It’s a common scenario in newsrooms around the world as broadcast and online newsrooms merge. It means you need to quickly learn new visual storytelling skills in order to adapt your stories for online publication.

While you can find loads of online training resources to help you get started, basic camera skills are only going to take you so far. If you’re required to produce photographs that document the story you’re covering, say an editor is suggesting to bring back eight photographs for a story or picture gallery, then you also need to employ skills from photojournalism.

OnMedia’s Guy Degen offers some tips for radio journalists to help produce strong images for their stories.

What type of camera?

Hopefully your organization places as much emphasis on good photography as it does on good audio. However, I like to think that it’s skill that makes a good image rather than a good camera. So before you go upgrading your camera, go upgrade your skills.

Of course, using the right tool for the job does make a difference. If I have to collect audio and take photos for the same story, then I prefer a camera that is small(ish), turns on almost instantly and is easy to use in manual and auto mode. But most importantly, the camera must be quiet. This is because I like to be less observed and there are times when I need to record audio and take photographs simultaneously.

For many years, I used a fairly basic point-and-shoot camera when  I was producing radio features – simply because it didn’t make the loud shutter noise of my DSLR. Later, a slightly more muscular, yet silent, Canon G10 offered the manual controls of a DSLR but in a small body. More recently, the near silent leaf shutter of the Fujifilm x100s has been my constant companion, and now the silent electronic shutter of the Panasonic GH4 (D)SLR will also be in my kit bag. I think even with a zoom lens the GH4 has a much smaller profile that a larger DSLR. It’s also great for shooting video.

Whatever camera you use, learn the essential functions.  It’s just as important to know how your camera works as it is to know how your audio recorder functions. Knowing how your camera works will make you far more confident when you’re out covering a story.

These days I also use my iPhone for taking photographs. Although the image quality is not as good my other cameras, it’s mostly fine for online publication. If you’re using a smartphone just be sure to use the silent mode or turn off any beeps or electronic shutter sounds.

The iPhone also has a neat trick of being able to record audio with an app running in the background and take photos at the same time – even in burst mode.

Planning is essential but keep your eyes open

Before going out to produce a radio feature, I usually write down a list of the interviewees (voices) I need to talk to and any potential ideas for sounds that might be interesting to record. Do the same for images. Write down a shot list of relevant people or locations or objects you need to photograph. As soon as I arrive on location, I walk around and get a feel for a place and add shots to my list.

In practice, I usually take photographs between recording audio. For example, if I record an interview with someone I’ll take a portrait shot of the interviewee immediately afterwards. But sometimes you need to plan a specific time for photography and a specific time for gathering audio. For instance, if you arrive at a location in the afternoon you might have to gather some shots quickly first to make use of available light.

But just as you would keep an ear open for interesting sounds to record, so too for photography – keep your eyes open to capture a moment.

What if you have to record and photograph at the same time?

I’ll be honest. Sometimes there might be a clash. Something visually interesting is happening at the same time as something essential to record. While reporting recently in Kiev, Ukraine, I wanted to record a group of old women singing in the Maidan square. They were so passionate and I knew it would make my story sound-rich. I also wanted to take photos as they were dressed in traditional costume, but I wasn’t sure how long they would sing for.

So to be safe, I began recording audio and taking photos at the same time – one hand holding a microphone, and the other hand snapping photos. It wasn’t ideal but sometimes it’s necessary. Once I had sufficient clean audio of singing, I put the microphone down and concentrated on getting better photos as the women were dancing with protesters.

Variety of shots

Having worked a lot as a video journalist, it’s second nature for me to document a scene or an action in sequences of shots: wide shot, medium shot, close-up, etc. This is a good technique to borrow for photography too and it will force you to keep moving and looking for interesting angles. What you don’t want to do is come back with photos that are all wide, or only taken from one point of view.

For a story about a building powered by a bioreactor I made sure that I delivered a variety of shots of the building’s bioreactor façade and of the bioreactor process for the editor to select.

And when you’re documenting someone in action think about capturing both the action they are doing with their hands as well as the reaction of their face.

If you need to get in close, use your feet to “zoom”, rather than just relying on the zoom function of the camera.

Remember, most of the time your editor will want photos in “landscape mode” (horizontal) instead of “portrait mode” (vertical). Landscape mode photographs look better in an online photo gallery.

Don’t forget detail

As much as a variety of shots is useful, don’t forget to look for fine detail – getting in close to show the audience what something looks like. There may even be a good reason to use the macro mode on your camera to get an extreme close up of an object.

For a story on how people make bicycles from bamboo in Berlin, I made sure that I captured shots of fine carving the bamboo frame.

Get a good portrait shot

There’s nothing worse than recording a great interview and then walking away and forgetting to take a portrait shot of the interviewee. Good quotes in your story are going to work well with a good portrait shot. Whether it is a composed portrait or a shot of the interviewee doing something, I always make sure I have a shot of the people I talk to – even if I know it probably won’t get published.

Hopefully by the end of your radio interview, you’ve also made a connection with that person and established some rapport and trust. That’s also going to be reflected in how they react to you with the camera.

Keep it simple. Observing the rule of thirds is a good place to start for portraits. But be open to experiment. I usually try to take a portrait shot at the location of the story for context.

Below are portrait shots of a designer who has developed a new type of humanitarian shelter. I offered the editor two shots to choose from. A “classic” all purpose portrait and one that has the designer demonstrating a structural component he invented and described in detail in the story.

Practice, practice and practice

Some people have a remarkable eye for photography – they’re naturals. But like a lot of journalism skills, practice will improve your photography. You can turn a weakness into a strength. Always keep your camera with you to take photos. Make it an extension of your hand. Follow good photographers online and via social media. Borrow and adapt their ideas and shooting styles. If I had to choose just one website, a great starting point is Time’s Lightbox blog – it’s a fantastic online showcase of the best of photojournalism.

Author: Guy Degen

The question is: how do I make my SLR camera as “mobile” as my smartphone so I can transfer images quickly from the camera to another device and share them on the web?

Yes, I can use a USB cable to connect my camera to either my laptop or my iPad or take out the SD card and plug it directly into the computer. But another way is to use a WiFi enabled SD memory card and there are some interesting advantages of using these cards for covering events.

WiFi enabled SD cards have been around for a while now. The WiFi chip inside the card creates its own wireless network, which allows you to connect your camera via the SD card to another device.

In this post I’m going to refer to two Class 10 WiFi SD cards: the Eye-Fi mobi and the Toshiba FlashAir.

Shoot and upload on the run

At the recent Newsgames hackathon in Cologne I tested a 16GB Eye-Fi WiFi enabled SD card.

The hackathon took place inside a large seminar room. To document the event, I wanted to be able to walk around and shoot photos of the hacker teams, upload the images to my iPad for a quick edit and then send them to a blog and social media.

The Eye-Fi card allowed me to automatically push images to my iPad as I was shooting. To make the wireless transfer faster, I deliberately shot in .jpeg format to keep each image file size small – around 4-5 MB per image.

I was able to walk around up to 20 metres or so from my iPad and keep shooting, knowing that every image was being transferred to my iPad ready for editing.

This was exactly what I needed to cover this event in near “real time”. I was able to shoot lots of good quality images, far better than using my iPhone, and edit the images in batches in the Snapseed iPad application and then quickly upload to the blog, Twitter and Instagram.

It’s important to note that although the Eye-Fi card can record photos and video in various types of formats (.jpeg, RAW, .mpg, .mov, .flv, .wmv, .avi, .mp4, .mts, .m4v, .3gp) it can only transfer .jpeg files.

Fortunately my Fujifilm X100S produces excellent .jpeg images, and despite the smaller file size, my photos were published in The Guardian, Deutsche Welle, Page magazine and in several journalism publications.

But this workflow is not going to suit every situation.

One problem with the Eye-Fi mobi card is that it uploads every photo you take whether you like it or not. In other words, it uploads the entire album. This might be fine if you have the WiFi transfer mode on as you’re shooting, but if you capture a lot of photos and then engage the WiFi transfer mode, you might find yourself waiting for the best image to be transferred.

One work around is to shoot in RAW and then convert selected images to .jpeg format in the camera’s playback mode. The card will then transfer only the .jpeg files. Bear in mind that not all cameras offer in-camera .jpeg conversion. Another way is to “protect” the files you want to transfer. This might be a bit fiddly to do depending on your camera.

The set up of the Eye-Fi mobi card though was very straightforward. You simply download a free iOS or Android app that works as the dashboard for transferring images and enter the card’s activation key. The card creates its own b/g/n WiFi hotspot allowing your smartphone, tablet or computer to make a connection. My camera also supports the Eye-Fi SD card and offers an upload option directly from the camera’s menu.

Only transfer the pics you want

I’ve also been using the Toshiba FlashAir (version 2) 32GB Wireless SD card and it works in a similar way to the Eye-Fi. The card creates its own WiFi network and you install an app on your smartphone or tablet to capture the images.

I think the big advantage the FlashAir has over the Eye-Fi mobi is the possibility of using selective transfer for the images. From the iOS or Android app on your device, you can see all of the images you’ve taken and then you can select the ones to transfer.

This could be really handy if you’re working in a team to cover an event. Photographers can get on with the job of shooting while editors can see the thumbnail images they are capturing on their tablet or computer and then select an image for editing and uploading to the web and social media.

The FlashAir also allows up to seven devices to connect to the card simultaneously. Again this could be useful for small teams covering conferences or panel discussions via “live blogs” and social media.

Great solution but not perfect yet

Both cards have their selling points but also a few drawbacks.

Connecting my iPad or iPhone to both the Eye-Fi and FlashAir card was not always instantaneous – even when both devices were side by side. Sometimes it would take a couple of attempts to connect. But once connected, the transfer of images was usually stable. Make sure you disable your camera’s auto-off function otherwise transfer will be interrupted when the camera goes to sleep.

Both cards can be draining on batteries.

On the Eye-Fi I encountered “Read Errors” messages several times. Ejecting and installing the card usually solved this problem and I have never lost images. However it doesn’t inspire confidence, especially if you want to use this in a professional capacity everday.

The Toshiba FlashAir also has a quirk. If you reformat the card in your camera, you will wipe the firmware that controls the WiFi chip. This means downloading and reinstalling the firmware from Toshiba’s website. It’s not a reason not the use the card, but it’s an easy mistake to make as in-camera card formatting is a common practice.

I also found the app for the FlashAir app a little bit clunky to use. It seems as if user interface was an afterthought in design. As an alternative, Photosync is a good mobile photo file transfer app that works with the FlashAir.

Hopefully competitors in this market will look each other’s products and produce a card that offers both quick and instantaneous connections, and a choice between batch transfer and selective image transfers.

Keep in mind the cost of these cards is usually two to three times that of normal SD cards, so expectations on functionality and reliability are understandably high.

Gradually, WiFi connectivity is becoming a standard feature in cameras. My new Lumix GH4 sports WiFi. And with Photokina in Cologne almost upon us, WiFi is bound to be a function that will become more widely available in new models.

For now though a WiFi SD card does a brilliant job of adding wireless functionality to “upgrade” almost any digital stills camera.

And while these WiFi SD cards are not yet perfect, they are well worth testing to see how they might give you more options for covering events and making your stills camera “mobile”.

Written by Guy Degen, edited by Kate Hairsine

Oudom also produces radio stories and video pieces, and his film about the shooting of three workers in the Cambodian garment sector was selected as a finalist entry at the 2013 German Development Media Awards. These days though, Oudom is mainly doing what he loves best, taking pictures of news events around Cambodia, which he hopes will help bring about democratic change in the country. He spoke to onMedia about his work.

Why did you decide to become a journalist?

I grew up seeing plenty of problems and corruption in my society. My father always taught me about the importance of fairness and independence. But the news on television and radio in Cambodia is mostly pro-government, and “very thin,” you might say. They just broadcast stories about the prime minister inaugurating something or praise some social initiative he has backed. They never broadcast information about government crackdowns on people, such as what happened in early January this year. I decided I wanted to try to help change my society by providing real, professional-quality news to the people in Cambodia.

What did your parents and friends say about your decision?

My family was very proud. They’ve always encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to do. If you feel good about it, they said, do it. But my good friends were afraid. They know if you want to be a fair journalist, you can come up against a lot of problems. They told me I should get an office job. I thanked them for worrying about me but told them I wanted to help change my country into a real democracy. I think they understand now.

What do you like most about your job?

I love taking pictures and then writing captions for them. I like to present information to people, not telling them what to think but allowing them to make up their own minds about what’s happening in the country.

These photos by Oudom Tat were taken on Dec. 23, 2013, during a demonstration in Phnom Penh calling for a host of reforms in the country.

What do you dislike most about being a photojournalist?

I don’t like it when the government discriminates against the media. We have a lot of problems with them. Government officials don’t provide us with good information and rarely let us interview them. Journalists also face a lot of general harassment. I myself have been harassed and intimidated a lot, even threatened. When I was reporting on the problems of garment workers, I was kicked off my bike once. My bike was stolen on another occasion. I can’t be sure if the people behind it are from the government or the garment factories, but there have been problems and I’ve been told to stop doing my work or I’ll “get in trouble”. During a recent government crackdown on striking workers, I was taking pictures when someone in the military pointed a gun at me. He said: “Do you want to die for just a picture?” I stayed calm, put down my camera and stepped back to let the tension subside. But afterwards I started taking pictures again.

What was the most difficult story you have covered?

They are all hard, because it is so difficult to get information from the government. Getting an interview with a minister is the most difficult thing of all. They almost never agree to talk to independent media outlets.

Is there a story that you have covered that has particularly affected you?

I helped produce a video on garment factory workers and during the reporting I saw first hand how much many of them have suffered. I talked to women who had fainted on the factory floor. They told me they didn’t make enough money and didn’t have enough food to eat. It really made me think about how I was fortunate compared to them. I really felt I needed to do something to help them and get their stories out.

How did you acquire your photography skills?

I never had any formal training in photography. After I got a smart phone, I realized I liked taking pictures with it. Then I realized that I knew a lot of people at work who really knew how to take good pictures. So they taught me. I just practiced and practiced until I got it.

What kind of media do you listen to/watch/read?

I follow both local and international news. I like keeping up with international developments with Reuters, CNN and the BBC. I real the local Phnom Penh Post newspaper and of course, listen to my own station, the Voice of Democracy. But as far as Cambodian TV goes, I watch something maybe once a year.

How do you feel you are developing as a journalist?

I love what I do now, since what I enjoy best is taking pictures and putting a simple but powerful caption on it. I think it’s one of the best ways to get easy-to-understand information to a large number of Cambodians. So now, I feel I’m being successful in informing my community, my country and even abroad. My aim is not to become famous and I don’t really need a lot of possessions. I would just like to do more of what I’m doing and continue to learn more about journalism and the challenges faced by my society.

Interview: Kyle James

Photo: flickr/Kristina Alexanderson: CC BY-4.0

Let’s say you’ve got a blog or a news website and you want a free image for your article or post. You could just go to Google Images and copy the first one you see but you could well be infringing on someone’s copyright. This isn’t just unfair to the photographer or graphic designer, it could also end up being expensive for you if they demand damages. A legal alternative is to look for images with a Creative Commons (CC) license, which allows you to use the pictures under certain conditions. onMedia’s Kyle James, who’s a CC fan, goes into the details.

Those of you who have read my onMedia posts before may have noticed many of my images are credited with a formula that looks like this: “Photo: flickr/(a screen name).” What that means is I’ve found the images on flickr, a photo and video-hosting site. But I can’t just copy any image from flickr – just those with Creative Commons licenses, meaning the creator of the image has said it’s fine if others use it, as long as they follow a few stipulations.

Image: flickr/Irish Typepad: CC BY-NC-SA-4.0

Using CC-licensed images means you don’t have to worry about breaking copyright law and risk the chance that some angry photographer takes you to court.

And, best of all, they are free! After all, not everyone has the budget to buy images from Shutterstock or Getty Images, or has access to the AP photo database. So CC is a great alternative.

A little history

Creative Commons is a non-profit group founded in 2001. It aims to be something of a halfway house between full copyright, the default “all rights reserved” version and an intellectual property free-for-all, where anyone can use anything created by anyone at any time. So, CC has a “some rights reserved” model, the details of which we’ll go into a little later.

Image: John Randell [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

CC licenses are not limited to photographs. Books, plays, movies, music, articles, blogs, websites and even databases can be licensed under the CC system. But for this post, we’re focusing on images.

The common licenses

When someone creates a work—snaps a photograph or doodles a cartoon character—they can go to the Creative Commons website and decide which license they want to apply to their image. There are several main restrictions they can decide on; they have a two-letter acronym and icons. The most common ones are as follows:

• (BY) Attribution – All the licenses require you to credit the original author in the way they want to be credited. It’s not always their name, as I found out in the occasionally interesting handles (names) people use on flickr.
• (NC) Non-commercial – People can use the work but they can’t use it to make money. If a profit is going to be made off it, you will need to talk to the creator of the work.
• (ND) No derivatives – The work has to be used in its original form. That means you can’t alter or photoshop the image in any way.
• (SA) Share alike – The image can’t be placed under any different or more restrictive terms for re-use than those set by the original creator of the image.

The above license terms can be combined in various ways, creating different types of licenses. The six regularly used ones are:

• BY – Redistribution is allowed if the creator of the image is credited.
• BY-ND – This allows for redistribution, even for profit, as long as the creator is credited and the image is used in its unchanged, original form.
• BY-NC – The image can be used for non-commercial purposes only and the creator must be credited.
• BY-SA – Attribution is necessary in this case and no different restrictions can be put in place than set by the creator of the image.
• BY-NC-ND – Money cannot be made off of the image, the photographer must be credited and the original form of the image cannot be changed.
• BY-NC-SA – Credit must be given where credit is due, profit is out of the question, and the license of derivatives must remain the same as the one put on the original work.

Whew! There’s some alphabet soup but it’s important to know so you can be sure you acting in line with the wishes of the image creator.

How to attribute

You’ll notice that all of the license types include attribution. What that attribution should look like is a matter up for debate; there is no set standard. However, there are some things you should take into consideration when attributing to make sure that the image creators are getting the credit they deserve. In the past, I’ve used the formula: Photo: flickr/(creator’s flickr handle). Then I made the credit an active link that goes to the page of flickr where I found the work.

Photo: flickr/Kyle James: CC BY-NC-4.0

But, some don’t think this is quite enough. I tend to agree with them so as you can see in this post, I’ve now changed to the following option: I have included the Creative Commons the work is licensed under, such as CC BY-NC-4.0. (4.0 refers to the latest license version). If you want, you can even link to the license description on the CC website. Others prefer including the photo’s title, for example, my picture to the left could be captioned:

“Woman in Rickshaw” by Kyle James is licensed under CC BY-NC-4.0.

I think that’s a little long but it’s definitely thorough!

Wikimedia even offers suggested attribution text.

It’s also nice to send a message to the creator (which you can easily do on flickr), telling the image author you’ve used the photo and maybe a link to it. It makes everyone feel good.

What is NOT correct is something like this: Photo: Creative Commons. Why? Well, the author’s name is not mentioned, there’s no link to the original photo, no title and there’s no mention of the license. Creative Commons is the organization, not the license. They’ve got a more exhaustive list of attribution best practices here.

Finding CC images

So now you’ve got the basics of CC. Now, how do you find your images? Creative Commons has a search page that puts you in touch with a treasure trove of usable media. You enter a search term and then you can choose a variety of places to look, from flickr to Google Images to WikiMedia Commons to other sources. It also gives you options for searching for other CC-licensed media, such as video or music.

Image: flickr/Vince Welter: CC BY-NC-SA-4.0

You can search, of course, directly at flickr, and they’ve changed their interface to make looking for CC images easier. After you’ve entered the search term, on the results page a few drop-down menus appear, including one called “License.” Just make sure you choose Creative Commons. Compfight, which is a gateway to flickr images, is useful. There are some handy search options easy to access and it appears to load faster and display more photos per page than its source site. So, you don’t have to scroll through page after page of flickr pics. Others options include Photopin, flickrstorm or Free Images (it’s not a CC site, per se, but has uploaded pictures that are often royalty free. But you have to check on each picture to see what the usage rights are.) Try out a few and see which one has the features you like.

Author: Kyle James

Getty Images has made a big part of its photo collection free for embedding in non-commercial blogs and sharing via social media.

It’s a very bold move for one the world’s biggest photo agencies, and for an industry that is highly protective of copyright.

Getty says the Internet makes it easy for its images to be used without permission or with proper attribution when people right-click and save a photo from a website or grab a screen shot.

By removing their watermark and making images free for non-commerical use, the photo agency says its images will appear in a custom “Embedded Viewer”: think of YouTube’s embedded player. This “Embedded Viewer” includes the proper copyright information, and when you click on the image, it takes users back to the licensing page on Getty’s website.

How it works

Users can simply log-on to the Getty Images site; search for an image and click on the embed tool </> icon.

A pop-up box with the iframe HTML embed code appears. You simply copy and paste the HMTL code for the image into your blog.

The images available under the updated terms of service also come with share buttons for Twitter and Tumblr and provide a link for the image to be shared.

As you can see from the example at the top of this post, the photographer and Getty Images are clearly attributed. However, the viewer does not provide a caption or a mouse roll over function to offer more information about the image. You have to click on the image to find out more from the licensing page.

In this instance we’ll of course offer the professional courtesy to Kai Wiedenhöfer, the photographer whose exhibition Wall on Wall was displayed on a section of the Berlin Wall last year.

Read the fine print

It’s well worth reading the terms of service before diving in. Getty Images reserves the right to remove images (which may mean images disappear from blogs or it could lead to dead links shared on social media); to gather meta data about how you use images; and, to place advertisements with the images on the “Embedded Viewer”.

“Where enabled, you may embed Getty Images Content on a website, blog or social media platform using the embedded viewer (the “Embedded Viewer”). Not all Getty Images Content will be available for embedded use, and availability may change without notice. Getty Images reserves the right in its sole discretion to remove Getty Images Content from the Embedded Viewer. Upon request, you agree to take prompt action to stop using the Embedded Viewer and/or Getty Images Content. You may only use embedded Getty Images Content for editorial purposes (meaning relating to events that are newsworthy or of public interest). Embedded Getty Images Content may not be used: (a) for any commercial purpose (for example, in advertising, promotions or merchandising) or to suggest endorsement or sponsorship; (b) in violation of any stated restriction; (c) in a defamatory, pornographic or otherwise unlawful manner; or (d) outside of the context of the Embedded Viewer.

Getty Images (or third parties acting on its behalf) may collect data related to use of the Embedded Viewer and embedded Getty Images Content, and reserves the right to place advertisements in the Embedded Viewer or otherwise monetise its use without any compensation to you.”

Is free going to be profitable?

It will be interesting to see if other large photo agencies or collections follow this path to “monetise” their images with embedded advertisements. Moreover, it will be interesting to gauge the reaction of Getty staff photographers and stringers. The Getty Images’ website will most likely become one of the go-to sites for free images for web publishers, but photographers might wonder whether they are getting a good deal.

For journalism trainers, it adds another twist to that very important ethical discussion about copyright, licensing and fair use of images.

For more in-depth analysis on this new feature from Getty Images, check out the British Journal of Photography.

Author: Guy Degen

UPDATE (07.03.2014): In the original post, I showed an example demonstrating that when you manually adjust the HTML dimensions to publish a smaller image, the text showing the photographer’s name and Getty Images does not appear. It looked like you could crop the bottom part of “Embedded Viewer”. At some point today the HTML for the smaller embedded image changed. And now, it clearly shows the photographer’s name and Getty Images. So here’s how it looks now and the original HTML we posted is below. Could be a little lesson here too. If you’re going to rely on the embedded GI photos they can change.

<iframe src=”//embed.gettyimages.com/embed/173229787?et=RQJ9fZ2ri0yNMwkwMXLrjA&sig=cu8Qk3pArw7VOWYCsNvrVpg-CWACiXbt0tXkRyr320k=” width=”394″ height=”261″ frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no”></iframe>