Behind the Photos (The Planet Magazine Fall 2015)

There is a lot of work which goes into the making of a magazine. And I mean A LOT of work.

And of that work, about 80% leads somewhere,  50% of that is publishable, 20% of that gets seen by an editor, 10% of that gets considered for publication – so that by the time The Planet Magazine was finished only about 5% of the work behind it ever saw the light of day.

But what happens to the remaining 95%?

Well, it sits on my laptop, taking up space and dejectedly waiting. I have over 1,000 unpublished photos wishing someone loved them as much as the three lucky ones which got to go on page 6 of the Fall 2015 Innovation issue.

But some of them are about to get a second chance here. Here is a collection of never-before-seen photos and their unique and goofy stories.

 

Solar Window – We called this project the unicorn story, because for a while we didn’t believe it really existed.

We were assigned to document a prototype for a transparent, solar energy collecting window which had been designed and built by Western students. We knew it had won prestigious awards and grants in the spring but whenever we asked to see the prototype, our sources (professors, scientists, students) just shrugged and said “We don’t know where it is.”

As far as anyone knew this was the VERY FIRST transparent solar window EVER created and they had LOST IT.

Finally we tracked down Professor Todd Morton of WWU who scratched his head and said, “So they lost it huh? Well, it might be in one of our storage closets.” Three flights of stairs, one wrong turn, an empty lab, a locked door, and three wrong tries later – we were the first three people to lay eyes on the NOVA Window prototype in six months.

It was, needless to say, a very exciting moment for us. But that wasn’t the end of the misshapes.

Three weeks later I was in another lab with two new members of the continuing project team. They were a little unsure of how to handle me at first so I told them to just demonstrate how the window operated while I took pictures. Things where going fine until Atwood tried to show me the safety feature which he said would keep the smart window from closing on anyone’s hand. He hit the “close” switch and stuck his hand inside, but not only did the window close on his fingers, it broke as well.

It was a bit like watching two proud parents whose baby had just spit up on a stranger. They kept apologizing and saying the prototype really hadn’t been meant to last this long and it was a wonder nothing bigger had gone wrong yet. I kept my laughter professionally stifled inside the whole time as I continued to snap photos.

This one is my favorite: It eloquently hides the annoyed stares, puzzled head shakes and barely stifled curse words as they tried to figure out what exactly went gone wrong.

 

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Net-zero Energy House – The net-zero story went much smother as a whole and it was the one story I worked on which made it into the print edition of The Planet magazine, but it still had its moments.

The first work I did on the story was at the EcoBuilding Conference in
Seattle. Which of course begged the question: “What does one wear to an EcoBuilding conference?”

As two women, my writer and I discussed this extensively. She said she was wearing slacks and a blue shirt with ducks on it. “You know, professional but whimsical,” she said. My roommate waved her hands unhelpfully and said “Wear your normal style.” When I asked what that was she said “Weird borderline hippy.” Thanks friend.

But no one could ever accuse me of being a hippy compared to the main source for our story. His three foot beard nearly hid is face and made photography next to impossible. Any photo of him was completely overwhelmed by hair.

The evil part of my photographer’s heart was tempted to throw all journalistic integrity and photographic composition out the window and just focus on the beard. I knew that he was saying revolutionary things about affordable, energy-neutral housing, things which could change our very society. But I also knew that the average reader was far more likely to stop if there was a picture of a man with a giant beard.

Thankfully one of the first lessons you learn as a journalist is how to squash that evil part of your soul and portray all situations with grace and dignity. You learn that fast and you learn it well, because you never know what you might be working with from day to day.

But if the beard was not distracting me enough, Clifton’s kid was also giving me the evilest eyes you have ever seen on a child. I tried every trick in my nanny bag (I also work in childcare since the paycheck of a student journalist is not enough to even pay my coffee bill) but nothing could get him to smile.

Giant beards and grumpy kids, two of the reasons why  95% of magazine work never sees the light of day. The picture above could never run in the printed edition, but it’s certainly fun to look back on.

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The Net-Zero Energy story was published in the Fall 2015 Innovation issue of The Planet Magazine, an online copy can be viewed here.

The solar window protect was later written up and saved in the online archives as well. A version of it can be read here.