Blogging on photojournalism, video, television news, technology, and other media issues.


Working it! One shot at a time. That's what I do. Having had a camera up to my eyes since I was 14 has made me who I am today. I've met so many people, traveled to so many places, and lived my life through various focal lengths of glass. In fact, I can't think of too many things I've done without a photographic reference coming to mind. The World Trade Centers, 1973: My first camera, a Minolta Hi-Matic, Tri-X film. Israel, 1980: Nikon F2, 105mm and 35mm, Kodachrome. The New York Stock Exchange, 1986: Nikon FM2, 300mm f 2.8 and 24mm, Fujichrome. The birth of my twin boys, 1995: Minolta CLE, Nikon FE2, Canon Sure-shot, Fujicolor. Montana, Fishing on the Yellowstone River, 2010: Canon Rebel XTi, 28mm-135mm, 10 megapixels. Occupy Wall Street, NYC, 2011: Sony PDW-510, XDCAM, Fujinon 20X lens.


If you've lived your life through photography, film, or video, then we have something in common. Or, if you're new to this passion of creating images and telling stories visually, I'd love to hear about your discoveries and your reactions to mine. It's a great time to have a camera to your eye. We're living through this fast-paced, digital revolution together. So much change, but the bottom line is still the same: Working it. From one moment to the next. One shot, one exposure at a time. Visually we communicate ideas, inform and, hopefully, touch others emotionally, all the while maintaining a level of integrity with the intended message. Let's keep the dialogue open.


Sunday, June 19, 2011

f. 8 And Be There!

News and documentary photographers used to have a saying: "f. 8 and be there." It basically means that if you see it, if you are present, then you can shoot it. There is some disagreement as to who came up with the saying--maybe crime photographer Arthur "Weegee" Fellig--but it's probably been around since the 1940s. Great pictures are often the result of long adventures with many obstacles (both technical and logistical) and some involve simply being there in the right place at the right time. It doesn't matter if you're observing a grizzly pulling a fish out from a river or if you're shooting unrest in the Middle East, surviving the journey is often as much a part of the success as anything. If you're not familiar with those numbers on the lenses, f. 8 is an aperture setting between f. 11 and f. 5.6. It offers relatively good depth-of-field or sharpness. If you were using the 35mm film Kodachrome (available since the mid-thirties which most National Geographic photographers used before Fujichrome and digital cameras led to it being discontinued a couple of years ago), then picture-taking outside in sunlight with a shutter speed of about 1/250 of a second and the lens set at f. 8 would be pretty close to a perfect exposure. The point is: How could you miss?

Thus, capturing the news and finding great moments is all about getting there: "Be there!"
This was on my mind as I was driving from New Hampshire at 4:30 a.m. anxious to meet my reporter, Duarte Geraldino, at the site where the tornado had hit in Springfield, Massachusetts on June 2, 2011. While on the Mass Pike, some 40 miles from Springfield, I noticed a convoy of two dozen fire engines and utility trucks from eastern towns and cities like Lowell and Boston. After seeing the state troopers up front I figured they were on their state-of-emergency mission.
I pulled up behind them and followed them off the highway exit to their staging area.

Every disaster has a staging area, where the police, emergency management, and other officials meet to direct who goes where and does what! It's where we set up the microphones for press conferences.

Often, we find out in advance where that is. But today, the only address I had was where our satellite truck was parked since early morning. So I was feeling a bit lucky having the staging area reveal itself with such ease.

I followed the last fire engine into the parking lot of the Basketball Hall of Fame and saw the National Guard out in full force. There, I met Geraldino, who was driving up from New York City, and we shot some footage from the planning meeting just getting under way, got our coordinates, and moved on to find where the devastation was.

Now here's the crazy part. It's 7:30 a.m. We have less than 90 minutes to grab as many scenes as we can find for the 11:30 a.m. video package being edited in New York. To keep to our deadline, we are set to meet our truck and start feeding our footage back to our broadcast center around 9 a.m. That's more time than we usually have as we have to be in place by for our live shots back to stations for their noon broadcasts around the country.

Geraldino sees a woman crossing the street right in front of a police barricade. She is crying. He approaches her. I park the van and grab my camera a nd get ready to shoot. By the time we start interviewing her she's calmed down and I'm thinking this isn't great stuff. We move on and see a couple cleaning out the broken glass from their car. Not bad, but not too exciting. By that I mean, it doesn't tell the story in pictures.

Then we decide to turn around and head out of the downtown area. Traffic is a touch-and-go. Trees and power lines are down everywhere. Police have major intersections closed off. Signs from businesses are strewn about and windows are broken. The cleanup effort by shopkeepers is in full force. As we make our way through bumper-to-bumper traffic, I glance down a side street and I let out a scream! I can't believe what I'm seeing. A woman wielding an ax is chopping a tree on top of her car. I think, "Money shot!" It has all the elements we need.

The sound of the ax coming down on the tree is unnerving. I get in place and start shooting. Her ax misses once in a while and hits her front windshield or the hood of the car. "This is nuts," I'm saying to myself, "but certainly entertaining!" Geraldino interviews a few of the women who have taken turns with the ax. The owner of the car says it's her graduation day and she needs the car to run some errands, not knowing if it's been cancelled. I shoot close-ups of the ax hitting the tree, of their faces grimacing, of the car that is totaled swallowed up by this five-story tall tree, then step back and shoot wide shots.

Geraldino calls the producer in New York and tells him about our find. We film a stand-up to camera and decide we've got enough material. Time to find the truck which our GPS tells us is two miles away. Our segment featuring the ax-lady makes it into all of the packages from noon until evening.

A look at the clock and it was only 8:15 a.m. But already we had our f.8 and be there moment! Anything else we find that day would be gravy.