Bringing Documentary Photos to Life

He’s traveled the world photographing communities and landscapes, but Porter Yates wants to get beyond the mere documentary image. Bridging the gap between subject and viewer, Yates’ photos tell the stories of those in them.

When you look at Yates’ photos, the world feels a little smaller and the distant places and people he captures become a little more human and a little more real.

Six months have passed since EyeEm named Yates its 2015 Photographer of the Year. Prior to that, we featured Yates’ story in How To Become a Pro Photographer. We caught up with Yates to hear what’s happened since the Photographer of the Year Award— press, travel, and Witness.Earth his new avenue for visual storytelling!

How were the last six months for you?

Busy! There was quite a bit of press with the award which was all fairly new to me. I’m usually fairly private, and was little overwhelmed with the attention. There is a skill to giving interviews and responding to press. Like anything, it takes practice. Outside of the attention, not much has changed — I still love to photograph and explore. I’m going to keep doing that. However, I feel I have a larger platform to start sharing my experience with others. I’m going to be focusing on that in 2016.

Meeting Ashley Gilbertson was great, he provided a lot of insight into the world of photojournalism. It was exciting to learn where he draws his inspiration and about his photographic process. Much of his motivation comes from telling a story with visual elements fitting within that structure. For me it’s the opposite. The visual process is what drives me, and I often struggle with a story. During my recent trips I tried to think about how certain images might relate to a comprehensive story. I took some shots I probably wouldn’t have taken otherwise, but I still feel the story is missing — the description I began to put together was still based on visual components.

What is Witness.Earth?

Witness.Earth is a new project I’m working on with my friend Dan Melamid. It’s a new style of photographic presentation to music. The new technique fuses slideshow, time lapse, and stop motion imagery; all set to the rhythm of unearthed and vintage songs.

How did you come up with the idea for it?

I’m sure most people have scrolled through their photos, on their camera or computer, and seen sequences that look like stop motion movies.

Through my travels, I’ve accumulated about 100,000 photos. Only a handful of these shots ever see the light of day, and that made me think about new and different ways to utilize my unused images. For example — below is a sequence of monks debating in Tibet.

Of the nine photos, only one was selected as a viable still — that leaves 8 unused images. However, the sequence itself is interesting and shows much more than could ever be captured one image.

A few years ago I attempted to make a few videos with the sequences of images. The results were intriguing, but lacked polish.

One of the prizes I won in the EyeEm award was a new monitor. I already have two and didn’t need a third so I gave it to my friend, Dan Melamid, a video producer here in Brooklyn. He agreed to edit my photos into a video for the trade. However, once he saw the resulting video, he realized we had a viable brand — taking his editing skills and my backlog of travel photography, we could create a unique vision of the world — and Witness.Earth was formed.

Our first video covers the Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad, India — the largest gathering of humanity on the planet.

What’s unique about the technique is that every frame is a photograph, and unlike video, each frame can be stepped through and examined — it’s a unique way to view photography and experience the world. It’s a bit like an animated contact sheet.

What’s your vision for the future with it?

Our next video will feature my shots from the firework festival in Tultepec, Mexico. It’s coming along great; it’s going to be really cool!

“Each frame can be stepped through and examined. It’s a bit like an animated contact sheet.”

What are your hopes for Witness.Earth? Would you like more people to engage in that form of storytelling?

We have a few ideas for the future. We’d like to make something physical — an album of the tracks accompanied prints and mixed media. I think the technique could make great supplemental content to travel documentaries. I’d love to see others experiment with the idea — there are so many time-lapse and stop-motion travel videos. I’m excited to take a trip and shoot with this project in mind.

Have you thought about bringing it to the big screen?

Not at the moment. The videos are so dense, I don’t think people could sit through an hour of footage, not to mention that would take hundreds of thousands of photos. Right now, the format fits well with 2–3 minute videos, which happens to be the length of a song. The music we select is vital to the project, it brings so much emotion that usually isn’t experienced when viewing still photographs. It’s the combination of photographs, sequences and music that makes this project unique.

Where are you traveling to next?

I’m currently planning a trip to India, to attend Kumbh Mela in Hardiwar. I’m also looking into a trip to Ethiopia.

Tell us about your recent trips.

This year was unique for me in my travels as I was able to revisit places I had previously explored — Iceland, Tibet, the Balkans, Oaxaca, and Cuba. The first time I visit a place, it can be hard to understand anything but the novelty of the foreign environment. Knowing this, I made an effort to revisit places to gain a better understanding and improve my photography.

I left for Oaxaca, Mexico in late October to photograph the events surrounding the day of the dead. I spent some time in the pueblos to the north and even reconnected with a few people I had photographed during my previous trip.

One of the prizes from the EyeEm award was the Impossible Project Instant Lab, which lets you turn digital photos into instant prints. It turned out to be a great way to make prints for people I photographed.

From Mexico, I traveled to Cuba. I had previously visited Cuba in 2012, and traveled to many of the same places as my first trip. While much was the same, I could sense that large transformations were beginning. Currently, the United States is beginning to relax some of the regulations regarding travel to Cuba. WiFi, though restrictive, was now more accessible, much of Central Havana had been torn up and new infrastructure was being installed.