Tell Me A Story...

Photographers, editors and reporters come to the National Press Photographer's Association Oklahoma Workshop for as many different reasons as why they got into TV news in the first place.

For some of the photographers, it was a matter of their employer saying, "Hey, there is this big photog thing in Oklahoma that we budget people to go to every year and they always come back really inspired, we will pay for you to go." For others, like me, it was a sacrifice of $1500 on my MasterCard at 21% interest and taking a week of vacation time. As I look back over my notes and await my pictures to come back from the photo lab, it was worth every borrowed penny.

This is one of those learning experiences I wish I would have had about six years ago, right after I started to get a feel for the camera and editing, but before I adopted many bad habits and had to learn some simple things the hard way. The most important lessons I have learned in the last eight years, I learned in ten minutes or less. Dave Mathews (not of The Dave Matthews Band, but rather news director at KOAT's old Roswell Bureau) showed me the importance of a tripod in about two minutes as we compared a crime scene he shot with one versus one I shot without one. We could have played his raw tape on the air straight out of the camera in a pinch, whereas mine required about ten minutes of editing and still looked really bad. Brent Clark at KVIA taught me about the difference between filters 2,3,4 in about three minutes as he showed me a piece of tape illustrating what that little 1/4 ND thingy means next to the filter wheel. It is scary to think I had been shooting for three years already, I had always just taken it as law that you use the filter with the sun icon next to it for sunny days, the cloud filter for cloudy days and I never bothered with the other one. Gilbert Benavidez at KOAT taught me about color temperature in about three minutes one day while eating dinner. He showed me how the shutter "crushes" the background and creates depth in about ten seconds. In less than thirty seconds, he taught me the simplest rule of lighting that no one had ever bothered to mention before: put your reporter between the camera and the light source. I had been shooting for seven years before Richard Adkins took two minutes to teach me about screen direction and crossing the axis. How is it possible for someone to do something for so long and still not know what they are doing? Automobile manufactures do not build cars for seven years without knowing how the brakes stop the car. Accountants do not go through seven tax seasons without knowing how deprecation affects assessed value. A chef does not run a restaurant for seven years without knowing butter scorches and margarine does not. To take a phrase from Hemingway in the Snows of Kilimanjaro, "How did this leopard climb so high?"

After the past week at the Oklahoma Workshop, I have to look back and ask, "How did I get so far without knowing the basics?" I attribute it to several things. First of all, unitl I came to WRAL, I don't believe anyone really cared how my shooting looked, as long as it made it's slot in the newscast and was not horrible to watch, it was acceptable. Since no one gave a damn, why should they push for any kind of education to make us better photographers, that would have cost time and money. There were very few good people around me to learn from, and the folks I could learn from, I took everything they had to say. But they were under the same gun I was, shoot it and get on to the next assigment, teaching was a luxury time could not afford. Secondly, I was pretty happy with my work. It looked as good as everybody elses', so I did not perceive a problem. I liked blaming the lack luster quality of my shooting on crappy gear, oppressive management and boring assignments. I always wanted to believe the photographers at the good stations like KUSA and KSTP did not have to battle these things (even though I know now they do). Finally, TV is fleeting. If I do something today that is not on a tripod, has blue video or was not well lit, in a minute and thirty seconds, it will be gone forever---floating out into space until little green men pick it up on their TVs out on Zordak4. At many stations (my previous station, not my present one), photography is secondary to the story. Consultants have convinced news directors that the more stories you have in a newscast, the more people will watch. That develops the mentality of get it shot, get it on the air and get to the next story, don't waste time and money with lights and tripods. People and stories move too fast to worry about little things like making the subject look good or actually telling a story. When you watch the news tonight, count how many stories you see. Then ask yourself, "Was that a story?" Did it have a beginning, middle and end? Did you get a feel for who the character was and why the story was about them? At the end of the story did you care about the character or maybe associate with them in some way or did they teach you something or at least entertain you for a minute? Then think about the newscast again, how many "stories" did you really see?

That right there is what the NPPA Oklahoma Workshop is all about: becoming storytellers, not just people who lug around heavy camera equipment for eight hours a day. Before you can tell a story, you have to understand how to shoot the story. The week began with the basics. They taught the 300+ students in two days what it took me eight years to learn. First there were the things I wish I had learned so long ago but thankfully know now: "Shoot wide, medium, tight, super tight" "Rule of thirds" "Edit on the action". Then there were the things I have known for a long time, I just put in the back of my head and was not using: "Action/Reaction", "Get the moments" "Don't tell the viewer what they can already see and hear". But what I really came for was the inspiration: "You can tell the comfort level of a reporter by who the first sound bite in a story is with" "If my camera is 50 feet from the subject and your camera is 5 feet from the subject, I have 45 feet more of honesty." "The strongest story is the weakest voice".

A year ago, KOAT photographer Todd Ziemek and I made a pact to come to the Oklahoma Workshop. At that time, I had planned it as a job hunt as well. It was time to leave KOAT and I knew committed stations would be at the workshop recruiting. But a funny thing happened on the way to the workshop... a station in Raleigh, North Carolina found me. But I was bit by the workshop bug. I knew I needed to do this, I had lost a lot of faith in television news along the way and this would be the place to find it again. I was in search of the religion in the medium. I watned to understand why people commit their careers to a job that consists of long hours, lousy pay and no recognition. I could not remember why I had gotten into it, I just knew I could not leave again.

I left TV news for about 8 months in 1996. I thought I had grown out of it, it was time to get a real job. I worked in cable advertising for TCI. At first I was enomoured with the novelty of a real lunch hour (as opposed to snarfing down a burger with one hand and steering with the other while en route to my next story). I loved having an office, with a door and a desk and walls. Previously I had a discarded tape box full of personal affects under the producer's desk. I was also a huge fan of getting a paycheck that could actually pay the bills and have some left over for food and entertainment. But working 8 to 5, spending more on dry cleaning than groceries, and having money in the bank was not my kind of life style. It was so safe and sterile, all the days just blurred together, I was painfully bored. Then one night as I was cleaning up the office to go home, my pager went off. The number was bizarre and familiar at the same time. It was to the KOAT newsroom. I did not leave KOAT (the first time I resigned in May 1995) in the best graces, I could not imagine what they wanted from me. I called trying not to identify myself and hoping they would not recognize my voice. But then a familiar voice answered the phone. It was Teresa Davis McKee, our anchor from the dissolved Roswell bureau now the weekend anchor at the Albuquerque main station. In grand Teresa style, she did not beat around the bush. She told me it was safe to come back to the news business now that a certain news director was gone and there was a position waiting for me. I could not say no. So I said, "yes".

From the first time I put the camera back on my shoulder, I knew I was doing the right thing again, I was just not doing it right. Over the next two years I lost sight of why we put the news on the air everyday. I knew I loved shooting, and I knew I loved storytelling, but that is not what we were doing. I knew the Oklahoma Workshop would recharge my professional batteries and hopefully find me a place to tell stories rather than just shoot assignments. But like I said before, I took a 1700 mile detour from Albuquerque to Norman, Oklahoma by way of Raleigh, North Carolina. Suddenly all the people around me did all the stuff really well and I was the one who need to catch up. The reason why I needed to go to Oklahoma changed.

There is not one giant revelation I took away from the workshop, like some people do, like I might have seven years ago. The workshop put lots of little voices in my brain that will help me tell stories and get through the bad days and embrace the good ones. Somedays it might be Bob Dotson of NBC Nightly News telling me "to fall in love with every story", other days it could be John Larson of Dateline asking, "What is the big ticket item in this story? Love, Fear, Jealousy, Shame, Regret?" or News Director Scott Lisbin pounding the podium, "Fight the formula!". It may be simple words like KSTP's Mark Anderson whispering, "Wide, medium, tight, super tight, get the moment" or the human tripod---Darrell Barton lurking over my shoulder "Action/Reaction, Action/Reaction" or it might just be one phrase, "Tell me a story."

Behind the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism
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