Stand still or keep moving?

A photograph and a video are very different beasts. 

In the modern age of digital and online media however, the line between still image and movie is ever-blurring. Most professional photographers accept, some slightly unwillingly, that they will have to embrace the rise of online video or sink below the water. This is due in part to new high-speed internet which can allow anyone to stream high-definition video to their laptop, Mac, iPad or even mobile phone. People like moving images - they can send an information-rich message far more quickly than text and in a far more entertaining manner. 

Video is also enormously flexible. You can use it to tell a narrative or communicate a concept:

There is however a stark fact that confuses this photographer-videographer-fusing steamroller. Videos are very different to photographs. The skills and talents that make a photographer great at his or her art do not always translate to the world of motion film. I noticed this whilst researching a promotional video I needed made to promote my speaking profile. It is just not possible to cobble together a professional-looking sequence with an HD camera and iMovie unless you have experience and the right intuition. I therefore enlisted the skills of someone who did.

A photographer, when constructing their image, needs to use a very limited toolbox to convey a great deal. They have no movement or sound at their disposal - only a single, still image. Even a photo-essay sequence helps very little. They must communicate their story in that one photograph - distilling time and multiple elements into it. One great benefit of this, and the reason why I take photographs instead of make films, is that your audience can take their time and ponder each part of the image. The part of the image that you looking at is not suddenly whisked away from in front of your eyes and replaced with something else, as with video. It is a great skill, and one that few have mastered, to tell a story and convey a concept or character with this neat and simple medium.

On the other hand, videographers can indulge themselves in the movement and use both that and sound to tell their story. If you randomly freeze a video in any position and look at it in isolation, very few would stand up well as a still image (Vincent Laforet is a possible exception).

My thoughts are therefore: if you are a photographer, take great photographs. There will always be a demand for a still image, regardless of technical developments and the newest web-craze. If you are a videographer, make great videos and embrace the incredible developments that are taking place now. Just five years ago, the thought of having a camera with excellent quality 1080p HD footage and shallow depth-of-field control for £700 would have been ludicrous.

If you're talented at both, well you're very lucky.