Assignment Chicago

An End of School Sock-in-the-Face

2013-05-19T14:50:33-05:00

School is ending this upcoming week in my area of Chicagoland, and to herald the end of the long haul there's nothing like an unanticipated sock-in-the-face. My children's school holds a family picnic on the playground at the end of the school year. The "white surprise" is a curious tradition that involves what I believe to be pancake mix, flour, whipped cream and/or other baking ingredients that forms both a white cloud and a gelatinous mess. But that wasn't the only way to get creamed.

Shortly after this was a soccer game in which a couple kids were hit square in the face by a soccer ball kicked by a grownup. I chose not to play in that soccer game until the last few minutes, to avoid repeating what happened a few weeks before. I had been so enthused while playing in a similar soccer game that I didn't remember bowling over a couple kids in the pursuit of the ball. The last thing I want to do is traumatize some poor grade-schooler on his own turf. A friend teased me about it until he played at the picnic and became the grown-up who caused the last sock-in-the-face of the school year...

The Lies of Photo Forensics

2013-05-14T18:07:43-05:00

A firearm hangs in a state forensic science department in Virginia. The image was for a series about wrongful convictions based on faulty forensic science.

Hey Sebastian Anthony, this isn't C.S.I.

Even now, you're re-writing your post about how the 2013 World Press Photo was "faked" with Photoshop, softening and back-tracking from accusing photographer Paul Hansen of cutting and pasting body parts to compose his image. Or, as you strongly asserted before changing it, "the photo itself is almost certainly a composite of three different photos, with various limbs spliced together from each of the images".

Well, almost certainly.

How that conclusion was reached, even when the "expert", Neil Krawetz, you referenced didn't even say that? You never explained. Fortunately, you changed that.

I won't guess at your motivations. Yes, your article was tweeted over 2,000 times, and was liked on Facebook over 13,000, but I'd never say that traffic was EVER a motivation. I don't think BusinessInsider.com for all its penchant for inflammatory headlines, would have written (and re-written) such a post.

I've been on the receiving end of Photoshop accusations. So has my colleague Scott Strazzante. Being accused of cloning, or cutting-and-pasting, is the most venomous accusation you could make of a photojournalist.

Each time people were certain that we used Photoshop.

Each time we had to waste energy defending baseless accusations.

Each time people kept reposting the original allegation, contributing to the belief that photojournalists regularly lie with their pictures.

You're not a part of the photojournalism community. So you might not see much harm in trashing someone's reputation without the benefit of the doubt. As Krawetz himself said, nonchalantly, "In my own view, World Press Photo is 'just another' photo contest."

But you know better than that. I really believe you do.

The worst part is that people shared the article so quickly.

Shame on us.

I believe your forceful accusation would have gone nowhere without the window dressing of forensic analysis.

Maybe it was that bedazzling ELA analysis. It looked so cool - like I was seeing through night-vision goggles. I like the acronym too.

But forensic science, as any criminal defense attorney will tell you, is not always science.

I know a little bit about this phenomenon. I travelled across the country for an investigation of forensic science experts who push their specialties, such as bite marks or fire science, in courtrooms around the country.

People have gone to prison, wrongfully accused, because of them. When a person dresses themselves up as an expert and pushes their conclusions as certainties, juries tend to believe them. Even when the F.B.I says such testimonies are based on unproven, unfounded, or outdated science. I've visited the incarcerated and their families. Their lives and reputations are ruined. One person was put to death in Texas over a fire that bad science said was an arson.

But it's so persuasive. Charts, graphs, diagrams. Titles and professional associations. We may not understand, but that's because we're just not smart enough, right? The more assertive, the more credible is the expert. "We'll take your word for it." It's like the Milgram experiment in my college social psychology class. Wear a lab coat and we will blindly follow.

Although we're just talking about photos, forensic science experts can be just as careless with people's reputations as they are with individual lives. They rarely, if ever, apologize.

I'm not saying your forensic expert was careless or sloppy. I'm sure he believed what he said. Even now, he's declaring himself vindicated, even after World Press had their own forensic experts testify to the integrity of the image, putting the issue to rest, mercifully.

I think you'll relate when I say that you shouldn't always believe what you read.

As I write this, your article reads differently. I don't know why you keep changing it.

Your article has more versions than Paul Hansen's photo has layers.

I think it's just time to kill the post entirely.

--- Alex Garcia

************************************************

Be sure to catch up on all of the weekly photography tips from Assignment Chicago.

Below are some of the more popular "Tuesday Photo Tips":

How to Approach Picture Stories

Tragedy and the Role of Professional Photojournalists

The Age of Fauxtojournalism

Lisa Rose and the Goals of PhotoPhilanthropy

Photo Logistics and the Presidency

9 Reasons to Steal Pictures on the Web...All of Them Bogus

Top 10 Tuesday Tips from 2012

A Reality Check about Photo Jobs

The Greatest Enemy of Photographers

Does the Use of Hipstamatic and Instagram Betray Photojournalism?

Will Citizen Photojournalism Take Over the News Industry?

Why Photojournalism is an Awesome Job

You Know You're a Photojournalist When...

10 Key Traits of Winning Photojournalists

Got Photo Cliches?

The Most Important Skill for a Photojournalist

20 Code Phrases Used by Photojournalists

All Good Work is Done in Defiance of Management

13 Things Photojournalists Love to Hear

9 Things Photojournalists Don't Like to Hear

YouTube Doesn't Care About Your Beginning, Middle, End

7 Lies About Photojournalists

"You're Not My Mother"

2013-05-13T12:41:50-05:00

To see the face of the financial crisis in Illinois and the effects of slashing aid to our mental health care system, consider Chris Marciano. Diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, bipolar, with conduct and narcissistic personality disorders, he has been denied comprehensive mental health care and incarcerated countless times before arriving to the Chicago Read Mental Health Center. I was there for a family visit, accompanying reporters writing an in-depth story about the difficulties that his mother Mary Gabel, at right, has endured to find him appropriate care. If you've ever had questions in the wake of recent tragedies about why parents of violent children don't just find them the right care, then you must read the article. It is heartbreaking and scary.

The situation above was very tense, since he didn't know that a photographer was there to take his picture. The tattoos on his face were etched with cigarette ashes and staples pried loose from magazines during his time in prison. I waited to gauge his stability and to find the right time to bring the camera out from behind a desk. He was ominously incoherent, saying that Mariah Carey was his mother and that Gabel deserved the death penalty. I made one image before he stood up and declared the meeting over after a few minutes. I took a few more frames as he loomed over his mom and then he was gone. His sister says, "My mom has fought long and hard for that boy," Stephanie Marciano said. "She's talked to anybody and everybody that she possibly could, and he's just fallen through the cracks every time."

Chicago's Town Square

2013-05-10T15:34:17-05:00

One of my favorite places in Chicago is Daley Plaza at noon. It's like our town square. Just take a look at the "Under the Picasso" schedule for May to see the kind of international diversity you will find on a regular basis. Whenever I have an assignment, I like to peek in to see what's going on. Today was Croatian American Day which featured songs and dances by traditional folk ensembles. The high schoolers about to perform above are members of Kardinal Stepinac, a Croatian dance and song group from St. Jerome's Parish in Bridgeport. Their faces reflect part of the rich tapestry of Chicago's ethnic diversity.

Paul Kahan - James Beard Outstanding Chef

2013-05-08T17:24:47-05:00

Congrats to Chicagoan Paul Kahan, the chef who oversees such outstanding restaurants as Blackbird, Avec, and The Publican! He shared in the top prize at the 2013 James Beard Foundation Awards in New York Monday. (These pictures were extras from a profile by Kevin Pang last year.)

The Temptation of the Lopsided Life

2013-05-07T22:37:28-05:00

When my son's Little League team went to U.S. Cellular Field last year for a night game, I was there with him enjoying a night out with him and his teammates. His first season was an awesome experience for both of us.

Never has there been such temptation to lead a lopsided life.

You know the kind of life I’m talking about.

It’s the one where every moment is flipped into an Instagram, Tweet, or Facebook post.

It’s the one where thoughts constantly drift to the next picture, blog post, contest entry or traffic spike.

It’s the one about regret for photos not taken or images a few minutes ahead. “Wait a second, let me make this picture..”

The internet is a fickle beast with a voracious appetite. It needs to be fed 24/7. It craves pictures and reminds you there is a lot of talent out there. You see all the things you’re not doing. You feel like you're falling behind.

Don’t feed it regularly and it might take its loyalties elsewhere.

But you will either tame that beast, or end up on a chained collar to the internet like Princess Leia to Jabba the Hut.

Heck, you might want to let it be all-consuming. If you don’t catapult your spouse or children into therapy over it, give it a go. It can be a lifestyle choice and work perfectly fine.

Great achievements in photography, after all, belong to those willing to live a single-minded life. Find a biography of any famous photographer and you'll see devotion to one's craft that is admirable if not all-consuming.

On the other hand, as one photographer put it to me years ago, go ahead and live a lopsided life such that when you die they’ll scatter your photographs on your coffin because that’s all you’ll have left before the dirt is piled on.

Her harsh metaphor startled me. After all, I had pegged her to be an agency photographer willing to go anywhere, anytime and to live a life dedicated to her craft. Yet inside my colleague was a person wanting more of a family life.

As an intern first starting out, I romanticized a single-minded life. I wanted to scour every street for pictures to make the front of Metro. I tried to be like the Photo Terminator, looking left and right robotically at every intersection with the news scanner as my life soundtrack. I wanted to live, breathe and eat photojournalism.

Fortunately, I didn’t crash either by not paying attention to the road in front of me.

I was hungry and ambitious, but craved balance. Years later, I realized finally that when your whole life is all about work, a logical thing happens. When you have a bad day at work, you have a bad day. In a collaborative work environment with variable factors, how likely are you to be able to control for all those that will affect you? You end up giving up control of your mental health to others.

Personally, I wanted my life back. I didn’t want to march through snowstorms on my days off, live off couches for months, or experience the wonders of childhood through strangers’ experiences. I didn’t want to cannibalize personal moments and make my family feel as if I was miles away even though I was standing next to them.

In pursuing a life outside work, I found something that journalists don’t talk about that much. The more you become an active member in communities outside journalism, the more you can bring those communities to your journalism.

I’ve found stories, and helped reporters find stories, through organizations, businesses and churches that I’ve been involved with outside work.

It’s actually a win-win.

Of course, not all are sympathetic at this notion. One boss I had years ago, zealous to have control over our staff as if they were indentured servants, barked, “If you want to be a Little League dad, don’t be a photojournalist.”

My son is playing t-ball and my girl starting softball. Did I tell you she just won “Player of the Game”? (Proud papa)

There are downsides. You’ll also see other people’s careers advance more quickly than yours. Other photographers will win more and bigger awards consistently. Other photographers will pursue projects with the kind of time that you wish you had.

I wish I could say that I’ve mastered the work-life balance. But photojournalism isn’t about clock punching, so I can’t get too hung up on it.

On the other hand, I can say that it helps to draw a line in the sand.

If you aren’t clear and firm about separating your personal and professional life, then technology and competitive pressures have a way of making sure no such boundaries exist.

You'll likely give in to insecurity, ambition or the need to be "Awesome!" for everyone, everywhere because you never know who's watching or who you're competing with.

Whatever choice you make, however, don’t find yourself becoming Jabba’s pet.

--- Alex Garcia

Disorder in the Court

2013-05-06T17:08:50-05:00

It was Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day recently at the offices of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County. The children of employees were discovering just how the judicial system worked, and which door you needed to go pee. It was actually an impressively run event, with singing and dance contests and an opportunity to check out what your parents do all day. Between banging the gavel like they were playing "Ring the Bell" at a carnival, and seeing all hands go up in the jury box at the eviction court, I was glad I wasn't living a courtroom version of "Lord of the Flies". The disorder in the court was only brief, but very forgiving.

A Flashlight App to Light Portraits?

2013-04-30T17:39:00-05:00

Shockingly, the flashlight app on my cellphone proves useful enough to light portraits. My assignment was to photograph this WWII prisoner-of-war who wrote a book about his captivity. It was my first test with a live person, so I'm likely to try more.

Before taking the portrait, I had experimented with my "Flashlight" app, lighting still-lifes in our company studio while replacing a photographer on sick leave. Testing your app on immovable objects to get the hang of things is a good way to go. Less sweat trickles down your back on a portrait when you've practiced a new lighting tool. Public relations people can smell fear.

I use a T-Mobile MyTouch phone, issued to me by the company. The "Flashlight" app turns the flash from the phone's camera into a steady flashlight, a flashing strobe or even a traffic light (go figure). I suppose I could have used the strobe light function on the app, too, but you never know when a rapidly blinking light in a subject's face could accidentally trigger a latent seizure condition. Bad idea.

More than a decade ago, when light-painting was the big craze, I used the poor man's version - a flashlight-hardware-store-special inside a small cardboard box with a hole in it. The purpose of the box was to hide the glow from the cone of the flashlight, so the cone itself didn't create mysterious light streaks on camera.

As I moved the flashlight inside the small box and light poured through the hole, the process sounded somewhat similar to beating an egg. Goofy. Why didn't I just get a flashlight with a black cone or tape it up? I don't know, probably to be different. Years later, I wonder how my subjects felt, sitting in darkness with a photographer acting like a short-order cook.

Nowadays, with less kitchen sound effects, you can use a myriad of lighting apps. For this picture, I set the camera on a tripod, positioned the subject in front of the appropriate backgrounds, and set the exposure at 10 seconds. My aperture was f/16 and my ISO was 100. My metadata dropped out so I can't see my white balance, but I believe it was set for a general auto white balance. It worked fine, but in the future, I'll likely set a custom white balance setting for my phone. After looking at other people's phones, the white balance of the light is all slightly different. The room was very dark but not pitch black.

If you look at the image, there are five zones of the image that I lit, for roughly 2 seconds each.

1. His face, from above right of his head

2. His uniform, mostly from above and from the right.

3. The poster at left, from behind him and from the right.

4. The stars, up close, from right.

5. The flag as a whole, from right.

The whole time, I'm palming my phone, because the screen facing the camera was emitting the app's settings back to the camera.

The difficulty, of course, is that my subject had to stay immobile for the two seconds. As steady as he was, I don't think a single image was tack sharp when brought into Photoshop. We did several takes, and each one there was a bit of movement. This one had the least amount.

A solution was offered to me by friend Kevin Vandivier, who pops a small flash on a person's face to make sure their features are tack sharp. The rest of the image can be light-painted. That might be the way to go in case the image runs large.

WIth more practice, I'll get more of that glowy effect that light-painting is known for. This kind of lighting is of the type where the more you experiment, the more happy accidents you are likely to have.

The best light, as it turns out, could be the one that's in your pocket.

--- Alex Garcia

************************************************

Be sure to catch up on all of the weekly photography tips from Assignment Chicago!

Below are some of the more popular "Tuesday Photo Tips":

Tragedy and the Role of Professional Photojournalists

The Age of Fauxtojournalism

Lisa Rose and the Goals of PhotoPhilanthropy

Photo Logistics and the Presidency

9 Reasons to Steal Pictures on the Web...All of Them Bogus

Top 10 Tuesday Tips from 2012

A Reality Check about Photo Jobs

The Greatest Enemy of Photographers

Does the Use of Hipstamatic and Instagram Betray Photojournalism?

Will Citizen Photojournalism Take Over the News Industry?

Why Photojournalism is an Awesome Job

You Know You're a Photojournalist When...

10 Key Traits of Winning Photojournalists

Got Photo Cliches?

The Most Important Skill for a Photojournalist

20 Code Phrases Used by Photojournalists

All Good Work is Done in Defiance of Management

13 Things Photojournalists Love to Hear

9 Things Photojournalists Don't Like to Hear

YouTube Doesn't Care About Your Beginning, Middle, End

7 Lies About Photojournalists

How to Approach Picture Stories

2013-04-23T17:15:50-05:00

When I photographed a recent story about a 57 year-old embarking on a second career as a professional wrestler, it had two elements going for it: he practiced not far from my home, and it was a heck of a lot of fun...

At the Midwest Photo Summit this past weekend, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Preston Gannaway spoke about the challenges of photographing documentary stories. I found myself nodding my head, relating her experiences to the shipwrecked projects I’ve had or seen over the years.

Like the immigrant couple I met after a major earthquake in Los Angeles. Nine months pregnant and living in a shelter after their apartment building collapsed, the mother said her family had enough. They were going back to Mexico. It was a reverse immigration story. I followed them through the homeless shelter, the maternity ward, and their new place. But they decided to stay. My editor said, “It’s no longer a story.”

Documentary picture stories are, frankly, a hassle. At first you own your story and all is glorious. The story exists in your mind like a romantic ideal. You share your excitement with others. You have renewed sense of mission and purpose in your career.

Then, your story owns you.

You cancel dinners, holidays, and travel plans in order to be there when the long-awaited moment happens. You end up shooting a lot on your personal time, knowing you’ll never get the time back from your employer or family. For some, it's a worthy sacrifice.

Gannaway said her friends joked she was in an “abusive relationship” while working on stories. When Dallas Morning News photographer Mona Reeder spoke at a previous summit, she recounted how she was gone on stories so much her dog didn’t recognize her. I know a photojournalist with children who had to enter therapy over their parent's absence. Working on stories has very real consequences that you don't often hear about.

To make matters more challenging, the sacrifice doesn’t always result in a completed project. There’s a reason why picture story categories in annual contests aren’t jam-packed with narratives of individuals. Life, and journalism, is complicated and messy.

• Subjects disappear or won’t call you, or forget to do so, when it’s important.

• Other family members convince your subject to stop working with you.

• The writer decides to steer the project in a different direction.

• A subject suddenly demands payment or control over what is published.

• A publisher hears about the story and drops it, in fear of an advertiser.

• Your assignment editor says, enough with your project, we need you back.

• Your family says, enough with your project, we need you back.

These are just a few of the reasons why I gravitate to essays more than stories. But I admire and respect photojournalists who do follow through, consistently, on photo stories of individuals. I appreciate this all the more two decades into the profession.

So what are some of the secrets to making them happen? Gannaway mentioned some, but others came to mind based on the successful experiences of other photojournalists:

Prepare Your Subjects…

John Kaplan, on his Pulitzer Prize-winning project about 21 year-olds, shared how he practically dissuaded subjects from working with him in order to keep them from dropping out of the project halfway through. He was investing too much in people to have it not work out. You want to avoid the conversation that starts with, “Had you told me what it was going to be like…”

…But Not Too Much

Not everything needs to be shared, such as all your hopes and expectations with grandiosity, and all the possible outcomes in dreadful detail. You don’t want to have your subject adjust their behavior to fit your expectations, or to freak out over outcomes that have a .001% chance of occurring. The best stories are ones that take different directions, which offer that elusive “surprise”. Stories often grow in scope and length only after your rapport that you might not have predicted before starting the story.

Find Subjects Near You

I once proposed a story on a group of people that lived an hour south of Chicago. Then a massive reconstruction project started. One hour became two. That story became difficult to advance. But when story subjects live within a mile of their work or home, you can stop in easily and frequently. A picture editor here at the Trib, Jeannie Adams-Smith, photographed a heart-breaking story that she found at a rehabilitation center just down the street from our building. The more time you can spend, the more a subject can trust you. That translates to more intimacy, access and storytelling.

Have Something in Common

It helps to have something in common with your subject. Your subject can introduce you to others as someone in the mainstream media who understands their needs and concerns. It also provides you the small talk necessary to carry you both through long stretches of time together. It also keeps you invested on an emotional level to stay with the story when you might be tempted to pull the plug too early.

Get an Advocate

Ideally this would be someone at a publication who will fight for your time while on a project, and to fight for better use of your work. But it also helps to have an advocate in your personal life, who can encourage you while providing an outside voice to a story that can easily become all consuming. A third eye, mind and heart is necessary.

Be Organized and Strategic About Time

Time is a precious commodity, so where and how you spend it can make all the difference. You essentially become your own assignment editor, thinking through visual possibilities to make sure that you can expect a measure of success with your investment of time. This is not to say you need to get a picture every time you spend time with someone. But this subject now has a place and priority on your calendar.

Nothing gets the ball rolling in a newsroom more than great photos early on. But it’s hard to do that with some subjects, who keep erratic schedules and frustrate the best-laid plans with your editors. I wouldn’t say don’t pursue that kind of story, but be prepared (and prepare others) for a lot of wild goose chases and giving up much of your personal time.

Overall, as Gannaway noted, it helps to be realistic. Your project could soar or sink, but you have to know from the outset that your journalistic intentions are sound and square.

After that, destiny takes over…

--- Alex Garcia

Wake Me When the Sequester is Over

2013-04-22T17:36:47-05:00

I felt bad for this passenger. Afraid that the budget sequester was going to create massive delays at the airport, he took an early morning bus to O'Hare from Peoria in order to arrive several hours before his flight. When he arrived, the check-in areas were so empty you could have seen a tumbleweed roll through. I looked up at the flight board. Every flight was on time.

Of course, delays caused by furloughed air traffic controllers are likely happening as I write. He was probably ahead of the curve. But at that moment, the only sleep relief he found was on a baggage scale. The terminal worker at rear arrived at his workstation to find him there, but didn't have the heart to wake him up. He eventually did on his own, and spoke about his frustration with a government that was "playing games" with the budget. He had still had four more hours before his flight was to leave.

Assignment Chicago

An End of School Sock-in-the-Face

The Lies of Photo Forensics

Be sure to catch up on all of the weekly photography tips from Assignment Chicago.

"You're Not My Mother"

Chicago's Town Square

Paul Kahan - James Beard Outstanding Chef

The Temptation of the Lopsided Life

Be sure to catch up on all of the weekly photography tips from Assignment Chicago.

Disorder in the Court

A Flashlight App to Light Portraits?

Be sure to catch up on all of the weekly photography tips from Assignment Chicago!

How to Approach Picture Stories

Be sure to catch up on all of the weekly photography tips from Assignment Chicago!

Wake Me When the Sequester is Over