The art of photojournalism during the London Riots within a social network age. Don Omope interviewed by David Dunkley Gyimah

London's Burning - Riots 2011

The London riots will stand as one of those epochal events in British history.

[this post will be enormously useful for practitioners, academics and anyone interested in photojournalism and videojournalism.]

Much has been trawled through and spoken about with interviews from the police, politicians and rioters, but rarely have we heard from those on the front-line documenting these events, which have provided us with iconic images and reportage.

Don Omope, a photojournalist, is special because he embodies qualities that have come to define the new worker, the new photojournalist  - a freelancer who is also many media savvy.

He's special because, I have had the pleasure of seeing his career crystallised from BA student, MA grad, working for Sir David Frost and now producing network programmes, and he demonstrates what hard work can yield.

You'll be animated by what he says because he reflects the views of many, who work on their own terms eschewing the establishment route of media, creating their own niches.

You'll want to listen to him because, as he puts it, he was one of the first journalists on the scene, before Tottenham exploded. He made that point known broadcasting live on BBC News 24.

A bit about me:  I have been in the media since 1987, first presenting on radio for the BBC, to working across many of its acclaimed outputs e.g. Newsnight, and ABC News/ BBC WS in South Africa from 92-94 where I first came across some of the best photojos e.g. The Bang Bang Club [read here]. Then becoming an active videojournalist in 1994 training and working alongside many photojournalists.  In 2001 I wrote on my other site mrdot.co.uk how videojournalism used a photojournalistic methodology [read here]. In 2005 that led to one international award describing my videojournalism work as "photojournalistic and cinematic".  I have worked with an extraordinary number of internationally acclaimed photojos e.g.Yannis Kontos, a world press award winner,  and more recently my PhD work I'm completing explores an alterity narrative. What Don has here is relevant to the craft of photojournalists - practitioners and academics. Its very special.

Charge of the parade - Don puts himself between rioters and police for this shot

1. How it started
I started off by asking Don how he got down to Tottenham. He lives close by. He had no interest going, but friends and neighbours constantly called him that something unusual was brewing. Then when he got down there, a usual state of play, the police were being uncooperative.

The art of photojournalism - London Riots 2011 by david dg

2. Eye witness account trumps all
Don describes his interview with BBC News 24. What the BBC was saying came no where near to what was really happening, I told them. Meanwhile several photojournalists were being attacked, their gear stolen and smashed in front of them - equipment worth almost $30,000.

London's Burning 2011 Riots - a photojournalists account by david dg


3. The Myth of Photojournalism.
Whilst undoubtedly photojournalism is a craft, it has also perpetuated or disguised a huge myth relating to the flawed geniuses of many practitioners.This is not uncommon of many other disciplines. But as Don so eloquently explains here out of his 2000 shots many turned out to be unusable from a professional display point of view. In Art, that could be a different matter.

The point I want to make here is that for every set of pictures taken a photojo like Don unconsciously and consciously swiftly evaluates their work with references to the matrix of technical data on the camera to the outcome of the photos, the storytelling aspect of quality ( proximity, shape etc) of the story image and whether they are after a narrative or not.

Get the shot before it decomposes. Photojournalists therefore take a series of shots. Each frame is different from the other. Within the shot duration small changes - the man blinking, sighing, head turned a certain away affect the aesthetic quality of the image. What would have happened if Don got to the floor such as the image below by Yannis Kontos? What prevented him from doing so? Listen to the podcast.

Yannis Kontos, award winning photojournalist. This image was taken in Iraq. For more in Yannis go to his website www.yanniskontos.com

This section of the interview is lengthy, but deeply interesting for what academic Barbara Kennedy would call aesthetic impulse. Don's aesthetic impulse, like many others, is informed by many factors. But the one I'm drawn to is the lone ranger.

In photojournalism and videojournalism involving live events, there is a shared communion between even rivals to establish a near repertoire of story shots.  They inform each other within a constant looped paradigm.  How do you know what to shoot and when?

Heiddeger one of the west's celebrated philosophers created the word: "Dassein" - a complex understanding at how we think and work, which involves being in the zone. Don's Dassein involves working against the grain. He wants to see what others have not, capture the event before it decomposes and then swiftly move on. Heiddeger talks about moods and how things in this case, the scenes of the riots, articulate something the photojournalists absorbs. It's an unconscious thought and involves an intentionality - your mind directed to a task. Your doing informs how you will undertake future task - what others have called experiential learning.

The consciousness of the aesthetic. There are a limitless number of ways to capture an image. Here the fire burning provides a signification - there is a fire. Don has stooped to the eye level of the crouching policeman. There is a proximity. Forget everything you've learned as a technical exercise and concentrate on the composition. Don is only about 10 yards or less away. Part of the art of photojournalism is a fearless quality of getting the shot. Its what Cappa said and its the reason so many photojos get injured.

A Photojournalist in the thick of the London Riots reflects by david dg

4. The limitation of the 5D and social networking
Don reveals what would have been his favourite camera for the job, but also reflects on the use of social media at the time. It's become imperative thus, for the freelance mini media mogul to make a living, to understand all workflows in media.

The photojos becomes a narrative specialists understanding the mechanics of text. See Hayden White's Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (1989). The writer becomes a visualists. See Representation and Photography by Manuel Alvarado et al (2001)

Here too Don speaks about social networking to drive the story and pictures.

Photojournalists in a networked world by david dg




Oner last thing before I sign off. I'd like you to have a look at the two pictures below. One from an old friend which dates back to 1990 - London's poll tax riot - and the one after from a student demo and fees. There's a story in there - and one that Don and I discussed may involve police response to different sets of crowds. 

Student riots 2010

Poll Tax Riots - 1990

Click here for insight into major new findings on

What is videojournalism on the web, in multimedia and offline - a major study and film - and why it matters

The flaneurist Mediaist - Videojournalism and photojournalism

The flaneurist mediaist - PhotoVideojournalism in China. David roams the streets looking for material to film.

From Wikipedia
The term flâneur comes from the French masculine noun flâneur—which has the basic meanings of "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", "loafer"—which itself comes from the French verb flâner, which means "to stroll". Charles Baudelaire developed a derived meaning of flâneur—that of "a person who walks the city in order to experience it.

Inspired by two separate but connected incidents today I set about an experiment of sorts.  The first catalyst was my PhD supervisor noting my latest submission.

Sometimes I wonder whether it's possible to abandon critical theory in unveiling the molecularity of a subject, and instead opt for a historical account,  as many have that reveals and connects events previously unnoticed.

The second was Adam Westbrook's dissection of The Sartorialist. Adam does a wonderful job in deconstructing, which led to a couple of things catching my attention.

Firstly the movement of the camera and subject which created a poetic distanciation. Secondly, the close ups - the affective shot; and lastly when Scott Schuman says he just does "it". "It" being the creative process, what does he mean?

It is a given, if that process could be revealed as a formulae, it would be prized.  It is the "it" that I am at pains to do justice to, as a process to decipher.

The Creative It
In essence the "it" is beyond common sense and reasoning, Your subjectivity extends beyond the norms of 1st degree sensations. It is not external but becomes internalised; you feel it. You become lost in the process as the viewer watching "it".

This is pure cinematic, as opposed to cinema. And sometimes the sensation is so grand, so cosmic, you're in awe.  This is not my extempore, but those convened from Metz, Kant, Deleuze.

For the likes of Schuman and anyone else who has spent long enough pondering or working their craft. "It" is their DNA. It cannot be transferred. It's you voice, the conscious becoming the unconscious.

Right, so back to the inspiration. In and up to the edge of the 20th century, the photojournalist, photographer ruled when it came to the profoundness of the image, as opposed to the cineist who excelled in the moving image.

The invention of the word Videojournalism, and its deconstruction, which we've  set about doing as a body working with David Hayward BBC journalism College, and Paul Egglestone from UCLAN, leaves open several experiments.

The first, could the moving image decompose the still image? Could one day on your IPad or device yet to be invented, the moving image become a dominant thing, usurping the still image?

Now at this moment in time, there are scores of photojournalists who might shout never. Nothing beats the still image. Its immanence; the fact it is still capturing that singular moment defies any other logic for a contender.

Paintings vs Photography
But history tells us otherwise. We only need to look at painting and the revelation of perspective and Brunelleschi's, work in the 15th century. So for at least five centuries from that point, nothing could challenge the dominance of the still image as executed by painters.

Curiously our swiftness to be dismissive is redolent of that age old saying from Plato that in effect our knowledge is only as good as that we are conscious about.

At one point everyone, intelligent men and women believed the world was flat. Elsewhere social theorist Clay Shirky reveals how change takes place over years and not months and weeks, which we fight each other about.

So change is practicable, and the framework that often defines that nestles in trend extrapolation, new philosophies and the unknown. Yes and there are the obvious quack ideas.

So back to the idea. Today, I set about as the PhotoVideojournalist out to capture events. A sort of realism, where people at work would just by being reveal a bit of themselves.

That in itself may have little consequence, other than how people react to different systems: video and Photos. A photographer takes a single image, so the subject is attentive for that moment; in video, there lies a different behaviour, and the series of images are rendered obstinate without sequences or filmic meaning. Oh dear!

Lucy - stall holder

Miles - Street Performer

Guy- Tax advisor

Next I plan to see, utilising Vertov's notion of the loop, which we used in some award winning work in the 1990s, to see if I can affect a classification near to the affect of the image. By coding it in Flash using Action Scripting 3 I can sustain the loop, so the image revolves slowly enough - a liquid image- before the user changes the scene.

The next step which I'm talking to Jude Kelly at the Southbank should complete the process. :) I hope to return to talk about that.

By Product of a web site

David presenting at Apple talk - the event went well but afterwards was soured by a friend's plight


" Bloody hell, someone's nicked my bike".

We rounded off my talk to Apple - I was first there 2 years ago (link here) - on a bit of a downer ( bad news).

Duncan, whom this post is about really, emerged from Apple' s store, walked a couple of paces down the road to find his $1400 bike, which he'd attached to railings, had disappeared.

I felt so sorry for Duncan. If it's happened to you it's a bummer anyway. To have it happen to a nice bloke like Duncan who's the sort of person who'd give his last bit of change to someone in need is crushing.

Always happens to the good people eh?

Duncan, I have in a short period met two both extraordinary, is the someone you'd like to see down with a guiness.

He's a photojournalist and an extraordinary one at that.

He made his name - this is only half the story - getting pictures of Prince, Madonna, Elton John....

You name it he had the pics, but he acquired his lot in the most extraordinary of circumstances: he never went to a gig as a press photographer, always sneaking in with fans and finding a good spot to get his exclusives.

He tell's an incredible story capturing Prince at a gig, which I'll let him tell in a video spot pretty soon.

Then there's the Roling Stones in the early days of their career.

And then his knack for making the stars do things, they wouldn't ordinarily do: Elton John and Madonna together baring their chests.


The Anti-Snapper
Duncan would later sell his photo agency to the Press Association where he is today.

And the project he is knee deep in is what I can only call the celebrities celebrity- YOU.

Duncan is photographing and telling stories in his own way by capturing people.. Thata's it .. people. He approaches his subjects cold and intrduces himself, the rest is the art of human interaction and what any TV producer would kill for, opening up people enough for them to be so relaxed they tell you and do things they would normally only do with family.

And the stories he has to tell could fill a whole schedule.

Here are a couple he's kindly given me permission to show... NJOI NJOI NJOI as much as I am






Postscript -
In the post below this, I talk about the plusses of having a web site. Viewmagazine.tv has been extraordinary in that. And I continue to be grateful as well as inspired by the people I come across who have their own stories and centre of gravity.

Sound Slides and beyond e.g. Stop Action

The photojo from France didn't much like it, when a couple of years back we mixed a brill gospelly track, created overnight in the studio to the photos of Yannis Kontos who had just won World Press Photographer in the contemporary section.

"Leave the photos alone", was his advice.

He might have a point, and perhaps he wasn't referring to the cuts you can undertake on that brill programme SoundSlides.

In this case I was key-framing to produce the sort of filmic effect you'd find using a rostrum camera on opening credits to Law and Order or Homicide - Life on the Street.



Manipulating pics to provide movement is one of those added weapons in film making, whether as stand alone - see Eye of the Prize or as part of film - and one effect which regularly surfaces and there are some good ones on Youtube is Stop Action.

I can see how I'll end up stretching this to do something else, but for 5 minutes work, well you judge.

There's really nothing in it other than dragging a selection of photos from Iphoto onto FCPs timeline which I configured to 5 frames in FCPs "still frame" settings.

Creativity
A student emailed me about creativity and how you begin to create a slew of workable ideas.

My advice to her was that beyond the plethora of books on the stores shelves,go hang out with creative people, if you have the opportunity, particularly those that come from the adworld.

Their motivation, aside from being creative is to sell a product within the constrains of compressed time: a short movie in 40 seconds.

I spent three years with Jon Staton, ex head of TV at Saatchi and Saatchi - who's still my mentor. His office housed another creative team: the writers who thought up the car in front is a Toyota and other gems

And as a parting para to the wonderful world of manipulating pics, how about this for photorealistic from a friend and work colleague, Rob Ojok.

This isn't a picture taken by a stills camera but something built in Illustrator.

Nice!

Making of a multimedia Journalist

Some proof reading - typos etc, links to refine and pre-loaders, and hopefully that might do it. Do feedback Pls.

The making of a multimedia Journalist - a snap shot guide here

1mb connection would do you fine. Click image for bigger pic