Ed Kashi's photojournalism hits home for people the world over. His award-winning stories have been featured in publications such as National Geographic, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Smithsonian, Stern Magazine (Germany), The Sunday Times Magazine (London), Newsweek, Aperture, and American Photo.

Recently returned from assignment in Nigeria, Kashi took time to speak with iView Multimedia about how he approaches his work, discuss the practical matter of what it's like to "go digital," and talk about how he manages his digital workflow.

"I have been making photographs and telling visual stories for nearly 25 years. My focus has always been to depict the human condition though the prism of social and political issues of my time.

"My work lets viewers look into a world they don't know, or to see familiar scenes in a new or different way. I strive to give the viewer the intimate feeling of being close to the subject, while candidly revealing the daily lives of my subjects. I prefer to work on long-term projects that allow me to make in-depth observations and to explore the themes and issues I choose in a way that creates a unique and lasting documentary.

"I basically went overnight from shooting with film to shooting digitally. Three years ago, if you'd asked me whether I'd consider going digital, I would have said it was impossible. But after a year and a half now, I can tell you that it's transformed the way I work.

"I'm not someone who's very focused on all the technical ins and outs—I figure after a certain point, there's not much difference between equipment; it's your heart, mind, and gut that makes something work or not. So, I'm still approaching my subjects the same way. But where you get into a whole new universe is with the computer—there's a different learning curve, a new area to learn and be challenged within. That's very exciting.

"It's impossible to contrast how I worked before with how I'm working now. It's so fundamental—technology like this simply never existed before."

"What digital has meant for me is that it's opened a whole new range of possibilities. First, there's simply the fact that it's a new challenge, a new set of things to learn—always good for the mind. Next, it impacts how I work—the workflow. Particularly as a journalist, it's enhanced my control and ability to put an even deeper personal imprint on my work. Specifically, I can come out of the field and not only are images ready for distribution, but the contextual material is there in the form of metadata. Before going digital, the process was very cumbersome, involving getting materials back and forth from the lab, then hours, days, or weeks of editing. Now it's all condensed right in the field.

"Well, there are some slight exceptions. For example, when I was in Afghanistan without electricity, the process wasn't so efficient. But normally I'd be annotating and archiving my work every night before going to sleep."

Digital photography's best ally

"It's impossible to contrast how I worked before with how I'm working now. It's so fundamental—technology like this simply never existed before.

"iView MediaPro [now Microsoft Expression Media] has become my primary and essential tool for editing, batch renaming, creating the metadata, and ultimately archiving my new shoots."

Kashi's first media management tool was Fotostation, a tool that was recommended to him by the same friend who later introduced him to Expression Media (formerly iView MediaPro). Kashi believes that Expression Media (formerly MediaPro) is "by far the most comprehensive, intelligent, elegant, and easy digital asset management program I've ever used."

Of Expression Media's (formerly MediaPro) features, Kashi finds the following to be the most useful:

• Batch actions
• Ability to sync metadata to Adobe Photoshop files
• Slide shows
• Editing

Not only does Kashi believe that Expression Media (formerly MediaPro) saves time and money, but he says that it has enabled him to do those things that were not possible before—such as archiving a day's shoot that very day.

"My typical workflow is to download a day's shoot, batch rename, caption, keyword, and add all other pertinent metadata, and save the day's work as a new catalog. If it's a one-day shoot, then I'm done with my archiving.

"I'll process the photos within an hour or so of downloading. If I'm working on a long-term project—such as the assignment I just returned from in the Niger delta for three weeks—then this daily routine is part of a larger process that creates a huge iView MediaPro [now Expression Media] catalog of my whole shoot.

"For the Niger Delta story, I had nearly 6,000 images completely archived by the time I had returned home. Once back in my studio, I transfer the catalog to our server, and then my staff uses iView MediaPro [now Expression Media] to do another pass on the metadata to make sure my work is correct and to fill in any holes in terms of captions, keywords, and so forth.

iView MediaPro (now Microsoft Expression Media) is "by far the most comprehensive, intelligent, elegant and easy digital asset management program I've ever used."

"The other wonderful aspect of iView MediaPro [now Expression Media] is that it has become my primary tool for making presentations, which I do quite regularly. It has basically revolutionized my ability to present my work. I can show more work than anyone would ever want to see in one sitting—it's all in my Macintosh laptop. iView MediaPro [now Expression Media] has enabled my laptop to truly become a magic box of communication."