A Little News

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.

Photojournalism is a ticket into all kinds of situations. Some you will enjoy and some you will abhor. You are going to see stuff that will cause your stomach to turn. There are going to be things you photograph that stick in your head long after the actual incident has passed. You are going to see things that enrage you. You are going to see death up close and personal. You are going to feel the frustration and senseless loss of teenagers killed the first time they drive on their own. You will see little children suffering from killer diseases. You will sit in the homes of families trying to cope with the loss of a loved one. You will see and experience all kinds of things in your career and some of the stuff you see will be very difficult to deal with on an emotional level.

Before I came to the profession of photojournalism I had already been a volunteer firefighter for almost seven years. I had seen death and suffering from a point of view that most photojournalists simply won’t see. I remember the first dead body I had ever seen outside a funeral home. It was a man killed in a car wreck and the image of that guy is still etched in graphic detail in my mind. The older guys in the fire department helped me learn to use humor to deal with all the things I was seeing. Firefighters and emergency personnel of all types have a pretty bizarre, dark sense of humor and it becomes a defense mechanism for them and helps them deal with all the junk they see. Some departments even provide mental health assistance for their emergency workers. My newspaper does not.

As a photojournalist I have seen some pretty gruesome stuff. I have also seen some very disturbing stuff. As far as I know, there is no program to assist photojournalists trying to deal with the disturbing things they witness. There are images in my mind that will probably never go away, images of death and destruction and suffering. I have a bit of an advantage over most because of my background in emergency services. Still, there are things in my mental catalog that are truly disturbing, little details that stick with me and just won’t go away.

Not to be overly graphic but I remember walking into a traffic fatality scene where we had to be careful where we walked because the victim’s face was smashed and the pieces were all over the sidewalk. There is an image of a woman’s hair with glass and dirt tangled in it after she was killed in a crash with an 18 wheeler. A hand the color of old candle wax that had slipped from under the sheet at a traffic fatality. (Hollywood simply can’t simulate death.) There is the truly disturbing image of firefighters doing CPR on a pair of children killed in a car accident. I left that scene where four people died and I have never been more deeply affected in my life. Seeing those precious little children expiring right in front of me was just too much. I left there physically ill and have never wanted to be able to throw up more than on that day.

You are going to see some tough things and you will need a self-defense mechanism. The best advice I can give you is to hang around a fire station. It won’t take long until they start telling stories and trying to gross you out but they will always be laughing. The laughter is not out of disrespect for the victims it is just their way of handling the stress that would otherwise build up. I am sure soldiers also have a dark sense of humor relating to wounds and death. Laughter really is good medicine. Don’t dwell too long on the junk you see. Some of it will literally make you sick. Talk to emergency workers. They have people dying in their hands on a regular basis. See how they learn to deal with it. And don’t forget to laugh. Most of all, don’t dwell on the negative. Remain positive in your outlook and in your inlook, your thought life. Don’t dive too deeply into the dark thoughts that surround tragedy. The dead we cannot help. The living we must help. That is our mission and that is our answer. My pastor says you can go through hell, you just can’t stop there.

About The Photos: The top photo is from a soldier’s funeral I covered a year and a half ago. It was very emotional and it was easy to get caught up in the family’s grief. The bottom photo is from a fire where two volunteer firefighters died in a structural collapse. This hurt me too. Any time a firefighter dies in the line of duty it is hard to deal with. I was once a firefighter and my dad is still a firefighter. Once you get firefighting in your blood, it never leaves so when they suffer you suffer a little bit too.

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

I have been a photojournalist for 18 years now. In all those years of shooting I have found the toughest thing to do is infringe upon a person’s mourning with my camera. Technically the photo is usually pretty easy to shoot. That is not the issue. I simply can’t get excited about photographing someone mourning at accidents or fires or other traumatic situations. I have always held the philosophy that a person should be able to have a private moment even if it is happening in a public street. To be fair, not everyone holds this point of view but I don’t have to sleep at night with someone else’s philosophy, I have to sleep with mine.

I’m not trying to put on a halo here. I have photographed family members mourning the loss of someone in a wreck or fire and I will have to do so again. I wish I could tell you when to do this and when not to but I can’t. Much depends on who you are. I am not a person fond of situational ethics but there are times when shooting the picture feels right and there are times when it definitely does not. There are times when I have shot the photo and times I have walked away from it.

To be honest, some people put on a show for the camera. Other people are oblivious to the camera. Some others are conscious of the camera and are obviously trying to avoid being photographed. Every situation is different so there is no one set policy that says shoot in this situation but not in this one. Personally, I try to cover the story without infringing upon a person in a way that would cause them more pain. If I have a chance, I try and talk to them even before I shoot the photo. This allows them to know who I am and that I care about something other than the picture.

I remember covering a fire once and the home owner came over to me and a TV journalist and demanded that we leave and stop taking advantage of him. You will run into that. This man was very mad at us for just being there. We tried to explain our job but his emotion made him unreasonable. I had a friend who was attacked at the scene of a fatal accident when a family member literally assaulted him. Thankfully a deputy was nearby and came to his aide. I was shoved by a drunk and enraged family member while covering a house fire. I have been at other scenes when the family members were very accepting of my presence and understood what I was doing. There is just no way to predict how people will react under pressure.

Don’t forget that when you shoot a photo of someone, you also have to get their ID. That makes a tough job even tougher. (This makes me glad I am not a reporter!) People may have no problem with you shooting but may not even be willing to speak to you much less give you their names. On the other hand, I once had someone come up to me at a shooting and try to tell me the whole story. I finally realized they thought I was a police investigator and was able to point them to a real cop. To say these are fluid situations would be an understatement.

Whenever I walk into a situation like this I do a few things that may help you. First, I want to get a feel for the emotional atmosphere. In other words, how emotionally charged is the situation. This can be a red flag and you should pay extra attention when you walk into a high emotion situation. Journalists can be easy targets of aggression. Next, talk to bystanders. Neighbors of the victim can be an excellent source of information, including names. This allows you to shoot without having to further intrude on the situation. Sometimes this is a matter of logistics, sometimes a matter of courtesy. Either way, it may make your job easier just remember to verify all second hand information before you submit it for publication. Neighbors may also lead you to shots you would not ordinarily even know about. Third, and probably this should be first, put yourself in the person’s shoes you are about to photograph. If that were you out there crying over the loss of your child would you really want a photographer shooting your picture? You remember the old Sunday School golden rule? Do unto others the way you would have them do unto you. Pretty good advice. Finally, is the situation significant enough to intrude upon another person’s grief. That is the ultimate barometer. Grief can’t and shouldn’t be ignored but do be sensitive to the person you are shooting.

About this photo: I was assigned to shoot something at a karate studio following the murder of the popular instructor. I found some of his students outside the building crying with a few flowers on the doorstep. This was an entirely appropriate time to photograph grief. I believe this was done with a 17-35mm on an Nikon D1.

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

If you don’t know yet, as a photojournalist you are going to run into people in every conceivable facet of life and in every circumstance you can imagine and probably a few you can’t imagine. Some of these people will not want to see you there at all. A few of those people REALLY, REALLY don’t want to see you there and they will be vocal, or physical, or both. You will run across people who treat you like an insignificant gnat that they would really like to swat away but can’t because too many people are looking. You will also run across people who treat you like a prince when they have no reason to. And, you will run across people who want very badly to manipulate you into doing what they want. That being said, I can’t remember anyone telling me how to approach any of these people. Oh, and did I mention police officers?

By far the most difficult situations to deal with are those where people have just suffered a traumatic loss. The worst of these for me is the traffic fatality. I despise covering traffic fatalities because, just be honest, I feel more like a vulture in that situation than in any other I can think of. And the worst of the worst in fatality situations is where young ones are killed. When you walk into the middle of those situations you are walking into the most emotionally volatile situation I can think of. When family members come up to the scene, as they inevitably do, you will be seen with little favor and sometimes with open hostility. How you handle people in these situations is absolutely critical and humility is your best weapon.

Having great access to breaking news scenes will allow you to get right up where the action is. Great access comes from having great relationships with police officers and departments.

When you are at the scene of a fatal accident, you will be viewed by almost everyone else there as an outsider who really doesn’t belong. Some will confront you. Some will speak some very evil words about you and they will say them just loud enough for you to hear them. Unless your paper has a good working relationship with the police, you will most likely be told to move away from the scene. The rubber neckers will make sure and glare at you. And everyone there, bystanders, police and emergency personnel, will try and protect the victim and the family from you. It is a very difficult situation. Some officers will even come up to you and tell you that you cannot shoot the scene which is not true. You have every right to shoot the scene; however, you don’t have the right to encroach upon the scene in any way that will impede the rescue work or the police investigation and you don’t have the right to defy a police order. (Sometimes the police lines are imaginary!) Officials may also prevent you from even approaching the scene and there is really very little you can do about it right then and there.

When you begin working an accident scene do the smart thing and shoot something quickly, as soon as you approach the scene. It may be a terrible photo but you will at least have a photo if someone runs you off. Then work your way in from the edges of the scene and work your angles and stay the heck out of the way. If you have good relations with your police officers, you may just walk right up to the scene and begin working. If you don’t have good relations or if you don’t know if you do or not, work the edges and move in slowly. Always be conscious of the victim. You are not forbidden from shooting victims and most emergency workers know this and won’t try and stop you unless the person is dead or in extremely critical condition. Our newspaper has a policy where we won’t run any photo of a victim who is dead or if their life and death status is in doubt. Explaining that to an officer can be very helpful and I have done it more than once. However, keep in mind that what you do today affects what you will have access to tomorrow. If officers feel you are being unduly intrusive they will keep it in mind and keep you further back the next time.

Most police officers are really good people. They put on the badge to serve and protect and if you approach them in relaxed times and talk to them they will find the same thing out about you. When an officer asks for a print for his scrapbook or something like that just go ahead and give him one. Pay for it yourself if your paper won’t do it. Stuff like that is just good politics. No matter how you slice it, make sure the guy with the badge understands you are on the same side as him. At the scene of an accident I find it is always better to just comply with an officer’s orders without argument. If he says to move, I move. If he asks me not to take pictures, I may ask why in a very polite and professional manner. This may allow me to overcome whatever objections he may have. While he doesn’t have the right to keep me from taking pictures in most situations, he does wear the gun and he can arrest me regardless of right and wrong. The charges would be dismissed, of course, but the relationship with the officer would be ruined. Keep in mind, there will be other days and other accidents, other shootings, other arrests and many times you will need police access to a scene. Ask yourself if the picture in front of you is worth the dispute and act accordingly.

I had an encounter with an officer at the scene of a traffic accident last year over where I parked. I had to move my car and cross a very busy four lane highway on foot (not recommended). After the scene cleared, I went over and had a calm word with him. He recognized me, knew who I worked for but he thought I was parking in the way of an incoming ambulance. We talked and I made sure there was no problem between us and then apologized for causing a potential problem. We have continued to work well whenever we are scenes together.

Whenever you cover an accident or fire or any other unfolding emergency situation you must remember that the number one priority is resolving the situation and not making pictures. Your ability to shoot is not the first priority of anyone on the scene except you. With that in mind, don’t do anything to hamper the efforts of the emergency workers. Theirs is the top priority. Aide them if you can but mostly just stay out of their way and follow their instructions. There are times when something has to be shot and you have to break the rules to do it. Whenever this happens and you have to violate a police order, do it in a way that is discreet and does not show up the officer. Get your shot but remember the old army adage to live to fight another day because in a career there are many other days. Over a period of time, officers, firefighters and paramedics will come to recognize you and, if you have built up a level of trust, accept your presence as they would one of their own. That is the long term goal you work toward in covering spot news.

After spending two days covering the tornado that struck Lawrence County, I went back to a more or less normal assignment load on the third day after the tragedy. I have been doing this a long time so it came as a big surprise how difficult it was to shift my mindset back to “normal” mode, whatever that might be. As I walked around covering the immediate aftermath and the beginnings of the recovery effort, it felt a bit like being in another world. Stepping back into the every day assignment load was jarring. My Friday jobs included photographing a group of high school seniors who are graduating in the spring, a profile for the Meals on Wheels Program, a profile on a man and woman who met on the job, married and now work together and the swearing in ceremony for a new district judge.

All day Friday, I spent thinking about what was going on in Lawrence County and how the people were doing that I had photographed. You never think about the impact the things you shoot have on you because your everyday work load doesn’t normally produce the mental impact that a tornado produces. I find myself linked to these people who I mostly didn’t know prior to Wednesday in a way that is surprisingly strong. Although most people don’t think about it at all, or if they do think about it, think that journalists are recorders at best and some kind of uncaring low life at worst. In reality, we do care about the people we interact with. There are people I photographed years ago and I have never forgotten. Many of them I will never see again. I just dipped into their lives for a few minutes and never saw them again.

If you remember how I said in an earlier post that there is something of you in every photograph you make and if I see enough of your photographs I will have a pretty good idea who you are, you will understand what I am talking about. A photographer invests himself in the subjects he shoots whether it is a person whose life was ruined by a calamity or a kid running down the street playing with friends. That is what makes photojournalism appealing to me. If not for that, I could just go off and shoot flowers or sunsets and be perfectly satisfied.

As photojournalists, we are continually documenting whatever is going on around us. The good, the bad, the ugly, and sometimes the miraculous happen right out there in front of our lenses. The camera is something of a shield but it also is the open door we walk through into and out of the lives of our subjects. No camera can shield you from the emotion of what you are photographing.I was once called upon to shoot a photo of a little girl who was stricken with leukemia, and I have never forgotten her. I did that sixteen years ago in Portsmouth Naval Hospital. Before I left that room I was invested in the little girl and her family. She died two days after I shot her picture. That photo stayed on my office wall until I left North Carolina to move to Alabama. That photo still hangs in the gallery in my mind. You just don’t forget.

Too many times I hear people say, “Man, you have a really great job taking pictures.” Most of these guys have very physical jobs and I know what they mean. They don’t know that I carry around the image of that little girl who died from leukemia, that she never really leaves me. They don’t know that I have seen death raw and ugly way too many times and have had to see too many famalies grieving over their loss and still have to find a way to tell their story without making the situation worse than it already is. They don’t know about the guy who shot a Pulitzer Prize winner a few years ago of a kid dying in Africa and just couldn’t deal with it and later killed himself. That’s the part no one thinks about so you just nod your head and say, “Yeah, most of the time it is really great.”

It’s not all about sadness. Fortunately, there are many joyful moments as well. Probably the good things I have shot outweigh the bad by at least ten to one. I know that outside the 1/8th mile wide, seventeen plus mile long path of that tornado life is going on pretty much as it always has. I also know that inside that same path, life will never be quite the same again. That is the dichotomy of being a photojournalist and that is why the job is both bitter and sweet.

The photos in this post are from our Sunday edition on the miraculous story of one woman surviving the tornado because the chimney of her house fell on her and kept her from being blown away with the rest of her house. The other is a photo of a little, sweet lady who gets Meals on Wheels and must use a huge magnifier to read her Bible because she suffers from macular degeneration.

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

Whenever I have covered a disaster such as the Lawrence County tornado I am overwhelmed by the power of natural forces. You can look around you and see things that seem impossible and I am in awe of what a storm can do. Then I meet the people who have lost everything they owned and sometimes have lost loved ones or been hurt themselves and I am overwhelmed by another aspect of nature, human nature. I am always amazed at the quality of kindness that people who have survived a disaster show one another and even show me. They really have no reason to be nice to a member of the media but I have not run across anyone who was less than kind in a disaster zone with the possible exception of the emergency folks but that is understandable considering all they are dealing with.

As I covered the Lawrence County tornado I continually met people who maintained their dignity, sense of community and a level of kindness in spite of the disaster they had just survived. I don’t really know what inspires this but I have witnessed it through several disasters and I am still amazed. I think, at least in part, there is a cathartic effect to telling their story, a way of relieving the stress of having survived a horribly traumatic experience. I visited Ocie Thrasher’s home which was one of the first hit by the tornado. He had not been home but his wife was trapped in the rubble of their home which was completely destroyed. She was sheltering beneath a staircase which was blown away. For some reason, the floor collapsed beneath her dropping about a foot, there an nowhere else in the house, then the chimney fell over the top of her both pinning her down and protecting her. She survived and is going to be okay. Mr. Thrasher and his friends were having lunch on the tail gate of his truck when I arrived. They insisted I have a piece of pie with them. I can only hope that if a disaster ever overtakes me I would be as kind to others as these people have been.

We will be covering the clean up and reconstruction effort for a long time as people try and put their lives back together and I am sure the stories will keep on coming until one day when things will at least look like they are back to normal again. I am providing a few more photos of the tornado and the clean up effort. I guess I am still at a loss for words to truly describe what I saw and what I felt. As a kind of p.s. to this I want to say thank you to everyone who has left comments about the coverage of the tornado. I have been deeply moved by what you all have said. Thank you!

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

On February 5 and 6 tornadoes ripped through the south killing more than 50 people. One of them visited rural Lawrence County, Alabama damaging and destroying property from the Bankhead forest in Lawrence County right up to the Decatur city limit in Morgan County. The storm killed three. The deadly tornado dropped from the sky at 3 a.m. and by 3:06 a.m. it had done its most deadly work fatally injuring three members of one family on County Rd. 183. Their house was completely destroyed and I mean completely with nothing left but the concrete front porch.

I stood in the middle of the wreckage a few hours later making pictures of shattered homes and shattered lives and it was there that I ran across James Devaney. He is an elderly gentleman and he had just picked up a purse from a debris field. I shot a few frames with a long lens then went up to get his name. As Mr. Devaney told me his story I realized that the stuff he was picking up were memories of his daughter, son-in-law and grandson who were the victims of the deadly storm. My heart was broken for him and for his loss. As we stood there, I offered to pray with him. We prayed for a moment or two and then we both wiped our tears. I had to continue shooting and Mr. Devaney had to keep on picking up the broken pieces.

Covering tragedy is very difficult. You are literally walking into the middle of someone’s personal disaster and you have to remember your humanity first and foremost. The pictures will come. Be a person of compassion and the stories will come. I don’t have time to write all the stories I heard. But I will share one of them. Telitha Shelton and her family were trying to outrun the storm to get to her dad’s house to get to his storm shelter. The tornado caught them right out on the road in front of the home where the people would be killed. She said the Lord just reached down from heaven and held their SUV on the road and not one thing happened to them. Her husband opened the door of the SUV as soon as the storm passed and heard the cries of the family amid the rubble of their destroyed home. Her husband pulled an appliance off of the man and sat down in the middle of that driving rain in the pitch dark night and held the man and his wife in their final moments of their lives.

Maybe I came along at just the right moment to to bring some comfort to Mr. Devaney in the middle of his loss. Oh yes, I made pictures but I think that just maybe I was in that place at that exact moment to comfort a man in his loss more than I was there to make pictures. The fact that I got some shots I was really pleased with was so very secondary to the other that it is beyond words. Maybe I will write some more about the technical stuff but not right now. If you would like to see all the work done by Decatur Daily photojournalists you can view the slide show here.

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

Sports has the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, thanks in part to the old ABC show Wide World of Sports. In this case we can use sports as a metaphor for life because life is full of victory and defeat all the way from birth to death. This is cool thing, and sometimes the uncomfortable thing, about being a photojournalist; you get to be there for the whole ride. In fact, my dream is to put together a book about the seasons of life. Emotions are what make life interesting. Without emotions all you would have is blank people walking around a blank world doing blank tasks. Add emotion and you put the spice into life. We are jubilant when we succeed and we are downcast when we fail but both success and failure are all a part of living.

As a photojournalist, documenting the emotion of life is what we are all about. Emotionless assignments are the worst assignments and make the worst pictures. If you get emotion in your photos your photos will sing with the vibrancy of life. The counter side of this is emotion is often very difficult to get. People tend to shy away from the camera in any situation but particularly so when they are showing negative emotion. Some folks will even shy away when they are showing positive emotions if that is out of character for them. Then there are the actors in life who will show you whatever emotion they think you are looking for. I really hate those situations because the emotion is fake and comes across as fake and the people look like they are faking.

But when it all comes together and you have a genuine moment, life is good. There is not a lot of technique to this post. You have to be there and be prepared. If it is a situation where you have to set up lights, make sure you are set up and tested before the event you are covering begins. Given a little time, most people stop thinking about you and the lights and just get down to doing what they do. Make sure you have the cameras and lenses set and ready because emotion does tend to be fleeting. If you miss it you can’t go back and get it. Catching emotion is all about snatching that magical moment that was all too frequently there and gone in a few moments. The great thing is when you catch those fleeting emotions you have created a metaphor for what the person went through to get to that particular moment in their lives. All that came before is encapsulated in that moment. Did you get it?

The photos with this post are three moments where I did get it. Unfortunately, just like a fish story, there are too many that have slipped away. This first photo I shot this week. The lady crying is at a pep rally for her 13 year old son who collapsed with a heart attack during a school field trip. The boy is recovering at home and his school held the pep rally in his honor. I didn’t even know the lady was his mom until after I shot the photo. I found that out when I got her name after shooting. I followed the emotion and somehow she understood that guy with the camera in her face was not a threat.

The next photo shows three women who are actually watching American Idol on TV. They are related to former Idol finalist Bo Bice who is from North Alabama and they were gathered at a restaurant in Somerville, Alabama with friends to watch the show. We kept going back to this restaurant for weeks as Bo progressed. In this moment, they are watching Simon Cowell give Bo a very good review and they are reacting to the review. I had to light the restaurant but I was all set with lighting tested so when the moment occurred, I was in place with the right lens and right light.

Finally, this photo shows a woman who is dying from a variety of complications she accrued from a drug addicted lifestyle. The little girl behind the door is her daughter and the child reaching out just about breaks my heart. There is nothing to this technically. I am just looking for the sadness in the lady and all of a sudden the little girl comes to the door to get dressed and she reaches out. Right camera, right lens, right moment. It is not an emotion that I like but it is a storytelling moment. The old guys used to have a saying, “F8 and be there.” There is more to it than that but you do have to be there and be ready then let the emotion tell the story.

Photos copyright The Decatur Daily. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of my employer.