I was recently commissioned to shoot both photos and video on a job. The photos were for a double-page magazine spread. The video was for a three minute clip for the company’s website.
(No, I won’t be showing you either here because I don’t have the neccessary permissions and, anyway, this post isn’t about that specific commission, rather some general thoughts about shooting photos and video together).

I suppose I had better start by saying that I was delighted to be asked to do both. It’s clear to me that my clients are going to increasingly migrate to web-based publication and that they are going to need still and moving images. Being able to do both, providing quality within a reasonable budget is going to be one of the major challenges of the (my) near future. But that’s not the whole story: shooting video is interesting and stimulating. More than anything else, that’s what motivates me.

When I started keeping a diary during working trips, I noticed that my pictures got better. Why? Because I was putting into words what was best conveyed by words and only using photography for what was best conveyed as a photograph. Video adds another dimension to this separation: what requires sound and movement can be recorded as video, what works best as a still can become a photograph. To this extent I believe that shooting both can improve each.

As my policy is not to repeat here what you can easily find better elsewhere, I’m not going to say anything about technique. Again, Google is your friend. There are masses of websites that deal with the tecnical apsects of using video-enabled DSLRs.

What I do want to do here is share a “Note To Self “, a kind of auto debriefing after my job. I’ve mentioned before that, no matter how good your preparation, there are things you can only learn when working, in real-world conditions. There’s simply no substitute for experience. Here are some of the things I learned shooting both photos and video in a professional context. Some, with hindsight, are pretty obvious, others less.

Prepare! Prepare! Prepare!

If you are going to shoot video you need a plan and you need to stick to it, at least to ensure that you have the basic structure of your film. Then you can improvise. Serendipity and photography go well together, serendipity and video far less.

Do not rely on someone who is not a photographer or videographer to do your preparation for you. They will miss things. It’s not their job and what they miss can easily compromise yours.

(Note – Golden Rule Of Photography, learned while I was working as a assistant to photographer Terence Donovan, a long time ago: if they can mess it up, they will).

Any delay or obstacle will slow you down twice as long because you are doing twice as much work.

The range of things that might delay or obstruct your production will be doubled if you shoot video as well as photographs. An interviewee who simply freezes in front of the camera, someone who starts a loud conversation in a nearby room when you are recording sound, light that changes during your shot… You need to allow for extra contingency time. If you don’t have it “in the can” on the day of the shoot, you can’t make it up when you get home.

Your DSLR needs to be kitted out especially for video: ND filters, a microphone in the hotshoe, an LCD magnifier to check focus, probably a tripod with a video head… The list goes on…  All of which needs to be removed from the camera if you are going to switch from video to stills. You can’t seamlessly go from one ot the other. What you really need is two cameras, one for stills and the other for video. But that rather defeats the purpose of using a “hybrid” DSLR. It also increases the investment you need to make in equipment and, as a consequence, what you need to charge for your services to recoup it.

Investment: here’s the sticking point. You are shooting photos and video. To be able to offer both services requires equipment, software, storage space (video files are enormous) and training.  You need to be able to get a return on that investment, especially because by adding moving images to your offer you have dramatically increased the amount of your rapidly-obsolescent equipment. Are your clients going to see video as a supplementary service they will pay extra for or as a cost-free bonus? I made a list of the jobs I was doing. It included producer, grip, assistant, sound recordist, editor, colorist…

The extra equipment you are using for video has to be transported and all that extra data generated needs to be backed-up. Both require effort and time. My shoot went well but there were moments when I really felt I needed an assistant with me, not least because time spent worrying about logistics is time not spent connecting with your subject. Photography, it has taken me a long time to learn, is all about relationships. In the end, it’s the quality of those reationships that  appears in your work. This is a constant problem: I’m paid to make images yet the conditions I work in often mean that I spend more time on peripheral activities than actually shooting. You get used to it but it’s not ideal… Of course, this is not specific to photo and video shoots but adding video to the mix accentuates the problem.

Time: video takes a very, very long time. Time to back up your data, to view the rushes, to even begin to get an idea of how you are going to edit everything together.  Then to make a provisional edit and submit it for review. With photographs it’s fairly simple: you edit and  then process the raw files to generate the best quality delivery JPEGs for the client. It takes time but ultimately it’s up to the client to decide how to exploit the images to their best advantage. With video you can’t just deliver the rushes. The work is coherent only when it has been given form through editing which adds a whole new level of complexity to the process.

I was lucky. I was with people I enjoy working with and the discussions over my provisonal edit were rewarding. In fact, I really needed external input to see how I could put the piece together. Which leads me to my last point: video requires a very close collaboration between all concerned. The end result will only be as good as the quality of that collaboration. See? Video is all about relationships, too. Only more so.

What’s the link between all that and a photograph of the Umbrian countryside sunset? None!