Photojournalism at The Times

Carly sent me a link to this piece on The Times Multimedia page. It is a video prepared by Marianne Schwankhart (I am not sure if Marianne is a photogrpaher for The Times or if she works outside The Times) documenting her trip to Pakistan in February 2007. Through this montage of video and sound, Marianne takes viewers on a tour of the Pakistan she saw during her trip.

I really enjoyed the background sounds she recorded and played and which changed as her location changed. Videos like this are great virtual tourism tools and a great opportunity for some armchair tourism.

Carly told me that one of the ideas behind Marianne’s video and similar ones is to have photographers share their experiences of the places they visit and the things they see in their own words. I think it is a fantastic idea and it is something that pretty much anyone can do if they know how to create a video slideshow and record a voice over it.

This is the sort of thing that really makes new media interesting in a very real way. It isn’t about the hype of the medium, it is the use of the medium to entertain and inform people in a way that puts the medium in the background and the correct emphasis on the content itself. Of course what also appeals to me is that this video was published under Creative Commons (although I didn’t see which license it was published under).

Technorati Tags:
the times, multimedia, photo story, marianne schwankhart, video, slideshow, pakistan