing products can benefit more than just a manufacturer. When reviewing gear, you can use your own work as an example of what can be done with the kit. By speaking out on your experience with gear and kit, you can help create dialogue for both users of technology and the creators.

In this example, I combine a product review of Kessler Crane’s Pocket Dolly, with a promotion for my own work. Guest blog post here: KESSEL ON KESSLERCRANE – JONAH KESSEL REVIEWS THE KESSLERCRANE POCKETDOLLY V2.0

PEOPLE HAVE QUESTIONS, YOU HAVE ANSWERS: People are curious. That’s a universal truth. One of my favorite new sites (which admittedly I had more time to use) is called Quora. Its a social media based Q&A site with an excellent community of experts on various subjects. As journalists we’re always (at least attempting to) answering questions. Often when I have a new story I think about what question it might be answering. For more on Quora and its potential see this post “Curious on Quora.”

In the example above, I created a video on censorship. I searched Quota for questions relating to censorship and China and found a couple that it related to. For example, one user had asked “When will China’s web censorship stop and the government’s attitude change?” While my video didn’t exactly answer this question, I did have an unused quote that I added to the conversation. I then gave some links to help push viewers from this site to my content in other places.

UTILIZING YOUR ASSETS: Often I see great content with short legs. This means, I see a great article but I don’t think the journalist (if its a freelancer) necessarily got all they could out of it. If you can promote your content efficiently, you will have the capability to make more money while getting more eyes on your content.

This means one project can have many different lives. In the fall of 2011, journalist Kit Gillet and myself created a project called “The Fate of Old Beijing.” This was an interactive project funded by the Asia Society and included three videos, a digital tour and two photo essays. You can see the project in that form here. However, we wanted more eyes on the content.

While we had an audience in the nonprofit sector, we then found a home for the video package in the editorial, or news sector. We sold the package to Global Post, who published all three videos in a series called Beijing’s vanishing act. You can see those videos here.

After a nonprofit and online newspaper — we moved to television and sold the rights to the Archeology Channel, where the videos were shown in the summer of 2011. Their posting about the series here.

Using our own contacts in the media, we started offering interviews and screenings of the films. This might seem like an obvious thing to do, but you will gain a greater audience by simply making yourself available to other journalists. Here’s some links of some of the places I interviewed, blogged or helped promote my material:

• Interview: Jonah Kessel, ‘The Fate of Old Beijing: The Vanishing Hutongs’
• Travel Site: Filmmakers Jonah Kessel and Kit Gillet examine the fate of old Beijing’s hutong
• Local listings: A documentary screening of The Fate of Old Beijing: The Vanishing Hutongs will be held alongside a dialogue at the UCCA.
• Guest blog post: THE PERILS OF SUBTITLING AND TRANSLATION IN VIDEO – JONAH KESSEL ON HIS LATEST 5DMKII PROJECT
• Photo Essay: The Vanishing Hutongs
• A converging media gray area
• Backstory — The Fate of Old Beijing: The Vanishing Hutongs
• CANCELED or CENSORED? The Fate of Old Beijing: A Vanishing World Documentary Screening & Dialog
• The Fate of Old Beijing: A Vanishing World Documentary Screening & Dialog

Beyond online media, we had enough content on this one to flip it around into a print article. As DSLR shooters, you always have the option to shoot stills and video. I often grab a still shot before I shoot video, to examen the frame. This gives me still photographs of most subjects and places I go. When video is rolling, you are grabbing quotes. So the only thing left is to fill in the details of the story where the quotes leave off.

This video appeared as a print article in UK based Geographical magazine in November of 2011, nearly six months after its first publication at the Asia Society, again — bringing in more revenue while getting more eyes on our content.

THE WIDE WIDE WORLD: You may have noticed a great variety of places mentioned above. Geographic variation can be another great asset to your content. When I publish an article, often times I think — “Ok, its published in China. Where’s next?” While publications like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal won’t make this possible, other publications have looser rules surrounding the issue.

HONG KONG: SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

In many instances this can be a great asset to you and publications. For example, it is unlikely a reader in India will read a newspaper in Hong Kong. Above, you can see an article titled “Tunnel Vision” which appear in South China Morning Post in May.

BEIJING: THAT’S BEIJING

Three months later, a slighter shorter version appeared in That’s Beijing’s August edition. The article would again be printed in Caravan, an Indian magazine. And of course, a blog post. Looking at your content as dynamic assets will get more eyes on your content while at the same time raising your profile and your income.

RE-EDIT/RE-SELL: Keeping control of the rights to your content is perhaps the most important thing you can do in repackaging and reselling. While NGO’s and the nonprofit sector don’t necessarily pay well, its usually pretty easy to control the rights to your content while helping out a good cause. Most NGOs are very happy in this scenario as it creates greater awareness of their cause. Here’s an example:

I support a couple different NGO’s, one being Shanghai Roots & Shoots. In the fall of 2011 I helped create a series of twelve, two-minute videos detailing one of their projects called “The Million Tree Project.”

The NGO paid for my expenses to travel to Inner Mongolia and film their volunteers planting trees in the desert. While there I grabbed more content that I knew would not be needed for their films, but might be useful for an additional program. In the end, I had enough content to create their videos as well as another long form piece here:

I find the nonprofit and NGO sector to be a great resource in doing ethical work while gaining assets that would otherwise be expensive and hard to find. In my experience, its pretty rare to encounter newspapers and magazines that will pay freelancers expenses (lodging, flights, food, fixers, translators). However, NGOs can do this — and as long as you can keep yourself separated as a journalist from their agenda, you can put yourself in a great position to gather unique and sellable content.

FINDING THE TIME

If the above plan sounds daunting, it is. On good days, I can get it all done. On days where hundred of emails are stacking up and the clock clicks away toward deadline, this can become tough. However, I have found the effect of my dissemination and promotional plan to be invaluable to both my career and content.

Now … Any questions? Those of you in class, ask away, those of you not in Beijing, feel free to write in questions in the comment section below or email me.

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