Friday Photo 9-28-12

Buffalo, Custer State Park, SD

Off the beaten path

It's fun to do something out of the ordinary once in a while. A criticism I have of newspapers is we often do something the same way every time. While that's great for consistency, it's horrible for creativity.

That's why it's good the Free Press produces a pair of in house monthly magazines, the Minnesota Valley Business Magazine and the Mankato Magazine. While both are very different products they share a common trait: they are not the newspaper. Normal newspaper photography and writing styles don't necessarily apply to the magazine product.

When Mankato Magazine associate editor Tanner Kent came to me for help with a cover idea for this month's magazine an idea leaped into my head. After hours of trying to convey that idea to him, and convince him we could pull it off, we ended up in the product photography studio at HalloweenCostumes.com in North Mankato with a fog machine, a cauldron, some other props and a fantastic model/employee named Ashly Schmaltz who was willing to have herself painted green for the photo shoot. An hour and a half (and a few tweaks) later we concocted the cover you see here.

I like how the cover looks. Of course, there are things I would change (aren't there always?). A bit darker background would have been nice, and a little more smoke coming from the cauldron would hurt, but in general this was how the idea appeared in my head.

This kind of photography is something we rarely get to do in the newspaper side of things, if at all. It was fun assembling all the pieces, trying different lighting combinations and really creating an image, as opposed to capturing one.

Friday Photo 9-14-12

Wind blown corn, St. Peter, Minn.

Friday Photo 9/7/12

Ford Tri-Motor airplane. Mankato, Minn.

Should I go, or shouldn't I?

AP file photo

Newspaper photographers all get them: The phone call, email or letter saying you just HAVE to be at this really cool event. It used to be just phone calls, but with the rise of email marketing my inbox is often flooded with such event announcements.

Some are cool and worth going to, others not. Still others are harder to gauge whether they will offer something photo worthy. Whether I go or not, the invites keep coming. They're often too easy to ignore simply due to their volume, pushing them aside, saying I don't have time this week or I really should be somewhere else.

Malcom Browne was a photojournalist in Vietnam in 1963 when he and many other foreign journalists received a phone call to be at a certain place for a "very important" happening. Unlike his other colleagues, who pushed the cryptic invite aside Browne decided to go, and made the photo above of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc protesting against South Vietnam's U.S.-supported government by dousing himself in aviation fuel and setting himself on fire.

Browne died Monday at the age of 81 after a long career as a photojournalist, much of it with the New York Times. In his 30 years at the Times, I'm sure he received a mountain of phone calls and letters to come see the next cool event. He may have pushed many aside, but I bet he took a chance on many of them, going just to see if an interesting photo could be made. A good lesson for me, I think.