A Little News

There is an old saying that says necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity drove me to this little flash get up while assisting my friend David Higginbotham shoot a wedding. We were in a very large, dimly lit church shooting some pretty large groups. The Vivitar 285s bounced into umbrellas were not giving us enough light. In the blinding flash of a flash, inspiration struck and man did it hurt.

I quickly grabbed a pair of Nikon SB800s and set them to the SU4 setting so they would fire on optical slave. I then strapped them to the light stand just below the Vivitars. As you can see, you can also strap them to the umbrella itself using the other flash as a prop. This doubles your power per umbrella. If you are shooting with two umbrellas you are then getting four full power strobes bounced into umbrellas. You don’t lose the nice light an umbrella provides and you get basically double the power.

Since I first did this on the spur of the moment I have been able to use it for my photojournalism several times where I would have had to use direct flash in the past. The photos I have included in this post are not real good examples of photojournalism but they were shot for an education magazine we publish for the city school system and this is the photo they requested. It did need to meet the higher repro standards that the magazine has relative to the newspaper so some fill lighting was essential. The umbrella light was necessary so the double strobe set up was the perfect alternative. I am giving you an example with the strobes and without to show you the difference. Like I said, it is not the greatest example of portrait lighting I have ever done but the assignment and time of day conspired to make this pretty difficult.

You will find several situations where this lighting technique will help save your bacon. Maybe you need monolight power but don’t have a monolight budget. Maybe you have those precious lights but they are back at the office. Whatever. Give this a try. I am sure there are better ways to secure the second strobe and I know I have seen a double strobe bracket but, like the strobes you don’t have, it doesn’t help you if you don’t own one.

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

PS. Both photos are untoned so you can see the difference without any image manipulation from Photoshop.

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.

Perhaps you have been reading this blog for a while and the question has come across your mind, “Who is this guy anyway?”  Well, you are in luck.  I have decided to answer the question.  There is now a page about me in the column at the right.  Scroll down to just below the link to my Flickr page and you will see the link.  So, if you are curious you can go there and read all about it.  And if you are not, and I certainly don’t blame you, just go on reading the posts and have fun.  Viva la anonymity!  Or something like that.

There is an old saying in the Christian world, never pray for patience. It seems if you ever decide to ask for patience the trials upon your patience redouble. In photojournalism, patience is sometimes the most difficult of photographic virtues. How often have you shown up to an assignment with the need for speed because you have to leave for the next job in fifteen minutes only to find that absolutely nothing is going on? Or you arrive at a crime scene and everyone is just standing there doing nothing. All you can do is wait. But what are you waiting for?

In the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Jack Sparrow and Will Turner are setting up Captain Barbosa and Sparrow says, “Wait for the opportune moment.” Of course he says the line with panache as he is busy stealing one of the cursed pieces of Aztec gold. Then, at the opportune moment, he and Will shed the required blood on the gold and shoot Barbosa and all the pirates are caught and condemned. Ahh, the movies!

Now back in real life I have yet to find a cask of gold, Aztec or otherwise; however, there can certainly be a golden opportunity for those who can wait for that illusive opportune moment. Waiting is a part of the photojournalists life. You show up on time and the thing you are shooting is running way late. You show up late and the event started early and you missed it. You showed up on time, the event started on time but nothing good happens while you can stay to shoot. But every now and then, you show up to a job and nothing is going on. You walk around, check the angles, talk to people, whistle, draw patterns in the dirt and wait. Then it happens. For a brief moment or two, everything comes together and you have a photo. Then it all goes back to the nothingness that was going on when you arrived but its okay because now you have your image.

I will grant you in this do more with less people journalistic world we live in, there are fewer and fewer opportunities to just wait. Most of the time you have to show up, shoot and move one. When you can wait, wait. This is pretty tough for me. I feel the need to be on the move and I hate waiting. Developing a little patience will pay off in the long run with better pictures. When you have to rush go ahead and rush. It is a long career. However, when you have some extra time, use it and hang out and wait for that opportune moment.

One of the best ways to wait is to engage someone in conversation. You will be surprised what you can find out about the situation or the people you are shooting if you just use that waiting time wisely. You might even develop a lead for a future story that will more than compensate you for the time you spend idling at this job. Most people are more than willing to talk to a person who seems more than willing to listen. I believe that most every photo assignment has an opportune moment. My job is to be there and be ready for when it happens. Stay focused on why you are there. Have everything ready so when the moment happens you are waiting for it.

About the photos: Coincidentally, both photos with this post are from fires. The first photo is becoming a favorite of mine. I went to Athens when I heard of a reported railroad warehouse fire. A half hour later I find the fire is actually in an abandoned switching station and the fire department has decided to let it burn down due to safety reasons. There was just nothing to shoot so I stood around jawing with the firemen trying to work some angle. After about a half hour after I arrived, a train came along and I have a photo that is rapidly becoming one of my favorites. The second image is from a fire investigation. Two firefighters perished in a structural collapse the night before and the state fire marshal, local fire marshal and an ATF investigation team were going through the rubble. Noting visual was happening. I waited for a good long time before the debris pile ignited from smoldering materials and the flames neatly framed the investigators.

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

I just wanted to say thank you to Donald Winslow, editor of the NPPA Magazine, for running the photo I shot of the tornado aftermath in the March issue of the Magazine. I am deeply honored. For any NPPA members who are dropping by to view the post you can see Tragedy In The South here. There are a few other posts that are related to the tornado coverage. You can view The Power of Wind Versus The Human Spirit and Back To Normal Assignments.

Feel free to stay and visit a while and come back and see us again.

Up to this point, I have done all my posts based on photos that I have shot.  When I come back from vacation in a couple of weeks, I am going to begin using some of your excellent submissions to the A Little News flickr pool and bounce some new ideas around with you, some critiques and just show off some nice shots.  It might be a good idea to plop a few new images in the pool over the next couple of weeks and show off a little.

While I am in the frosty north you guys will be reading at least four blog entries from friends I have conned into helping me out.  I hope they inspire you and motivate you and give you a different perspective on this great job we have or aspire to.

Sometime next week, I am going on vacation for a couple of weeks. Now most normal people take the opportunity to head south for some warmth on the gulf coast. But not us. Nope, we are heading north to the great state of New York to visit some family. So if any of you guys are up that way, try and warm things up a bit for us.

During the time that I will be away, I have lined up a few guest bloggers to keep things fresh. My friend Corey Wilson from the Green Bay Press Gazette you already know from his post about shooting in the deep freeze at Lambeau Field during the NFC Championship game. He has a great post about covering the legendary Packers quarterback Brett Favre. My friend and coworker Jonathan Palmer is crafting a post on what should be required reading for a photojournalist. He will be sharing some of his favorite photo books with you and setting up a kind of suggested reading list which we will turn into a page on the site and add to from time to time. Another friend, David Higginbotham, whom I worked with at The Decatur Daily for a number of years is going to write a post too. He is no longer in photojournalism but works for a government contractor shooting a lot of space related stuff for the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. David is also an excellent wedding and portrait photographer, an accomplished musician and all around great guy. He is kind of enough to drag me along to help him shoot a wedding every now and then. The final guy, for now anyway, is AP photographer Rob Carr. Rob has become a good friend in a fairly short period of time. He worked in the Alabama bureau before transferring to Baltimore, MD. I have no idea what either he or David will be blogging about but we shall see.

I have a couple of other folks that I hope to con into doing posts for me while I am away. I know that these excellent photographers will bring something to you that will be very inspiring and enlightening. For some of you younger shooters out there, one of the great things about the photojournalism community is the other photojournalists you meet and form friendships with. One of the very best things about shooting college sports for me is renewing acquaintances in the photo workroom before and after the games. Those relationships are priceless. Just to give you an example, every year after the Iron Bowl between Alabama and Auburn, the photographers from the Mobile Press Register host a shrimp boil in the media parking lot. It is a great time of just hanging out and building friendships. Hopefully you guys will all get the chance to have a group of friends like that during your career.

It appears that everyone who responded would like a group photo pool on Flickr so here it is. Go to A Little News Flickr pool and post away. Make sure you read and understand the group rules. Also, when you post a photo please write a caption in the description field and add tags like news, portrait, sports, feature or whatever your photo falls into. We may use the tags later and it will help define your images for now.

This is very important. Only post images you hold the copyright to or images which you have permission from the copyright holder to publish. What I did in starting this blog was to go to our publisher and explain what I wanted to do. He gave me approval so now I make sure he gets a copyright notice with every post. You can waterwark the image itself or you can put a copyright tag line in the description field. Just make sure the copyright is visible.

To post to the Flickr pool you will need a Flickr account. They are free and can be set up in a very few minutes. You can set up your account here in just a few moments and begin uploading. When you have images uploaded, go to the A Little News site on Flickr and join our group. Then you can post to the group directly from your account.

Lets all remember that the site is set up to help us get better. I strongly encourage everyone to participate in giving feed back to other members that will help them get better. Please don’t get nasty. I have had that happen with editors before and it is not pleasant or very constructive. Use your comments to make suggestions or build up the shooter. Don’t use comments to drag the other guy down.

Finally, and this should already be obvious since we are a photojournalism site, but nudity is not acceptable unless in those rare cases where it is part of the story like some poor, starving person in Africa trying to breast feed a baby. I think you are all big boys and girls and understand what I mean. Other than that have a great time and you can start using the pool right away.  Who will be the first to post?

The last day of the year is a good day to stop and say thanks. First of all, I am alive and well and that is really something to be thankful for. I have a great family and that is the next best thing to be thankful for. Amid all the ups and downs of 2007, I was blessed to be able to start this blog. I am having a blast doing this.

Many, many people have helped me in this profession and there is nothing I can do to repay them except to pass along to others in the same way they passed along to me. So thank you to all who have helped me along in my career, especially Dave Martin, a former AP staff photographer who worked in Alabama for many years and gave me excellent advice over and over again and helped me get through some of the bumps in my career.

I also want to say thanks to Clint Shelton who, with his father Barrett Shelton, own and operate The Decatur Daily. Without Clint’s permission and indulgence to start with, this blog would not have happened. As you have noticed, it has been populated with photos from The Decatur Daily almost exclusively. So to the Shelton family, many thanks, not just for this blog but also for keeping me on the payroll.

Finally, thanks to all of you who read this blog. It is so much more fun and satisfying to write something and know that people are reading it than it is to just be writing it to cyberspace. I hope this blog continues to be a blessing in your life and I hope that I can continue to impart something to you that will be useful in your career. I am glad we have all arrived at the end of this year. I look forward to what 2008 holds in store. From my family to all of you, have a blessed, happy and prosperous new year. And like they used to say on Hill Street Blues, lets be careful out there!