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Thoughts on April 20, 1999: I had worked a couple of late nights and was catching up on sleep when I was disturbed by a series of pages. The third 911 page at 11:30 a.m. was from my friend Jaime who said he had received an initial report of a shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. The magnitude of the incident did not register for the next couple of minutes. We headed down to Denver and the seriousness of the incident dawned on me as his news pager spit out update after update. This was a six-alarm tragedy. I had many concerns on my mind. I had dashed out of the house with a lot of film in my fanny pack, except a lot of the film had been used at a concert the previous night. A head count of unused film brought a chilling figure: five rolls of 200 ASA, a couple of rolls of 400, two rolls of slide film and three rolls of 800. Not a good start. The five news helicopters hovering over the crime scene were our compass through Littleton. We arrived at about 12:45 p.m. at the library where parents had gathered to find their kids.
Mark decided to bypass the police cordon. We drove a block around the perimeter when he stopped to ask for directions. That's when I made a crucial mistake, a mistake that went against my instincts. I decided to get the sure shot and not take the gamble. I followed the pack gathered at Leawood Elementary school and missed the shot Mark earned: he shot from a house adjacent to the school and got pictures of the students being evacuated from the building by the SWAT team. The next couple of hours were a blur. I got shots of parents finding their kids, students breaking down and finally, busload after busload of kids who had been evacuated from the school by the SWAT team. I was so concerned about getting the action that I didn't know what I was missing. I learned a lesson in relaxation. There was a lot of pressure to get the shot and a lot of national competition. Chris Anderson told me to relax and find my style. Relaxing allowed me to think and get a unique shot. I was hit hard by the news that as many as 25 students were dead. I shudder to think something like this could ever happen again but unfortunately records were made to be broken.
There were two immediate problems. I didn't have time to grab a monopod during the rush to the crime scene but I found a good substitute in a musical bin behind the altar: a four-foot Latin American rain stick with a fat base. All it needed was a screw for the mount and the manufacturers would have the best sounding monopod in the business. I also found the solution to the loud rewind noise of my EOS 1: I hit the rewind button and immediately dumped it into a guitar case. It's amazing how the world of journalism can change so suddenly. The front page of the Rocky Mountain News that day was a feature on the Denver Zoo's two polar bear cubs. The next day it's of a girl screaming in agony after the shootings with the headline "Heartbreak." I got back to the office at 11:30 p.m. and started off my night. Editing, scanning, captioning and transmitting eleven photos to a photo agency took me close to 2 p.m. I was exhausted and I didn't dream that night. Thank God. |
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James
Keivom
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Contributor
since 1998
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Behind
the Viewfinder - A Year in the Life of Photojournalism |
