Over 550,000, 10,000 airplanes of all types, 20 photographers and seven days. Oh, and Harrison Ford.
About 120,000 frames were made, with about 8,000 edited and added to the EAA Merlin Digital Asset Management (DAM) system.
I spent a week recently in Oshkosh at the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) annual convention, known as AirVenture 2016. Considered the busiest airspace in the world for the week, more than 10,000 aircraft descend upon Oshkosh. Convention highlights include performances by the Canadian Forces Snowbirds aerial demonstration team, the ginormous Martin Mars flying water bomber, fireworks from the ground AND the air, experimental aircraft of all sorts, military aircraft through the years, oh, and Harrison Ford.
The 20 or so photographers that provide photo coverage are dedicated to aviation photography and are experts at their craft. The EAA does a year’s worth of photography in a week; photo stories on specific aircraft, including amazing air-to-air photos, newsworthy photos of newand different aircraft, action photos from daily air shows and interesting feature photos of people in airplanes, or watching airplanes. Oh, and photos of Harrison Ford.
Merlin and Trax were a significant part of the daily workflow. Prior to AirVenture, assignments were entered in to Trax. Each day, photographers were given their assignments from Trax. Once the assignment had been completed, photographers would copy the data from their cards onto a local server for editing. The selected photos were copied to Merlin and associated with a Trax ID. This allowed for searching based on metadata included with the photo or metadata from Trax. It was my pleasure to assist in the editing process and ensure that the Merlin workflow went well. I saw amazing photos from amazing photographers. And of course, photos of Harrison Ford. Mr. Ford, a lifetime EAA member flew with 16-year-old Jodie Gawthrop of Westchester, Ill., who represented the 2 millionth participant in the association’s Young Eagles program, which introduces youth to aviation.
Each morning, using Trax, it was possible to see what content was outstanding, and what content had been completed; printed reports made it easy to ensure that content flow continued smoothly.
Merlin serviced a number of different daily outlets including the EAA Flickr feed and a daily print publication, AirVenture Today. Other content stored in Merlin will be used in a variety of EAA publications throughout the upcoming year and to publicize AirVenture 2017.
David Breslauer
Sales & Marketing Support Manager
MerlinOne
Email: dbreslauer@MerlinOne.com
Phone: 617.328.6645
