We were told to all bring our cameras to class on Thursday for some mysterious project. When we got there our professor told us we had an hour and a half to wander the campus and come back with a stand alone news photo.
It was late in the week, it was raining, no one was doing anything interesting. But, when you need a photo you can’t let any of those things get in your way.
Our classroom is on the south end of campus, next to a large bus stop and the parking lot for commuter s students. The busses coming and going were perfect because I figured if I was going to photograph anything it might as well be something which I could shoot over and over until I got something I liked.
I shot probably over 100 frames with different angles, different shutter speeds, different styles. I wanted to focus on the reasons which students choose to ride the bus to school instead of driving. One of the girls I talked to said that even though she has a car she takes the bus because of how hard it is to get a parking permit.
I chose to submit this photo because although it isn’t the most interesting photo to look at it has the students, the bus stop, and the cars, all of the elements which I wanted to focus on. When you pair it with a caption which has a quote and an explanation I think it become a decent news photo. It addresses an issue and portrays it in a straight forward way.
It wasn’t the most exciting photo assignment I’ve ever had, but I think it was very real world. Photojournalists are completely dependent on the world around them. When you can’t find anything interesting going on you can’t just quit. You have to keep looking for news to portray even when it’s not extraordinarily interesting.
And then there are days like this: The sun is out, it’s 70 degrees, everyone is feeling happy, and two student’s decide to practice acrobatic yoga on the comm lawn.
It was one of those days when I thought to myself, “My camera is really heavy and I don’t need it today,” so I left it in my room. To everyone out there: it is always those days when cool things happen. But thank heavens for 21st century smartphones with incredibly high quality cameras.
Their names were Savannah Maas and Garrett Lander and they were two of the sweetest people I have ever met. They were also the strongest people I have ever met. Every time they showed me a new pose I was overwhelmed with the feeling that I belonged to some incredibly inferior subclass of human. They made it look so effortless!
Before coming to college I would have a taken a photo from afar and moved on. But that day I walked up, introduced myself, and spent the next 15 minutes being blown away by the amazing tricks they preformed for me.
And of course, this happened on a day when I had no photo assignment due.
But I thought I’d post both photos to show the main struggle of a news photographers life. When you need a picture nothing interesting happens and you’re stuck with pictures of bus stops. And when you don’t need a picture the world drops acrobatic yoga in your lap.
Which is why I run a blog – where I get to decided the deadlines and the content. It’s a way of shouting “Look! I am good at this, just not on the day you needed me to be.”
Oh well, someday something amazing will happen and I will win a Pulitzer prize. But until then I will continue to document the mundane and the unexpected, because that is how all great journalists begin the road to documenting the historic.
Kesia Lee 