I started my journey to being a photographer about 7 years ago. I didn't study photojournalism in college or even take a photography class. I bought a digital SLR camera to take better pictures of my young daughters and a love affair was born almost overnight. Soon after my passion for sports photography took over and has held me captive every since. I "learned" my craft mostly online, with the help of a number of great online photography forums. I learned the importance of clean backgrounds, tight cropping, sharp subjects, and most of all, peak action! Catching a play at the peak of the action became my mission. My obsession. And while on this path, I also became a bit of a perfectionist. If my photos didn't meet these all important criteria, well, it just didn't make the cut.
A few years ago, I started shooting for a wire service. One of the smaller ones, but that didn't matter, I was in. I had made it. Validation. I was finally and truly a sports photographer. And as a sports photographer, I really didn't consider myself a photojournalist. I mean, I wasn't taking pictures of burning buildings, protest, riots, or mayors. My only concern was backgrounds, shallow depth of field, sharp subjects, and above all, peak action.
Over the years I slowly began to learn that these things were not the holy grail of sports photography I had learned on these forums. I sell more non action photos now than anything else, and when I first started out I didn't even take any of those shots. My learning continues to this day and my latest lesson is one that may shake me to my core.
I realize now that any time I pick up my camera and cover an event, be it a sporting event, or concert, or yes, a burning building, I AM a photojournalist. Something happened to me this week that made me realize that I need to start thinking differently.
I was covering a preseason NFL game between the SF 49ers and the Oakland Raiders. If any of you have ever covered preseason football, you know how boring it can be. Many of the starting players will play just a series or two, and most of the game is played with players who will be cut and out of the NFL in just a few short weeks, making all of the pictures you are taking worthless. But as I diligently snapped away trying to get what little action there was, or some worthwhile player stock pictures, I noticed that there seemed to be a larger number of alcohol induced fighting going on in the stands. As a sports photographer, I rarely even looked into the stands because the peak action was to be found on the field. But in one instance, the fight was pretty close to me, and since the game was pretty boring, I turned around and snapped a few pictures. I then went back to the task at hand and finished the game.
In my editing workflow, I always go through every picture that I took at a game, and flag the ones that I want to edit and upload to the wire. I came across the fight pictures, chuckled to myself at how silly grown men could be, then kept going. The thought of editing and publishing these pictures never crossed my mind. The next day when I picked up the newspaper, I saw that a picture of this very fight was on the front page. Not the front of the sports section, but the front page. Over the next couple of days, I noticed that the pictures of that fight were everywhere! At that moment, the sick feeling of regret began to creep over me. Why hadn't I uploaded my pictures of the fight to my wire service? And it hit me. Perfectionism, and photojournalism...
When I looked at my fight pictures, I decided not to upload them because of:
1. Photojournalism - I am covering this game to get action shots of players and coaches, not drunks in the stands. I am a sports photographer, not a photojournalist. I felt that shots of a brawl in the stands had no value and that no one was interested in them.
2. Perfectionism - I barely registered it at the time, but when taking my pictures of the brawl, someone had walked into my frame and the shadow of their head could be seen in the corner of my shots. On a barely conscious level, I deemed the shot ruined. No one wants this kind of stuff to begin with, and certainly not with some guys head in my shot. I only realized this because the shot on page 1 of the paper had a nearly identical issue in the opposite corner, and yet there it was on the front page of the paper.
After seeing the pictures of the brawl almost everywhere, I came to my senses up and uploaded the shots to the wire. More importantly though, I realized that I am indeed a photojournalist every time I cover an event, sports or otherwise. I now know that my personal feelings and perfectionist hang ups have no place in deciding what is newsworthy. So now all shots go to the wire and the publications can decide what is fit to print.
