January 27, 1998

Dick Kraus writes about the public perception that our job is all glory. It might seem that way this week at the Journal Times and our sister papers in Madison and LaCrosse. We each sent photographers to San Diego to cover the Green Bay Packers, and today we sent Liana Cooper to Green Bay to shoot the welcome for the Packers at Lambeau Field. Tomorrow the LaCrosse Tribune will be busy covering President Clinton's stop in their city, an assignment that takes on added significance in light of the controversy swirling around him.

These assignments are actually very demanding and draining ones. Jim Slosiarek, our photographer at the Super Bowl, knew that he was out there alone competing against at least a dozen Associated Press photographers whose work would stream into our photo editing computers along with his, via satellite links from the stadium. We were delighted with Jim's work from the game...especially his telling photo of three-time MVP quarterback Brett Favre fumbling.

The viewfinder in our cameras is dark for the split second we shoot our photos...that means that if you see a "great" sports photo, you were either too early or too late when you hit the shutter. We've learned to never count on anything until we see our film.

Liana was shooting against two AP photographers at Lambeau Field. We are leading tomorrow's paper with her photo of star defensive player Reggie White circling the stadium, greeting fans.

Presidential visits are another beast. The public often has better access than the working press. The press is herded onto over-crowded platforms at the rear of the hall. Photographers are shoulder-to-shoulder, photographing a carefully scripted (for TV) event. There is virtually no chance to get a photo different from anyone else's, but there is the devil to pay if you lose your concentration for a split second and miss any spontaneous moment that may happen.

Vice President Al Gore came to Racine the day before the 1996 election. Liana was on the press platform with the requisite long lenses and tripod. I brought our family point-and-shoot camera and used a public ticket to get a front row spot as Gore worked the crowd shaking hands (we used Liana's photo because she had a better photo of Gore with the local candidate he was supporting).

I remember the 1992 campaign when Dan Quayle was in Racine. The party faithful warmed up the crowd showing a video about Quayle which ended with his post-Murphy Brown quote, "I have earned the scorn of the media, and I wear it like a badge of honor!" The partisan crowd went wild. Yet, twice when Quayle spotted me taking pictures as he shook hands with the crowd, he stopped, faced me, and held a wave until I took a picture. He told the crowd he was proud to have earned the scorn of my profession, but he was going to make sure he helped me get a picture for the front page (we didn't even consider those phony frames in our film edit)!

Glory? More typical assignments from this week are a six-bart snow dog a father built for his kids, that peers into the living room window; a photo for a business page story about the growing shortage of good tool and die makers; a photo of a well-known store going out of business; a feature about a local minister who emigrated from Cuba; and an illustration for a teen page feature about getting the courage to ask someone out for a date. As for sports, Jim's first assignment back from the Super Bowl was a high school swimming meet in a humid, under lit high school natatorium.

January 27, 1998

Mark Hertzberg