Click below for a multi-media ’essay’ on the Dead Sea.

Over a period of several weeks, in addition to the regular assignments at the White House and armed with basic knowledge of a recent course in video editing at the Kalish workshop, I started to think about how we can illustrate in a multimedia format what a typical day at the white house looks like.

Starting out with a couple of early experiments of the Marine Guards at the west wing and a daily press briefing, I was hooked on the short time-lapse sequences that I saw come alive when i played them back at high speed. I began taking along to all of the big events an extra couple of cameras, tripods, clamps and pocket wizard radio remote triggers. This involved slightly more work as I had to start thinking of the best place for a time lapse sequence that may not make a good still image itself, but rather as part of a larger project. From the East Room, where most official functions are held, to the Rose Garden, the South Lawn and the West Wing, I would set the cameras up to fire one picture every 5-10 seconds (depending on what the event was) over a period of up to an hour before, during and after the events, to show what it looks like behind the scenes.

Thousands of pictures were shot over the course of those weeks, and as I collected them in a folder separate to our regular news wire work, I would slowly start to put together a narrative, which, in it’s final form, loosely follows what we may typically photograph on any given day at the White House.  It would be impossible to have cameras in all the locations on one particular day and cover all the things that we shoot chronologically. All of what we see in the project is made with just two cameras on the time lapse and one hand-held camera, so its a very basic set up. Even shooting handheld for the project meant that you would have to shoot major burst sequences with long lenses, all the while ensuring not to move the camera around too much. Even slight movements will render an entire sequence unusable. Tripods are too cumbersome to use at the white house and you have to remain mobile to make pictures so I would innovate by propping myself against a ladder and holding my breath or putting the handheld cameras on the ground, whatever it takes to shoot a short burst without moving the camera at all. This worked well for the walkout of the Oval Office where President Obama walks towards us. Thats a 70-200mm lens on the ground, prefocussed and composed with live view switched on, as I hold the camera perfectly still as he walks in and out of the frame.

Making it all come together in one coherent package is done in the edit. Being a newcomer to video editing and seeing a project in terms of a narrative and not just in single moments was the most challenging aspect. That, and getting my head around the 8,000 images that sat in a folder called “Multimedia” as the weeks wore on. I tried to edit for the project as it went along, so that when it came to putting together the sequence, there would be chunks of loosely finished product ready to just drop into the appropriate part of the story.