Hal MacLean

I have just bought Scott Kelby’s recent book Digital Photography volume 2 and love it. I read the first book and learned that Scott’s style is down to earth and practical. He uses a lot of humour to ease you in to the subject for each chapter, but there are some seriously good tips and hints in each section.

Since I consider myself a learner still (and probably aways), particularly when it comes to photography, I really find this kind of book extremely useful. Yes, there are bits that are probably common sense and need not be said, but then again there will be folk will appreciate the information nonetheless. After all, having your common sense ‘confirmed’by an authority such as Scott can only be a good thing!

One immediate action as a result of reading the book was to buy a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 lens. I love it… so fast compared to even my f2.8 Sigma and the results are tack sharp. Thanks Scott! It didn’t cost a fortune, and I am sure it will be a firm favourite of mine very soon (probably by Friday afternoon, since it will be used for a wedding shoot then).

Reading Scott’s book also prompted me to  go through all of my kit and check out some of the features I know I don’t use so often. One such is the ability to use my SB800 flash gun ‘off camera’ using the wireless connection from my Nikon D200. I love the depth you can get when you move the light around to a different angle instead of blasting right off the top of the camera. Another tip was to shoot ‘tethered’ - i.e. using a USB lead from my camera straight in to my Mac. This needs a piece of software from Nikon (30 day trial) and you’re away. I liked the ability to see the image right on my laptop screen instead of in the viewer window on the back of the camera, but the software leaves a lot to be desired… more on that in another post, I think.

All in all, the two books I now own from Scott are proving to be a goldmine of useful information and I can thoroughly recommend them. The information in the second one about the use of flash is brilliant (no pun intended), and just what I needed to give me the confidence to go off and try stuff out. Buy the book - you won’t be disappointed.

I recently went back to Anglia Ruskin University for two days to run a ‘journalism and broadcast’ summerschool for a group of 14 year-old students. Working with Matt, we ran through some (by now very) familiar ground but as ever tried to provide a twist to make the event unique and fresh for the participants. On this occasion we looked at still images telling a story and then the use of digital video to capture a point of view. With more time we would have looked at how broadcast technologies could be used, creating a short TV schedule and running it live.

The group were excellent - every single person remained engaged despite some pretty intensive talking at various points. They were enthralled by the editing process and the ability to re-tell a story to create an event that just didn’t happen. Use of five shot technique, editing for story telling, cut aways, audio creation and so on really helped bring their work alive. I can honestly say that this group were amongst the very best in terms of their concentration and drive to succeed.

One very notable trait was that we spent a lot less time explaining the technology than ever before, and a lot more time on how to get the best story out of the footage. It is almost as if the young people were fully aware of how the technology would support them, and in fact were almost unconcerned with it to the point where they didn’t question whether it would or wouldn’t work, just that they could rely on it and get the best result from it.

Once again, we were using Apple kit. This time we provided a number of desktop machines to augment our small and ageing fleet of powerbooks.  If ever we needed new equipment for these events it’s now! However, the desktop power macs did us proud - incredibly heavy to move around, but ultimately the most reliable kit for the job.

We edited with iMovie again. I am always amazed at how versatile this software really is compared to some higher end authoring apps we use, such as Final Cut Pro. iMovie does the job up to the point where someone wants multiple video tracks. Using garageband to create a soundtrack is usually a second activity for a different part of the day, however during this event we found the participants anxious to multitask and were firing up garage band during the import process. We  were intrigued to see how they would review the footage but as it turned out most of the groups used a shot list and storyboard, despite not having introduced that. Times they are a-changing! In the end they achieved a remarkable amount in a short time, and out of 24 or so students only one had used a Mac before, two others had seen one and the others weren’t fussed. The type of kit they used wasn’t as important to them as whether they could tell their story. Powerful stuff, eh?! I guess if we had used unreliable machines the whole event would have been different, so once again a big grin from me for the old faithful hardware!

Check it out in more detail over at digitalcreativity.org 

Last week I worked for four days at the BETT show and helped run the Create at BETT feature stand at the top of the stairs in the National Hall, Olympia, London. It was probably the busiest BETT show I’ve known in the last five years, and a delight to be working on such a high profile stand.

A number of partners made this stand exist. Apple computers gave their support with Alan Bennett from Apple Education Europe on the stand each day to answer questions and talk about the education market for Apple. Nick from AT Computers provided a stunning range of kit for us all to use (thanks Nick - really good!) and John from Reflecmedia provided a state of the art chromatte station with live chroma keying happening direct into iMovie. BBC Blast helped establish the stand and Learning Central were there to talk about innovative work with the BCS.

Matt from Cleveratom organised a group of children from King Harold School to be on the stand for four days to run the equipment and talk to the visitors. As ever, King Harold School pupils were brilliant! Their enthusiasm, infectious energy and determination to succeed meant that the stand never had a dull moment. Many thanks to Malcolm Burnett for organising the group and being there with them, promoting both their activities and our new company!

The image shows Matt giving (yet another) impromptu demonstration to some of the many, many visitors. We used iStopmotion from Boinx software to run some stop frame animation activities.

Both the stop frame animations and the chroma keying were used to create instant podcasts on the stand. It never ceases to amaze us how complex some pieces of software would have you believe a podcast is… don’t be fooled! With relatively little skill and only simple software everyone can be podcasting at will. Email or phone us to find out how we can get you podcasting like a pro! We will happily run sessions in your place of work or school and show you exactly how easy it really is.

In addition to the Create at BETT stand, I was also working on the ‘Tomorrow’s Learners Today’ stand, organised by Stephen Heppell of Heppell.net and situated in the middle of the Grand Hall on the main floor. This was a brilliantly interesting stand with a continuous flow of speakers all talking about building schools for the future. Some amazing presentations from people including Stephen himself, I was available to answer questions from the audience to follow up on the content and get people talking more about how to use the BSF programme in their own school. More about BSF another time - BETT was huge, and a great success!

More images from the stand can be seen by CLICKING HERE. This should open a new window with a web gallery in it.

Thursday 23rd November 2006 was the date for the Bromley Learning Alliance celebration event, where children who took part in the Summer Project got to share their work with parents and friends. Matt and I were presenting to an audience of approximately 200 people and we were delighted to be leading the parents through the work, commenting on it and talking to the children as each film was shown.

What struck us both was the absolute quality of the films in terms of the story behind each one. The animations they created (all stop frame, all using the excellent iStopMotion from Boinx) may not have had the precise model making skills for a Nick Parks production, but the digital literacy the children exhibited was astonishing. The participants were all aged from 9 to 12 at the time of the event, which is a very young group to do this kind of work with.

They are not the youngest, however! That honour falls to Cressing Primary School who we worked with to see if stop frame animation could be used with 6 and 7 year olds. We found that it can, but you cannot simply go in and do it without a certain amount of preliminary work.

The Bromley pupils were part of the Bromley learning alliance, which was formerly known as ‘SEEVEAZ’. We have worked with them for the past five years running summer projects in digital creativity and they have carried the torch on further than we originally anticipated.

Top marks to Bromley, then - and our sincere thanks to Andrew Ferrier, Sue and Merrill for their support and time in making this all happen.

We made the DVD for the children to take away on the night, but there were so many issues with the media that we will re-do it for them free of charge.  This is the first time such a glitch has descended on our DVD production routines - I only hope the re-make will be better! We use DVD Studio Pro for the authoring and I am confident that the problem lies in the media or the audio format we used. I’ll investigate… but my apologies to the children of Bromley who have a disc that may not work well!

Last Tuesday I attended the teacher’s centre in Bromley to deliver a presentation for a group of staff from different schools who are going to be taking part in this year’s ‘Summer School’ event.

For a lot of the time I went over the last five years worth of work, which was absolutely compelling to do - I can’t say how much of an impact this stuff has - it is really leading the way in the digital creativity stakes! The staff were attentive, asked questions and ultimately just *had* to participate!

When I get round to demonstrating clay animation it is really captivating - not because of me, but because of the subject and the materials you get to use. On this occasion I animated a mobile phone and a ball of plasticine, making a six second film called ‘disappear’. Then it was the turn of the teachers and boy oh boy you should have seen the way they got into making those plasticine models! It really is a refreshing thing to do and to see…

The actual training day for the children is next week, and I am sure we will have every bit as good a result as in previous years. We ought to make a few DVDs of this work…