alittlenews

Photo by Don Johnson. All rights reserved.

We are going back to Kaufman, Texas for this View From The Pool.  Don Johnson shot this nice portrait of the incoming and outgoing parish priests at Our Merciful Savior Episcopal Church in Kaufman.  Portraits are an everyday portion of a photojournalists work and there are several really nice things to see in this shot.

First, Don used layers to build his image.  There are three very distinct layers in this image.  The fence forms a foreground layer.  The two priests form the mid-ground layer.  The church forms the background layer.  Giving the viewer several layers keeps him in the image longer and this is really good for a newspaper portrait.  One of your objectives in the use of photography in a newspaper is to keep the readers on the page.  Not only does this give the stories on the page a greater chance of being read, it also increase the time a person can see ads on the page.  This is tremendously important, especially on the Internet.  Working on the news side of the paper, it is really easy to discount the ad portion but the truth is that there would be no news content without the ads and no ads without the news so we form a symbiotic relationship that lets both groups survive as a single unit.

Next, Don chose a wonderful time of day to shoot this photo.  You have very low ambient which allows the single strobe in an umbrella to do the main job of lighting the two priests.  Since they are not the dominant visual element in terms of visual weight, the use of the strobe “highlights” them so that the eye understands that they are the important part of the frame.  The light causes them to pop from both the foreground and background elements.  The lower ambient also creates a nice feel to the portrait and the church has a nice visual character in the low light.  The lanterns on the front stoop of the church add a nice touch.  In mid-day light, these would never be visible and would contribute nothing to the image.

The final element I really like in the image is the way the priests are interacting with the camera.  It is an obvious portrait so there is no reason to pretend otherwise.  It is okay for them to be looking at the camera and the pose of the priest on the right especially contributes to the feel of the image.  Just the subtle positioning of his hand, which I am sure is just a natural response to the situation, is nice and much better than him just standing there in the “frozen” pose you see all too often.  Both men have nice expressions on their faces and the whole image makes me feel comfortable at the church and the men.

Overall, a very nice portrait.  I am always tempted to add more light and I might be tempted to add a second strobe to this one.  If I did go with a second light, I would use it to add just a bit off fill on the left side of the priest on the left.  You don’t want it to be too strong, just a bit of a kick in the shadows.  That is all.  You would also have to be careful to keep it off the fence or the fence would be totally blown out and draw excess attention to the white in the foreground.  So if you added a second light you would have to add a snoot to it to keep it from spillling onto the fence and the front of the church.  Really, the portrait is fine just like it is but since I am tinkering, that is all the tinkering I would do.

NOTE: I forgot to include a link to Don’s blog when I wrote this.  You can see more at East Texas Blogspot. Sorry for the flub.

Photo copyright Don Johnson.  All Rights Reserved.  The opinions in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or of Don Johnson.

Photo by Michael Gresham, The Kaufman Herald. All rights reserved.

Today I am picking on an editor and publisher. I had an email conversation this past week with Michael Gresham who is the editor and publisher of the Kaufman Herald in Kaufman, Texas. He tells me that he shares the ideals of Alittlenews, that a small town newspaper doesn’t have to be a small time newspaper.  Michael and I share something else too, we are both the fathers of large families.  I, as you know, am the proud father of eight.  Michael has a little catching up to do having only four so far, but he is still young!

Michael said in his email that the Kaufman Herald is a small newspaper and his staffers do both the photography and the writing and many of his employees are right out of college.  That is the nature of the beast in small newspaper markets.  This basically means these “green” photojournalists have a lot of growing and maturing to do, both as human beings and as photojournalists.  Part of my job at The Decatur Daily has been to help our new staffers, many of whom are fresh out of college, to adapt from the classroom to the real world.  That is a larger jump than you might expect.  There are all sorts of things that have to modified from what they were taught in school and many, many things that have to be added that they were never taught.  So Michael, I know, has his hands full with this retraining process in addition to his normal duties as editor, publisher and some-time photographer.

I selected this photo of Michael’s from a submission to the A Little News Flickr Pool. This is a very typical assignment for smaller newspapers.  The kids are participating in a kindergarten program at a local school.  Man, I can’t tell you how many of those things I have shot over the years.  It is the kind of assignment that is important to your community but can drive you crazy, especially if you have too high an opinion of yourself.  By this I mean that photojournalists can be prima donnas.  I know, I know, how could it possibly be true?  We are all so humble about our work!  The fact is that creative people can be a little self-absorbed from time to time.  As Paul would write in one of his letters, I am chief among sinners here.  I have to remind myself all the time that these assignments are so very important to families in the community whether they are important to me personally or not.

Here is the thing that I like about Michael’s photo above all else.  He clearly understands how important an assignment like this really is.  You can tell by the effort he has put into the shot.  Notice how he has worked in a foreground element with the colorful sombrero.  He didn’t stop there.  He got a truly captivating expression on the childrens’ faces.  That is not just luck folks, that is someone working the assignment who cares enough to do more than stand at the end of the stage and grab a “quick” frame or two so he can just move on.  You can tell that he likes the people he is photographing and that is amazingly important.  If you like the people you photograph, you are more inclined to treat them fairly.  I can tell you from experience that it is difficult to separate your personal bias about the person you are photographing from the resulting photograph.  If you think the person in front of you is evil, that will certainly show through in the image.  If you like the person, that too shows through.  This is important because I believe in treating people as I would want to be treated if I were the subject rather than the photographer.

Being visually fair is important in small papers even more than in larger ones because in the small newspaper world you are directly accountable to your community.  You go to church with them, you shop with them and your kids play youth sports with them.  In other words, you can’t separate yourself from the community you cover.  In most small towns, the local newspaper is an integral part of the life of that community.  I don’t know Michael but I bet you he understands this quite well.  There is nothing like getting an ear full from an irate reader over your coffee and eggs in the morning at the corner cafe.  That doesn’t mean you aren’t honest.  Sometimes you have to do the “hard” news and take your lumps.  That too is the nature of the game.

Wow!  This post really wandered far afield from where I thought I was going at the beginning.  Let me summarize and bring it back to the photograph.  I like this shot a lot.  The use of point of view and capturing the moment of joy on the kids’ faces is just right.  There is nothing that I can say negatively about the shot.  It is just a very nice moment and I would be happy to have nailed a shot like this at any kindergarten dance.  Well done Michael, and thanks to all for putting up with my wanderings.  You can visit Michael’s Photostream and The Kaufman Herald to see more of his work. He also has an interesting blog, Obstructed View which is an read; although it generally doesn’t relate to photography.

Photo copyright Michael Gresham.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer or of Michael Gresham or the Kaufman Herald.

Today’s view from the pool is by Pensacola, FL freelancer Greg Riegler.  He shoots freelance for the Pensacola News Journal and for the Pelican paper.  Greg was covering a night structure fire on Pensacola Beach when he captured this image.  I am actually showing you two of his images from the fire to make a point about using silhouettes in the night fire situation.

This image is looser than the second image but I actually like it better.  I am guessing you can see why right away because it is what immediately caught my eye too.  The firefighter’s flashlight beam showing up through the over spray from the fire hoses just absolutely makes this picture stand out.  At my newspaper, The Decatur Daily, our publisher really hates silhouettes and we can only get one to run about every six months or so.

My friend and former co-worker Jonathan Palmer calls silhouettes “one look” photos because they simply don’t have visual depth.  That is what makes me look twice at this photo.  It does have visual depth and the flashlight beam can even be said to have added a dimensional depth to the image.

My only complaint is that the photo crop is a little loose.  I would have tightened up the crop on the top and on the right side, possibly eliminating the black diagonal intrusion on the right side of the frame.  This would have brought the firefighter into more of a dominant position and made the shower of sparks in the background more pronounced.  I have re-cropped this image to show you what I mean.  Hit the jump to check it out and finish reading this post.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo copyright Paulo Rodrigues. All rights reserved.

A few weeks ago I did a post on shooting dignified portraits. In that post I also invited you guys to submit a dignified portrait photo to our Flickr Pool which Paulo Rodrigues did with this very nice executive portrait.  Paulo lives in London, United Kingdom and has become an email supporter for my wife and I as we raise a child with Down Syndrome.  He has a daughter who is two or three years older than my son, Reece, who has DS. (Thanks for all those notes Paulo.  They really do mean a lot.)  Take a minute to check out Paulo’s Flickr Stream, his Web Site, and his Blog.

I really like this portrait and should have done something with it before now but I, like many of you, get a little busy from time to time and things slip out of my mind.  There are several things to like in this photo.  First of all, the portrait has a nice, dignified feel that would work well in anything from a news story in the local paper to an annual report.  The lighting is very well done with an SB-28 fired through an umbrella and Paulo managed the always problematic reflection in the glasses masterfully.  Another thing I like is his positioning of the subject within the frame.  I love the negative space and the use of color in the negative space.  A page designer for an annual report could easily place type over this with little distraction.  Then there is the look on the man’s face and the way he is dressed, both of which declare him to be a person of substance.  This is just a well executed portrait.

The only criticism I have, and this is being very nit picky, is the top and back of the head could benefit from the addition of a hair light.  It is just a matter of preference, really, because this portrait is excellent just as it stands.  It would have to be a very soft hair light to not ruin the mood of the lighting and it would have to be controlled not to spill onto the background and ruin the light falloff there.  Any time you decide to add light to “improve” on what you have, you need to be sure that the addition enhancing the lighting scheme and not simply just more light.  Some of the most effective portrait work of all time has been done with a single light source so don’t feel like you have to go multi-light set every time.

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

Photo copyright Gary Rhodes

Gary Rhodes, aka Rhodesphoto, contributed this photo from a rally welcoming now former president George W Bush home in Midland, TX where he works as a photojournalist.  I absolutely love this photo.  Hey, a guy named Gary can’t possible go wrong!  I have covered rallies and crowds of all types and I would love to come back with this image.  My only suggestion would be to crop a bit tighter on the top of the image.  The extra space at the top of the frame does nothing for the image.  One rule for cropping that will always help you is to see if negative space is helping you or if it is just sitting there.  In this case, I think the negative space at the top of the frame is just sitting there so a crop to just above the top of the highest W would help the image.

I am not a cropping freak.  I like to let the frame speak.  That said, we had some gurus in to The Decatur Daily a while back and they really put an emphasis on cropping tighter.  I don’t agree with all they said but I will admit that I am a bit loose on some of my crops so tightening up helped me.

Rhodesphoto put several photos in the pool from this event and this one is the standout image. Click here to check out his Flickr Photostream and you will see several variations on this image but none carry the weight that this one does. Also check out Gary’s blog, Shadow and Light. The thing that makes this image click and some of the others be second place is the sign in the middle. The welcome home sign gives you a nice piece of visual contrast in the sea of Ws and gives a touch of context. Not that any of us need wonder who the W refers to but it still is a good visual tie in. The sign also gives your eye just a little bit of visual rest as you scan the sea of Ws. This can be fairly important in a chaotic image.

When you hear writing coaches speak about the craft, you will hear about conflict and resolution.  The Ws carry the visual conflict and the sign carries the visual rest or resolution.  Conflict and resolution are critical parts of storytelling whether it is done with words or with pictures.  Always be conscious of conflict and resolution as you go through your edits.

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

I was checking out the ALittleNews photo pool on Flickr today and came across this gem by Lane Hartwell.  The photo is from a protest in the aftermath of the shooting of Oscar Grant by the BART Police in Oakland, CA.  I have never had to cover anything quite like this but I can tell you that sticking your camera, and therefore, your face in front of police in riot gear who are in no mood to mess around or be messed with takes a bit of courage.

In addition to this photo, please check out Lane’s collection from the event here for the protest rally and here for the riot that followed the shooting.  What you are going to see is a collection of excellent images from right in the middle of the mess.  It is always an unfortunate situation when a young life is lost and more so when there is a public riot over the death.  Lane did a nice job of getting the emotion from the event and apparently without getting arrested herself.

Covering any large gathering like this where people are getting out of hand with the protesting can put even credentialed media in danger of being arrested.  The Republican National Convention in Minneapolis this past summer showcased this when several journalists were arrested while covering the protests out in the streets.  Some were even arrested after clearly identifying themselves as credentialed journalists and following the police instructions exactly.  That makes jobs like this very difficult.  Even dealing with police on the local level in small towns and cities can be trying.

We live with and work in close proximity to the p0lice all the time and would like to think they are better and more right but sometimes that simply is not true.  Some of the time you have to go and get photos of them when they are on the wrong side of the law.  It is doubly tough because just as journalists protect and cover for other journalists, so do police officers for one another.  Our sheriff was arrested recently for contempt of court related to an order about feeding prisoners.  The sheriff was spirited away by U.S. Marshals who apparently broke several traffic laws in rushing away from the federal courthouse with the sheriff in custody to prevent media from getting any photos.

So my hat is off to Lane for her excellent, gutsy work.

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