Why professional photojournalists are necessary

Runner Bill Iffrig at the finish line of the Boston

 

Marathon. (AP Photo/The Boston Globe, John Tlumacki)

You have to admire anyone who runs into a tragedy, like so many first responders did Monday after the explosions at the Boston Marathon. They were willing to put their personal safety aside, consciously or unconsciously, to help people caught up in such a tragic event.

In that same line of thought, I can't help to think what it would have been like to be covering the marathon when those bombs went off. Would I have the courage to do what I could to help? Would I be able to document what I saw without turning away, or even running away?

Fortunately there were many brave photojournalists, like the Boston Globe's John Tlumacki, willing to stay put, look into the face of a terrible situation and record what was going on around them. Tlumacki was covering the race for the Globe Monday, laptop set to transmit photos of the runners at the finish line, when two explosions ripped through the crowd. He tells a very interesting story about his experience that day to Time magazine here.

But even more interesting than Tlumacki's account of his role in documenting the bombing is Chicago Tribune photographer Alex Garcia's piece about the need for professional photojournalists at tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombing.

Garcia argues that professionals are equipped with the tools, training and experience to document such tragedies well without infringing on the scene or impeding emergency personnel. Professionals, he argues, are prepared in advance and act with a mission to document the situation without exploitation and a conviction to do so despite the tragedy unfolding around him or her.

As the checkbook balances of news organizations shrink it is tempting for managers to cut professional photographers and videographers and hand cameras to other staff, or hire untrained (or undertrained) shooters. To do so is a disservice to all who rely on images like these to tell us, in a way words cannot, what happened in Boston that day. Events like this don't happen every day (thank goodness!), but when they do, you don't want the photographer to run away, shakily aiming their iPhone behind them.

Consider for a moment that nearly everyone had a camera of some type at the finish line of the marathon, poised to photograph their friend, loved one, or just take in the sights of the marathon. Now consider all the photos and video you've seen on Twitter, Facebook, Google +, Instagram, etc. I would argue that, while there are certainly exceptions, few document the story of what happened like the images produced by professionals.

I know some reporters that are very skilled photographers. Many of them would agree that when the chips are down they would rather hand the camera off to someone with experience and skill at taking pictures. While I'm sure I could cobble together a story, I would much rather hand the notebook over to a skilled writer.

There is value to the people we serve in our skills as storytellers and our experience at telling them.

A compulsion to play

Some days I just can't help myself. I come across a need to play with my food, or in this case, my pictures. After spending a couple of days shooting early season softball at Gustavus' Hollingsworth Filed (yes, the football field), I decided to mess around with a few of the photos. The techniques are still a work in progress for me as I'm not accustomed to doing so much post processing, but the results didn't turn out too bad.

By the way, for those that follow the blog, sorry for my absence. Winter can be a challenge for me to fit in all my assignments and find time to blog. Here's hoping I can do better!

Meanwhile, let me know what you think of the photos.

A little tilt shift experiment.

I think this one had potential, but could've turned out better.

My favorite out of the tilt shift set.

My first HDR attempt. I think I need a subject more suited to the technique.

Friday Photo 11-9-12

Season's over. Mankato, Minn.

Friday Photo 11-2-12

WEM fans hold up the number 2 to honor classmate Brady Hruska, who died in a hunting accident this week. Hruska wore the number 2 for the school's football team.

Friday Photo 10-26-12

Fire pole from old fire station, now in new Mankato Public Safety Center.

Friday Photo 10-19-12

Overachiever. Mankato, Minn.

There are throw ins, and there is the flip throw in

I've seen the flip throw in before, where a soccer player flips over the ball and flings it over her head during a throw in instead of just standing still. I don't see it very often though, and even less freqently at a high school game. So when I failed to get a photo of Alina Bachman doing one during a game earlier in the season I was disappointed.

The idea of the flip throw in is to get much more distance and height out of a throw in than throwing in standing still, which helps when the throw in is near the goal.

While at Thursday's section final soccer game between St. Peter and Mankato West I saw Bachman set the ball down on the sideline when given a throw in near the goal, a sure sign she was going to do it again. I managed to get in position and get off a series of frames of her doing the flip throw in.

I had a little fun with them between assignments tonight and made the animation at left. It turned out pretty well and shows the acrobatic throw in better than a single frame would.

Friday Photo 10-12-12

Martini glass sign, Mankato, Minn.

Friday photo 10-5-12

King and Queen of Sweden with GAC president and wife, St. Peter.

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.

   The news today of the passing of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, really made me feel my age.
   I know precisely where I was on July 20, 1969, when Armstrong first stepped out of the lunar module: I was sprawled chin-in-hands on the living room floor of my then girlfriend, Nancy Johnson, watching the moment with the rest of her family.
   As a 17-year-old, I naturally had a lot more pressing things to worry about in my world. Nevertheless, the significance of the moment when he uttered the words "one giant leap for mankind" as he took that final step off the lunar module ladder onto the surface of the moon was not lost on me.
   After all, the space race had become headline news when I was a first grader in 1957 as the Russians beat us to the punch by launching Sputnik.
  On that fall evening in October, I can remember gathering outside with others in the neighborhood, hoping to catch a glimpse of it as it passed overhead in the starry sky.
  President John F.Kennedy gave his space race speech in 1961, offering the challenge to get a man to the moon by the end of the decade and the race to get there before the Ruskies was on.
  It was regular headline news in the Weekly Reader that our grade school teachers dutifully passed out to us each week.
  Looking back, it was all kind of amazing, certainly exciting.
  From rockets exploding on the launch pad, to the successful Mercury missions, then Gemini, and finally Apollo, it is remarkable that it took only eight short years to fulfill Kennedy's challenge.
 Truthfully, forays into orbit and near space became so routine that it all became kind of unremarkable.
  Certainly, there were set-backs, even a few tragedies where astronauts died. But the most part, the race to the moon was America's to win and measured mostly by forward progress.
  And the first moon landing was a defining moment for Americans and American technology.
  We, and much of the world, watched from living rooms, from bars, through department store windows, as the poor quality black-and-white video of Armstrong taking those first steps was beamed from the crescent moon a quarter-million miles away.

  It was a remarkable moment, but one that soon became routine as subsequent moon landings followed and even as video quality of astronauts cavorting on the moon _ taken as they golfed or drove a lunar rover _ improved.
  Manned moon exploration ended in 1972 and hardly anyone noticed. And then came the space shuttles which also quickly became routine until January, 1986, when the Challenger disaster reminded us of the peril of nibbling away at the edge of one of the last frontiers.
  In the 1960s, the space race made it easy to find heroes that didn't swing a bat, catch a pass, dribble a basketball.
  Neil Armstrong was one of those heroes.
  The is some truth to that old adage about being as old as you feel.
  And with Armstrong's passing, I, along with that old girlfriend, Nancy Johnson who now happens to be my wife for the last 39 years, just can't help but feel a little bit older at the news.




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Friday Photo 8/17/12

Hat and glove, State VFW Baseball Tournament, Mankato.

Has it been that long?

Tri-County Fair, 2002.

A revelation hit me today as I was on my way to my first assignment of the day. I've been shooting pictures for the Mankato Free Press for 10 years, today.

It dawned on me as I was on my way to the Tri-County Fair at the Caledonia Curling Club building (now the Caledonia Community Center, I guess). The Tri-County Fair was the first assignment I shot for the Free Press 10 years ago. I remember being a bit nervous even though I had been a professional shooter for 5 years before that assignment. I just wanted to find a good photo, something that would earn the respect of my new coworkers and bosses.

I'd love to say I found a photo that blew everyone's socks off. Something that made everyone gather around my monitor expounding with "Ooos" and "Ahhhs," but it didn't happen. I was happy with the photo, don't get me wrong. I felt it was something worth putting my name under. It had a good moment between a young 4-Her and his cow as he waited to be judged.

This year's Tri-County Fair photo.

It was the start of something I didn't think would last this long. The start of finding a place I could call home. A place where I could get comfortable, get to know well and tell the stories of the people that live here. A place where the familiarity of 10 years living in a place would help bring trust, friendship, and good pictures.

I've taken thousands of photos for The Free Press since then, many of them better than the one I shot that day. But that one will always stick out for me, just because it was the first.

I remember it being a good first week at The Free Press. I made pictures I was happy with that week and started friendships with coworkers that have lasted 10 years, and hopefully will last many more. The Tri-County Fair started a 10-year exploration of southern Minnesota I hope continues for a long time.

Friday photo 8/10/12

Near miss, VFW State Tournament, Mankato, Minn.

Friday Photo 8-3-12

Autograph seekers, Minnesota Vikings training camp, Mankato.

Friday Photo 7/27/12

Sorry I missed last week. Vacation called.

Rain shower, Franklin Rogers Park, Mankato.