alittlenews

Last week we ran into a feature crisis. Okay, we pretty much have a feature crisis every day meaning that there are never enough stand alone photos. The search for stand alone art can be a weary one but not this day. I saw the excellent sky and clouds and knew that all I had to do was find someone I could stick in front of it and I would have a winner. The only problem was this was a pretty cold day and folks out playing around were pretty hard to find. It was already too late to use construction guys, the steady standby for all weather feature work. So I drove around for a while. Actually, I drove around for a long while just looking.

I had passed the boat harbor more than once and the light was fading and I was giving up. The I saw the guy. I was passing on the highway when I spotted him and had to go about a mile to turn around and get back and hope the whole time that I caught him before he left or the light left. Bingo, I made it back and grabbed a light stand and a strobe and hustled down to the pier where he was fishing. Turns out he fishes most every day after work and said that some years ago we had made a picture of him fishing. That didn’t bother me one bit. I had my feature.

I set up my Vivitar 285HV on a light stand about ten feet away, snapped a 20mm on my Canon EOS 5D and quickly set my ambient then adjusted my flash/ambient relationship quickly. Just as I am ready to shoot the guy snags his line on the bottom and can’t get it loose. My vision of him casting a line into the sunset sky suddenly vanishes and now what. He snaps his line trying to free it and is talking about leaving rather than setting up a new hook. Finally, at the last minute, he kind of inspects his gear and I have my photo. The whole episode last five minutes or so and the guy is happy because he gets his photo in the paper and I am happy because I beat the sunset and the odds on a cold day to get a nice stand alone.

Whew!

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

Tis the season for annual photo contests. I usually enter the NPPA Pictures of the Year competition and just like baseball teams going to spring training, I feel like I have a chance. Okay, not really, but since the judging hasn’t begun yet I have as much of a chance as anyone. Winning would be like finding money laying on the street. I never really expect it but if it happens it is most excellent. You can view my twenty shot entry in the NPPA Pictures of the Year contest below.

[slideshare id=247020&doc=contest-entry-images-1201711773824680-4&w=600]

The point of entering contests, for me at least, is not really winning, or more likely, losing. It is all about competing. For several years I quit entering contests. It was a rough time in my career and I felt like I was not getting better. Most of the time I felt like I was getting worse. That was the time of the multi-year slump I talked about in some earlier posts. When I started to come around, I decided to start entering contests again because the competition sharpens me. I never shoot for contests. That is like trying to hit a home run. If you are trying to do something that simply means you are pushing yourself in a very negative way and you will usually deepen the funk you are in because it frustrates you more. I rejoined the NPPA and started to enter the monthly clip contests. Just the act of competing against other photographers sharpened my focus.

I was not trying to win clip contests. I was trying to compete. Some photos in my NPPA entry are pretty decent. Maybe one might actually place in the competition. Who knows? The point is that I am using the competition to keep me sharp. I found that competing really helped me focus and make the most out of whatever situation I found myself in. Sometimes, and this is just flat out wrong but it is still true, you fall into a complacent trap and your work just goes flat. You really don’t care. That makes your work flat or just plain bad. The only way to break out is to do something different. Maybe you have read it here before but a good working definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The point is that contest can actually help you get better. They can help you stay focused. They can help you push the envelope. Maybe we should all be self-motivated 24-7-365 minus the two week vacation but I confess that I need a little help from time to time. Win or lose, let contests help you get better too.

The journey from being there to being intimate is not simply the goal of photojournalism, it is really the goal of life itself. I desire intimacy with my wife. I desire intimacy with my God. I also desire intimacy with my community as a photojournalist.

Photojournalism has three basic levels. First there is the record. I was there and this is what I saw. This level lets the reader see what the person photographed is doing. The second level is the emotional level. This level allows the reader to see what the person is feeling. The highest level is the intimate level. At this level, you are actually putting your readers into the subject’s life. Obviously, this is the toughest level to attain in daily photojournalism.

Intimacy in photojournalism usually requires time and time is something most of us do not have in our daily assignment schedule. We walk into someone’s life and spent fifteen to thirty minutes, on a good day, and walk out again. I have rarely attained an intimate photo from this type situation. If you are married, you know that intimacy, physical or emotional, takes time and energy. It doesn’t happen quickly and it doesn’t happen without trust. The same can be said of your photo subjects. If you have never been exposed to the person and just walk into their life and back out there is never time to develop trust and intimacy.

The solution is usually to find a story on your own and develop the story over time. This allows you to go back several times and spend time with the subject. This will allow the subject to understand your motives which is a big hurdle to photographic intimacy. If someone feels you are simply exploiting them you will never get inside their life. If they understand where you are going with a story and why you need to be there to shoot those private moments they are more likely to open up to you.

Developing a situation where intimate photos can be made requires some effort on your part. You may find the situation while working on a daily assignment and come back to the person later with a more in depth story idea that you can pursue over time. While you are out in the community remember to talk to people. Don’t just show up and be a robot. My co-worker Jonathan Palmer does this as well as anyone I have ever seen. He is always talking to people and developing story ideas. Not all of them lead to intimate photos but you will develop all kinds of story ideas this way and the more you develop the greater the possibility that you will be shooting intimate pictures.

It is a good idea to listen when you cover the mundane assignments during the day. I was covering an assignment a couple of years ago about a local charity handing out air conditioners. Not real exciting. However, I talked to a couple of people there and turned the “boring” assignment into a trip to a lady’s home who did not have an air conditioning. I didn’t really make an intimate picture but I did improve a poor assignment. You never know what or who you will run into as you do your job. Keep your ears and your mind open and you may end up with a very satisfying photo.

The photos with this post come from two self-generated assignments. The top photo is of a young woman who lives in a group home for special needs teens. The home has three residents and about twice as many live in assistants who work in shifts. The photo of this girl is, in my opinion, one of the most intimate photos I have ever shot. She gets into this position to lock out the world when the circumstances overwhelm her. I really feel her pain as I look at this image. The bottom photo shows a husband comforting his wife while she is in labor. The photo is from a story I did on natural childbirth. She is in a birthing spa and the thing that amazed me about all this is she was naked and still allowed me into her life for this very special day. She and her husband were great and the only thing that they really asked of me was to protect her privacy in the photos which is a given because the newspaper would not publish anything offensive to the readers anyway.

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

Note: This is the second of two posts from Green Bay Press-Gazette photojournalist Corey Wilson, a friend and former co-worker. Corey and I worked together for a couple of enjoyable years in Decatur before he moved to the frozen north to become a snowman.

After I got all bundled up for that Jan. 20th NFC Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants I headed down to the field about 30-minutes prior to kickoff. Wow. Nothing like minus-25 degree wind chills smacking you in the face as you walk down the same tunnel as Vince Lombardi, Bart Starr, Reggie White and Brett Favre.

My photo staff at the Green Bay Press-Gazette was given all brand new Nikon to test out at the game (and possibly the Super Bowl) by Nikon Professional Services. Unfortunately, all the beautiful D3 cameras failed the cold test. Upon kickoff I realized that NEITHER of my D3 camera bodies were working. I had one driving a 400mm lens and the other on my 80-200mm lens. Both cameras starting flashing “err” messages and when they would fire they would fire black images. Some of the images were half-black…similar to when you sync your flash at too high of a shutter speed and part of the shutter curtain casts a shadow on your image.

Uh oh. Not a good sign at the start of a huge game. What the heck am I going to do?

My boss came down to the field and gave me one of his D3’s that was operational. I quickly mounted that to my 400mm lens. Our ‘runner’ for the game also brought me one he’d had slung over his shoulder. Okay, I’m reloaded and ready to go. Well, one of those quit and I got frustrated. So now it’s the second quarter, I have basically no images, and I’m headed for our media workroom upstairs for reinforcements. I darted upstairs, as the Packers had the ball on offense, and grabbed my older Nikon D200 body. I only brought this for a spare! The batteries that were in it were all I had for that camera too! I’m actually sweating in a bit of panic at this point.

That camera lasted into the second half until the shutter literally froze in mid-burst during a key drive. Another one bites the dust (or ice). Our ‘runner’ brings me yet another D3 to replace my D200. He believes this D3 is operational…for now. It actually held up pretty decent, except for replacing a battery in the fourth-quarter. It held up long enough for me to get legendary quarterback Brett Favre slinging a cape over his head as he ran off the field after a 23-20 overtime defeat. Is it the last image of Brett Favre ever at Lambeau Field? We’ll see. Personally, I don’t think so.

So the biggest game of my life was filled with much frustration. I enjoyed the opportunity but trying to stay focused while cycling through SIX camera bodies was the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced while shooting an NFL game. So what’s my opinion of the D3? Beautiful. The images were drop-dead gorgeous and needed no toning at all. Just don’t plan on having much success with a D3 in the Frozen Tundra! I learned another sobering lesson? Turns out the Good Lord makes things better than we humans make things. Here he designs a human body that with proper planning (using the brain he gave us) can survive the most wicked cold temps in the United States. And we humans can’t even design a piece of ($5,000) camera equipment that can last 15-minutes in the same elements. Truly amazing.

For more images from the game, please visit The Press Gazette photo galleries from the game.

Photos copyright Corey Wilson, the Green Bay Post-Gazette. The opinions expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of the Press-Gazette or The Decatur Daily.

This is the first of two posts by my friend and former co-worker Corey Wilson who is now a staff photojournalist for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Corey shot and survived the Packer’s NFC Championship game in Green Bay last Sunday with temps dipping to -4 degrees with a wind chill in the -25 degree range. Corey shares his experience of surviving then shooting in extreme cold. Enjoy!

On January 20th I had the opportunity to photograph the NFC Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants here in Green Bay, Wisconsin. In my fifth year as a staff photographer for the Green Bay Press-Gazette I cover the Packers as my beat. I’m at all home games and I share half of the road game duties with my co-worker Evan Siegle. The Packers are our franchise topic to say the least. Unfortunately, this big game didn’t go very well for the young Packers team. The Giants won 23-20 in overtime and man was it cold. REAL cold. Like third coldest game in NFL history cold. Like minus-five degrees air temperature and minus-twenty-five wind chill cold!

These adverse conditions present a lot of problems for a photographer. Not the least of which is, “How am I going to survive this cold?” Frostbite can take hold in just a couple minutes to exposed skin. My wardrobe planning began several days in advance. I’ll admit I was a bit nervous. However, I photographed a game in Chicago on Dec. 23rd where 40 m.p.h. winds drove the wind chill to 20-below zero. Anyway, layers are what you dress in when you live in the extreme north. It seems I wore clothing (in weight) than I actually weigh (in body)! The key is to stay 100% away from cotton. It doesn’t insulate as well as polyester and other fibers and it doesn’t wick away moisture if you sweat a bit under all those layers! Here’s a rundown of what I wore.

Top:
Long Johns
Polyester long sleeve tight athletic shirt
Wool sweater
North Face wind breaker hooded shell
Down-stuffed winter coat

Bottom:
Long Johns
(2) pairs of athletic wind pants (jeans get too tight)
Ski pants with a liner

Feet:
Knee-high nylons (for wicking)
Thick wool socks
Heavy Columbia-brand winter boots.

Head:
Bomber-style hat with rabbit fur in the front, ears and down the side panels.

Hands:
Columbia brand arctic gloves I found at Dick’s for $35.
(I had to wear a thinner wool glove on my right shooting hand so I could feel the shutter release.)

WHEW! I think that’s about it. Oh yeah! And let’s don’t forget I had foot warmers in those boots and 8 hand warmers in my pockets to relieve my hands after EVERY single play.
Much like the players, it’s easy to let the preparation for the cold be a distraction. You actually think more about the survival and lose focus on being a photojournalist and the opportunity that is before you.
Fortunately I have been through this dozens of times and it is less traumatizing each time.
Strangely, there’s little preparation to do for your cameras and gear. There is really no danger of “wet” precipitation at those frigid temperatures. Even if snow falls, your cameras and lenses are already at the same temperature so nothing melts on them.
Now with all that taken care of, let’s go kneel down for 3 ½ hours on the frozen ice chunks along the sidelines at legendary Lambeau Field!!

Photos copyright Corey Wilson, the Green Bay Press Gazette. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Decatur Daily or The Green Bay Press Gazette.

Sports has the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, thanks in part to the old ABC show Wide World of Sports. In this case we can use sports as a metaphor for life because life is full of victory and defeat all the way from birth to death. This is cool thing, and sometimes the uncomfortable thing, about being a photojournalist; you get to be there for the whole ride. In fact, my dream is to put together a book about the seasons of life. Emotions are what make life interesting. Without emotions all you would have is blank people walking around a blank world doing blank tasks. Add emotion and you put the spice into life. We are jubilant when we succeed and we are downcast when we fail but both success and failure are all a part of living.

As a photojournalist, documenting the emotion of life is what we are all about. Emotionless assignments are the worst assignments and make the worst pictures. If you get emotion in your photos your photos will sing with the vibrancy of life. The counter side of this is emotion is often very difficult to get. People tend to shy away from the camera in any situation but particularly so when they are showing negative emotion. Some folks will even shy away when they are showing positive emotions if that is out of character for them. Then there are the actors in life who will show you whatever emotion they think you are looking for. I really hate those situations because the emotion is fake and comes across as fake and the people look like they are faking.

But when it all comes together and you have a genuine moment, life is good. There is not a lot of technique to this post. You have to be there and be prepared. If it is a situation where you have to set up lights, make sure you are set up and tested before the event you are covering begins. Given a little time, most people stop thinking about you and the lights and just get down to doing what they do. Make sure you have the cameras and lenses set and ready because emotion does tend to be fleeting. If you miss it you can’t go back and get it. Catching emotion is all about snatching that magical moment that was all too frequently there and gone in a few moments. The great thing is when you catch those fleeting emotions you have created a metaphor for what the person went through to get to that particular moment in their lives. All that came before is encapsulated in that moment. Did you get it?

The photos with this post are three moments where I did get it. Unfortunately, just like a fish story, there are too many that have slipped away. This first photo I shot this week. The lady crying is at a pep rally for her 13 year old son who collapsed with a heart attack during a school field trip. The boy is recovering at home and his school held the pep rally in his honor. I didn’t even know the lady was his mom until after I shot the photo. I found that out when I got her name after shooting. I followed the emotion and somehow she understood that guy with the camera in her face was not a threat.

The next photo shows three women who are actually watching American Idol on TV. They are related to former Idol finalist Bo Bice who is from North Alabama and they were gathered at a restaurant in Somerville, Alabama with friends to watch the show. We kept going back to this restaurant for weeks as Bo progressed. In this moment, they are watching Simon Cowell give Bo a very good review and they are reacting to the review. I had to light the restaurant but I was all set with lighting tested so when the moment occurred, I was in place with the right lens and right light.

Finally, this photo shows a woman who is dying from a variety of complications she accrued from a drug addicted lifestyle. The little girl behind the door is her daughter and the child reaching out just about breaks my heart. There is nothing to this technically. I am just looking for the sadness in the lady and all of a sudden the little girl comes to the door to get dressed and she reaches out. Right camera, right lens, right moment. It is not an emotion that I like but it is a storytelling moment. The old guys used to have a saying, “F8 and be there.” There is more to it than that but you do have to be there and be ready then let the emotion tell the story.

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

I have a good friend and former co-worker who nows works for the Green Bay Press Gazette. Corey Wilson and I worked together for almost three years before he moved on to greener pastures a few years back. He is now just four quarters away from a trip to the Super Bowl, a life-long dream of his. Today, however, he is preparing for the coldest game he has ever covered and it just happens to be the biggest game he has ever covered. The game time starting temp is supposed to be well below zero and will fall during the game. I have asked Corey to do a guest post for us on how to survive and shoot in the extreme cold weather of the frozen tundra! Corey has agreed and sometime during the next few days you can look forward to seeing his post.

You can get a bit of a preview by checking out the Press Gazette photo galleries. Last week’s gallery on the snow game are very good. Corey has several pictures in the galleries as do his co-workers and photographers from the paper in Appleton. In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the icy NFC Championship game in the comfort of your heated living room. Have a cup of coco in tribute to Corey!

I got an assignment two days ago to shoot a town meeting about beautifying the city. Already it seems like a pretty dry assignment. It gets worse, technically speaking because they want a photo of the speaker in front of a power point show he is presenting. It will take place in a really large, historic theater in town and they will not be spotlighting the speaker meaning that I have to light him. That is no big deal but the trick is to get enough light onto the speaker so he is properly exposed, the flash can’t be close to him and there can be no spill onto the screen where the show is projected or you won’t see the image on screen.

The only thing working in my advantage is there is some distance between the speaker and the screen, say twenty feet and the screen is huge so I will have a nice image to work with if I light it properly. Anyone who has shot in a completely dark room and tried to light it in as non-disruptive a manner as possible knows what a challenge this will be. I will also need at least one shot that shows the crowd attending the show which requires an entirely separate light setup.

Here is how I tackled the problem. I set one strobe on an 11 foot stand to cross light the speaker. I put a homemade 8″ snoot on this strobe and fired it with a Pocket Wizard. I had to use cross light to make sure no light spilled onto the screen. I set this strobe a 1/8th power which is very low for the distance to the subject which was about 25 or 30 feet. This meant I would be shooting at about ISO 800 at f 2.8 to f4 with a shutter speed of not more than 1/60th but usually about 1/30th to make sure I had a good exposure on the projected image. I used the low power setting on the strobe to keep from blinding the speaker in the darkened environment and to not disrupt the proceedings any more than necessary.

To light the crowd, I took a second strobe to the balcony and set it on a light stand there. I would have preferred to use about a 6″ snoot here too but I had only one with me so I zoomed the flash to 105mm and hoped for the best. This strobe, because it had to do more work, was set to between 1/4 and 1/2 power and fired using the optical slave and a third flash on camera to fire it. The Pocket Wizard was attached via the camera’s pc connection. Normally I would have just used a second Pocket Wizard on the other strobe but I didn’t have the other Wizard on this job so I had to improvise.

Controlling light is not too difficult when you can use snoots and gobos with your strobes and you can learn all you need to know about these techniques at Strobist without me trying to reinvent the wheel for you. The final result for me was a pretty well lit photo that did not disturb the event and ended up being the lead photo on page 1 the following day. You will encounter a bunch of jobs where light control will be important so mastering this technique will serve you well in a bunch of situations. Learning how to light really separates the pros from the amateurs so spend some time on this. If you are hoping to move on in your career, lighting is one of the edges that will help you distinguish yourself from the pack so light em up.

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

I don’t know if any of you play golf so this may not makes too much sense. I don’t play much any more. I just have too much else going on but from the days when I used to play I draw this analogy. Golf can be an extremely rewarding game. You make a nice shot, drive the ball straight down the middle 300 yards or sink a long putt and it is very gratifying. Unfortunately, for a duffer like me, those were too few and far between. However, I would usually make a few really goood shots in any round of golf and that kept me coming back for more.

Photojournalism is a lot like that. We have to shoot all kinds of pictures in all kinds of light and under a wild variety of circumstances and that can make for some frustration. But, I make a shot every now and then and just go, “Ahh!” And I come back to work again and look for the next Ahh! moment. Right now, we are mired in a very involved tab section for advertising that we do every year. It takes the better part of January and February and this one will contain more than 80 profiles of different folks and the jobs they do. I shot three of these today. In two of the three jobs I came away with photos that I really like. One photo because I worked the light and one photo because I happened to be in the right place at the right time with the camera ready. I’ll take it either way. These shots help me get ready for tomorrow when I will probably have three or four more of these jobs to shoot.

Here is the rundown on the portrait. The guy is a funeral home manager so I can’t really shoot him working. Directing a funeral is a delicate business and having some guy chasing him around with a camera would just be inappropriate. Ergo, the portrait. This could be pretty pedestrian stuff. Guy standing in chapel looking at camera. The light saved the day and I came away very satisfied. I know it looks like something you might see in a brochure but that is not necessarily a bad thing in this case. He looks sharp and professional and that is what he is supposed to look like in the bereavement business. I was very happy with the result. The main light is an SB8oo fired into an umbrella at 1/8th power. The background light is an SB800 fired direct at 1/2 power and aimed right at him from the back of the chapel. I used a 17-35mm lens and a Nikon D2Hs.

The other shot was done in a restaurant in the same town an hour or so later. Same camera and lens but this one is unposed. She is really working and that makes it much easier to get spontaneity but much harder to get good light. I used an SB800 on camera in bounce mode with the little plastic diffusion dome on top. I think it was set manually to 1/8th power. I seldom use a strobe in any auto mode because I have been burned too many times. Anyway, the light is not so good but the expression and movement make the image. I came away pleased from two out of three jobs that could have really been sows ear assignments. But hey, that’s what we get paid the big bucks for, right? Turning the proverbial sows ear into a silk purse is the job about half the time.

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

One of the great things about photojournalism, and perhaps the greatest draw to me personally about this job, is its tremendous scope. In the very limited discussion so far in the Flickr Pool for A Little News there have been a couple people saying they don’t really have photojournalism type images. I know our rep is that “if it bleeds it leads,” but photojournalism now encompasses such a broad variety of topics it really spans life itself.

For those of you working in photojournalism, think about a month’s worth of assignments. Did you do the same thing over and over again or did you get spread all over the place. At a small newspaper like The Decatur Daily, we get spread all over the place. I could be out shooting in a chicken house (God save you from such torture) to an executive boardroom where I am setting up lights for a portrait. I could be on the sidelines of an NFL game or a little league game. I may go from a construction site where I am wading around in ankle deep mud to a church sanctuary where I have to take off the nasty shoes just to go inside.

Now think about all the pictures that come out of those assignments. Yeah there are some traffic accidents, the occasional shooting or stabbing or something like that, but there are also pictures of birds, little kids, happy people, mad people, butchers, bakers and coffee makers. Just off the top of my head, this week I have photographed a teacher and an inspirational speaker, an organist, two basketball games and a park playground renovation. And this has been a fairly light week so far. Tomorrow I am going to shoot, among other things, a house that was originally built from discarded crates that contained howitzer shells during World War II. So, don’t just limit your ideas about photojournalism to the bleeding stuff.

I shot two stories last year on tea parties! For crying out loud, photojournalism is really wide open. That is why I like my job. It is seldom the same thing twice. There is no Groundhogs Day in photojournalism. And there is no assembly line. If you start thinking like that please refer back to the posts on breaking out of a slump. This is one of the jobs that is truly whatever you make it. There really are very few jobs where the product for the industry that day is whatever the employees happen to create but that is the essence of photojournalism and aren’t we thankful that we have such a privilege.

So, what are you going to do today? What are you going to make out of your job? Back in the old days before the world turned digital, I used to tell myself, especially on the bad days, that each roll of film I shoot may produce a Pulitzer Prize. Was that unrealistic? Slightly, but you understand that we walk out every day to a world waiting to captured in a slice of time about 1/125th of a second thick. That slice of time you catch today very well may become an iconic image in your community or in your world. Don’t take that for granted. Use that thought to pump you up because you just never know. Tomorrow may be your Pulitzer. Will you be ready to capture it?

These three photos represent my day today. I went from an Martin Luther King Jr. memorial to a classroom to a city park being renovated. Three jobs, three techniques but no Pulitzer. At least not yet!

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