Grok Steady

mayday, mayday

Conor Kodan Lynam from 360 Project in Australia, pivot fakie at the inauguration of what's got to be Cambodia's first skateboard park, Friday, 25 March 2011. Quick 'n' dirty edit.
© 2011 Rick Valenzuela

 

No distress*, but maybe a few everyday slams in between tricks at the opening of a skatepark in Phnom Penh's Pourire Sous les Enfants Pour un Sourire d'Enfant school, in Stung Meanchey district. The few dudes who skate in town put on a demo, as well as guys from 360 Project, a design-and-donation outfit from Australia that gave 30 completes to the park. Still a little baffled that this really happened, and, after rumors of one every couple of years, was pleasantly surprised. I was alternating hard between wanting to shoot video, shoot stills and roll around myself. At this point, I'm getting the most satisfaction setting up strobes and laying in filth (on purpose).

 

* non-skate nerds, or young skate non-nerds: a pivot fakie was once called a mayday.

PS: As I play catchup on this thing, I meant to post up my last video at The Phnom Penh Post. Typepad won't embed it, so here it is.

a return, and more history

Been a bit remiss about posting again.

Somewhat recent things:

A newish online skateboard mag, Already Been Done, interviewed me about Journal. In the folllowup, they have a video interview with Tim O'Connor about Ryan Gee busting his spleen while out on a photo shoot, the reason he ended being called The Gill in the Bam/Jackass stuff. They also put up scans of all three issues, in case you've never seen them, or never see them anymore because they're in a dusty box somewhere.

http://alreadybeendone.com/content/2011/01/18/regift-journal-magazine/

http://alreadybeendone.com/content/2011/02/08/regift-journal-1-2-and-the-story-of-gees-spleen/

If you can, check out ABD from a mobile device. That's how it's intended to be viewed, and it's worth it. It's looking good, and the main dudes behind it are Josh Friedberg, from 411 days, and Rob Brink of The Skateboard Mag, so you know it's going to be.

snowboard photog getting stiffed on pay

More ripoffs in the photography industry -- a snowboard photog getting told off and called "unstable" by the CEO of a company because he invoiced them for an image they used on their Web site.

There's two changes going on here. With decent hobbyists and unthinking rookies giving out free work, professional photogs really need to prove their value in their fees, contracts and deliverables, and need to stand up to crap contracts and deadbeat companies. Chris Messervey is doing the right thing here. I hope he gets his, at the compounded rate that he's asking. The other shifting grounds are these industries. There's some comments calling Messervey unprofessional, purportedly by established professional photographers, presumably by ones who aren't part of that specific industry.

I don't know jack about snowboarding, only what I've gleaned from skateboarders who do it too and because it gets lumped together in what used to be called "action sports". I figure the snowboarding industry has gone through the same insane growth skating has, probably sooner, quicker and on a larger scale. Companies started up by bros who live the life and took out a loan, turning into major teams/brands, then evolving into what are now called "core companies" that might hire execs from outside the industry, and sharing a market with household-name, publicly trade corporations tapping into that segment.

For anyone who's working as a photog or video shooter in snowboarding, skating, etc., some companies are not going to operate like it was back in the day. That bro network is fine between the shooter, the sponsored person and the team manager, but beyond that, it'll probably be different. Some numbers guy from outside the industry doesn't care, doesn't think about doing it or laying on the ground or climbing up something to get the shot, or things like that. He never did it, and doesn't appreciate it beyond what it does for the bottom line. The CEO stiffing Messervey, Joseph Condorelli of Grenade Gloves, an apparel company, is a skiier who can hardly stand up on a board. From what I gather, he took the reins of an established company, and maybe ruined it as far as "core customers" go.

For the future, I don't know how it will work in situations like how this one started -- Messervey gave an image file to the snowboarder he shot. That's par for the course, give him a low-res jpeg. They went on a trip together, not commissioned by company or mag. He shares the good times/end results, and the snowboarder figures out which team manager to send it to. He acts as an agent for himself and the photog, for whichever coverage is best or needed -- magazines where the rider gets a photo incentive from his sponsor, or to a sponsor for use in an ad. This was standard operating procedure in skating not too many years ago, probably still today in many places, and works fine if this guy's main sponsors are really core companies that won't screw over a photog. It doesn't make sense to -- if the sponsored guy went on a mission and brought along this shooter, they're probably friends and have been and will continue doing this together. But if these industries are all going the way of every other big business, that M.O. is going to have to change. You go on a trip like this with friends, but after that, it's business, and it might have to be conducted the same way as you would a client in any other industry.

H/T to Lightstalkers' Alerts and PDN Pulse.

Panasonic's interchangeable lens camcorder

Panasonic's forthcoming AG-AF100 video camera, taken from the preview PDF available here

Panasonic looks like it's taking a new tack with its next camera, a micro 4/3" chip in an HD camcorder with the option to use a range of its 35mm still camera lenses. On the tech nerdery, it will do 30p, 25p and 24p native at 1080 or 720, 60 and 50 interlaced at 1080, and 60p and 50p frame rates at 720. Two XLR inputs too. Interesting, for sure.

During my last camera purchase, I took a long look at the HMC152 (Euro edition of the HMC150, switchable NTSC/PAL) because it takes stills, but at the time (and, after a cursory poke around the interweb just now, still) there's scant information about how good the 152's 10.6MP images are.

 

[EDIT: I was wrong; the HMC40 takes stills, and the 152 stuff was rumors. But the HMC40 is a 1/4" chip camera. I'd rather have 1/3" chips and take screen grabs]

 

Seriously, Panasonic could sew up a nice market if it did that proper, and I'd be really interested if the AF100 has that capability. It's already got a bright idea with interchangeable lenses from its Lumix G line, but it could wholly go the reverse direction of HDSLRs and make a proper video camera that makes quality still photographs, has professional, manually adjustable audio inputs, and wouldn't need torso scaffolding to use it.

It makes sense and is more doable for them than other companies, too. Canon seems to always hold something back so one product from its still or video departments doesn't totally trump everything, Sony only took a half-step there with the Z7 adapter for Alpha lenses, and Nikon doesn't have a foothold in video cameras at all.

According to b-roll.net, word is that the AF100 will retail around US$6,000.

Nostalgia: Journal No. 0

Kevin Taylor, front blunt, Philadelphia City Hall, photo © 1995 Ryan Gee

My trip home soon and a bunch of good oldies on Facebook got me digging around the hard drive for this not-so-great scan of Journal issue zero. 

Download Journal_zero

This mag is a teenager now, 14 years old. It was slapped together around the end of 1995, with special thanks to the Blizzard of '96 for a huge free-time boom.

In the mid-90s a bunch of us were really getting into the idea of skateboard companies on the East Coast, companies like Zoo York and Torque, and magazines like The Five (Atlanta) and Smag (Baltimore) before us. Journal Vol. 0, No. 0 was the mockup of our vision, and we wanted to take that around to show what we could do and sell it to advertisers. We assembled a decent cast of characters, but ran it like you'd expect a bunch of kids getting together to do something. We lived and worked in a crappy Section 8 skatehouse in Queen Village, Philadelphia, next to a recreation park with skateable benches and tables, where at night you'd see the red cherry of a crackpipe glow bright and get passed along. Up the street was a guy with two pit bulls named Chronic and Caine, and two days after we met him, there was a shootout in the direction of his place. The next morning, while we played gin rummy on the sidewalk, police ambushed the place and kicked the door in.

We spent ludicrous sums on Velvia and parking tickets, had a beeper sponsor (seriously), and would go get the best veggie banh mi and John's water ices while waiting for the Power Mac 7100 (80Mhz, 16MB RAM, 250MB HD) to render stuff. We output everything to chunky, 5.25" 44MB SyQuest disks that lost data if you picked them up too fast. The Cardonas sent us their check-out bios on notebook paper with doodles, and it took about five minutes to figure out there was no way to transcribe it and make it read normal, so we scanned it. Close to deadline we would practice "extreme sleeping": working the day job and the mag job for about 18 hours and then finding the worst possible position/place to lay down, the idea being that you would only sleep as much as necessary like that. I often crawled onto the middle tier of a shelving unit, and Nerd lined up a tunnel of chairs.

We remarkably did make it to the trade show with this issue, and in a week had just barely learned, wrote and uploaded a website too. The Nerdernet was young then, and our links page had four sites, plus Nerd's homemade warning to use Netscape 2.0, then the top choice in frame-supporting browsers.

We gave out mags with stickers and rate cards, and some T-shirts -- our very first one, a heather gray shirt with Journal in a plain serif font and a strikethrough. Our photog John Senesy made it in Microsoft Works. Works.

Over the next few weeks I'll try to scan the other two issues, and whatever shirts I still have. I think I have the nose grind sticker (it's not Jimmy Chung) but not the "split in half" sticker. If anyone reading does, please send a pic.

Oklahoma-bound

I'm headed to Norman next month!

Talking about cholera

Sok Reaka, a 6-month-old suspected cholera patient from Kampong Speu province, watches a nurse tend to him at Kantha Bopha Children’s Hospital in Phnom Penh last week.

There's cholera in Cambodia.

The good news is that the fatality rate is low on the reported cases, and maybe the bad news is that it's tough to really tell because there's probably a lot of unreported cases, and bad diarrhea in general at this time of year.

The odd part, is that the Health Ministry held a press conference Friday publicizing the confirmed cases but couldn't man up in the press release.

Download Press Release Severe Diarrhea Feb 22_Eng

The joint statement with the WHO advises the public about "an increase in the number of cases of severe acute watery diarrhoea since November 2009", and the part where it actually mentions cholera is buried in Latin:

"To date, 128 laboratory confirmed cases of severe 'rice-water' diarrhoea caused by the Vibrio Cholerae bacterium have been identified in Phnom Penh, Kandal, Takeo, Banteay Meanchey, Kampong Speu and Prey Veng provinces -- 127 cases were treated successfully with fluid replacement therapy and antibiotics and have fully recovered."

The health minister said they don't want to make people panic, and the WHO has pointed out that the treatment is the same for cholera and severe diarrhea (lots of oral rehydration). Reasonable, but it's a way, way different reaction than the official awareness campaigns that followed swine flu and bird flu outbreaks.

The main hospital that called for the government to publicize the cases was Kantha Bopha Children's Hospital. Last week there reporter Brooke Lewis and I met children confirmed with and suspected of having cholera, including a 6-month-old boy, Sok Reaka, who had just arrived from Kampong Speu province an hour earlier and was being tested for cholera.

We ran his photo in black and white, which we haven't haven't really done except for art photography. In talking about it to one of our graphic designers, Andy Ball, we thought the color was distracting; the red took away too much attention from Reaka's eyes or the nurse holding his hand. So we flipped it. I haven't done this a lot, and we ended up using a method I got from a former editor, Mark Roy: change the image to Lab color, go to channels, delete the b channel, then delete the Alpha 2 channel. Adjust curves, change mode to Grayscale, then change back to RGB or CMYK.

I would think that a lot more data gets lost than is wanted (necessary?) in the move to Grayscale, but I mostly like what I've seen so far. The printed version we ran actually could've used more black, but I'll chalk that up to never having output a B&W image for this printer/paper before.

sports shooting

Eric Vandenbrink catches a strike at Baribo field in Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia, playing an impromptu "friendly" against the national team on 12 September 2009. © 2009 Rick Valenzuela

I've never really shot sports -- some skateboarding, which is more like an action portrait, where you know what's going to happen and sometimes  light the scene, and surfing. But not traditional sports. In September I got to shoot some pretty decent games, at two really different events.

One was a trip a bunch of journos made to watch the Cambodian Baseball Federation play at their field in Kampong Chhnang province. Baribo field is bordered by rice paddies and cows and water buffalo roam the outfield. The federation exists because a Cambodian-American, Joe Cook, fell in love with the sport and wanted to bring it to his homeland. He runs the national team and the federation from Alabama, where he's a cook at a Japanese restaurant, and dude sends out some of the wildest and funniest emails and game updates.

A Cambodian national team player points out to the ball boy a foul ball that landed in the rice fields that surround Baribo field in Kampong Chhnang, Cambodia, on 12 September 2009. © 2009 Rick Valenzuela

So a bunch of us roll out from Phnom Penh, four or so hours away to catch this game, break out the ice chest and make some hot-water hot dogs and just kick it. And then the announcer calls an "international friendly" with the Westerners. No one saw that coming. Half our team played barefoot, and we got smoked 17-4. 

Korea's Beon Yeonha drives past China's Zhang Fan in the finals of the FIBA's 2009  Asian Women's Basketball Championships in and the Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai, India, on 24 September 2009. China took back the gold from Korea 91-71 in a repeat matchup from the last championship two years ago. It was China's 10th gold. Beon scored the game high 29 points. © 2009 Rick Valenzuela

A couple of weeks later, I was in Chennai, India, for a World Association of Newspapers conference. Our paper got a bronze award for cross media, and the CEO took me out there. The conference was way more technical newspaper stuff, printers and such, and nothing editorial, so I ditched, and ended up finagling myself under the basket for the International Basketball Federation's Asian women's basketball championships. I didn't know anything about these teams, but damn, China played a super physical game and dominated Korea, but Korea's Beon Yeonha is scrappy as hell.

China's Chen Xiaoli covers Korea's Jung Sunmin in the finals of the FIBA Asian Women's Championship in Chennai, India, on 24 September 2009.  China took back the gold from Korea 91-71 in a repeat matchup from the last championship two years ago. It was China's 10th gold. © 2009 Rick Valenzuela

Sports is fun. Makes me wish I had bigger, faster glass.

Cambodia's new economic adviser

Thaksin Shinawatra, the self-exiled and convicted former premier of Thailand, speaks Thursday, November 12, in Phnom Penh in his controversial role as economic adviser to Cambodia.

I didn't really think about how shooting video in a scrum would be so different from shooting stills. For one, instead of my neck aching it's my shoulder. Yesterday morning's Thaksin address was a little messy, and I ended up shooting off-tripod entirely. And squeezing myself into a spot, where a still photog kept knocking the back of camera.

Lesson: When this happens, shoot *lots* more cutaways.

full story

A moment in 16:9

A Thai soldier weaves a fishing net he says he will use back in his home village on Sunday, 05 July 2009, at the Keo Sekha Kirisvarak pagoda at the Preah Vihear temple complex. The UN cultural agency UNESCO listed the temple as a World Heritage site in July 2008, which has touched off an armed standoff with Thailand.

I'm really digging the widescreen aspect ratio.

Another frame grab in the paper today, this one running four-columns, from Preah Vihear, which has been a flash point and war zone with Thailand for a year. That said, a soldier's life there can still get pretty chill. This unarmed Thai soldier  is just calmly doing his thing only a few meters away from Cambodian troops. 

Full story here.