A Little News

In the last post on backgrounds, I approached the subject of backgrounds with the idea of eliminating distractions that hurt your photos. Now, let’s look at how to make your background work for you. We don’t have total control over the background in most photojournalism situations. In most breaking situations you don’t have the time to even worry about the background. When you have time to work a photo you should really try to get the background to help tell the story.

Sometimes you just get lucky, or unlucky, with the background; however, like the old saying goes, luck favors the prepared. When you first approach a situation look at backgrounds. What will you shoot your subject against, even in an action situation. Is there a background that will contribute to the photo and also, is there a background you want to avoid? This is also a good time to figure out the best lens choice. Now, when the moment happens, you are prepared.

I have three photos with to show you here. The first is a stand alone photo of a kid fishing. I was able to make use of a high embankment and get above him which allowed me to isolate him against the water which was also reflecting the sunset clouds. By the way, this photo is also strobed. I set an SB8oo on a light stand and put it in the edge of the lake to give me a little bit of separation and a nice little kicker. I used a D2h and an 80-200 lens and fired the strobe using a Pocket Wizard set. Adding the strobe allowed me to go a little under on the water without losing detail in the boy.

The next photo is from a mud volleyball tournament held every year in Athens, Alabama to raise money for the elderly and homebound. I was waiting for someone to go header into the mud hoping that they would come up facing me. That never happened but when this girl did her own version of a face plant I was able to use the people watching to get a nice photo where the background helps tell the story. You can’t see the front of the girl but you can see the other people reacting to what they see. This photo was shot available light with a D2h and a 17-35mm lens.

The last photo is also a D2h and 17-35mm shot. Decatur hosts the NAIA National Softball Championship Tournament and it is one of the highlights of my year. I love to shoot that tournament. This was the championship day and I actually had to leave before the game ended to go shoot something else. Hoping that something would still be going on when I got back, I hustled through the job and found that the tournament had ended by the time I returned. Fortunately for me there was still some celebrating going on. The girl hugging her father turned out to be the tournament MVP and her teammates in the background are holding up their championship banner for a photo. I probably could have done no better even if I had been there at the end of the game. The foreground shows the emotion and the background tells you why. I love it when things come together.

When you are out shooting, plan and prepare as much as you can but be prepared for change. Don’t over focus on the background because you run the risk of losing site of the main subject. Keep your eyes open and work your angles and lenses to maximize the background. Some of the time a wide zoom will be appropriate and other times a long zoom will be the better choice. You have to make that determination on the scene. After you have done this for a while, you won’t even be thinking about the background consciously. You will simply develop a “sixth sense” for backgrounds and you will be shooting instinctively.

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

Let’s talk about getting better fast. Clever how my lead sentence reflects my title isn’t it? Cleverness aside, there are some things you can do to get better in a hurry. Just don’t get so good that you come gunning for my job!

One of the things that separates the greenhorn from the cagey veteran is the way he handles backgrounds. The background of a photo can help, hurt or do nothing at all. When I was a young shooter one of the things that really got me was backgrounds. I was so intent on the main subject that I seldom noticed what was going on in the background. That sometimes still bites me but over the years I have gotten better at watching my backgrounds.

The photos in this post are an example of how the background can either help or hurt. The first shot of the cannon actually firing is a fine moment and I like the picture. The only problem is I can’t look at the photo without seeing those cars in the background. The cars totally ruin the feel of the picture. Were it not for the cars it could be 1864 all over again. (Yes, it is sadly true that in the South we still fight the Civil War and some here feel that we are winning!)

The next photo is just a few seconds later as they gunners swab the breech and smoke has completely obscured the background. Man, where is Matthew Brady? The smoke helps deliver a feeling that is missing in the first photo. The smokes erases the signs that we are in the present day. It also makes a perfectly clean backdrop that allows you to focus on the soldiers.

Most of the time you won’t have any cannon smoke handy to blot out your background. Do not fear, there are a bunch of other ways to handle a messy or distracting background. If you remember seeing the photo by Joe Johnston of the Cal Poly pitcher you will see a very effective use of the low angle to clean up the background. Now that you have the low down, go high angle. This is very effective in shooting sports because it gives you the relatively uncluttered playing surface for a background rather than the distractions of the sidelines or the fans.

Light can also be used to clean up the background. If you use strobes on the main subject, you can usually drop the background down to either deemphasize it or eliminate altogether. A long lens will help you blur a distracting background while the wide angle can be used to deemphasize the background because it creates a very dominant foreground while diminishing the size of objects in the background. There are many techniques for doing this and these are only a few. The main thing is learning to keep backgrounds from becoming a distraction in your pictures.

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

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.

Joe Johnston, a staff photographer for the Tribune in San Luis Obispo in California, gets the nod as our featured reader photo of this week. Joe’s portrait of Cal Poly pitcher Eric Massingham has a lot going for it and I wanted to point out some of the strong points.

First, the lighting is excellent. If you look at the photo and do a little Strobist exercise you can see Joe used two lights. His main light is a Canon strobe shot through an umbrella about a foot away from the guy’s face. The second light is positioned about four feet out of the frame to the left and is direct and about a +1 stop hotter than the main light giving him the excellent separation.

The next thing you are going to see is how Joe used a low angle to give him a clean, and interesting background. When ever you have a poor background, go low angle. The sky is an endlessly variable background that is totally free. Use it liberally. The slightly overcast condition also gives him some depth and texture in the background which adds a layer of interest. Although Joe did not tell me this in his description, I suspect he has underexposed the sky by at least 1/2 stop allowing the strobes to set the key of the photograph.

I highly recommend you check out Joe’s Flickr photostream. It is a beautiful collection of photos that will inspire you. Also check out a story Joe did for the Tribune. The story details a kayak trip he and a reporter did along the Pacific coast covering 100 miles in six days. Okay, now he is just showing off but if you live on the California coast, why not? Joe is 34 years old and has been at the paper for the past eight years. He has been a working photojournalist for ten years total.

Photos copyright Joe Johnston, The Tribune.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of The Decatur Daily or The Tribune.

Not too long ago, my co-worker Jonathan Palmer did a super shot of a guy driving his classic V-Dub beetle. He did the shot in fairly low light and used a strobe inside the car to provide the illumination. You can check out JP’s shot in his November gallery on his blog. The only problem is the image did not run. Well, it was a problem for Jonathan but a great boon to me. I loved the shot and though that it would be good to use the concept some time in the future.

Low and behold, I had the opportunity just last week. We were doing a story on a man who uses classic Rolls Royce autos in his limo business. The day was miserable, in fact I did the shoot between covering the two tornadoes last Friday. The man lives in the country so his home had to be the setting. I needed to get a portrait of him and I needed to limit the background which was a plowed field. I used Jonathan’s internal lighting scheme with a Vivitar 285HV laid on the seat beside him. The ambient light on the field was about 1/2 stop below the strobe and the front of the car was at least one stop below the strobe.

The real key to making this happen was to position the car so that some dark foliage was strategically blocking the light from the sky so I could see him inside the car. He had some tall evergreens in his yard that allowed me to have the area of windshield where he was seated to be free from the reflected sky light. Keep in mind that shiny objects will reflect whatever they “see.” This applies to a table top product shot just as well as it does to a car’s windshield. You can see my slacks reflected in some of the chrome on the front of the car. There was just nothing I could do about that.

The shot has real nice contrast because the paint is dark which creates a low key feel but the chrome gives some really nice highlight and, combined with the strobe, makes the shot really work from the lighting standpoint. I did the two versions you see here and we ran the tighter shot which was my favorite. The photo ran with a couple of other images that showed more of the car. For those of you reading this in the English Isles, the Rolls Royce is no big deal and you see them all the time. Let’s just say they are pretty rare in North Alabama so showing the car was a major part of the assignment.

Now when you check out Jonathan’s shot, you should know that he did his while driving down the road in front of the other car with his Canon D1 and a 300 2.8 hand held, out the window, backwards and without looking through the viewfinder. And he nailed it on the first frame. Jonathan is known by some around here as a legend, or just J-Ledge for short. By the way, he and I are partners in a real estate venture selling ocean front property in Arizona so drop us a line if you are interested. The prices are incredible!

About the photos: Both shots were done using a Canon EOS 5D with a 24-70 f2.8 lens, pocket wizards and a Vivitar 285HV. I believe the Vivitar was set to 1/4 power and was aimed at the roof of the car on its widest zoom setting. The exposure for ambient was about one stop under the metered exposure to ensure the car would drop down to a true black allowing the chrome and the guy to shine.

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

My first day back to work from vacation was anything but a quiet transition from leisure to work. It was, in fact, a fairly exciting day. Before I even got into the office the boss was calling to send me to photograph storm damage.

Alabama is in a fairly active tornado belt. I don’t think it rivals the Midwest with all of its monster storms but we do get our fair share. However, it is a bit unusual to have two in one day in our coverage area. Fortunately, neither one of these produced much damage and no one was injured. Both tornadoes formed from a line of storms that moved through North Alabama Friday morning and neither was actually on the ground for very long, if at all.

The first storm struck a rural section of northeastern Limestone County damaging a couple of barns and one house. One of the witnesses saw a funnel cloud dangling beneath the storm as the damage was being done. The second storm struck the city of Cullman and caused an evacuation after debris from a roof blown off an old warehouse punctured a fuel storage tank causing the worst of the trouble.

The most difficult logistical element in covering storms is often gaining access to the scene. I have not had much trouble from law enforcement or emergency responders. They are usually understanding and let you into an area as soon as the immediate threat is passed. It is a good idea to have you media credentials with you and properly displayed so the officer actually knows you are an accredited member of the media. One of their primary jobs is to keep looters away from the damaged area.

The main trouble can be in simply getting to the scene. Have you ever seen the movie Twister? Remember Rabbit, the guy with all the maps. Maps are invaluable, especially if you don’t know the area extremely well. I covered a tornado once and had to navigate by keeping an eye on the lights of the emergency vehicles to get into a scene. So many trees were down that all the main roads were blocked. I kept my eyes on the flashing red lights until I was able to find a back road that took me in the right direction.

I have found it a good idea to park well outside the affected areas and just walk in. You won’t be able to drive much in the damage zone anyway if the storm was a large one. The debris can also be pretty rough on your tires. Being on your feet also has the advantage that it forces you to move more methodically and talk to people. You will be surprised how much excellent information and personal stories you will hear as you walk around talking to people. Most of the time, the folks who survived the storm are more than willing to tell their story.

The other problem is keeping your equipment dry. Tornadoes are generated by a particular style of thunderstorm that can pour a tremendous amount of rain on you. I have covered storms where the rain was being blown sideways and there was no way to keep the camera dry. There are all kind of good rain covers out there. I don’t happen to own any of them. I usually use a plastic garbage bag and a small towel. When the rain stops you can just rip the bag off and throw it away or stuff it into you bag for future use.

Don’t even try to carry an umbrella with you. Can you say lightning rod!? Umbrella’s also have the nasty habit of folding up in high winds. They also make it nearly impossible to shoot since you have to hold the thing with at least one hand. A good rain coat with a hood is far better. There is also no real good solution to writing in a driving rain. The camera’s voice recorder comes in handy in that situation. If you don’t have a camera with a recorder, invest a few bucks in a digital voice recorder. They work well too.

Finally, shoes are really important. I usually don’t have a pair of rubber boots with me which means I end up ruining my shoes. All the rain creates mud and you will already be walking in junk with nails sticking up in it just waiting to puncture both shoe and foot. A pair of rubber mud/rain boots can really save the day.

About the photos: The top and bottom photos are from the Cullman storm. The middle photos are from the Limestone County storm. The gentleman in the first photo had a tree blown down on his house. He and a friend are removing clothing to a dry location. Canon EOS 5D with a 24-70 f2.8 The next photo shows a man leaving his home after the storm ripped a sun room from the back of his house causing roof damage. Same gear is used in the first three photos. The third photo shows a storm victim checking on farm equipment after the metal shelter was collapsed onto it. The final photo shows traffic moving along in front of the next wave of storms approaching Cullman. EOS 5D with a 70-200 f2.8

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

So, what does a photographer do on vacation? Shoot pictures, of course. Just not photojournalism. Now some of you may not consider driving 1,200 miles one way with wife and five of the eight kids anything like a vacation. I happen to enjoy my wife and kids; although, I admit that there are times when it can get a little testy when everyone is all cooped up like that. Makes one wish for a motor home except for the diesel prices. I also really enjoy driving and seeing the country. Probably I would have made a good over the road truck driver if things had turned out differently.

Any trip to New York to visit my wife’s family involves copious amounts of food. I packed on somewhere between three and five pounds and enjoyed every morsel. And this wasn’t even a big feast trip like some have been. Then, during the cold months, there is usually snow. For a boy born and raised in the South, snow is a rarity that I can savor and enjoy for a week then drive away from. It is a bit like playing with someone else’s kids. I can have a good time with them but at the end of the day they go home to momma and I just go home. Cool!

The other part of the New York visits is the chance to soak up the wonderful landscape that central New York state presents. I suppose the mountains are part of the Adirondacks and the area is absolutely beautiful. The landscape gets down in my soul like nothing in Alabama ever has. I guess I would feel differently living there but it certainly is refreshing just for a visit. I had the rare opportunity to spend some time alone in the snowy woods, just me, my camera and God. Let me tell you, two out of three ain’t bad. I think I was the bad part in the equation.

On this trip, for the first time in my life, the portion of Psalm 23 that says, “He restores my soul,” became a reality to me. Those walks in the woods either by myself or with my children were refreshing in ways that I cannot even begin to explain. But, when the last evening of vacation rolled around and I began to reflect on those quiet times, I began to realize how badly I had needed to have the batteries recharged. It made me thankful for a trip that at first glance didn’t seem like something I wanted to do.

The one thing in photography that has always appealed to me without fail is the natural world. I love to shoot nature. I love to shoot landscape both small and great and I love to shoot animals. Oops, I mean, photograph animals! I guess I keep going back to food. Kind of a one track mind, or stomach. Back to photography, my first magazine published image was many years ago in Popular Photography. I won second place in a contest for a picture I took at a natural spring along the Natchez Trace Parkway not too far from my home. Now, whenever I need a good refreshing, I get out into the woods for a good photo adventure.

This post may seem to be a bit off topic for a photojournalism blog but let me tell you, photojournalism has a way of wearing you down from the inside out. Whatever you do to get refreshed is as important to your career as any piece of equipment you will ever own. So chill out, take a hike or do whatever makes you happy and get a good soul restoration

About the photos: I found this beautiful little patch of ice along a creek bank in Russell Park in Ilion, NY. The creek ran beside a cross country ski trail which I was hiking with three of my little kids. I shot the photo with a Canon EOS 5D (love that camera!) and a 24-70mm f2.8 lens. The other photo is from a marsh that is right behind my sister in law’s home on Route 5 in Frankfort, NY. It was shot with the 5D and a 70-200 f2.8 with a 1.4x teleconverter. For more photos, check out my Flickr page by clicking the link in the right column.

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

I am back from vacation in the snowy north and fully recharged. I am going to begin a new feature on the blog by doing a critique on a photo from the A Little News Pool and Richard Hamm is my first victim. Richard is a college student, prime target audience for this blog and I asked him if he minded being first. He graciously agreed so here we go. By the way, the rest of you may not be so lucky. I may just nab your photo and slice it up without telling you! HA!

Actually, there is very little slicing to do on this photo. Richard is the photo editor for The Red and Black, the student produced newspaper at the University of Georgia. There are a few things I want to highlight in this photo because they showcase excellent visual thinking. The first thing that Richard did that is excellent, especially in one so young!!, is he previsualized the shot. To do a photo like this you have to see it in your head, or at least see it somewhere else and apply the technique to your own work. You will notice the excellent use of the track’s lighting to add depth to the image. This is another aspect of seeing. The track’s lighting provides a sense of the scale of the track that would be missing if the back corner were dark. Richard saw this and took advantage of it.

Another of the very nice touch is the serpentine nature of the race course which gives us the nice little wiggle in the trailing lights. Finally, and this can’t be overstated, Richard used the right lens for the job. The photo has enough compression to hold together evidencing the use of at least a short telephoto, in this case a 70 mm. A wide shot of this would fall apart and the light trail would diminish too much to be of any visual use. The longer lens slightly compresses the foreground/background relationship and holds the image together. All in all, a very nice job of photojournalism. You can see more of Richard’s work plus his portfolio at www.rahphoto.wordpress.com

Photo copyright Richard Hamm. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employer or of Richard Hamm.

Dedicated readers of this blog will recognize Corey Wilson right away. Corey did a post for us about shooting in the deep freeze at Lambeau Field for the NFC Championship game between Green Bay and New York. Corey is a graduate of Eastern Kentucky University and has been my friend for about seven or eight years now. We worked together in Decatur for two or three of those years and he has worked in Green Bay for five years. Corey is one of many photojournalists whose work inspires me. He is a wonderful shooter and a good man to top it all off. I hope you enjoy his musings on covering one of the NFL’s true legends.

History. When does it become such? As soon as Father Time ticks to the next second? Months later? Years later? As far as I know photography is the only way to stop time. Every photograph represents a slice of history. Is it your child’s first steps? A birthday? A war? A sports feat?

Most photojournalists like myself are in this business because we can’t get enough of capturing time…in fleeting moments. I’ve been fortunate enough to cover the NFL, namely the Green Bay Packers, for the last five years. This has always been a dream of mine and it’s one I’m proud I’ve accomplished. Unless you’ve been living in Northeastern Siberia for the past two or three weeks you know one thing. Brett’s done. Brett Favre that is. He donned the uniform like no other quarterback has from 1991-2007. He NEVER missed a start during his entire Packers playing career! (That’s 253 for those of you who are counting). He’s a legend and everyone has heard of his magic feats on the field.

I did a lot of reflecting as I pulled file photographs for special sections, books and audio slideshow productions that my paper, the Green Bay Press-Gazette, would be publishing in the days after his retirement on March 4, 2008. Covering Brett Favre has been a once in a lifetime opportunity. You could go an entire career as a photojournalist and not photograph a legend like that. It’s an opportunity I’m extremely thankful for. Thumbing through all these hundreds of images over the past couple of weeks made me sentimental. Do we realize that we are literally photographing history at the time we’re actually shooting it? Or does that come much later? Does it ever come at all?

Have you ever been on an assignment when you suddenly realize that what you’re doing, in that very instant, is going to be documented as history for years to come? Does it take a monumental event to seem important? A career like Brett Favre? Or do other events like murder trials feel like live-history? I fall victim to feeling like lesser-scale events like plays, church services, portraits or city council meetings matter less. Aren’t they just as important? You bet they are.

I guess all the reflecting did one thing for me. It served as a wake-up call. It hit me that our smaller communities are not made up of Brett Favre grandeur. As photojournalists we have a tremendous responsibility to document everything around us as if it were just as famous. Don’t we? How do we not?

With that said I’ll never forget the moments I had covering Brett Favre. I’ll have the newspaper covers to remember it. I’ll forever have my spot in the new Sports Illustrated Commemorative Edition of Brett Favre. I’ll have the black & white picture I shot with my Holga 120 plastic film camera (retail $20) as he ran onto Lambeau Field for a game in 2005.

***If you would like a glimpse of my 2007 reflections of Brett Favre please copy and paste the following link to a first-person audio slideshow:

http://www.packersnews.com/includes/newspaper/assets/soundslides/2008/030408remembering4/

Be aware that everything you shoot as a photojournalist is important. In 10, 20 or 30 years, when memories begin to fade, it will be YOUR photographs that remind people of days-gone-by.

Photos copyright Corey Wilson. The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of the writer’s employer.

It’s a whole new ball game out there. Not just on the playing field, but in photojournalism. In 1986, when I started my first paying job in this profession, I was one happy guy if I could turn in three good black and white prints from a 7:30p.m. basketball game and still make my 9:45p.m. deadline.

Today, that mentality has changed. Today it’s not about quality, it’s about quantity. It’s common place for a photographer to turn in 20 photos from a basketball game, and still meet that 9:45p.m deadline. We have to “feed the online beast” is the new battle cry in a world where newspapers and wire services, mine included, are struggling to find a way to deliver their product and still make a profit.

Yes, we no longer have to drive like mad back to the office to soup film and make prints, those days are gone. Now we sit at press row filing like our pencil colleagues in comfort, pulling out the reading glasses to view the small type of the flip cards as we write our captions.

But, is more better? Does the reader/viewer really want more? Do they want to see your 20 so/so images from the basketball game or do they want to see your best work? Do they really want to see a slide show with pointless audio from the last night’s game? I can’t answer any of those questions. Perhaps a well paid survey company can, but I can’t.

But I can tell you what I think.

I think we need to get back to basics. Yes, photo galleries are great, but make them tell a story. Don’t put four different versions of the same photo in your slide show just to flush it out. Put in the best one, edit your stuff. I would much rather look at 10 really good photos that tell the story of the game, then twenty photos that are all over the map. It’s about quality.

As a former picture editor and Director of Photography at several newspapers, I can remember vividly some of the heated discussions we would have in news meetings over the lead photo for the next days’ front page. No matter the opinion on the photo, in the end, it was always about the content. Was it a good enough photo to warrant carrying the front page of the paper for the next day? That thought process doesn’t seem to carry over to the online world where more is better.

We need to get back to basics of good photojournalism and having that page one mentality. While it’s not 1986 anymore, we need to still think like we did then and put our best work out there.

Photo copyright Rob Carr, The Associated Press. The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of the Associated Press or of my employer, The Decatur Daily.  The basketball photo is one of a sequence of five frames which Rob edited down to the best frame presenting the essence of his theme; one well edited frame is better than several pictures that are just not the right moment.