Why this blog ?

Screenshot: Nairobi rush hour, pre-election day ( 5d Mark III )

Being a news photographer for some years now, i go with the times and started to shoot video for news broadcaster. Starting with Al Jazeera, APTN, Channel 4 and now on a more regular basis Arise News.

But from the beginning i knew i wanted to push the boundaries a little. Not using standard broadcast equipment and to give the whole thing a little bit of a visual edge. I very often found, that broadcast features had good stories, but the visual styles where just too limited by equipment that was originally invented to provide fast production cycles rather then visual excellence.

Coming from a photography background i had a close look on the recent development in the field of DSLR-Video. After the early steps with the Nikon D90 to a quite sophisticated implementation with the likes of Canon's 5D Mark III, Eos 1DX and the crown jewel the Canon 1D C, i found that maybe it was time to move away from the "old ways" and try out something new.

I used to own a couple of Canon 7D's which i used during my work as a photojournalist. Although it was a steep learning curve and some research to find out what technically shortcomings i finally churned out a piece together with Al Jazeera's Malcolm Webb in Uganda. You can see it here.

Now moving on to a more modern 5D Mark III, which ironed out a lot of the headaches, im currently on with the new station Arise News. We just did a 8 days coverage of the Kenyan elections which was a excellent test case for the the new camera.

Together with my ever on-going process of trying to reduce equipment and technical dependencies, i working currently with the following setup ( including a manfrotto tripod with a 701HDV head ).