In the 2007-2008 New York State Associated Press Association awards I received third place in the online photography category (in the under 50,000 circulation group) for the following video:
(you have to press the play button in order to see it. Also, the video is copyright 2007 Star-Gazette.)
I shot it last october at Max Erlacher’s studio, as part of the paper’s “Extraordinary People” series, kind of like an über-neighbors column.
Yay. That is all.
I met seven nice ladies today. They were having a friendly gettogether. I will write more about them when I find out why my blog is broken.
OK, so I am back from vacation with Erin. I took a lot of photos, and Erin took a few also. They’re posted in her Picasa account. So check them out!
I’ve been back to work for a few days. On my first day back, I got licked by a cow. The person I was trying to photograph told me “that cow likes to lick people. it’s coming for you.” I didn’t see it because I was looking into the camera. Then I felt its tongue on my arm. I let out a surprised yelp, and the cow kept pushing me, so that I could not line up the shot the way I wanted to.
The farmer told me to swat the cow, but I am inexperienced in such things, and didn’t want to make it angry or injure it. So I tapped it, and the farmer laughed at me. Then I slapped it so I could hear an audible smack, but that was not very hard, and the cow just sat there. Eventually I moved around the cow and got the shot I was looking for. But the cow continued to lick my other arm.
Later at the same shoot, i was licked by goats, but I was expecting that. What I didn’t expect was when I came home: Kelsey (remember Kelsey?) licked my feet. And then the cat licked me, too. So, all in all, Tuesday was a day of being licked by many animals. It doesn’t happen to me at work all that often, but I am sure nature photographers have to put up with animals licking them.
Tonight I shot two graduations.
Both began at 7 p.m. I didn’t know that; all I knew was that I was to go to one school at 7 and the other at 8ish.
The problem with covering two events that occur at the same time but on opposite sides of town is that I can’t do very well at either of them. But that said, I think I still did a decent job.
I was at the second school’s graduation, and I heard some of the kids call my name. It was strange to hear them say “Hey, Jason Whong!” because normally, I’m doing my thing, and people are mostly concerned about either staying out of the way of my lens, or mugging for it, or they just don’t notice I’m there.
I don’t do anything crazy, I think. I mean, I don’t do any tactical tumbling or combat rolls or whatever, but I suppose that my stance when I am trying not to block anyone’s view looks a bit like a commando. I walk like those people in the opening credits from M*A*S*H, keeping my head very low, taking a knee to stop and aim, then click a few shots and move again. The kids that had called my name were commenting on my style. “That’s awesome!” they said. My khakis are ripped at the knee, but I am not sure whether they were already that way before tonight. I do a lot of ducking.
Allen Barton or Alan Barton was the one that asked me to blog about him. I made a voice memo to myself, but left the graduation program in the office, so I don’t know how to properly spell his name. But I think it is one or the other. Allen or Alan, congratulations on graduating, and good luck in the future.
I’ve been consumed recently by an issue that I learned about through Metafilter: a wedding photographer in a very conservative town in Colorado said he was in a quandary over whether, if the question came up, he would shoot a gay wedding and risk offending potential straight clients, or refuse to shoot the gay wedding and risk offending gay clients, and possibly risking a discrimination complaint.
The photographer mentioned a recent case heard before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission in which a lesbian couple complained that a photographer refused to shoot their commitment ceremony, and while they did not demand punitive damages, they won reimbursement of more than $6,000 in legal fees, effectively penalizing the photographer for their decision not to offer their services. The Commission also found that the wedding photographer was discriminatory against same-sex couples.
I don’t like bigotry. I prefer to be kind to everyone. And frankly, I don’t let my religious views decide who I will be friends with, talk to, or conduct commerce with. So, if I were to become a wedding photographer, I would shoot a gay wedding. Because I would approach it from a photojournalist perspective, it would be clear that my presence at the event was neutral, just as it would be for a straight wedding. And if any of my future clients have some sort of “have you shot a gay wedding before?” litmus test, they are probably too dumb to be my client anyway.
But the more I thought about it, the more I came to think that there are two issues at play: the right of equal access versus the right of an artist to define the scope of their work. Specifically, I believe that the freedom of the press mentioned in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution includes the freedom to create works of authorship, as well as the freedom not to create works of authorship. I do not think it is constitutional for a law to compel any person to create original works of authorship (photos, poems, videos, plays, etc.) that express an idea that person doesn’t want to express.
So if a photographer doesn’t want to express support for gay marriage, what about a caterer? Do they also get to refuse service at a gay wedding, on the basis that they don’t do gay weddings? I would argue no, because the caterer provides a service that is not considered a “work of authorship fixed in a tangible form of expression” under U.S. copyright law. As creative as a chef is, and while the food may be called a work of art by some, it is not considered a work under the law. Images, on the other hand, are necessarily considered works of authorship under the law. My argument is very specifically about the rights of artists to determine what works they will and won’t create, and what ideas they will and won’t express.
It sets a bad precedent when a law compels the reluctant creation and publication of any work of authorship, no matter how well-intentioned that law may be. Just because a person takes money for their work doesn’t mean they should lose the right to reject a job because of the ideas they would be asked to express (which is entirely different than rejecting the job on the basis of a client’s skin color, gender, race, religion, etc.) If there is a photographer that only wants to create images of Catholic weddings, because they think all non-Catholic congregations to be heretical, and that creating images of them expresses ideas legitimizing the beliefs of the heretics, they should have that right. It’s discriminatory, but so what? There are probably wedding photographers who think that Catholicism is really paganism, and won’t create images of Catholic weddings. That’s fine by me, too, but it is probably illegal in New Mexico. And if it is your wedding, do you really want a photographer that is only there because you approached him or her and the law compels his or her presence? Or do you want a photographer that is eager to please you?
Federal law considers photographers to be similar to poets, writers, graphic artists, sculptors, musicians in that they are all people that express ideas as original works of authorship in a tangible form of expression. So if a wedding photographer can be compelled to shoot a wedding they don’t want to, it creates a precedent in which a person can be forced, by law, to communicate ideas they don’t want to. What’s to stop a later law from compelling a pacifist poet to write an ode to glorious war? What’s to stop a conservative commentator from being forced to write articles in support of liberal causes? Can a photographer or painter of the future be forced to create nude images against their will? Can a vegetarian musician be forced to do an ad campaign for the beef industry? Maybe a newspaper can be forced by law to report on something that’s not an issue they want to cover. Maybe an R&B artist can be forced to record classic rock?
If you read through the aforementioned Vanessa Willock vs. Elane Photography LLC decision by the New Mexico Human Rights Commission, you may notice the 27th paragraph under “Findings of Law”, which reads:
To the extent that Elane Photography’s arguments in this proceeding sought to raise questions as to the constitutionality of the NMHRA or questions as to an automatic preemption of of the NMHRA by the United States Constitution, the New Mexico Constitution or the New Mexico Religious Freedom Restoration Act, those questions are not before the New Mexico Human Rights Commission for determination in this proceeding, and, accordingly, are not addressed here.
Based on my non-lawyerly reading of this, I think it is possible that some part of the law that ended up penalizing the photography studio may be found unconstitutional by a court of law, if it is challenged. If it happens, perhaps you read it here first: the right to a free press includes the right not to be forced or penalized by law to create works of expression that you don’t agree with.
Technorati Tags: gay marriage, Willock v. Elane Photography, first amendment, civil rights
Once again, I covered the LPGA Corning Classic for the Star-Gazette, and I did it almost exclusively with the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 lens attached to an EOS 30D. I brought along my personal camera, but only used it for a few shots with a wider angle lens during the tournament.
I keep saying that golf is more and more interesting each time I cover the tournament, and I think this year definitely threw us a curve. The night before the final round, there were something like 20 golfers that had a chance at winning, so despite having four photographers, we were really stressed, running around all over the place, eyeing leaderboards, and noting which names we’d not heard all weekend that were now only a few strokes off of the lead.
In the end it was Leta Lindley who won the game, beating Jeong Jang in a sudden death playoff on hole 18. It was my second playoff. If you want the nitty-gritty on how Lindley won, check out Joe Mink’s retelling of the playoff. Or if you want to read a heartwarming story, try Steve Jensen’s story about watching the end of the tournament with the winner’s children.
And now, onto my fave photos from this year. First, from the finish:
Leta Lindley reacts after sinking the game-winning birdie putt.
The taste of victory is running down her visor.
Some generally pretty shots:
I like Anna Rawson’s caddie’s white beard, which shows up even when he’s far away from the plane of focus.
Jimin Kang lifts a boundary rope. This is the first time I have shot a golfer doing something other than reacting or watching a ball or swinging or taking a club or walking or smiling. It’s just an act of courtesy that most people don’t get to see.
Meena Lee gave me my favorite sand shot of the tournament.
Sometimes the light works out just perfectly. Katherine Hull hits from the rough.
Ji Young Oh tees off under a blue sky. It was the first time a blue sky showed up in the tournament, so I needed to record it. Luckily for me, the ball was in front of the shade.
My favorite tee shot of the tournament: Taylor Leon on 13.
At one point, I noticed that our paper had three photographers on Erica Blasberg, so I took this shot and went back to send it to the office. Since she was winning round one, that’s the one that made it up online. I think she was smiling because her caddie made a joke about all the photographers following her.
Paula Creamer in profile. There’s tape on her finger. I don’t know why golfers tape fingers.
Some people look for rainbows when the sun shines as rain falls. I looked for golfers, and found Hee-Won Han.
And of course, some random reactions:
Giulia Sergas; Mi Hyun Kim; Jeanne Cho-Hunicke; Rosie Jones; Paula Creamer; Paula Creamer again; Laura Diaz; Erica Blasberg Joe Fazzary (from the Pro-Am); a baby bird; a baby raccoon.
Technorati Tags: LPGA Corning Classic, LPGA, Leta Lindley, Jimin Kang, Hee-Won Han, Taylor Leon, Meena Lee, Anna Rawson, Katherine Hull, Giulia Sergas, Mi Hyun Kim, Jeanne Cho-Hunicke, Rosie Jones, Paula Creamer, Laura Diaz, Ji Young Oh, baby bird, baby raccoon, Corning, Elmira
I took some photos of firefighters carrying water up a hill to fight a brushfire the other day.
The funny thing is, these photos were supposed to illustrate a planned story about how brushfire season is starting. You can’t schedule this sort of photo op, so instead we were scheduled to go to a firehouse to take a picture of brushfire fighting gear. Then the call came in, and we high-tailed it to the location of the fire, which was up a steep hill.
I came home from this assignment smelling of smoke.
(on another note - I finally added the TidBITS superlative badge that I was awarded in 2000. It only took me eight years. It’s on the right, beneath the Mac OS X badges.
This is a new one.
Today I was assigned to cover a protest to mark the fifth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq.
The protesters were on one side of the street. I was on the other side of the street, because I didn’t want to stand in rush hour traffic to get their pictures. I used my Canon EF 200 mm 1.8 L lens, which is a fairly large lens, and shot photos from the other side of the street. People started covering their faces and looking at me with disdain.
Later, when I introduced myself to get names for the captions, some of the protesters were releived. “We thought you were in the FBI,” a couple of them said.
In hindsight, maybe I should have introduced myself first before I took the pictures. I usually don’t try to do that, because afterwards it takes a few minutes for people to get back to acting naturally, and I’d rather photograph people that are acting naturally. But in some ways, photographing people who are afraid of your intentions has about the same effectiveness as photographing people who are mugging for the camera.
I am a patient guy, for the most part.
The only think I am really impatient about is when a computer is too slow.
For years, it seems I only ran into these things away from home. At the departmetn of motor vehicles. At work. It didn’t seem to matter where. So at home, I always had a computer that didn’t make me wait. And it’s not like I was spending top dollar on computers. I like to hang on to computers for at least four years before I replace them.
Well, my PowerBook didn’t make it into its fourth year, because it got rained on. It’s a long story, but basically if we had air conditioning in this house, my windows would have stayed closed, and I would not have had a problem with my laptop. (Though its 640 MB limit of RAM was irking me slightly, I knew i could have dealt with it for at least another year.)
Because I have lined up some freelance work, I have enough money to replace the laptop with a new Mac mini. Some of you may think I am nuts to go for what is essentially a low-end Mac. Here’s why I chose the mini:
1. I already have a good 21-inch CRT that I picked up at a county government surplus auction for $12. It’s not calibrated, but a decent CRT at least displays all the colors, unlike the latest low-end iMac, which uses a Twisted Nematic LCD panel (making it less useful for toning photos).
2. If I get enough money later, I can use an Apple Cinema Display like the one I have at work. (Yes, I know, I could connect one of these to a new iMac and use it as a second display. But, why would I want to do that?)
3. If I decide I want to use the Mac mini for work, I can stick it in a bag and connect it to a monitor there. Or I can bring my $12 monitor and leave it at work. (This might be useful when covering LPGA or NASCAR.) I would not feel comfortable lugging around an iMac, and since I would also not feel comfortable leaving it places, I’d be doing a lot of lugging when covering some events.
4. It’s cheaper, but it doesn’t suck all that much. My only regret is that it can’t run Civilization IV, because of its relatively weak 3D graphics support. Boo.
5. It’s not really the low-end Mac, because I got the faster Mac mini available (2 GHz), with the DVD burner on it, so I can store the gigabytes of photos I’ll be taking on blank DVDs. Also, I upped the RAM to 2 GB, which is a bit out of character for me as a DIY type, but I am not really interested in opening a Mac mini. I’m really not.
So, why am I writing about patience? Because I ordered this thing Sept. 1 and it’s still not here yet. It shipped (likely from a Taiwanese factory) on Sept. 5 and was handed off to FedEx Ground on Sept. 6. FedEx says it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, which is good because one of my freelance deadlines is coming very soon. Y’know. The freelance deadline that inspired me to buy this thing. The one that is paying for it.
And every time I wait for my backup computer to do something (it’s a six-year old iBook 500MHz with a screen that doesn’t always turn on), I get even more impatient, knowing that I’ve paid for something better, but because I wanted to save $20 on shipping, it’s not here yet.
A strange thing happened at work Friday. I don’t know that it is really all that strange. But it’s not something I have encountered before.
I was covering the Watkins Glen Grand Prix reenactment, which is basically a street festival in which people drive antique cars a few laps around the village of Watkins Glen, and no competitive racing is allowed (probably because if it were allowed, no insurance company would cover it.)
A couple of things were weird about this event: A lot of people were wearing blue photo bibs issued by Watkins Glen International, which is a racetrack up the hill from the village. So it made anyone who wasn’t wearing a photo bib look like they didn’t belong. (Despite the fact that the bibs don’t really belong off the track…)
So as I was walking in the street, doing my job, festivalgoers who weren’t allowed onto the street were telling me that I was blocking their view, and asking me to move (in an angry tone.) I was bothered by them not asking people with bibs to please move.
Later, when I was photographing the race, I wanted a different angle, so I found a nice spot near another photographer. I started taking pictures, and eventually I saw another person’s head about two inches in front of my lens. So I pointed the lens to the left and kept shooting. People get in front of my camera all the time. If I don’t like the frame, I have to change what’s in it.
I heard the owner of the head shout “that’s what you did to me!” but I didn’t realize what he meant, because I didn’t think it was a big deal that his head was in my frame… so I wasn’t sure what “that” was. Plus, I was shooting, and my mind was not in guessing games mode. I looked at him and saw he was holding a cheap point-and-shoot digital camera, pretending to take pictures of oncoming cars. So I asked him what he was talking about. “You stood right in front of me,” he said. This was untrue, because I was at least five or ten feet away from the sidewalk, which is the limit of where the festival volunteers would let the masses stand. So I didn’t understand his objection and kept on shooting.
Eventually I figured out why he had come to stand in front of my lens. He was so upset that I had blocked his view, that he felt the need to obstruct my view. But since I am not bothered by unexpected things in my shot, I don’t think he got whatever response he expected from me.
There are two ways of looking at this, as I can see it:
1) The street was closed to the public, and I was standing in the street because the organizers of the festival and law enforcement officials permitted me to be there. The upset fan should have known that there would be a chance for his view to be blocked, especially since most of the photographers covering the event were standing nearby. His entrance onto the closed street to obstruct me was inappropriate.
2) Photojournalists are ordinary citizens like any other; they have no more rights than other citizens. Just because I was not stopped by nearby police for entering a street that was closed to the public doesn’t mean that I had permission or right to be in that particular spot on the street. Perhaps my being on that part of the closed street was inappropriate because I obstructed the view of others. If I had been about ten paces to my right, there would be nobody to obstruct. (But the angle there was less interesting.)
I haven’t figured out the answer, though the idealist egalitarian in me is leaning toward the second option. Though, I think if I had one of those blue bibs from the track up the hill, I bet nobody would have said a word about where I was. And I really don’t think I was right in front of him, since I was so far away from the masses, and because he would have had plenty of opportunities to see the cars, which are wider and longer than I am.
Technorati Tags: Watkins Glen, Grand Prix, vintage cars, ethics
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