A Little News

Flames billow from a house at 1205 North St. SE in Decatur Sunday night as Decatur Firefigthers prepare to attack. The house was heavily damaged by the fire but firefighters did not think anyone was home. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 1/11/09

Seems like a no brainer doesn’t it?  Yet, this is exactly what almost happened to me Sunday night and this one really is one of those things they never teach you in school.  I was covering a fully involved house fire Sunday night and I very nearly stepped on the power service which had been snapped by the fire and was laying in the street.  Now, I am an old firefighter and whenever I have ever approached a fully involved structure fire as either a fireman or a photographer I have always located the power service.  Early in any fire this will still be “hot” and able to kill you quickly.

This time I didn’t look.  I was trying to hurry and get a photo because the Decatur Fire and Rescue is good and a fully involved house fire thirty seconds before I pulled up was now rapidly becoming a steaming, black pit on a very dark section of street.  My Dad used to say that God protects fools and firefighters.  It was a good thing Sunday night or I would  have stood a good chance of joining the heavenly choir in the role of fool.  I was hurrying along trying to find a better shooting angle before the flames were completely gone when I just happened to look down in mid-stride.  My foot was just about to land on the power service.  Thank God I was able to pull my foot back and move away.

Moments later, the end of the power line crackled in a huge ball sparks beside the house and I saw a firefighter go down.  I was afraid the line had gotten him.  Fortunately he was not injured and must have only been startled or something like that because he got right up.  There are many dangers out there on assignment.  Some you see, those you can usually avoid, some you don’t see, those are the dangerous ones, and some you are ignorant of and those too can get you.  Don’t get so caught up in getting that picture that you ignore the dangers of the assignment.

Over the years I have been through many things that made me grateful for my fire and EMS background.  I have been able to avoid some trouble because of it.  You may not have that background and people may not tell you about them.  Keep any eye on your surroundings and stay alive.  You may not even have to touch the danger to get whacked.  Had that power service been draped over the chain link fence surrounding the property it would have been electrified and touching it would be equally deadly.  There is just not a single photo I have ever seen that I wanted to die for.  The power service didn’t care that I am married and have eight kids to take care of.  It didn’t care that I have goals and ambitions.  Had I touched it all that would have gone away in a split second.  Like the sergeant on Hill Street Blues used to say, “Let’s be careful out there!”

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

Now there is an uplifting title to start the year.  I was swapping email with an influential blogger friend and he told me that it is time to develop an exit strategy from the newspaper world.  His reasoning is that the newspaper industry has so dated itself that the survival of the industry is in serious question.  For instance, both Chicago daily newspapers are in danger of folding.  Detroit Free Press is going to web only with an actual newspaper published only 3 times a week.  Even small newspapers are under tremendous financial pressure.  I think the newspapers that survive 2009 will have come through the worst of the financial crisis and will probably survive because those papers will have adapted very quickly to the climate in their readership areas.

I am talking about both the business climate, which will take some creativity of an unprecedented nature, and the news climate which will have to undergo massive change to keep readership.  What this means is there will have to be almost wholesale changes from the top to the bottom of the newspaper industry and it will never again be like it was in the old days.  I really have no expertise to speak to the business/advertising side of things so I will leave that to the folks who I pray do have and with a good portion of boldness to go along with the creative ideas.  I really can’t speak to the publisher side of things either.  I know more about that side but lets face it, I am still a grunt in this industry so let’s just focus on news gathering because that is all I can really affect anyway.

The traditional model for news gathering has always been words first and then visuals supporting and it has worked for decades, a century really.  Even the vaunted New York Times which was traditionally known as the “Gray Lady” for her dependence on the written word has made massive strides in getting more visual.  Newspapers are going to have to turn to their photography departments to take a lead role in news gathering and not merely look at them as service departments.  The reason being is that the web is a highly visual place.  Photographs, and even video on some occasions, need to lead the Internet coverage.  The one thing that many newspapers have missed either partially or entirely is the importance of being, not simply visual, but visually dominant.  Any readership survey will tell you that people are reading less and spend far less time on any site or with any newspaper than they did even a decade ago.

What this means is that newspapers must put an emphasis on strong visual storytelling in print and online or readers simply won’t stay.  Stories, in most cases anyway, will have to become shorter and much more local.  Anyone can read national and international news online up to 23 hours before they can read it in a printed newspaper.  Obviously, this also means that the Internet and not the printed product must lead the way in 09 and that shift has been underway in one form or another for a long time.  With this in mind, the Internet can be used to fill niche readership markets that the newspaper really can’t accommodate.  For instance, in our market we have a booming military and technology sector that is hard for us to cover in print.  The Internet provides a great opportunity to do this and do it very effectively.  Most of the folks in that industry will probably never pick up a newspaper but the Internet is always at their fingertips.  That, by the way, describes a huge portion of our potential readership growth market.  It will have to be online because many Americans are so Internet conditioned they will never buy a newspaper again.

As a visual reporter myself, I have to look in the mirror and ask myself what changes I am willing to make.  We don’t do video yet at The Decatur Daily and I really don’t believe video is the answer but am I ready to do video, and not just do video but do video well.  You see, it won’t do any good for the newspaper to lean more heavily on visual storytelling if I am not willing to do my job with excellence whether it is video or stills or even both.  And that really is the question because to survive we either have to work very hard at being the absolute best or we need to find another industry to work in.  The other thing is am I willing to become a lead storyteller?  We have been treated as a service department for so long in many newspapers am I really willing to jump out there and develop stories on my own and be a reporter with a camera rather than depend on a reporter to give me photo assignments?  These are the two biggest issues the photo departments will have to overcome to be newsroom leaders.

And what if you newspaper has no vision for any of this?  Well, you have two options.  First you could polish up your resume and start shopping yourself around and try and find a new job.  Since the newspaper industry is in the shape it is in, you might want to try a fast food chain.  They are always in need of cooks and counter help.  OR, you could work from within your newspaper and show through your aggressive pursuit of stories and the use of the technology available what is possible through visuals.  If you present editors with a finished product that is ready to publish and you do that several times in a row you will gradually develop an expectation for that kind of work.  This may not produce the rapid change that your newspaper needs but it will be doing what you can to affect the direction your newspaper is going.

I have heard it said that great opportunities often come disguised as huge problems so 2009 should be a great opportunity for those willing to see it that way.  If you are tempted to keep on doing things the way you always have and leave it up to someone else to produce change then this may not be a very good year for you.  Keep in mind that one definition of insanity is continuing to do the same things over and over again and expecting different results.  Don’t be insane my friends.  Push every day to do the job better than you have ever done it before and even if your paper folds you will have done all that is within your ability to keep it afloat and you will have put yourself in a better position to move on to the next opportunity.  God bless and keep you in this year.

Decatur firefighters work to control a blaze in a house at 1403 Vicksburg Circle SW Friday morning. The fire apparently started in the attached garage heavily damaging the structure. Jimmy Prickett pulls the overhead door out of the way so firefighters could more easily access the garage area. Daily photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 11/21/08

I covered a house fire Friday morning.  It was an unusual fire in that it happened in a really nice and fairly new home in one of Decatur’s newer neighborhoods.  There are always house fires in the older and poorer sections of town but it is pretty uncommon to have one in this neighborhood.  I can remember only one other near here and it was a really bad fire.  The fire department did a really nice job of containing the fire in the garage area and the homeowners plan to renovate and move back in.

I know it is not the politically correct thing to say but I like covering fires.  If you understand my background you will understand why.  I grew up around the fire service and spent a bit over six and a half wonderful years as a volunteer firefighter myself.  I have a deep appreciation for the fire service and no matter how far removed I get from those years of service I still feel a deep connection to firefighters.  My dad just retired after serving the city of Muscle Shoals, Alabama as fire marshall.  He was a volunteer firefighter when I was born and we even fought fire together during my years as a volunteer and those are still some of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had.  So now you know why I like to cover fires.  I was born with firefighting in my blood and it will never truly go away.

So, to the point.  I used to just get worked up covering fires.  It was like a giant, visual smorgasbord of opportunity.  I would just bang away without much thought to anything like composition.  I just wanted to get some good stuff with flames or, lacking flames, some really good smoke.  I still look for those things but now I am more of a photographer and less of a firefighter.  I look for composition and moments and whenever possible, composition within moments.  That is what separates photojournalists from the guy standing there with his cell phone camera.  Yeah, he will come away with a picture and if he is insanely lucky it might even have a moment in it.  A photojournalist looks for composition, light and moment no matter what he is shooting and that includes spot news.

This fire had some excellent smoke opportunities and the light was direct sun but it was back lighting the house so the smoke was lit from behind which created some opportunities to create those compositions.  The point here is to not get so excited or so nervous that you forget to do your photojournalistic duty.  (I can’t tell you how many times I have seen this abused on the sidelines at football games.  I mean, really dudes, you can’t be a fan and a photojournalist so pick one!)  Look for moments.  Work composition and light and see if your photos don’t improve when you are shooting spot news.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Ernestine Robinson

Ernestine Robinson is a forceful woman.  She is a woman whom I admire and enjoyed photographing.  Decatur Daily writer Deangelo McDaniel and I went to interview her on election night as Barak Obama was about to become the nation’s first black president.  Robinson marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights wars, and they were wars in Alabama, and she knows what it cost to see a black man standing before the nation as president elect.  She was one of those who helped pay that price.

I wanted to do a really dignified portrait of her and I had done some previsualization on my drive down to Moulton.  As often happens, my ideas had to be tossed out the window as soon as I got there because there was no location in her house where I could do what I had envisioned.  Situation normal.  I still had a basic lighting scheme in mind and this I was able to apply.  You have heard me say it before, have a lighting scheme or two that you are comfortable with and can fall back on.  That way you want be stumbling all over yourself when you actually go on location.

I knew I wanted to use the Octobank for a big, soft light and I knew I wanted to use a second light as a background fill or, if needed, as a secondary light on the subject.  What I wanted to avoid at all cost was a front light of any sort.  I wanted a dramatic quality to the portrait because I already knew something of her story.  What I ended up doing with my lighting scheme was not too far off what I had previsualized.  Instead of a portrait in the classic sense, I ended up doing and interview portrait which is sometimes better than a strictly posed shot and sometimes not.  I managed to squeeze in a couple of images of her looking at the camera near the end of the shoot.

The problems I faced in her home were mainly ones of spacing and background.  Her home is pretty normal, no big open areas and the collections of a lifetime around her in the form of photos, nick knacks, and quite a number of indoor plants.  I initially decided to just set up and use the window with a blind as the background.  She was already in place doing the interview there so it made sense.  I placed my main light in the kitchen doorway to the camera left and almost in a side light position.  This light was a Lumedyne strobe in the Octobank.  The background light was an SB800 on about 1/8th power aimed straight up the blind.  After a few shots I decided this simply was not working.  I was also struggling with my lens choices.  I didn’t have my full frame Canon with me and was using a Nikon D2Hs which I sometimes have trouble with because I don’t have a mid-range zoom leaving me with a feeling of never having exactly the right lens.  I tried the 17-35, a 50mm manual and the 80-200.  Nothing felt totally right.

After deciding that the background wasn’t working, I moved a little to the right and used the wall where I was getting a nice light falloff from the Octobank and now moved the SB800 behind her and off her shoulder to give a little separation.  I turned that strobe down even more to about 1/32nd power.  Now I felt a bit of a visual groove and she was animated while speaking to Deangelo.  The pictures flowed from this angle and I was able to use  the 50mm and the 80-200 effectively.  I was getting a nice rim light which worked well but decided to move the main light a bit more to the front because I was afraid of going too dark for our printing press.

Mrs. Robinson said one thing that really struck me while we were working with her.  She told Deangleo that she never dreamed there would be a day in her lifetime when she would be able to vote for a black man for president of the United States.  As I considered all she had been through to be able to vote for Barak Obama that day, I found a new appreciation for the courage it took for her and for all those who put so much on the line to just obtain the basic rights afforded to the rest of society.  I am about as conservative as it gets and Mr. Obama was not my choice but as I sat there and talked with Mrs. Robinson I decided that we would be alright as a nation especially if we can look across the table at one another and see more similarities than differences.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.

I hate banquet assignments.  Period..  That doesn’t mean that I get out of covering them.  No, no.  Banquets come every year.  They come at breakfast, lunch and dinner and I hate them all.  I don’t mean that I hate what they represent because most banquets are honoring the accomplishments of someone or some group and that is a good thing.  I hate photographing banquets.  They are all the same.

Making any kind of a decent photo from a banquet is a minor miracle and banquets are always too long and usually don’t present any obviously good photos.  Again, that doesn’t mean I can get out of covering them.  Banquet assignments are the ones I am most likely to sleep walk through meaning that I have to work very hard to stay visually awake.  After all, I don’t care who the speaker is, a speaker is a speaker is a speaker and a speaker at a podium is the same picture over and over again.  The only thing you can hope for is for a really nice reaction moment when someone gets their award.

I have actually made two nice photos at a banquet assignment, in the last 18 years, that is.  I made one of them last night and, ironically, both nice photos have come from the same banquet.  The other photo was done several years ago.  It has a somewhat iconic quality to it because it featured two pillars of the community dancing together.  The man was white and the lady was black and both were in their nineties at the time.  They only danced together for a moment or two and I go the photo.  It now hangs in a new elementary school that bears both their names.  In another of those ironic twists, both of them passed away on the same day a couple of years ago.

Last night’s banquet was the Minority Awards Banquet held at the Holiday Inn.  The room is always fairly dark during banquets which means I have to set lights.  In this case I shot with two Lumedyne strobes on light stands about twenty feet back from the diaz against the outside walls of the room which is fairly large.  I bounced them off the ceiling with both power packs set at 100 watt seconds.  This gave me an aperture of f4 at the podium at ISO 800.  The speaker was Representative Arthur Davis from Birmingham.  Obviously, with the economic crisis they are facing in Washington, the Congressman’s comments carried a bit more weight than your normal banquet speaker.

Our reporter Eric Fleischauer had walked up to the head table where Congressman Davis was seated to interview prior to the start of the banquet.  I thought I would go ahead and get a mug shot before thing began so I would have something in the bag.  When I got close enough to shoot, I saw that I would have a much better shot than a mug.  Congressman Davis was in a position that allowed me to shoot tight and he was focused on Eric which was good for me.  I took advantage of the situation and got several angles with the nice, soft light which seemed to compliment his demeanor.  When I stopped shooting I knew I had a nice image and could have left then and there except I still had to wait through the banquet to get pictures of the award winners.

I don’t know how the economic crisis will turn out but I do know that I like the Congressman.  He is a thoughtful and well spoken man that is easy to respect even though we would probably differ significantly on many issues.  I was delighted to leave a banquet with a photo like this one.  Had I allowed myself to sleep walk through the job, I would never have even seen the photo.  You just never know what you are going to get when you show up on an assignment and that is what keeps me coming back day after day.

Photo copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

Friday, I got a call to go cover a serious traffic accident. The inital reports were an 18 wheeler and a little four wheel ATV. That would have been an automatic fatality so, thank God, the initial reports were incorrect. There was a very bad accident involving an 18 wheeler and a car with one person critically injured. The accident site was about 20 minutes from where I was at the time of the call and when I arrived on scene the occupant of the car was still trapped inside. Firefighters were just cutting the top off the car to extricate the driver.

I parked well outside the emergency zone. This is a standard practice for me. I would rather walk a good distance into the site than to park too close and be told to move or be ticketed. I began shooting pictures immediately as I approached; although, I knew we would never use the photos. I do this just in case an officer stops me from getting closer or just stops me from shooting period. If that happens I will have a few frames already shot.

Like covering a fire, mobility on the accident scene is your best friend. The lead photo could really only be shot from one position and that position was partially blocked by an emergency vehicle. I also asked one of the firefighters if there was a fatality as soon as I got close to the scene. We have a policy that prohibits us from showing a body, even a body part or, in some cases, even a sheet covering a body. We are a community paper and we live with the people we are photographing so there is some understandable sensitivity to death images. The firefighter told me the person was critically injured so I was very careful to make sure she was not actually visible in the photos. We usually don’t publish an image where the person in the photo is injured to such a degree that they could die before publication of the photo. Again, this is just a sensitivity to the community values that I do truly appreciate.

The accident scene was spread over something like 75 to 100 yards of highway. The 18 wheeler had spilled its load and the impact and resulting forces ripped the two wheel trucks from the back of the trailer. One of the wheel trucks was laying in the middle of the scene halfway between the truck and car and the other wheel truck was actually laying across the cab of the truck. I knew this would be my secondary photo. I had very free access to the scene as long as I was out of the way of the rescuers so I used my mobility to get as many angles as possible making sure to include the rescuers working over the decimated car in at least one photo.

When the MedFlight helicopter landed I saw I could work the helo into the photo with the cab of the truck and as the patient was loaded I made my way to the truck cab to line up the shot. As the helo took off I was able to get the shot of the damaged truck in the foreground with the helo taking off over it. I left the scene immediately after getting this shot so I could cross the highway before the lanes were reopened to traffic. This sounds trivial but try crossing two lanes of traffic on foot while the traffic is going in opposite directions after the highway is reopened. The traffic will be solid for about 15 or 20 minutes because they stopped all traffic while the helo was on the ground. It is just a good safety precaution for me. You would not believe how people drive around accident scenes. It is crazy. Stay out of their way unless you want to become part of the news. Just ask a cop, rubberneckers are the worst.

About the photos: All shots in this post were done with a Nikon D2H and an 80-200 f2.8 and a Nikon D2Hs with a 17-35mm f2.8 using only available light. There is nothing technical to report just keep moving and getting your angles.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

It kind of struck me the other day that being positioned for success is not just for sports.  Positioning yourself well is the key to all kinds of excellent photojournalism and spot news is no exception.  In fact, covering spot news is a lot like covering a sports assignment.  You are looking for peak action and emotional reaction.  I thought I would begin with the spot news that I know best which would be covering fires.

First note, I do not speed going to spot news assignments.  Number one, I don’t like tickets and cops don’t care if I am in a hurry to get to the fire.  Number two, my life and safety are of much greater value to me than a house fire.  Number three, the lives and safety of other motorists on the road are equally important and I do not need to risk theirs to get a picture.  That said, I hurry safely!

Regarding fires in the city, unless it is a big, nasty fire, I am not going to get there before the fire department has all the flames knocked down.  They are just too good and too fast.  Fire in volunteer districts where response times are slower give a greater opportunity but they also usually take longer to get there.  Big fires, no matter if they are in the city or in the county, will still be burning when I get there.  It is just like a fatal accident, it will still be there when I arrive just don’t kill yourself getting there, literally.

Now, on the scene, the most important thing to remember is that your job is secondary to the job the firefighters are doing.  Stay out of the way.  I have been both a firefighter and a photojournalist and I can say that, as a firefighter, I am not thinking about you.  I am laser focused on my job.  So, stay back and let them work.  There are a few occassions when I have spoken to a battallion chief while the fire was going but I am always careful to be very brief and pick moments where he is not obviously busy.

Mobility on the fireground is your best friend.  Keep your feet under you and keep moving.  One minute, you may have a great shot in front of you and the next the fire may shift to another part of the building entirely.  There have been a number of fires where there was noting much happening in front of the building but chaos was erupting in the back.  Walk around and stay out of the way.  BTW, don’t trample people’s flower beds and gardens and stuff like that.  Be a citizen first and have a care for where you are and what you are doing.  Don’t make a bad situation worse.

Try to use all your lenses.  Try to avoid strobes.  Don’t forget to actually compose and make images rather than just snapping wildly away as your adrenaline drives your shutter finger.  Think about what you are doing and seeing.  Don’t forget to try and layer your images, especially with the wide lenses.  Use the hoses, fire trucks and firefighters to make visual layers in your image.  A burning building demands enough attention on its own and you can turn a dramatic fire image into a great one by layering.

There is emotion on the fire ground from time to time too.  Unfortunatley, fire is a very deadly thing and people die and are seriously injured in fires.  People lose pets in fires.  That may sound trivial but I remember pulling up to fires to hear a home owner screaming that her baby was inside.  What she meant was she had a pet in the house.  The only rescue I actually made when I was a firefighter was of a screaming cat.  I never knew a cat could make such a noise.  It survived and the last I saw of it was it careening down the street after I let it down.

Try and be sensitive to the misery of others.  There is nothing like having the assembled collections of your life be destroyed in a fire.  It happened to my wife when she was a girl.  You have to photograph it but don’t be a jerk.  Behave in the manner you could respect if you were on the other side of the camera.  That is pretty good advice for almost any shooting situation.  I am going to cut this off and try and be a bit more specific in the next post.

About the photos: The top photo is one showing the value of movement.  I shot several frames in front of the house but the scene was a little bland.  I walked through an alley and into the back and there was a great shot I would have never seen without moving.  D2H with a 80-200 f2.8 available light.  The second photo is from an apartment fire in town.  I used the D2H with a 17-35mm f2.8 to accentuate the ladder and the foreground to background relationship.  The last photo is from a church fire.  The front of the building was billowing smoke but I found the flames around back.  Being prepared allowed me to catch the firefighter shedding tournouts as a result of suffering heat exhaustion.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily, Gary Cosby Jr.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.

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!!!

For the reader profile this week I have come back across the pond and across the country to Corey Ralston who works in Selma and Kingsburg in California. Corey also happens to be the top contributor to the A Little News flickr pool. Corey comes from Olan Mills where he was a portrait photographer and, in his words, lucked into the job working for the newspapers. He is the only shooter for both papers which can be both a curse and an opportunity. I think Corey is seeing it as an opportunity.

The photos with this post are from a horrible accident on the interstate which was caused by
extremely foggy conditions. What follows is Corey’s description of the accident.

The wreck that I shot was caused due to extreme fog conditions on Highway 99. We have a horrible foggy season and accidents due to fog are nothing new. On this particular day there were over 10 vehicles invovled in this accident. My news office was about 5 miles from where the accident occured, my editor told me to rush out to one of the accident scenes. The fog was so horrible that I was unable to see any of the accident sites from the overpass, so I took an educated guess and parked on the side of the freeway and said a prayer and ran across the lanes and found the scene where this woman and two other passengers were pinned in a car. I was the first journalist on the scene for a good 45 minutes. Soon after two other newspapers showed up and every broadcast news station in the area. The woman was stuck in the car for over an hour and a half. There was limited space to stand without feeling like I was getting in the way. The fire rescue teams seemed very understanding of what my job was and I for them. They even kept their cool when the other news teams showed up and we all crammed together in a little space between a wrecked big rig and car and a passenger bus with Canadians watching the horrible scene.
I try to not get caught up in the emotion of the scene. I felt awful for the womans plight, and as you can see from the look on her face she was in horrible pain. And I know she was watching me at some point take photos of her. There was never a point in time where I felt excited about a shot. I just wanted her to be rescued safely from the accident and wanted to be there to capture it.

Corey faced the very tough ethical situation of whether to shoot or not to shoot and then, after deciding to shoot, he had to decide what to shoot. You can see by the horror on the woman’s face that she is scared and hurt. The photo conveys the message more than just bent and twisted metal can but photos such as these come at an emotional price for both the victim and the photographer. If the photo is published, you can guarantee calls to the office canceling subscriptions and protesting the judgment of the paper and the photographer. People will call you names and some may threaten you. It can be a very difficult place to be in.

Here is what you face when doing these kinds of jobs. First, is the photo necessary to tell the story? Second, if the photo is necessary, how can I tell the story without unduly infringing on the victim who is already hurt? In other words, is my taking the photo and publishing it going to cause more harm than good. Every situation is different. Many times I look for a way to tell the story without causing more trauma; however, there are times and places where I will go for the highest impact image regardless of the victim. Some of these situations would be a wreck in a particularly dangerous place where wrecks happen regularly or when there was a chase or drunk driver or some other important factor. Where I shy away from shooting the victim is in the everyday accident situation because there is no compelling reason to shoot the victim. It would just look like exploitation.

Why go for victim shots in the situations I mentioned above? Why not just do a scene shot and avoid shooting the victim at all? The primary reason to shoot the victim is because showing the human aspect of the tragedy gives the photo more impact and the more impact the photo has the greater chance that someone with the ability to make changes will do so. Will a photo of a victim get the highway department to make needed changes? Will the photo cause the police to be more diligent patrolling for dui drivers? Will the publication of the photo raise public awareness of dangerous places on their highways? If by shooting a controversial picture I can hope to save one other life then it is worth doing in my opinion. There may be some heat. It may be uncomfortable. If you are in the news business you just have to be prepared to deal with those things if you ever want to produce change.

Photos copyright Corey Ralston. The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of either my employer or Corey Ralston’s employer.

In my first post on Things I Never Learned In School, I said you will run across people who really don’t want you there. For my money, this is the worst part of the job because, to tell the whole truth, most of the time when people don’t want me around I would really rather not be there either. The trouble is you don’t know when or where you will run across these people. There are some obvious situations such as tragic death or people in legal trouble but it doesn’t stop there. Many times public figures get themselves into jams and we have to be there to show the mess to the public. I have even had police officers who were just flat out mean and all I was doing was my job. You will get into all kinds of difficult and uncomfortable situations in your career so be ready.

I remember covering a fatal accident several years back and the police were keeping everyone away from the accident while the bodies were extracted. A state police officer was walking near the media and a TV reporter asked him a question which he graciously answered. I attempted to ask him a question and he just looked at me and barked “I’m not talking to you!” And that is a mild situation.

I covered the arrest of a young man who was charged in the beating death of a child. Being a father myself, this just infuriated me. I photographed the guy being escorted from a police cruiser to the jail and a TV journalist was also there and shouted a couple of really brutal questions at the guy. He just hung his head, scowled and walked on without comment. About a year later he was cleared of all charges. The child had been beaten before being brought to his house where he was to babysit. The child died while at his residence. Guess who was called upon to photograph his release from jail and his homecoming. I had no idea whether he would even remember me but I certainly remembered the feelings I had at his arrest. I was extremely uncomfortable until we had a chance to talk after he got home.

Three or four years ago I had an editor to tell me to get a photo of a guy coming out of court but he was really mean and was probably a murder suspect and I should hide in the bushes to get his picture. Really, that is what I was told to do. Frankly, I am not a hide in the bushes/ambush kind of guy. I decided that I had to have a photo so I went to court and waited for the guy to come out. It was a traffic court situation and when he exited I asked him if I could have a word. I told him where I worked and who I was and that I needed to get a photo of him for a story we were doing. He initially agreed then thought it over and declined. I told him that I had to shoot something of him and explained that it was just the nature of the job. He understood that and we negotiated an acceptable solution to both of us. I got a picture of him getting in his car to go and he didn’t feel intruded upon.

I had a right to shoot any kind of picture I wanted to because the person was in public and on public property. I felt for reasons of personal safety it was far better to be upfront about it than to “hide in the bushes.” Uncomfortable, yes but I did get my picture. I think the key to dealing with people in uncomfortable situations is to be upfront and honest in your approach. Don’t hide in the bushes either literally or figuratively. I think people can deal with you honestly getting a picture of them far better than you using deception or ambushes to do the same thing.

There are situations where people will be threatening and abusive especially if they are in a state of high emotion when you are photographing them. You are the only person who can determine if making the picture is safe or not. Your editor may scream and yell but I have not heard of an editor beating a photographer over not shooting a photo. Kenny Rogers has a song you have all heard with this line, “You’ve got to know when to hold em, know when to fold em. Know when to walk away and know when to run.” You might want to remember that sometime. There is an appropriate time to just walk away and, yes, there is an appropriate time to run.

About the photograph: This photo was taken outside a courtroom moments after the verdict was read acquitting an officer in a fatal shooting of a relative of this lady. It was an uncomfortable scene but a relatively easy and safe one to shoot even though it is apparent the woman did not want to be photographed at that moment. The situation itself was tense with the officer who was white charged with killing a young black man. Other situations may be tougher when you are not in a public place or when you are alone.

Photo copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.