alittlenews

I really like this image but left it out of my edit, not due to ethical problems but technical ones.

Here is an issue that comes up from time to time.  You have shot an assignment and you have a range of photos.  There are photos that are highly representative of the event and there are other photos that are not quite as representative but still good story telling moments and then you have photos that don’t really represent the event.  That is not to say the images were not shot during the event it is just that the photos are not representative of the flavor of the event.  To make matters worse, your favorite image may come from that last group.

Now you are sitting at your computer editing the images and have to make a decision.  Do I include a photo in my edit that, even though it is a good, maybe even a great image, if it does not accurately represent the event or person in the photo.  Let me give you a good example.  I shot a Christian event Saturday night which was aimed at youth and was designed to help reach them in areas of their lives where there might be problems.  I was there during one of the concerts and the group performing was “The Letter Black.”  They were screamers and I mean that literally for you old guys.  My ears could pick up an understandable lyric once in a while but it was interspersed with the screaming.  Imagine the hardest rock and roll from your youth and pump that up a few notches then add in Christian lyrics and screaming.

So the band is young and the lead singer is a very attractive woman.  She gives her testimony and is clearly Christian, no faking apparent.  The problem in the photo edit is she often looks pretty sexy and it is really hard to tell the difference between this Christian screamer band and one that is just a regular screamer band.  I have to be careful in the photo edit to select photos that are representative of the “flavor” of the event without miscasting this band, and the lead singer in particular, as something they are not.  I intentionally left a couple of photos of her out of my edit for the newspaper because her posture in the image would be viewed by many as decidedly un-Christian.

I know some of you guys who don’t live in the conservative Bible Belt will scratch your head and wonder what is wrong with these pictures.  There is really nothing wrong with them.  In this very conservative area of the country some folks will find a few images objectionable and others will wonder what exactly was “Christian” about the Christian concert event.  So my comments are aimed at editing to that audience. It is important to know the value system of the people living in your area.  That is why obscenity laws are so vague.  What is obscene in Alabama may not be considered obscene in a large city in another part of the country.

Were the photos inaccurate?  Of course not.  It was literally what she was doing on stage.  Did the photos convey the spirit of the event?  Not really because they actually were performing a Christian show even if it is not my particular flavor of Christian.  But hey, they were not playing for me.  They were playing for a bunch of teens.  I would not have been technically wrong to have included one of the photos in my edit but I would have been wrong none the less because it would have misrepresented the band.

This is a fairly innocent example of ethical photo editing.  Where this gets serious is when it involves a breaking news situation or the portrayal of a public figure.  The still image is a powerful thing.  Mark Twain is quoted as saying there are lies, damn lies and statistics.  His means you can make numbers say anything you want.  Likewise, a still image which is captured in a sliver of time can be used to say anything.  For instance, you could be shooting a politician gesturing to a crowd and the still image could show an embarrassing arrangement of the fingers, if you know what I mean.  In a moving image no one would have noticed anything out of the ordinary but in that one split second a finger could be out of place creating a completely unintended gesture.

The list could go on and on but the idea is the still image can convey powerful thoughts, suggestions and innuendos and we are the guardians of truth.  Was the image on my screen actually indicative of what was happening in front of me?  That camera can be a powerful tool.  It has the ability to break a man.  Don’t believe it?  Remember Gary Hart’s political career was ruined by a snapshot of a woman, not his wife, who was sitting on his lap.  That was an accurate image and look at the power that snapshot conveyed.  It completely changed America’s perception of him and ruined his aspirations for the presidency.

Most of us won’t be shooting photos that ruin a presidential campaign but the lesson is treat people ethically.  Photographs have tremendous power to shape perceptions and as photojournalists we have an obligation not just to be accurate but to be ethical as well.

Photos copyright Gary Cosby Jr., The Decatur Daily.  The opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent those of my employers.

UAH Professor Andrew Pakhomov found guilty of murder.

Donna Woodlee acquitted of murder in defense of her son.

We recently had two murder trials running simultaneously.  The murders were both committed in domestic violence situations.  In one case the husband killed the wife.  In the other case the woman killed the man in a bad living arrangement.  One was a person of some note.  One person was anonymous.  The juries both returned verdicts.  One was found guilty.  One was acquitted. I photographed both for the newspaper.

University of Alabama Huntsville physics professor Andrew Pakhomov was found guilty of murder and is now awaiting sentencing in the Morgan County Jail.  Pakhomov killed his wife and dumped her body into shallow water near a boat launch on the Tennessee River in Decatur.

Donna Woodlee, a woman going through some personal hard times, killed the man whose house she was living in.  The man was attacking her son and had very nearly cut the boy’s throat.  Woodlee is now free and hoping for a fresh start after three hard years, much of it spent in jail and some of that time in the state women’s prison.

Our courts are pretty draconian about cameras in the courtroom, or cameras even in the courthouse, when trials are going on, so we have to wait outside the courthouse and try to shoot the primary participants as they come and go.  This is frustrating and difficult and requires a lot of hours just standing ar0und waiting.  The courthouse has two entrances so if you are serious you have to have someone covering both doors. Once in a while the Sheriff’s deputies will escort someone out a side door just to help them avoid the media.  Now that is really frustrating.

This is a post for another day but it has always amazed me that the most public of all venues, a trial court, could be closed to cameras.  Like I said, a post for another day.

On the day that Pakhomov was found guilty we got a heads up that a verdict was coming in.  All three of us rushed to the courthouse to cover the exits.  I knew where they would bring him out if the verdict were guilty but we had no idea yet what that verdict was so all exits had to be covered.  TV had at least six cameras all around the courthouse so there was no way that we were going to get shut out.  As it happened, I was in the right place for the guilty verdict and got the shots as deputies escorted the professor to a waiting cruiser.  The perp walk is usually unproductive but Pakhomov talked to us on the short walk from the courthouse to the car and maintained his innocence.

I shot a few frames with the 17-35 and a few shots with the 80-200mm lens.  I really liked the long lens stuff the best because it gave a feeling of isolation.  And that is just what Pakhomov will be feeling for quite some time.  His sentencing will be in about three months and there will be an appeal after that but there is no way he gets out now.  He will be sentenced to a very lengthy prison term but will probably be eligible for probation before too many years pass.  It appears his was a crime of passion and there was an affair involved.

While I was waiting outside the courthouse during the Pakhomovo trial, two ladies came out to take a smoke break during a court recess.  We talked and they surmised I was waiting for the murder case.  They chastised me for paying more attention to the Pakhomov case than to the case for their friend.  They said their friend was every bit as important as Pakhomov.  They were right, of course, but some folks have more notoriety.  Daily reporter Sheryl Marsh and I met Donna Woodlee Thursday in the law library at the courthouse where she and some family and her attorney granted us an interview.

I shot the photos just using the nice window light coming in from the south facing windows.  I shot her photos mostly with a 50mm f1.8 manual lens.  This is highly unusual for me because I just about never shoot a 50 and just about never have.  I actually found it liberating to shoot with a fixed lens and I found myself concentrating more of Woodlee than on zooming my lens.  It was a nice departure from the zoom lens normal.  Woodlee’s story is also one of passion.  Much of her life had fallen into the negative side of passion.  Anger, poverty, drunkenness and violence were an unfortunately regular part of her life.  In spite of the desperate circumstances she was successfully raising two children.  She found herself in a bad situation, a bad relationship and a bad environment – a perfect storm.

When the man whose house she was living in came at her son with a knife and slashed him across the throat, Woodlee did what any mom would and stabbed the man to death.  Perhaps there is no one who deserves death.  Perhaps some do.  I don’t have the wisdom to judge so I won’t pretend to but I can tell you if I were in her position I would have done the same thing.  The knife lacerated her son’s neck but fortunately the wound was superficial.  Her arrest and wait for trial deprived her of three years with her family.  She is now reunited with her son and daughter and trying to make a better life given this new opportunity.

I have seen that no really good thing comes out of murder trials because in the end there is a least one life taken and other lives ruined.  Even in Woodlee’s case where she was acquitted I guarantee she would like to have never been in the situation to start with.  As a photojournalist we often approach people with the camera when they are either in, or have just come through, desperate situations.  Treating all people fairly and with compassion is a good thing.  Since it is Sunday I will throw in a scripture for you.  Judge not and you will be not judged for with the standard you use to judge another so it will be done unto you.  (My paraphrase.)  I looked at convicted murderer Andrew Pakhomov and acquitted murderer Donna Woodlee this week and felt compassion for both.  Everyone in both situations lost so much and no one really gained anything.

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

You are on an assignment.  Someone is dead.  The friends and family are there.  Everyone is emotional.  Tears streaming down faces.  Anguish.  Distress.  And there you are with a camera and a decision to make.  Do you shoot?  Do you walk away?  Do you offer to help?  Is there anything you could do anyway?  This comes up over and over again in the course of your career so how do you know when to shoot, when to walk away, when to offer a shoulder to cry on or when to help?

Unfortunately, there is no single right answer.  What I want to do here is lay out some guidelines that I use.  The decision will still be agonizing but at least you will have some frame of reference to help you as you stand there wondering what to do.

Mourners outside a Decatur karate studio grieve over the murder of their instructor.

The first question you have to answer is, can I help.  If you are first on the scene, even before the rescuers, and you can lend a hand then lend a hand.  We are all members of the human race.  Help first.  Shoot second.  If there are already qualified responders on the scene then let them do their jobs and don’t get in the way but if you are there first, give what aid you can.  There will always be time for shooting pictures but there are moments when a life is on the line and you are the only one there.  Enough said.

Knowing when to shoot grief and when to lay the camera down is a different question.  There are some situations you walk into and you have an obvious choice due to the prevailing circumstances.  My basic guidelines are these.  First, is this tragedy a private tragedy or a public one?  By this I am not talking about where it happened.  I am asking myself is this tragedy of sufficient impact on the general public that they need to see someone weeping to accurately tell the story.  On the other hand, does a car crash that kills one person warrant me shooting a photo that is going to place a single family’s misery on the front page of the paper.

9/11 is a no brainer.  As a society we all shared in the grief that struck in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.  I would not hesitate to shoot someone mourning in relation to that event because we were all mourning.  On the other hand, it is a rare traffic accident where I would exploit the grief of another person for the sake of a photo.  I have noticed an interesting phenomenon over the years.  A guy can have his house burn down and be absolutely irate that I am there with a camera.  If the same guy lost his house to a tornado that swept away dozens or even hundreds of homes he would have no problem with my presence.  This begs the question is there such a thing as a private tragedy even if it happens in the public arena?  My answer has always been yes.  A person who is an average Joe, not a recognized public personality, has a right to have a private moment in a public place without my camera intruding on it.

No one died in this wreck and I had a chance to talk to the people before shooting their picture.

After the magnitude of the tragedy is considered, I usually look to the circumstances at the moment.  Some people project a hostility toward the media and you can tell that by making a photo you are going to make the situation worse.  I was with the some friends who shoot for TV and they were talking about being at the scene of a multiple homicide.  They were hanging back and giving the grieving family some room.  A reporter/photographer from another station went up to the family asking who was going to talk on camera.  The guys I was was talking to couldn’t believe what was going on.  There is an appropriate time to approach the family members but barging into the middle of their grieving is not it.  Back off and let the event play out.  A moment will come when you can approach without encroaching.  There will still be emotion but the family will have had an opportunity to brace themselves to face the media.  A little compassion goes a very long way.

Another factor for me has always been how invasive will it be to shoot the picture.  If it is at night I am going to have to pop a flash at the family members.  That is very tough.  I hate to do that because the act of taking a picture can be invasive enough.  Add a harsh, direct strobe and the situation just gets worse.  I have shot grief at night and used a strobe.  It is just a hard thing to do.  If I have to do it I am turning off the motor drive, getting a single frame or two and putting down the gear.  You have to remember that you can’t really make anything better for them but you can make it a whole lot worse.

There is a theory in photojournalism that you should shoot and let the editors decide.  By and large that is sound logic but there are some situations I don’t want to put into the hands of an editor.  I am the one who is there.  I am the one who is seeing the situation, not an editor back at the office.  I, in fact, am the first editor.   I have to decide to shoot or not to shoot.

This came up for me recently at a supposed drowning.  I was covering the search effort and three family members were clearly present.  One member of their party had gone under and never surfaced.  Turns out, the man had a heart attack and then went under.  Using my guidelines I quickly determined that there was nothing I could do to physically help the situation.  I also called this a personal tragedy that had very little impact beyond this family so I had no intention of photographing their misery.  I shot the rescuers in the water.  One member of the party kept walking near where I and the TV shooter were.  I kept seeing the pain in his eyes.  He finally came up just in front of the camera position and squatted down and was just crying.  I knew I had to do something so I laid down my cameras and went up and put an arm around him and offered to pray with him.

He was really glad to have someone there to give him comfort.  As I began to pray I felt a hand on my shoulder too and the TV journalist had joined me to pray for the man and his family.  It was a very difficult and emotional time.  I was wishing for a chaplain but there was not one to be had so I was the chaplain.  It goes back to the question, is there anything I can do to help.  I could not bring back the loved one but I could bring what comfort a prayer and a shoulder to cry on can bring.

My dad was a pastor and the fire chief in our town.  Many times I have seen him change from being the fire chief to being the pastor when someone had died.  I asked him once what you say.  He told me that it really doesn’t matter what you say, it matters that you are there to love them.  I have never forgotten that and when I don’t know what to say, at least I have some guidance on what to do.

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

Gladys Burgess kisses her daughter Paula Standridge during a birthday party for her at SunBridge Care and Rehab in Decatur. Standridge suffers from ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease. photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 10/29/08

Beyond the nostalgia of covering your culture, there really is a point to these posts. You may have noticed how many times I cited my childhood and my family life experience in those four pieces. You see, everything that has happened to me up to this point in my life shapes how I approach a photo assignment. I don’t mean that I sit back and reminisce over every assignment.  What I mean is that you can’t escape who you are.  Who you are shows through in the photos you take.

I was brought up in a loving, caring family with a mom and dad who loved me and cared about me and everything that affects my life.  In fact, I still have those loving, caring parents in my life.  That certainly influences my approach to life so there is no doubt it affects my approach to photojournalism.  Because I came from a tender and compassionate family, I tend to have compassion toward the people I shoot, especially when those people are enduring a tragedy.

Your life experience may have been different.  Your cultural upbringing may have been different.  The way you were brought up and the culture you were raised in will affect how you approach life as well.  One of the things that I have said from the start of this site is that if I see enough of your photos I will know you.  You always shine through in the photos you shoot and the way you approach people, life, faith, and especially tragedy.  I find that you don’t really know anyone until you have seen them under stress or in a tragic situation.  You won’t know yourself as a photojournalist until you have covered these kinds of difficult assignments where you are out there all by yourself with just you and your ethics making those split second decisions on whether to shoot or not to shoot.

I have walked away from several photos because I simply couldn’t bear to press the shutter button because of the anguish I saw through my view finder.  Some would have doubtless won awards but I don’t sleep with awards.  I sleep with myself and what I have done with my life that day.  No editor is going to sing me a lullaby or salve my conscience if I have violated someone with the camera and no one will know if I have done that except me and the person I photographed.

I learned this early in my photojournalism life.  While I was in grad school one of the major spy scandals in US history broke.  As it turns out the guy who was arrested for spying had a daughter who worked for the university.  We interviewed her for our student newspaper and I was assigned to do the shot.  I did all the normal stuff you would expect to do but I had one frame where there was something in the photo that just stopped me in my tracks.  There was a deep pain and hurt written on her face.  I don’t remember all the details but I remember thinking that I had a “real” photo here.  Somewhere deep in my gut I was very uncomfortable with the photo.  The more I thought about it the more uncomfortable I became.  Finally I went to see the young woman whom I had photographed to talk to her about the picture.

I remember asking her how she felt about the photo and she asked me a simple question, “Why?”  Why would I want to run a photo that showed her in anguish?  That pretty much stopped  me cold.  I had no answer except that I thought it would be a “great” photo.  As I squirmed in my seat I came to realize that the real reason I wanted to run the photo was not that I felt it told the story best but that I thought I would get the most praise from it.  When I saw that I was trying to garner praise at her expense I just apologized and got up and left.  I ran anther photo that told the story just fine and I could sleep with myself knowing that I had not violated my subject.

Was I within my rights to run the picture?  Certainly.  But do my rights to run a photo supersede my subjects rights to expect fair treatment from me?  Is there a clear cut answer?  Not really.  I hate situational ethics but sometimes they really do apply.  There are times when I would run a similar photo without hesitation.  In other times I would not even offer it.  Sounds wishy washy doesn’t it.  Try it sometime and you will see what I mean.

I recently shot a soldier’s homecoming, the kind where the soldier is coming home to be buried.  The family was reluctant to let the media out onto the tarmac because they wanted to maintain some privacy in this very difficult moment.  Finally they allowed us to shoot from a distance of about one hundred yards.  No big deal.  I didn’t even know where they were standing.  I shot and left and edited a selection of photos of the casket being unloaded.  Later, an editor asked if I had photos of the family.  I didn’t think so but went back and looked again.  Sure enough they were in a few frames and there was one frame in particular where there was tremendous emotion, especially on the young man’s little sister.  Initially I turned the photo in.  Over the course of the day I just kept going over that photo and it was a great moment but was it a moment worth violating this family’s desire to have some privacy?  In the end, the expression on the little girl’s face was one that would haunt me for years to come and I went to our executive editor and talked to him about it.  We decided to pull the photo from the edit.

We could have run the photo.  But could I have lived with it?  I didn’t think so and my editor agreed.  We could tell the story without the photo and I can sleep with myself.  Did my heritage play into that?  You bet.  All the values I learned as a child affected my photo editing at 45 years old.  Maybe there will be one less award on the mantle but there will be many more nights of good sleep.

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

I have a pet peeve.  Contest toning irritates me and the ethics behind it, or the lack of ethics behind it, really bother me.  Certain organizations that promote ethics year round seem to suspend them when it comes time for contests and toning that would clearly not be tolerated and could actually cost you your job during the year is suddenly rewarded and lauded as exemplary work.  This double standard rubs me the wrong way and sends a very mixed message.  I am not naming any names here and will not.  That is not the point.  Many, if not all, photojournalism contests, allow this  over toning of the submitted work.  Most of these photos in no way represent the actual situation the photographer encountered.

We are either in the business of honestly reporting the news or we are not.  Art photography has its place but I don’t see how it has a place in photojournalism.  It even bothers me that photographers who routinely work in color all year long will convert their contest entries to black and white to enhance their chances of winning.  This stuff bugs me.  While making black and white images isn’t unethical in any sense of the word, come on folks, we live and work in a color world and just about everything we shoot is shot in color and submitted in color and the only reason it goes black and white is usually because of the limitations imposed by the printing plants.  Once in a while, an assignment is made and planned from the outset to run in black and white but the overwhelming majority of assignments are planned and shot in color and we all know it.

I have just been looking at one of the premier photojournalism contests in the world and have been dismayed by the number of over toned, hyper contrasted images that have been given awards.  Just my opinion here, and that is what contest judging is, an opinion, but changing the content of the image through toning is something that should not be allowed in a photojournalism contest.  Images that would be rejected as inferior if they were normally toned are given second life due to the toning.  Again, that is an opinion and it is based out of my conception of what good photojournalism is.

Back in the early days of my career I could see lots of examples of the “hand of god” burning on black and white images.  This essentially means a photo has been burned down heavily in the background, particularly the sky, to create a “look.”  Frankly, this is not what you see, or what anyone else with you would see, on a photo assignment.  A contest entry should have to conform to the normal toning that you could do for an image to be published if it is being entered in a photojournalism contest.  Let the image speak for itself and not the image manipulation skills of a photographer.  Like I said, there are plenty of art photo contests  to enter those other images in.  Photojournalism is about reporting with integrity not making stuff up.  It doesn’t matter to me whether it is made up through adding or removing elements through unethical cloning, toning or other means.  If it isn’t what you saw it isn’t honest.  And I am not talking about what you wish you had seen.  I am talking about what you actually saw.

As you can tell, this is irritating me.  I just feel that if we have to face ethical standards in our daily work we should abide by those ethical standards when it comes to entering contests.  Let your toning reflect what you saw and do nothing to the photo other than correct the image so that what you saw will reproduce on your particular publication’s media.  That’s it.

I am including one photo toned three ways with this post.  The photo was done during a campaign stop for Artur Davis who is running for governor of the great state of Alabama.  The first image is toned for reproduction in the printed Decatur Daily.  The second has received some hand of god type burning of the edges.  Notice that the light/shadow combination is already there but I have enhanced it beyond what was actually visible to any person attending the rally.  The final image is a black and white conversion of the file with a bit of added contrast on Davis.  Tell me what you think about this post and the toning on these photos.  Leave comments and lets talk about this.  Maybe I am off base.  Maybe not.

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

Former Alabama Governor Guy Hunt lies in the Mount Vernon Primitive Baptist Church near Holly Pond Tuesday during visitation. Hunt preached at the church during his life. Photo by Gary Cosby Jr. 2/03/09

Every now and then something happens to put you in a really bad situation not of your making.  This happened to me yesterday.  I was assigned to cover former Governor Guy Hunt’s visitation prior to his funeral today.  The Governor passed away late last week and a visitation was held for him in one of the churches where he used to preach.  Our reporter had been in touch with the funeral home that was handling the visitation and they told us there were no restrictions to media activity.  You already begin to see what is about to happen?

I walked into the church and began shooting pictures as discreetly as possible.  I shot about eight or nine frames over the course of about ten minutes and was approached by a man who was very polite and informed me the visitation was private.  Now I am feeling like a total heel with nothing I can do but apologize.  It turns out he is the Governor’s son which I didn’t know as we talked.  He politely asked for my film and I had to explain that I was shooting digital.  So he then asked me to delete the images in his presence.  I had no choice but to comply.  As I began deleting frames, he saw a couple that he said were okay so I left with a State Trooper who was also very polite and had served as Governor Hunt’s body guard during his time in office.

He took me down in the cemetery to where the grave stone was and I shot there.  We had a very nice conversation and I asked him to please apologize to the family for the intrusion.  It was then that I found I had been talking to Governor Hunt’s son.  I was even more flummoxed than before.  I explained that we were really misinformed by the funeral home and he assured me he would explain it all to the family.  The situation was not one of my making but there I was anyway, right in the middle of it and feeling like a total jerk.

Normally, a governor’s funeral and associated activities are mostly open to the public.  In this case, Governor Hunt was also a Primitive Baptist preacher and he and his family have deeply held religious beliefs.  Apparently photographing the open casket during the visitation violated their beliefs which just made the situation worse.  There was a public ceremony today prior to the burial which we did not cover.  While everyone was extremely polite during  a situation that could have been very tense, I still marvel that I could have been in the situation at all.  I hated violating the family’s privacy but it seems to have turned out okay.  The Governor’s son allowed me to keep a couple of images that did not show the open casket which let me have a photo to turn in for the paper to run.  I am very grateful for his graciousness during what must have been a difficult time for he and his family.  While I hate that I was in the situation at all, I am grateful for the outcome.

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