Another site which incorporates the unique properties of the online medium is Focal Point f/8, which last year presented "The Russian Chronicles". Photo-journalist Gary Matsoto and writer Lisa Dickey, equipped with a digital camera and a Power Book, documented their six-week trip across part of the former Soviet Union, transmitting their photographs and text via modem every few days to Focal Points' studio in San Francisco. There project Director Tripp Mikich and Chuck Gathard Photoshopped and coded the images into HTML documents. This experiment in online journalism offered the viewer an immediate dialogue that no book or magazine could possibly accomplish. Web surfers from Europe, Asia and the States were encouraged to send email and post questions to the journalists for the subjects that were interviewed. Thousands of people logged on, including former Russian citizens who offered the journalists names of people to contact. Even the photography editor of Life Magazine posted a message from his office high atop a New York skyscraper saying how impressed he was by the work.

Mikich, a former picture editor for Parenting Magazine, sees great possibilities in the Web but claims not enough photographers are utilizing its potential. "Most photographers still see the Web as primarily just another 'gallery 'medium for their material, a view I strongly ... object to. In my own dealings with photographers, I'm constantly working to develop a new kind of thinking amongst documentary and even other types of photographers, that really focuses on the narrative nature of photographic work, both literally and figuratively speaking. What is it you want to tell people with what you're doing, and what else can be brought to bear that helps tell that literal, poetic, or figurative story?"

Mikach further believes that, "Some photographers are uncomfortable with the notion that their responsibility should be anything more than snapping the shutter and 'recording the moment'. However, this mentality will not thrive well in the contextual environment of the Web. Other photographers, like Gary Matoso of The Russian Chronicles, or Jeff Gates of In Our Path have embraced the notion of the non-linear, of the contextual, of the multiplicity of media possible, and the evolving technological relationship to digitalization of photographic media. This is one of the most exciting aspects of Web space for photographers and documentarians to explore, and I hope to see a lot more experimentation with these communicative attributes in the future."