What happens when old corn brooms are replaced by newer brushes?
Journal videographer Ryan Jackson created a short film about one such broom for the 2013 Brier.

This whole thing was shot in only four hours! I used my hacked Panasonic GH2 cameras with Canon 24 f1.4L. 50 1.2L, 70-200 2.8L, and Olympus 7-14mm f4 lenses.

What happens when old corn brooms are replaced by newer brushes?
Journal videographer Ryan Jackson created a short film about one such broom for the 2013 Brier.
To find out the fate of our old curling broom go to http://www.edmontonjournal.com/broom

All the volunteers showed up at 8-a.m. and had no idea what the script or anything was. I played them a rough cut video I made from the storyboard and we started curling!

Here is my original storyboard. I had thought it would be cool to have the rocks talking and picking on the broom but then I decided that talking rocks would be confusing so I just used music.
I spent hours writing and re-writing the script to make it as simple and manageable as possible.
It’s way easier to fix your script before you shoot than after!

This was the final shot of the day. I used gaffers tape to mask my 7″ monitor to 2.35:1 aspect ratio to help with framing.

Jason Franson was helping me for the shoot and took this photo of me filming Carleigh Johnson with the broom. I was able to pull the scene off with only two 500-LED light panels and one small 160-LED light panel to the right.

Transition from an NHL hockey game to a curling match. Journal photographer Ryan Jackson took over 30,000 still images of Rexall Place from the beginning of the Oilers game on Saturday Feb. 23 till Tuesday Feb 26. for the 2013 Brier.

I used a Canon 1D-Mark III with an 8-15mm f4L lens @ 15mm. I filled two 32GB cards with 30,000 pictures taken every 10-seconds over four days.

I shot 36 pictures straight on and 36 pictures at a 45-degree angle using a motorized turntable.

Lucas then put the images together into an interactive spinning player using the very cool and lighweight jQuery Reel.

For a 360-degree view of Princess Diana’s tiara go to http://www.edmontonjournal.com/life/diana-celebration/tiara/index.html

I used a spinning serving tray from Ikea and covered it in black tape.
I then used a small continuous servo motor connected to a Phidget server controller and my laptop.
I timed the servo so it would turn the table 10-degrees, wait 5-seconds for me to take a picture , turn 10-degrees, wait 5-seconds for me to take a picture, etc. for 360-degrees.

The little tire is from an old Meccano set.

Here’s Lucas Timmons smiling politely. I used one 24×36 soft box as my main light and two lights with grids behind to make the tiara sparkle.

Rather than shooting 10 separate videos and presenting them as 10 separate clips, I put them all together in one YouTube video and used annotation buttons to make the video interactive. You can jump back and forth between clips and choose which stories you are most interested in.

Since the videos are mostly just “a person sitting at a desk talking” I decided to up the production value a but and have the camera constantly moving.

I built a Pan/Tilt/Slide robot for doing timelapse videos in the summer. I used it for the World’s Longest Soccer Game Video but now I would need it for video instead of stills.

I made it programmable so I can tell it to start in position A, then take X number of minutes to move to position B. The device consists of three stepper motors and three Phidget stepper controllers.
Everything is programmed in Python. Those years spent in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science come in handy!

I used my hacked Panasonic GH2 for the video and my Olympus LS10 audio record with a Sennheiser wireless mic for sound.

Here is my Pan/Tilt/Slide robot that I’ve been working on for months. I added 8:1 ratio pulleys to the motors to make the movements smoother and slower. I also surrounded the motors with plastic to dampen the sound. (not shown here). The design is constantly changing which is why I haven’t blogged about it much. Though I guess I should blog about all the changes!

I made a DIY teleprompter using cardboard, tape and my iPad running the Teleprompt+ app. This was my first time recording reporters with a teleprompter and it made my life so much easier! The subject doesn’t have to fumble for words and some say it makes them forget about the camera a bit.

Here is the very rough version 1.0 of my Pan/Tilt/Slide robot controller.
I plan to eventually control everything with an iPad app that I’m writing so there’s far less wires!

Frame grab of David Staples from the video. I just used two 500LED lights for him.

Here is my setup for David Staples in City Hall. My assistant and friend Megan Voss is on the right.

Frame grab of Gordon Kent from the video. I just used two 500LED lights really close to him. The sunlight coming through the window was much brighter than the video lights so they had to be placed close.

Gordon Kent in City Hall talking about the hockey arena saga. It was hard to balance him against the bright window with only two 500LED light panels so I underexposed him a bit and then brought up the shadows in post.  Photo by Megan Voss.

My setup for Graham Thomson in the Alberta Legislature talking about former Alberta Premier Peter Lougheed’s death. I got Graham to stand on a box so that I could frame him with the portrait.

Frame grab of Stephanie Coombs from the video. She has a 1800-watt 48″ Octobox to her left and one 500LED video light to her right.

Stephanie Coombs at her desk to talk about the Hub Mall shooting. You can see I used my Olympus LS10 audio recorder connected to my wireless Lav for sound. It’s always better to record your sound separately and monitor it with headphones. Photo by Megan Voss.

A frame grab of Sandra Sperounes from the video.
I just used the light on her desk and a small Light Panel with an orange filter off to the left.

Sandra Sperounes at her desk talking about the Paul McCartney concerts. Photo by Megan Voss.

Marty Klinkenberg at his desk to talk about Highway 63. Photo by Megan Voss

Frame grab of Jim Matheson from the video.
I used two 500LED lights and one small Light Panel as a hair light.

Jim Matheson in Rexall Place to talk about the NHL Lockout.
I wanted to film him in Rexall place to illustrate the empty stadium seats and lack of hockey.

Using the Pan/Tilt/Slide robot added a ton of work to the setup for each video but it really made the videos more visually dynamic. It also moved the camera much smoother and consistent than if I moved it by hand.

I certainly wouldn’t do this for most news video but a fun feature like this was a perfect opportunity to test out some new tools.

Basically CN Rail was planning on shutting down the longest stretch of straight line track in Alberta. This would leave many towns and farmers without a railway which would cost money for the farmers and hurt the small towns along the tracks.
Instead of giving up, a co-operative was formed to purchase the tracks and a train engine and run the railway themselves.
It’s a nice David vs. Goliath kind of story that hits close to home if you grew up in the prairies like me.

I overheard Journal reporter Marty Klinkenberg and an editor talking about this story and jumped on it as I knew it would be a perfect opportunity to use a new storytelling technique I’ve been working on.

Think of it as a truly multimedia slide show incorporating stills, video, audio 360-panoramas and educational interactivity. You can play the interactive tour here. It works great on desktop and iPad but there are still some bugs with iPhone FYI.

Ever wanted to drive a train? Journal photographer Ryan Jackson has created an interactive tour of the Battle River Railway story. Take a seat at the controls of Engine 5353 and learn how to drive a train! The tour works on your desktop or mobile device. Go to http://www.edmontonjournal.com/BRR

Will Munsey, volunteer Engineer for the Battle River Railway, poses for a photo in Forestburg, Alta. on December 1, 2012. The BRR is a community-owned railway line between Camrose and Alliance, Alta. The new generation co-op purchased the 80-km short-line from CN in 2008 after they announced they were going to sell off the rails for scrap. By keeping the line active, local area farmers are able to save money and time transporting their grain. The co-op also turns a profit which it returns to it’s shareholders and plans to offer tourism and oil transport in the future.  Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal)

Battle River Railway Engine 5353 transports grain near Galahad, Alta. on December 1, 2012. The BRR is a community-owned railway line between Camrose and Alliance, Alta. The new generation co-op purchased the 80-km short-line from CN in 2008 after they announced they were going to sell off the rails for scrap. By keeping the line active, local area farmers are able to save money and time transporting their grain. The co-op also turns a profit which it returns to it’s shareholders and plans to offer tourism and oil transport in the future. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal

Ken Eshpeter, Chairman and CEO of the Battle River Railway, poses for a photo in Forestburg, Alta. on December 1, 2012. The BRR is a community-owned railway line between Camrose and Alliance, Alta. The new generation co-op purchased the 80-km short-line from CN in 2008 after they announced they were going to sell off the rails for scrap. By keeping the line active, local area farmers are able to save money and time transporting their grain. The co-op also turns a profit which it returns to it’s shareholders and plans to offer tourism and oil transport in the future. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal)

Peter Wetmore, Forestburg-area farmer and railway conductor for the Battle River Railway, links two grain cars near Galahad, Alta. on December 1, 2012. The BRR is a community-owned railway line between Camrose and Alliance, Alta. The new generation co-op purchased the 80-km short-line from CN in 2008 after they announced they were going to sell off the rails for scrap. By keeping the line active, local area farmers are able to save money and time transporting their grain. The co-op also turns a profit which it returns to it’s shareholders and plans to offer tourism and oil transport in the future. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal)

Peter Wetmore, Forestburg-area farmer and railway conductor for the Battle River Railway, poses for a photo near Galahad, Alta. on December 1, 2012. The BRR is a community-owned railway line between Camrose and Alliance, Alta. The new generation co-op purchased the 80-km short-line from CN in 2008 after they announced they were going to sell off the rails for scrap. By keeping the line active, local area farmers are able to save money and time transporting their grain. The co-op also turns a profit which it returns to it’s shareholders and plans to offer tourism and oil transport in the future. (Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal)

I got to drive a train!

Here’s how the story turned out in the paper. The designer Keith did a fantastic job!  You can read Marty Klinkenberg’s wonderful story here.

Most smartphones like the iPhone have GPS built-in and can automatically geotag your images for you.

Turn on location services for your iPhone or enable the GPS on your Android phone to embed the GPS co-ordinates in all your camera photos.

But what about your D-SLR? New D-SLRs coming out will have GPS built-in but what about the camera in your hand right now?

Here are three methods I use:

Method #1. Get the location from Google Maps.

If you can remember exactly where you were standing when you shot an image you can just use Google Maps to find the GPS position afterwards.

Go to http://maps.google.com and zoom into the area you took a photo. Then Right Click (CNTR-Click on a Mac) at the exact spot you want and then select “What’s Here?”. The GPS Longitude and Latitude will appear in the search box.

Method #2: Just take a picture with your smartphone at the same location as your D-SLR.

Upload the image to http://regex.info/exif.cgi and it will tell you the embedded GPS info.
Once you have this Info you can map it with Google Maps.

You can then embed the gps location into your D-SLR picture by using exiftool.

Add “-overwrite_original” to the command or else it will create a backup copy of the image.

You can find exiftool for Mac or PC or Linux here.  Also try googling “Exiftool GUI” if you want a graphical user interface.

It may look complicated to use a command-line tool but it is actually very powerful. Check out this awesome tutorial on scripting Exiftool with with Automator.

This method is okay for one simple picture but isn’t there a better way?

There are two different ways to represent longitude and latitude: Minutes and Seconds or Decimal Degrees.

Method #3: Sync a GPS route from your iPhone/Android to a batch of images.

This is the method I have been using lately and I like it. Mainly because I find the app to be very reliable.

Simply launch the EveryTrail app and run it for the day that you are taking pictures. At the end of the day you can sync all your photos with GPS Photo Linker.

How does it work?  
Basically the app creates a “.gpx” file which contains data like this: Date, Time, Lat, Long, Date, Time, Lat, Long, Date, Time, Lat, Long, etc.
GPS Photo Linker looks at the time each of your photos was taken and correlates it to the closest GPS point.

What you need:

1. Use the free GPS Photo Linker program on your Mac or GpicSync for PC  to sync your photos with the GPS track.
2. Buy the EveryTrail Pro app for you iPhone or Android phone.

EveryTrail.com is a cool online trail mapping site. It has a lot of cool features but we are only interested in creating creating a GPS route of our walk.
You can make a GPS route of your trip and then upload a .GPX file to the web to download and sync with your pictures.

Here’s the process:

1. Download and install the app. I think you need to buy Pro version because the Free version doesn’t let you upload the .GPX files.
2. Setup an Account in the App.
3. Go into settings and change your GPS precision.
4. Click “Start Tracking” under “My Map”
5. When you are done, Select “Pause” and then “Finish”
6. Upload the Trip to EveryTrail.com
7. Now go to EveryTrail.com and log in with the username and password you setup.
8. Click on “My Tracks”
9. Scroll down the page and you’ll find a link to “Download GPX for your GPS”

Now launch GPS Photo Linker or GpicSync and sync your photos with the .gpx file. The program will automatically embed the GPS longitude and latitude in the photo’s EXIF info.

Here is another tutorial on this process.

This may seem like a lot of work but you will thank yourself in a month, year or decade when you wonder where you took that beautiful picture.

This process is also a HUGE time saver when you are shooting aerial photos and need to figure out what you were shooting after the fact.

Isaac’s friend and fellow River Keeper member Doug Boyer took us out for a tour of the river on his jet boat. However after two hours, something went wrong with the impeller on the boat and we could only move 3 km/h. It wasn’t a bad thing though because it allowed me to make this beautiful portrait.

Glen Isaac, Executive Director of the North Saskatchewan River Keeper poses for a photo along the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton on October 1, 2012. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal

I didn’t bring a flash with me but the single light at the end of the boat gave enough fill on his face.

The river was smooth as glass which also allowed me to make some pretty photos of Edmonton’s skyline from a different perspective than you normally see.

The Edmonton Skyline at night as seen from a boat on the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton on October 1, 2012. Photo by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal

Although it sucked to me moving so slow, I was able to make some pictures that I normally wouldn’t have gotten if we were moving 60 km/h.

We finally just docked the boat and got out and walked to catch a ride as it was faster than moving 3 km/h. Elise blogged about our adventure here.

We took all the information we got from Isaac and created an interactive map where people can submit their own pictures and information about the river.

Edmonton Journal started this map for residents to share their river experiences and favourite places at http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/rivermap/index.html

360-Video and Innovation Talk at ONA12 from Ryan Jackson on Vimeo.

Andrew Satter @asatter discusses innovative video techniques. Ryan Jackson @ryan_jackson talks about his 360-video projects and an open discussion on video with the audience happens at the end. Enjoy! Sept. 22, 2012 at Online News Association annual conference ONA12 in San Francisco. http://www.ryanjackson.ca http://www.asatter.com

Ashley and I are driving back to Edmonton from San Francisco and I have limited internet connectivity so this blog post will be fully updated with links and quotes in a couple days.P.S. If you ever get a chance to drive the west coast, DO IT!

This is a super duper quick list of the links I’ll be sharing at the #ONAunconf Unconference session at the 2012 ONA conference in San Francisco

Try to do something different. NOT TV. “make something worth talking about” – Seth Godin.

-Multimedia — use best tool to do the job. … sometimes video, sometimes sound slides, sometimes panoramas, sometimes interactives.

- I want there to be a holodeck like on Star Trek!

-I want to have the news beamed into my brain like in the Matrix or Simpsons.

PICTURE
-We’re going to get there before you know it

Getting closer!

#1. put me there.
-360 panorama Twitter CEO yesterday

I hate boring video
. Passive vs. Active. We will sit down and watch TV for hours (passive) but it’s hard to watch a 2-minute video online (active)

Make your videos active.

-Interactive Talking Heads

””

something simple…
Interactive Political Debate Video
-I shot video. Lucas Timmons figured out the API and he blogged
HERE how to do it.

Blog about shooting it

-28 mins of video here. people spent WAY more time on it than if it was just a normal linear video.
-think backwards. how do you wish you could watch long videos that are boring?
Immersive Video

Make videos immersive and interactive.

””
Blog post about shooting 360-Video.

Watch 360 Dodgeball Video on Edmonton Journal

Went viral. picked up by Gizmodo and got 10,000 hits in an hour. which 10k x 100mb video = a lot of bandwidth!
Slave lake 360

-took this tool I made and used it for something more serious and breaking news

“Google Streetvew” style 360 video tour

360 Street View Tour of Slave Lake after Wildfire Devastation
-got special access because this video could be used as a service to the citizens.
-Blog post about making my own Google Street View Tours

The next year I returned and shot 360 Before/After Panoramas showing the reconstruction

Lucas Timmons created the map.
Blog post about re-shooting the panoramas from the same place.
-next year later i returned and did the exact same route. thank god for GPS. Lucas Timmons

-Next, combine those two ideas. Start with one project and build on it for the next.

360 election – Interactive Coffee with politicians

-how be used for something different. scarcity. interactive, put you there.
Interactive 360-degree interview with political leaders:

Blog post about interviewing politicians in 360-degree video.

Choose your own adventure game

Interactive 360 “Choose your Own Adventure” Tour of Edmonton Carnival

-Best viewed on iPad.
-now this is cheesy but think of it as a little town. You could do panoramas of a small town or neighborhood and make it so you go to each section and talk to people.
-360 video on a Roller Coaster

-Start with one thing and build build build on it.
-i use KRpano.
-interfaces with VR headsets and game controllers.

-360 isn’t for everything
-A LOT OF TIME.
-must be super duper interesting topic to get good ROI
-must be something worth looking around for.

TimeMachine

Collaborated with Carnegie Mellon University

-contacted them and collaborated

””
Zoom into video and move around in time and space.

-dodgeball again! 1st – viral…2nd. 360…3rd… time-lapse in time and space…
-URL and video screenshot

GigaTAG Facebook.

Also created a Facebook GigaTag so you potentially have 5,000 University students tag themselves in Facebook.

GigaTimeBot

Dynamic time lapse of CAPITAL EX
-every hour update video.
-just PHOTOS…

Robot tweeted every time it took a photo