In the week I went to an evening on digital storytelling presented by Daniel Meadows and hosted by London Independent Photography. Daniel’s passion lifelong has been documentary photography and story gathering. When he studied photography at Manchester Polytechnic alongside the likes of Martin Parr he hired a shop front in Moss Side to take photos of locals. Once developed they would go in the shop window and he would give copies to the willing people who had posed. This love of capturing people and their stories led to the famous photobus which Daniel bought, lived and travelled in for 18 months. He converted it so it had a darkroom onboard upstairs and travelled Britain gathering photos and stories.

Having been a photographer for most of his working life, since 2000 Daniel hasn’t taken a photograph but has fueled his passion for documenting peoples stories through digital stories. This isn’t just a general term but has a particular meaning. He describes it this way…

Short, personal and written with feeling there’s a strictness to their
construction: 250 words, a dozen or so pictures, and two minutes is
about the right length. Considered narratives which subject themselves
to strictures of form tend to elegance. Digital Stories — when
properly done — can be tight as sonnets: multimedia sonnets from the
people.

The stories Daniel showed were delightful. You can view plenty on his own website. They are woven together using something like imovie by taking old photographs, scanning them in and weaving together a narrative/audio that tells a tale. It looks very simple but no doubt is actually an art that takes a while to master. [A hot tip on the audio front was his recommendation to get a zoom h2 recorder]

For seven years Daniel had a lot of fun commissioned by the BBC for the project Capture Wales where together with a team he traveled around Wales running workshops empowering people to make digital stories which were shown before the BBC news each night and caught the imagination of the nation.

It’s a great technique and one to try out – with a bit of imagination, old photographs and free software anyone in LIP could construct a digital story. There was interest in a workshop to do just that so I guess watch the event space and get in quick to book.

Daniel’s enthusiasm and love for magical stories is infectious. One phrase he kept repeating was that a photo is alive and you never know where it is going to travel especially with new media and its global reach. His curiosity about life (something else that is all too rare a gift) led him to go back and try and trace the people he filmed all those years ago on the bus and this has demonstrated how a photo might have its own magical journey. It is also refreshing to find someone in the later part of his career who is enthusiastic about the possibilities inherent in the new media environment rather than suspicious of it. He particularly loves the way the new media democratise publishing and put tools in peoples hands to tell their own tales rather than needing the gurus and experts so loved in the old world.