Literal transcription contains transcription errors and misspellings.
00;00;01;21 - 00;00;34;13
Unknown
Thank you, Smitty. Good morning. It's my pleasure to introduce our first speakers. Richard Olsenius worked for National Geographic magazine as a photographer and picture editor, and he was the lead producer in the 1996 launch of National Geographic's first Web site. I was working at Nat Geo Publications when Richard came to the magazine. One day I went to see him, and as I walked into his office, I noticed these huge keyboards, double keyboards, synthesizer lasers.
00;00;34;13 - 00;01;11;04
Unknown
Really? And I said, What are these for? And he said, I'm betting that there's going to be music and video on the Internet someday. He predicted the future of change and creativity. Christine Olsenius collaborates with Richard on books, films and web based storytelling. She also contributed to National Geographic's issue on water in 2016. Richard created the original music score for the new film Beautiful Swimmers Revisited, which chronicles the state of the Chesapeake Bay.
00;01;11;17 - 00;01;30;21
Unknown
Richard also took the documentary through post-production, using his sound design and film grading. Please join me in welcoming Richard and Chris all seniors.
00;01;35;18 - 00;02;05;26
Unknown
Let me fire up old Betsy here. Well, thank you, John and Smitty. Christine and I are really excited to be here today as part of this communication week, and in particular the Skillman Symposium. Dr. Scheinman, who I know mainly as Smitty and Pat have been mentors to Christine and I for many years. Know I can't tell you how important that has been to us.
00;02;07;07 - 00;02;31;27
Unknown
So we're really incredibly glad you're both here today. And Pat, we're so glad that you're back and running full speed. And I also want to thank Bob Stuart and nursing Young for pulling all of this together. And I know there's a whole bunch of other folks here that I'm not going to be able to hit on. But we're here this morning, I think, to focus on what we've called in this theme, the challenging landscapes.
00;02;32;22 - 00;03;02;08
Unknown
It's perfect for us to help describe the ride that we've had through the changing media. I mean, I can't tell you how many times it's changed on us and basically driven us nuts. At the same time, keeping us enthused. And I'm assuming today that most of us here are photographers, students, writers, professors and advocates concerned really about the health of our profession.
00;03;02;11 - 00;03;30;02
Unknown
And I'm also guessing that many of us still have that fire in the gut. You know, the one that fuels our journalistic passion to tell stories, to write, to make pictures, to lay bare hypocrisy, to passion, to also speak for those who can't. So regardless of whether or not you feel our times are pulling the seams apart, I do feel that our work today is more important as ever.
00;03;31;10 - 00;03;56;23
Unknown
So the theme of challenging landscapes is very relevant, I think, to these unprecedented times, which you and I have been challenged for over 40 years to tell stories in a variety of manners, trying all of that time to keep up with the changing technology. But to be honest, we don't think we've ever seen such layers of uncertainty as we face now.
00;03;57;01 - 00;04;27;26
Unknown
And that points to a paradox. See, on one hand, I don't think we've had an arsenal of tools like we all have right now. It's pretty amazing. We have cameras to capture, images in the dark, almost video cameras. I have a couple of these at 4000 pixel wide, images add up to 240 frames a second. I know it's all technical stuff, but, you know, it's that balance that I'm always trying to achieve between the story and the tool to get there.
00;04;28;19 - 00;04;51;20
Unknown
And I'm even amazed on one of the last little things we did that this heavy digital video camera was put aside and discovered the joy of an iPhone and 4K on a stabilizing stick. I mean, it's just it just blows my mind how this sliver of glass and metal, which we call a phone, is taking over our lives.
00;04;52;14 - 00;05;22;13
Unknown
But on the flip side of this wonderful technology, there's something that I think is really scary is the frontal assault on truth. Our journalistic values are many times being perverted by the same technologies that we use to do our stories. I hate the word fake news, but I haven't quite comprehended how that's changed us and the way we approach our stories and so on.
00;05;22;27 - 00;05;56;07
Unknown
So Mark Zuckerberg recently spoke so that like every ten or 15 years we do have this unexpected platform that changes on us for communication. For those of us who started at the beginning of our careers in the personal computing age the last few decades have been breathtaking. Like I said before, whether it's publishing, web development, music production, all the distribution channels for these or a simple brick and mortar store in the regional mall.
00;05;56;14 - 00;06;23;24
Unknown
No one has been untouched by this digital river that's flowing. So we watch traditional media companies of print, television and music challenge are being challenged to find new ways to retain their readers and viewers. Images flow freely now across the Internet, like water over Niagara Falls. Many are just given away into the digital ghetto. Disappear. Can't find them.
00;06;23;24 - 00;06;47;26
Unknown
Where's our family pictures? Where you know, where where are they? Media companies owned by conglomerates now are rewriting contracts on photographers, taking rights where we once had secondary rights and could actually do a business plan with our work after doing the initial assignment was never just one assignment, you know, you had to cobble together ways to use that material after.
00;06;48;06 - 00;07;14;21
Unknown
And that's changing. Music is copied and dropped into videos without a thought. You know, they're clamping down on that. And, you know, if you do that, be careful. Black SUV might drive up in front of your house someday. Copyright protection is changing and our core value of fairness and honesty. So truth is a New York Times says is more important now than ever.
00;07;15;17 - 00;07;46;10
Unknown
Well, we're really trying to say is that on the one hand, we've never had so many tools, powerful tools to tell our stories and yet never been more challenged to collect and shape and share them and still have a reasonable chance of making a living. This is our digital goal to tell stories and to share beauty as we collectively make a living while navigating through these change challenged technological landscapes.
00;07;46;10 - 00;08;25;10
Unknown
The growth in the number of photos taken each year is exponential, and there is no indication it's going to slow. It's nearly tripled since 2010. It's projected to reach 1.3 trillion images by the end of this year. 75% of those taken on some form of a phone. So to put this in perspective, Kodak, which I grew up on, the Kodachrome, the little square images or frames their best year for images shot on film was in the year 2000 and compared that to today.
00;08;25;22 - 00;08;47;17
Unknown
Their record was just 6% of where we are today and the number of images being taken. I just learned the other day, you know, we probably all know this, but that YouTube right now is absorbing 400 hours of video a minute. Oh, that's a minute. I can't even comprehend this. I don't even know how these servers can handle this.
00;08;48;22 - 00;09;14;14
Unknown
So the question really is to all of this advancement, has this made us all broadcasters or just a small amount of listeners? I mean, that's my concern. All broadcasting, we're all shooting. Are we having enough time to actually absorb and see what we're all doing? And I hope we are. So the question for me is the value of writing, photography and music slowly losing its worth.
00;09;15;02 - 00;09;50;15
Unknown
And more importantly, how do we maintain economic value in what we do in our photography, writing and music in a world that I think sometimes we all want for free? So these flat little wonders are today's reality. And with that, we must remind ourselves and reinforce ourselves that we are still the creators, the storytellers and the visual communicators with powerful tools to mix together our photography, words, audio and music for current and new markets.
00;09;51;07 - 00;10;25;07
Unknown
This is a complex process. It requires judgment to bring these layers together. Artistry to align them in ways that work and not distracts, to communicate and not confuse. These are truly times of innovation and adjustment for juggling our creativity and technology, which is our theme today. I just wanted to turn this over to Chris. Recently, New York Times put out an internal study and we would encourage all of you to read it.
00;10;25;07 - 00;10;49;16
Unknown
It's the 2020 Report. And take a look at the first two points here, because I think they're very relevant to all of you. We will hire significantly more visual journalists as well as a small number of tool builders. But two, we will train many, many more reporters and back fielders to think visually and incorporate visual elements into their coverage.
00;10;50;02 - 00;11;29;23
Unknown
So there's a lot of counter indications whether this is true and all markets, but it is a positive outlook for those entering the job. You know, the job market that will be developing these skills, these tools. So with all that being said, I think we needed to put the broad brush away and follow a young photographer and his partner on their path to at that point and still hopefully find purpose and creativity in this constantly changing digital trajectory and to find the work and the ability to, you know, actually pay the rent.
00;11;30;20 - 00;11;52;23
Unknown
It was my early twenties and it was the late 1960s, and as somebody had said, I had come back from New York City where I had worked at Life magazine. I wandered in there from the Midwest and got a job and I was filing corrections for time and Life magazine. It was a full time job for the Corrections, and I was also doing pulling research material.
00;11;53;22 - 00;12;13;10
Unknown
But it was a childhood love of a love of photography that was rekindled when I'd wandered into the Life magazine photo lab area and I came back to Minnesota to restart my schooling, and I started taking courses from Dr. Stroman, and that's where he left off with me. This was the time, though, when the streets were filled with discontent.
00;12;13;27 - 00;12;43;15
Unknown
Black Power was, you know, a growing issue. There was anti-war dissent in the white flight. Suburbs from Beacon City was in full swing. That was there in Minneapolis that I started to focus as a student, a college student, to look at the urban schools in Minneapolis, compiling a work entitled High School. It wasn't very nostalgic, and I did put a lot of focus on the high school portfolio.
00;12;43;25 - 00;13;34;13
Unknown
This portfolio actually, and the work with the University of Minnesota led to an intern position at the Star and then a full time position on the Tribune. So I was a working former journalist. I loved it working in the community of some of the high school images. So in 1970, while I was in the beginning of my newspaper career, this collection had come together and I was able to get a photographic exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, which was basically the News photographer of the Year.
00;13;34;24 - 00;14;00;19
Unknown
I mean, I was a news photographer, but it was the first news photographer expedition at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. So for the next 12 years, doing a relatively stable news photography career, my camera became in my mind, a passport to the people and places of my home region of the Midwest. But it was early in the career, and as today, I was, like I said, amazed how my camera job opened up the door into people's lives.
00;14;00;19 - 00;15;12;09
Unknown
And I'm going to take you through as a quickly, again, a handful of shots from that period, a little bit of street photography that I was doing. So while Richard was working at the newspaper, he was approached by husband, wife publishing company that was interested in creating a book, producing a book of his landscape photography. But Richard was pretty excited about his social landscape photography at the time and convince them to switch gears and Flight was born.
00;15;12;09 - 00;15;37;02
Unknown
His first book, The idea that a husband wife team could start a publishing company, put a seed in my mind, and which came to fruition a little bit later. And it was a point in my life though, and with my camera, I actually felt that there was something that I was seeing or feeling that extended beyond my daily assignments.
00;15;37;02 - 00;16;09;11
Unknown
And it was also at this time that there was a international tragedy that was unfolding in Cambodia, and Pol Pot was been waging a war of genocide against most of his people in Cambodia. And thousands and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled to the border of Thailand and millions died. It was it was a well, the travesty. But I can just give you, again, a small snippet.
00;16;09;11 - 00;16;39;16
Unknown
The newspaper was generous and really willing to expand on this and went to a picture magazine story. And we were filing most of this back and by wire. We're about there for three, three and a half weeks. I've never been comfortable winning awards for this type of coverage, but I was honored that this work was honored by the World Press photo contest and won a first in the news category.
00;16;39;16 - 00;17;08;07
Unknown
So starting in 1980, my interest in the moving picture really began to take hold. Christine and I went out and bought a Bowflex electric 16 millimeter camera with a 400 foot magazine on top and a fluid had tripod. It was a sweet little unit, but I remember the cost was $200 for a 400 foot roll. And unfortunately, when you turn the shutter on, there was about 11 minutes of time on that.
00;17;08;23 - 00;17;39;05
Unknown
And I can't work that fast. So every time I hit the shutter button, that balance of creativity came to zero and the checkbook concerns came to about 95% and went to post-production. She was $300 an hour was even worse. So Chris hauled around the 20 £20 Tandberg real a real sound recorder, and we soon discovered how important good sound in music was to production.
00;17;39;24 - 00;18;48;19
Unknown
And we're going to jump through if I get my cursor over there. It's snippets of the 16 millimeter and of summer begins to fade. And I think we're getting in One day the countryside appears tired like a friend who's suddenly aged. You know, he was already using. We hired a quartet to do the music live. And that's the Minnesota that I know.
00;18;48;19 - 00;19;20;13
Unknown
So this was really the beginning of our production company, Bluestone Productions. We were filmmakers. Now is very exciting time. We started to collaborate on the filming, the sound, the writing, the narration and the marketing we used on national and regional film festivals to get the film out there, found a distributor was selling this to libraries and schools throughout the Midwest and actually had a showing on Thanksgiving evening in Twin Cities.
00;19;20;13 - 00;19;54;22
Unknown
Minnesota Public Television, which is one of the bigger markets for PBS. So we were real pleased. So with this under our belt, I was so full of confidence. I mean, wow, you know, I decided to with this confidence write the publisher of the Minneapolis Star Tribune Company and asked them to start a film production company and expand our daily work, try to find ways to reshape our work, kind of look beyond the daily news, the, you know, the process that we're used to see then, you know, becoming fish rivers, the next day.
00;19;55;12 - 00;20;18;28
Unknown
That's a really old one. But he understood what I wanted to do, but it didn't quite fit his ink on paper profile or business model, and that was shelved pretty quickly. So again, still full of confidence. And after 12 years on the newspaper, I felt this challenge where I wanted to pursue new interests. I mean, I wanted to continue going.
00;20;19;16 - 00;20;43;05
Unknown
I took a big gamble. I resigned to Earl Seibert, my boss, and quit and decided to become a freelancer and without any work. My first assignment was self assigned, You know, I'd go out, make some money on this. I'm going to drive from Minneapolis to Reno, Nevada, to photograph the Reno Air Show. So I had a little pickup camper on the back of a Toyota.
00;20;43;05 - 00;21;04;05
Unknown
If the wind was blowing from the sky and it was like, you know, watch out. And so I got there and got out of the truck. Here I am in about 10 minutes later, I realize there were 200 other professional photographers there. And each of them had connections to the Blue Angels, you know. Yeah, I'm going up tomorrow and so I'm out there, 300 millimeter lens.
00;21;04;05 - 00;21;34;08
Unknown
And I found out that I got dizzy looking at these planes and trying to focus. It was, Well, I just will tell you. Well, I got this phone call from Richard. He was calling from a payphone in a deserted lot with the Toyota camper just outside. And this was, of course, his big kickoff of his freelance career. And obviously, things had not gone as he thought they might.
00;21;35;12 - 00;22;01;07
Unknown
And he was actually quite distraught and asked if I could fly out to help him drive home. It was clearly a rescue mission, so it took less than 3 hours to pack at the dog in a kennel and get on a flight first flight to Reno. So it was during that long drive home, I asked Richard, what is it that you really want to do?
00;22;01;09 - 00;22;24;17
Unknown
We have this great opportunity now. And he remembered driving the backroads of Minnesota and wondering why a particular town was located where it was. Why would anybody come here or what's the history? Every town has a history. Every town had a story. And he thought, let's create a book that celebrates the history along the highways, the major highways of the state.
00;22;24;24 - 00;22;50;18
Unknown
And that was the birth of the Minnesota Travel Companion. So here we were, you know, publishing this. And without Christine doing a bulk of the work on this particular project and help from Judy's Irby, who also worked on the second book, Christine will mention that that I was using a model Radio Shack model 100. I don't know how many have ever seen one of those.
00;22;50;27 - 00;23;17;25
Unknown
It was one of the first I was on the road typing into this little four lions screen and but it was amazing, you know, it was I wasn't using a pencil and didn't have a typewriter. So we came back, started putting our stories together. And we we used we were actually the first in Minneapolis, I don't know, as far as the country to use an Apple two computer to transmit tape overnight on a 300 baud modem to a tape house.
00;23;17;25 - 00;23;43;05
Unknown
And we were getting typeset and being able to pick it up the next morning and doing the stops. So it was a it was a pretty exciting time with using this technology to start helping us into some of the pieces we were doing. The Minnesota book was very successful. It led to us doing The Wisconsin Travel Companion co-produced and co-written by a mike and Judy Irby, who are in the audience today.
00;23;44;22 - 00;24;10;25
Unknown
And the Minnesota book went on the press about five different times, both books. Eventually, we turned over to the University of Minnesota Press, but we all learned how to network with the bookstore buyers, which you could do one on one in those days. We got good local, we got press in a number of newspapers and also TV and radio appearances were very important to the marketing.
00;24;11;08 - 00;24;34;17
Unknown
So here we were still trying to juggle, you know, photography was still a big part of our lives, but this was kind of a different shift. And that's kind of like what the point of what we're trying to tell with you today or to you today. So the next three frames are a real big departure. And I got to tell it to you because I think it's a pivotal point in my life.
00;24;35;29 - 00;25;05;01
Unknown
We were so happy with the way the computer in the laptop was working that we decided to work with Panasonic and build a small battery pack system to help, you know, run these little portable batteries. So we designed an ad and we put it in a magazine called Portable Computing Modern Portable Computing. And it was unbelievable. The the the the returns from that ad like, just knocked us over.
00;25;05;08 - 00;25;31;27
Unknown
We were getting calls from the Defense Department. They were using the model 100 and tanks. And, you know, with all their wisdom, they they were running out of batteries. So we started dealing with the defense Department. So it was so incredible that with all this confidence, again, I had read one night in bed, I remember it was Macworld and said, Apple, too, is going to release a new one to Apple to see.
00;25;32;15 - 00;25;58;25
Unknown
And it was going to be portable with their new and first LCD screen. I have the first prototype so together with this first the screen and all that, they needed a battery system to make it portable. Well, I had the solution, so I flew out and got a meeting at Apple Computer and there I was sitting in the boardroom with the Wozniak Apple two team demoing the bag in the Bower Power System.
00;25;59;27 - 00;26;29;18
Unknown
It was a it was a pretty heady experience. And I thought, what's the chancellor going to do with this? But it's a great experience. So by the time I got home there, it I missed my I might have to go back, see if I can go back. Well, I got this letter in the mail and the last paragraph was we envision a rollout designed to not only announce the flat panel availability to our Apple dealers, but availability of battery packs from independent sources.
00;26;29;27 - 00;26;58;09
Unknown
Your participation in this rollout is key to the overall strategy. I almost fell over. So we've got to move quickly so that February they rolled out the computer, they had the flat panel screen, they took out Wall Street ads. They ran our little, you know, system there. And a footnote on below and the distributors for Apple, then they had a distributor network in stores, not the actual Apple stores, but they were Apple stores.
00;26;58;28 - 00;27;25;13
Unknown
The orders were rolling off. And I can't tell you I mean, it sounds like you're brave. The money was unbelievable. I thought, here we go. Photography, you know, uh, you know, this is where the money's at. So we're going to end this story. And if anyone's really interested in the real story, you got to buy me a drink and prepare yourself for about a 45 minute talk.
00;27;26;01 - 00;27;53;01
Unknown
But the moral before we change off of this is never, never, ever write a personal guarantee. Any project you're going to do, anybody you're going to work with, do not write a personal guarantee and never get involved, ever with a product line that Steve Jobs lost interest in. So that was a disaster. So short. So here we go, dusting off from this disaster.
00;27;53;01 - 00;28;14;05
Unknown
And this was a another one. I went back to the love of shooting, and I really was the love. But this time I had packed a four by five camera in the car and started to drive around the Midwest looking for a new direction, a new beginning to my life. And I'm just going to give you a few examples of some of the four by five.
00;28;14;05 - 00;29;05;28
Unknown
We're. So I decided to put together this collection of four by five black and white prints in a box, and I packaged them up and shipped them off to Rich Clarkson at who was the director of photography, National Geographic, and thinking, what was the chance that someone like him would be interested in large format, black and white work for a publication that publishes in color?
00;29;06;25 - 00;29;29;24
Unknown
So not too long after I was in the basement framing up a picture and I got this call from Rich Clarkson and Tom Kennedy, his assistant, and they asked me to do some work on the Great Lakes story with another photographer, Bob Saget. Bob Saget, who has come through here recently. I was amazed at this opportunity at a critical time to have an assignment of five months.
00;29;29;24 - 00;29;58;04
Unknown
That's when assignments were running really long. They're cruising the Great Lakes and 36,000 CD-ROMs or Kodachrome slides. Later, I was back in Washington for the final show and a photographer there, I remember pulling me over saying, Richard, do not put too much emphasis in the final product. That final published story, he said, will never live up to your expectations, embrace your experience, your daily life, and that's your reward.
00;29;58;04 - 00;30;37;02
Unknown
And I thought, boy, is he a cynic. So I'll touch briefly on the other story, the Northwest Passage story here briefly. But here's just a couple of images from the Great Lakes coverage. So I was devastated like this destroyed wall and a Chicago storm. The story was reshaped at the very last minute by Bill Garrett to a high water theme.
00;30;37;24 - 00;31;10;12
Unknown
It was never even part of our coverage. So I had six photos in the story, as did Bob. Sasha and I still get sick about it anyway, so Richard and I started talking about how we might in a way salvage this experience because it had been an amazing experience for him. There had to be a way we could tell the stories of the people along the Great Lakes that he had met, and we decided a video was we didn't want to do another 60 millimeter film.
00;31;10;12 - 00;31;42;19
Unknown
It was expensive and tough to produce ultimately and sell. So video was on the rise. So we thought, let's do our first video. 60 millimeter by now had been eclipsed in three quarter inch video was was it £24 camera, £24 tape deck? That's £50. But the film costs were dramatically cheaper and our creativity seemed to be able to flow because I could let the camera run and let the situation just kind of play out.
00;31;42;19 - 00;32;12;11
Unknown
And that was pretty exciting. We decided to tell it in order to get a focus on the Great Lakes. We decided to tell the story of four people whose lives were shaped by the lakes. Jeff Pope As 75 year old sailor who had built his dream 55 foot or 50 foot Topsail Ketch, a yacht called this Juliet, Andy Lafond, one of the last remaining commercial fishermen in Algoma, Wisconsin.
00;32;12;11 - 00;32;42;21
Unknown
Mark Johnson, who was a vintner working out of Traverse City, Michigan, something he could do because of the microclimate of the lake. And Clem Morrison, a tugboat captain in the changing times of the Duluth Superior Harbor. So here's just a short segment from the Shelly Yates, America's Inland America's Inland Voice Radio. I used to get the ads out of yachting magazine, and I send the waves of the catalog because you would always get a brochure with interior.
00;32;42;24 - 00;33;06;21
Unknown
I've got to jump through. And I think I wonder what sales are filling. Right. And the vessel is responding to the trim and the when there's not a survival on right. As spontaneous and you just kind of burst inside. This is also the first production, which I and I think people are beginning to find out that you don't have to be dead at 65.
00;33;08;00 - 00;33;47;14
Unknown
It's hard to imagine wanting to know of something they didn't know existed. That was a that's an hour long piece. So, you know, all the good stuff's on the other cliff. We began marketing the video through the region and and actually got about 37 PBS markets around the country to air it. So we were so with that, there was still the question then what were we going to do with the 36,000 Kodachrome prints that were just crying to be seen stuffed in a box in the basement?
00;33;47;19 - 00;34;17;12
Unknown
Boxes, boxes in a basement, Lot of lights. Max's. Okay, So we had this idea of publishing the book and creating music designed specifically to blend with the images. We were trying to still now think of kind of a multimedia kind of a combined event. So I was spinning any and every extra piece of cash increasing into digital tape and keyboards.
00;34;17;23 - 00;35;06;14
Unknown
And the interface with Apple Mac, the Apple Macintosh in me was and still is incredible interface of the computer and the keyboard and the ability to if you are inclined to do this put this stuff together and I mean everyday stuff. So anyone interested in this concept of processing or putting together integration of music and video, I'll be giving a two hour seminar Thursday at 2 to 4 at the Schoonover Building in room 448, I believe so distant was really our first mixed media project, but the packaging became a real challenge because at the time we were dealing with cassette tapes kind of thick and along with a book.
00;35;07;10 - 00;35;30;11
Unknown
So we had putting the two together really required some custom design packaging. Then we discovered that the bookstores, we're going to have a real problem relating to this new mixed media era because you couldn't thumb through it, right? You know, it was a package all together and you needed to shrink wrap it not only for security reasons, but to hold it together on the shelf.
00;35;31;11 - 00;35;59;09
Unknown
And so we had some interesting discussions there, but we with the bookstore, but we got it out throughout the Midwest and had some good regional sales. But we were caught in mid-stream in a technology change again. By the time we got this package done with a cassette tape, cassette tapes were kind of already on the wane and the CD was the new to the new incoming technology.
00;35;59;09 - 00;36;50;26
Unknown
So we had to repackage another set of the book and the CD and a thinner, sturdier package. But anyways, it was one more, one more redo. Incredible hurdle. So what we were trying to do these projects and keep this alive, the work from National Geographic started to pick up and over the next several years I was focused on work in Wyoming, Labrador, Labrador, Puget Sound and the Alaska Highway, and I was doing double duty, continuing my work in the environment and and actually consulting with National Geographic on the first quarter special, but also marketing and shipping bluestem products at night and on the weekends.
00;36;51;24 - 00;37;26;27
Unknown
And I had to just show you my cover from National Geographic to move. Move on. Okay. All right. So all of my assignments for Geographic impacted me. I mean, it was the game in town still is. So but the travels in the Arctic were really deep and it impacted me. I had sailed on the first American yacht from Alaska to Greenland, took us 45 days, and the owner took actually seven years to do it.
00;37;26;27 - 00;37;52;27
Unknown
I was on the seventh year and then I was returned the following year to travel along the North American Arctic Coast to document the native Inuit. So I was beginning to compose music to this Arctic experience. And now suddenly we had CD-ROM, CD-ROM was a new technology and this was going to be so exciting because it was truly multimedia.
00;37;53;07 - 00;38;32;08
Unknown
You could mix your videos and and the music, the still imagery, and we could have Internet connectivity. This was going to be the multimedia project we'd been envisioning for years. So here we were. We wanted to package the book and the CD-ROM. It was in a pocket in the back. I think we have a picture coming up on that and we thought we would have the first crossover product in this new incredible communication package that would sell in bookstores and in music stores and the structure of the structuring of this was amazing.
00;38;32;14 - 00;38;51;29
Unknown
It was called an enhanced CD. You could put it in a CD player and it would play the music, but if you put it in a computer, it had to decide whether it was a Windows computer or a mac computer. And I had to create different program structures to handle the different video formats for it. And the software changed.
00;38;51;29 - 00;39;14;08
Unknown
As I was producing Christine, I produced this change two or three times and had to be rebuilt and there was always a question is why are we doing this? Christine was researching and writing copy because we were going have a password into a special website that would have all the data on the Arctic that you would ever want, and that actually was functional.
00;39;15;17 - 00;39;49;02
Unknown
So our marketing challenge was that that technology continued to be a moving target, and CD-ROM actually had a surprisingly short lifespan. So and then we had another head to head with a book stores because Arctic Odyssey was Richard wanted to do this small format book because it could also be sold in the music store as well. Bookstores think something this size is 995, but I kept saying it's a CD-ROM and it has music and it has all these other stories.
00;39;49;09 - 00;40;20;04
Unknown
And so we need 2295. Anyway, it was a long story. We got into some bookstores. A lot of gift shops, and we also were bought by the Navy. I think the Arctic Odyssey is on every major ship out there in all of the libraries and media centers was and and ultimately it did win second place in pictures of the year for the small company Multimedia production.
00;40;20;04 - 00;41;34;14
Unknown
This is a snippet from one of the small little profiles that we that was on the CD-ROM. And this. So I had started to work on the fire ecology story for geographic for the magazine. And the editor, Bill Allen at the Geographic at that time had called me out in the field and asked if I would join the staff.
00;41;35;27 - 00;42;04;07
Unknown
I asked him, Would you mind if I had a room full of keyboards and screens? And he says, That's why I want you out here. So we they moved us out of geographic, and apparently our multimedia projects had not gone unnoticed. And at this time, the National Geographic was particularly feeling a pressure to react to the web. And we had a edict from the board of directors to get this on our Web site.
00;42;05;06 - 00;42;32;24
Unknown
So I was out there with a number of others, but I became the lead producer. I had two jobs. I was still editing for the magazine pictures, stories, and was also the website producer we launched in 1976. And that process, I got to tell you, 96, 79, 1996, the process was so brutal. That in itself is a work worth a talk because of the pull between the divisions.
00;42;34;01 - 00;43;12;03
Unknown
But after the launch, I was convinced that we had to go into the field and start doing blogs, capturing rather than shooting still photographs. We were pulling stills from HD video and transmitting audio interviews and snippets. And for the 13 days that I was there, it was 3:00 in the morning when I usually finished up. And so that was when I also came the conclusion that we're all talking about one man band kind of things where you do it all and have the impossibility of maintaining that kind of structure.
00;43;12;15 - 00;43;35;12
Unknown
I still have a big question in my mind. We can do it. We have the tools. I know how to do it, but do I have the health? So after four years on the staff and launching the website or help launch the website, I wanted to really get back to my photography making pictures. So I resigned my staff position and became a freelancer once again.
00;43;36;11 - 00;44;00;19
Unknown
This is at the same time that Garrison Keillor or a Prairie Home Companion fan fame proposed a story to the magazine to search for his roots. You know, where is this exactly? And I was assigned to work with him for this search. I got the approval to do the assignment in a four by five format on black and white film, which was a big push and a jump for them.
00;44;01;20 - 00;44;39;13
Unknown
But I thought the color would distract from the mythical place of Woebegone, and I, for many reasons, loved the process of picture making with a four by five camera. So I felt that this was going back to my roots after all these other digital chases that I was going after. And I will remember the darkroom evenings in a bathroom in a motel with towels stuffed around the door, loading sheet film holders, and it was so on digital so cathartic that I found it to be one of the best experiences of my life.
00;44;40;09 - 00;45;19;11
Unknown
So that should load up. Oh, there it is. So this is the one on the opening page from the magazine story, and I just shoot through a couple of frames here from this. The book was published or the story was published in the magazine magazine, but the Geographic wanted to do this book, but Garrison and I had committed to Viking Studio, and it was turned over to them, and it was a large press run.
00;45;19;11 - 00;45;45;20
Unknown
I mean, it was a pretty exciting time. Faber, Faber, Faber, Faber in London published it. Also. The exciting part for this and for the emphasis here on the toolmaking part of what I keep on stressing is that I had an interest in I had invested in an IMAX scanner and we had been scanning our work and so I was able to scan all the images for the book and do the printing for all the press layouts for approval.
00;45;46;02 - 00;46;30;17
Unknown
And it was a control that I had not had before in our printing. And so I'll give you a few screenshots from the book pages after the Lake Wobegon project, and that was really a very satisfying project. I had another great assignment. It was a story about the unique relationship between man and man's best friend, and this became also a magazine story and then a book project.
00;46;32;06 - 00;47;08;11
Unknown
It began on the Lebanese Israeli border over standing over a 12,000 year old fossilized remains of a woman buried with her dog. It's the earliest record showing a relationship with her hand placed on the dog's head. And of course, we've gone a long ways since then. So what's a story about people, places, dogs, relationships and the business of dogs, working dogs and dogs have filled empty spaces in our lives and other people's lives.
00;47;09;02 - 00;47;42;08
Unknown
And I even followed a man up the Alaska Highway, the Dempster Highway, to take his German Shepherd on his last long ride. So the book came out and again I was able to do the scans, the color scans, separations and see my color corrections. It was things that I had developed and I encourage everyone, every aspect of your things that interest you, your tools, learn them because it was additional work, but it was something that I did not give away.
00;47;42;08 - 00;48;10;15
Unknown
And you can't give away, you know, all of these elements. I mean, I replaced, unfortunately, two or three other jobs in doing this, But we did this book. The book came out, but it also evolved into a DVD that took some of these chapters and turn them into many videos with Richard's original music. And we sold this on Amazon.
00;48;10;15 - 00;48;38;05
Unknown
Amazon has been a good market for our books and the DVDs over the years. They have had made some changes. Now that are going to make it a lot tougher for the small independent video producer. But but over the years we've we've been able to find that as our outlet to the world. I'm going to give you a quick short burst of this from the very beginning of this journey to better explore the relationship between man and dog.
00;48;38;05 - 00;49;16;18
Unknown
I have had no trouble discovering stories of the special role our dogs play in our lives. This shared love is deep and emotional and best of all time. Timeless. And these are just a few of the stories of how dogs have touched our lives. So moving on, Christine and I worked together very closely on on that book in that production, and I'm going to jump through the next three real quick as we are.
00;49;16;28 - 00;49;59;17
Unknown
We've got one segment that we want to show another run for, but the tools, again, it's I keep on going back to that helped expand my kind of crazy career. I was able to do three or four books for geographic in their field guides. I did most of the scanning and helped in production and layout that also led me to become it my design interest also to become an art director, producing large visual screen support for the Defense Department for the World War Two Monument dedication in Washington DC in the Korea 50th anniversary.
00;49;59;28 - 00;50;32;13
Unknown
And we dealt with huge projection issues and we were timing this on live performance, full screen singing with a live orchestra of 60 foot screens and up to 200 actors. It was new meaning gave new meaning to me for live performance. So but coming back to our own productions, we now have seen the opportunity from producing long form multi layered stories for the web.
00;50;33;06 - 00;51;01;04
Unknown
And this takes us to our latest project, which is Icebound The Last Voyage of the Sheila Yates. Now, you might remember this fellow. He, he he we met him on the Great Lakes story. He became a lifelong friend. He was in the book Distant Shores, in the movie America's Inland Coast. Well, Icebound is the story that follows Jeff Pope and his crew on their sailing journey from the Great Lakes to Europe.
00;51;01;21 - 00;51;47;12
Unknown
But off the coast of Greenland, they get caught in pack ice and they send out a mayday. There is one ship in the entire area that actually hears that mayday and comes to their rescue. It's a Danish fishing trawler. This long form story that we want to take you through now in abbreviated form has 15,000 words, but we mix it with earlier interviews of Jeff video and interviews, video that is was taken by the rescue crew on the Danish trawler and audio interviews of the ship's crew, who we were able to track down.
00;51;47;12 - 00;52;11;00
Unknown
So it's been viewed by tens of thousands of people and in, I don't know, more than ten countries. And I just might add the analytics that we put in this, we were amazed. Here's a six chapter story, long form New York Times have done a few of these. I'm sure others have too. But the analytics showing that people going through the chapters, spending sometimes up to 2 to 3 hours were high as 30%.
00;52;11;01 - 00;52;31;26
Unknown
Now, that doesn't seem like a lot, but on the web, getting someone to stay in your site and to read your story as those numbers, I mean, it's just like suddenly said, well, is this where it's at now? So we'd like to more since we're not connected to the web and this runs about 10 minutes and we've got about 5 minutes left on our timeslot.
00;52;31;26 - 00;53;25;02
Unknown
Well, we'll go over just a short bit. I wanted to run the whole thing, and that's a screen capture of me navigating through the web. So it jumps, but it's just meant to give you a feel and let's see if we can get it. Start started. You know, the splash screen, you you know, people say scared, frightened, react with words.
00;53;25;02 - 00;53;54;11
Unknown
And I don't know why. Because you are you are you're apprehensive as hell, but scared kind means apprehension. And we bring the audio up a little bit on sort of a shallow level. This is a deep scare that that kind of you don't express it. It isn't expressed in The Scream. You don't express it with any trembling. It's just way down inside.
00;53;54;22 - 00;55;43;09
Unknown
And you know that you are in very deep shape, you know, And how the hell are you going to get out of it? Next chapter? Well, I think was like the theater of violence, because on the night of their final race, like at events to figure out, okay, fine, when the sales are filling right sailing in now towards fight storm the ice got thicker and thicker and so I called Wayne on command because I didn't want to go any further.
00;55;43;09 - 00;56;31;03
Unknown
And I asked them about conditions and transgressions and I said, Captain, that no way is chock full of ice the glacier. There's just no ways. And the thing that really happened is that we were on the actual fringes of the ice line, this loose ice and the wind had hauled around and the wind had picked up from the southwest.
00;56;31;03 - 00;57;14;20
Unknown
That and I came on what the fog was like this and pretty much like that. Maybe there was more than 50 feet visibility at times. You know, we weren't in the swells like vertical up and down the swells, but the ice was compressing us. So these big chunks, big chunks would just come crashing in and on this wooden hole and make this huge noise.
00;57;15;05 - 00;57;48;11
Unknown
Sure, there's going to be water pouring in. We we could hear the edge of the ice. It's it's a roar, kind of like a surf in Hawaii on the beach and almost 20 foot waves. And it's just it's a frightening roar. And as there we felt, each of us, that we were seven dead guys and not nobody broke nobody.
00;57;48;18 - 00;58;59;29
Unknown
But there wasn't any no way. But it was solemn. That was a very solemn meeting, a real honor. But we all wanted to go forward if we had to. In the meantime, we'd do as had suggested. We'd call on the our this is the iceberg or it was trawler coming in now looking for this is great danger with this ship also, you know you're you know I had one of these immediately or know we were actually very impressed with the filmmaking by the guys on the crew because that ship was really moving.
00;58;59;29 - 00;59;36;24
Unknown
It was a mayday call, the Hueys. We gave our position when when you could hear the carriers say, we are there's a caveat, give you out to the Chileans. We are on a roll and have miles from the opposition. We know exactly where you are. We'll be there in two and a half hours. I mean, from the depths of our deep, deep of fear to holy cow here, you know, we couldn't believe it.
00;59;36;24 - 01;00;55;09
Unknown
You that boat's 50 feet long. You saw in sea ice all of that weight basically sink. You were pulled out of the ice eventually. And now there maybe a out of the ice ice line and a gale hit them. I mean, the timing in all of this was incredible. I mean, it's difficult. We simply could not get the Zodiac or the water going that far.
01;00;55;09 - 01;03;18;10
Unknown
We couldn't get the Zodiac out, therefore we couldn't pump again. Therefore, we knew the end was just a matter of time before the guy got where, you know, life does go on. And and it seems kind of too much to say. Life does go on when you're all you do is lose a vessel and not a person. But the shield is a a vessel does become that almost that important to you or it's akin to that.
01;03;18;10 - 01;03;45;16
Unknown
That's why you name them after your daughters, I guess, in your lives. All right. We have to move on. I'm going to cut that off at this point. Our music and videos are all available on our Web site, American Landscape Gallery dot com. And if you ever wanted to see the silhouettes in full, it's on Sheila Yates dot com.
01;03;45;16 - 01;04;16;10
Unknown
And our journey through the challenging landscapes of digital photography has not been as straight line or a straight a road as this photo might suggest, and yours might not be either. So through all of these examples, I hope that you gain some, some insight or inspiration hopefully to take you through your journey now in these challenging and wonderful times.
01;04;16;16 - 01;04;25;01
Unknown
Thank you. Thanks.