Spartan Sagas

A few years ago, one of our student employees asked Mark a simple question: "What is your favorite thing to photograph?" I thought for sure that he would say Football or Dance or Travel, but without even thinking about it, he simply said "People". He went on to explain that meeting so many different people from all walks of life and finding out their story is what makes his job so interesting.

When all is said and done, it is the students, faculty, staff, alumni and yes, even the staff photographers that breath life into a Institution. Without these people, all you have is a bunch of empty buildings. That is why I love the ongoing "Spartan Sagas" project that is being created by Kurt Stepnitz at Mighigan State University. Their focus is on the people that make MSU great. If you haven't seen it yet, do your due diligence and jump over to: http://spartansagas.msu.edu/

I was very interested in finding out the impetus behind "Spartan Stories" as well as their plan to tackle such a large project. My Q and A session with Kurt follows below:

Q: How did this project come about?

A: MSU felt it needed to consolidate its brand and about two years ago began working with a research firm and ultimately an ad agency to come up with a new branding campaign. Alumni, prospective students, and higher education peers were queried among others during the process, and came up with the tag “Spartans Will”, creating a premise that could be completed by sagas telling how Spartans around the world are making a difference every day.

Q: What is the overall goal of Spartan Sagas?

A: The campaign is designed to illustrate MSU's hard-working excellence. As one of the world's first land-grant institutions, now world-grant, MSU wanted to illustrate how they’re collective genius and intellect spans the world (that line is not mine, but the agency’s). Through our web site and social networking, a primary goal is to get Spartan students, faculty, staff and alumni to share their sagas by submitting videos and photo essays telling their personal stories.

Q: Generally what equipment did you take on each one of these assignments?

A: To some degree travel restrictions, but most importantly the desire to use only available light for these pieces has led me to a core set of a D700, a 14-24mm 2.8, 24-70 2.8, and 80-200 2.8. I’m about to add a second D700, 50 1.4 and likely a 105 micro. I have an SB800 on the trips with me, but have yet to use it. The D700, as many UPAA members already appreciate, is a joy to use in low light. We’ve bought into the Strobist mantra the last several years, but I have to say that letting the sensor do the work has been a liberating experience personally. I also just picked up another ThinkTank bag, one of the Retrospective models, looking forward to trying it out before the next trip. This available light approach was dictated by the photographic style recommended by the ad agency. In a nutshell, they envisioned images in a journalistic style, with the subject depicted in a dominant position, keeping in mind graphic elements that lend themselves to headline usage. It took some getting used to, and for quite some time we didn’t think we’d even be utilized for the saga photography. Freelancers around the country were being seriously considered.

Q: How are you capturing the audio? When do you do the interview?

A: The constant factor in all of our sagas are the still photographs and HD video and sound capture. I’m lucky to be working with a multiple Emmy award winning crew from our Big Ten Network (BTN). The dynamics in this crew were interesting at first. As still photographers, we all know what a pain in the neck the TV folks can be, right? Our BTN Assistant Producer and Technical Director is used to controlling the set and the shoot specifically, but for the sagas I was told they will be my shoots and the video dudes would have to cherry pick around me. Took some adjustment for both of us. Its working great and I’ve never had more fun. So he gets the natural sound and b-roll while I’m doing the still shoot. One of our editors typically does at least a telephone pre-interview to flesh out the basic idea of the story beforehand. Then ideally we will get our subject into our makeshift hotel room studio for their on-camera interview. This is edited into the primary sound track under the stills, and I’m also in the studio during the interview so I can start thinking about what to focus on during the following day’s shoot. Our BTN Executive Producer (he’s also Director of University Photography and Videography) and Assistant Producer shoot with two cameras for cut-aways. Everything we’re doing is designed to be expanded upon for eventual use in our Big Ten Network MSUToday show.

Q: How much time do you get to shoot each story?

A: There is some variation, but we typically look at two days of location production for each story. Set-up and studio interview one day, a full day of stills with the saga principle the second day. Travel and post-production are of course on top of that. I do a first edit of the images, a script is written by our Executive Producer, typically looking at a 4-6 minute story length, then our Tech Director cuts the base sound track and decides on images to drop in. They’re encouraging me to be more involved at this editing stage lately. Its helping me make story telling decisions while shooting, a good thing. The whole idea of covering scenes as a sequence, shooting wide, medium and tight shots to help move in and out of various parts of a story was new to me. Not to film makers or pure photojournalists, but certainly in my case.

Q: How have you and your office benefitted from this project?

A: With the exception of event photography, it’s changed the way we shoot much of our work. We try to work the branding style into most of our client projects so they can utilize it in a more unified way with the institution. Having been a scientific photographer the first 22 years here, then more of a portrait/PR shooter in the last 7 years, this is a refreshing change for me. It somewhat parallels graduate classes I’ve taken the last few years in environmental journalism, so I was ready for a change. Just didn’t think it would happen in house, at least not while I was still here.

I’m on the road quite a bit, with more to come. We’ve lost two valued photographers in the past 12 months to layoffs, and to say this project has affected the regular client workload is an understatement. The rest of the crew has pitched in big time to keep our clients taken care of. Our media communications photographer, Greg Kohuth, has done a great job covering a few stories where we had overlap and also when I was dealing with a slight injury. Overall it has been a very rewarding project for me personally.

Q: Which piece is your favorite, and why?:

A: That’s tough, they’re all special in different ways to us as a crew because of the various circumstances associated with each project. But my personal favorite to date was with Sister (Dr.) Anne Brooks in Tutwiler, Mississippi. She has such passion and dedication to her life’s work and the people she works with and serves appreciate her so much that it was very inspiring. She's such a lovely lady. But I have to add that I have no clue how the UPAA guys and gals handle that heat down there! Whew, that was rough. Give me some snow and a parka!

If you have any questions for Kurt, post them in the comments below.