[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-W2Ia9tar8]
Before there was Twitter or before Facebook gained popularity, I followed people online directly through their Websites or RSS feeds. I’ve long favored personal blogs over professional news sites. The best stories are told by and are about people.
Fast forward five years, people are what make the social Web work so well, and why my profession, journalism, is in state of chaos. Why read something filtered by a reporter/editor when the single, or even crowd, source is available? Interaction is more personal and direct.
Among my favorite follows is Carl Rytterfalk, who tells great stories using a camera. I tell stories with words. Others do better with photos or movies. Carl might not define himself as storyteller, but he is one through the people photographed.
Carl is from the town of Älvängen in Sweden. His breathtaking Flickr and informative YouTube galleries are stories in stills and motion. As he learns more about digital photographic and video technology Carl explains—teaches—it to others. His sharing is in the true spirit of the Internet, or my vision of it when I got online in 1994.
Today, Carl posted an 8:44-minute movie that he made using the Canon EOS 5D mark II digital SLR and Canon 24-70mm L lens. Maybe he should be a filmmaker, too. The intro is creative and fun and the entire video, while seemingly random, has real flavor. Pack my bags and move me to Sweden!
Here’s a surprise: For most photographic situations, Carl favors (so far) his Sigma digicams to Canon’s mega dSLR. He blogs: “But, as a still camera even in good light I don’t like the output as much. I can’t get ‘that’ from it—and I’m not impressed with the 21mp resolution.” Carl uses a Sigma SD14 dSLR and Sigma DP1 and DP2 compacts.
The three Sigma cameras use the same Foveon sensor, which captures colors in separate red, green and blue layers rather than side by side in disparate proportions. Foveon delivers exceptionally realistic color reproduction compared to sensors used in most other dSLRs.
Carl takes amazing photos—eh, tells intriguing stories—with his Sigma cameras. Will he adjust to the Canon EOS 5D Mark II or stay solely Sigma? That’s a story yet to be told.