Life’s Incongruity
Yesterday provides a perfect example of the weirdness of the photojournalism life. I began the day with an assignment to photograph a baby duck a lady found swimming around in her ornamental pond in her back yard in a very nice part of the city. I was not terribly excited but the photo turned out quite nice as you can see. Then, life in all its weirdness, struck with a shooting that was literally less than a mile from the lady with the duck. The neighborhood was one of the city’s less attractive and a guy was in an argument with a friend and the argument led to gun play. One man was left lying in the street with a bullet hole in his leg. He will live and be fine but how weird is it to go from a photo a little baby duck to a grown man laying in the street with a bullet hole in his leg in the matter of a couple of miles and a couple of hours?
This also plays nicely into the discussion we started yesterday with Corey Ralston’s reader profile. I did not hesitate to photograph the victim of the shooting. First of all, shootings are normally pretty uncommon. Secondly, the man’s life was clearly not in danger. The Decatur Daily has a policy where we do not run photos of people from accidents/fires/shootings when their life is hanging in the balance or where they have already perished. It is just one of those things our paper does out of respect for the community. The third reason for shooting the victim, no pun intended, is because this happened to be the third day time shooting in the city in the last month. That is extremely uncommon.
Whenever you roll up on these situations there is nothing but your gut to guide you. You will have to quickly determine what the situation is, how it feels to you and if you feel safe in taking the picture. I have been in situations where people were watching me to see what I did and when I mean watching me, I mean they were waiting for me to do something that would piss them off which would give them an excuse to do something to me. You just have to listen to that little voice inside. It is seldom wrong.
That brings me to an interesting question. Is there a photo worth dying for? Well, probably not in Decatur is my usual answer. In fact, there are situations where I will take some extra risk to get a photo and some where I definitely will not. Again, listen to your gut. It is seldom wrong. Don’t get so caught up in shooting that you fail to notice what is going on around you, particularly at shooting scenes. When I first came to work here, I was told that in certain neighborhoods I was to leave as soon as the police did. Most people never think about it, but you have several thousand dollars worth of gear around your neck at any given moment. That gear is not worth my life or my health so I will be very conscious of my surroundings. If you are working with a reporter, watch one another’s back.
With the amount of drugs and alcohol out there, you never know what is going on in people’s heads. Keep your eyes and your ears open and listen to your gut. I keep saying that but it is one of the most important things when you are in a touchy situation. There is actually a second nervous system in your gut that operates both independently from and in cooperation with your central nervous system so it is a real thing. Pay attention. Be safe and live to shoot another day.
Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
A little PS here. I will not be posting this weekend. We are going to Orange Beach for the Associated Press Managing Editor’s convention to collect a few awards! Hoorah! Awards mean somebody out there agrees with you!!!
