Redlights and Redeyes

I could sit here and write a ton of copy about covering Florida politics.

Fact of the matter is, it’s weird, it’s draining, and it’s one of most fun things I get to do in photojournalism.

With that, here are some random rectangles from the week of covering Mitt Romney’s win in the Florida Primary with some scraps from the cutting room floor as a bonus.

I-4 is an interesting road.  Connecting Daytona, Orlando and Tampa, it slices the nub of South Florida right off the map, it provides a vast array of landmarks – strange kitschy theme parks, vasectomy billboards, and rest stop oasis after oasis.  It is also fertile ground for voters and an area candidates target every election cycle.

The New York Times sent me with a reporter and videographer to tackle I-4 man-on-the street style to try to find folks opinionated about the state of the GOP and politics in general.  I did that.  Then I also did this.  Whenever I could break away and find some images for me I did, and luckily the NYT embraced the latter and ran it A1 as a grid of four.

I know there aren’t any faces, a lack of folks, but sometimes the details and vignettes of nouns can tug at the sweater string of story mood.

For more photos along I-4 in Florida please visit my Photoshelter archive.

You know what, Instagram?  I’m sorry.

I cursed you and your buddy Hipstamatic for the last couple years.  You were destroying our industry, flooding our market with imagery, and making the construction and process of image-making too easy and less intellectual.  I was one of, if not the guy who wrote the blog post that started the whole Damon Winter/POYi mess.  I cursed iPhoneography, Holgaroids, and Urban Outphittography™.  Oooooh, I like that – Urban Outphittography.  Note the ™.

I’m big enough to admit that I was wrong.  Well, sort of.  Wrong is such a subjective term.

Here’s where you are right.  I caved one day when walking along a storefront and finding a little window with a mannequin head in it I wanted to shoot.  I didn’t have my 5d Mark II, nor was it a scene I really needed to break out a big DSLR and really work.  It was the morning after landing a great gig and I was happy.  I was excited about life, excited about being my own boss, and excited about being so freaking lucky to be able to be able to make pictures still after leaving my staff job a year-and-a-half ago.  Something about that window, that little patch of light, that reflection that made me want to just snap and capture it.  I whipped out my iPhone and made a frame and randomly used the Instagram app, which I had on my phone and never used – know thy enemy.  Then I posted it and was suckered into a medium I had previously put on blast.

Now, I can sit here and try to wrap the reason for you as to why I am on Instagram and why I am not a hypocrite, but I can’t.  I am a hypocrite.  I’m using and enjoying my latest foray into Instagram.  It has been six weeks and 36 frames (ironically, a whole roll of film), and I think I know why I’ve changed my mind about it.

What I haven’t changed my mind on its role in photojournalism.  I think it’s a slippery slope of ethics to be be masking and changing content for news stories.  For feature stories, illustrations, and work not labelled as news?  Sure and please do.  I think there is one last holdout of truthiness out there, though, and that is documentary photojournalism. It is a field that should adhere to its own set of rules and ethics, no matter how the world changes around it.  I’ll preach that until it dies (don’t worry, I’m not going there).

Damon Winter and Ben Lowy are two of my favorite photojournalists and friends, and more power to them for using the iPhone for evil (kidding, guys).  Their work inspires me, and consistently pushes me to be a better photographer.

There is something to be said for making pictures that aren’t important, that don’t change the world, and that aren’t perfect.  I just need to make pictures…more.  As a freelancer, I apparently spend 12.2% of my work hours making actual photos per this diagram.  That is true.  I make pictures when I am hired and honestly, I don’t pick up my cameras as much as I did at the paper.  I used to shoot 3 assignments a day for years and years.  I wore my crappy cameras out.  Now, I have gear that is nice and snug in a bag in the corner of my office and not rolling around in my trunk.  When I shoot now, it is much less frequent, but much more deliberate and important.  I’m paid more for those shoots, the risks are higher, and it’s my name on the line.  Not the paper’s.  I lose a client if I screw up.  It can be frightening, but always exciting.

Instagram lets me document random moments that don’t need 21.1 megapixels and a Lightroom bath.  These are pictures that aren’t important to really anyone but me.  They are there just to document for the pure sake of documentation.  They are slices of me with four little corners, four even lines, and some borders.  It may be just a fad, but you know what?  Participating in a fad means at least you are participating.  It means contributing the the visual history of what we put as photographers out there.  There may be a lot of it overdocumentation now, but it is who we are in the Applocracy we live in. Again ™.

They aren’t photojournalism.  They aren’t perfection.  They are just..life.

So, Instagram, please take me back.  I’ll never be mean again.

Lovingly yours,

Chip

Return of the creamsicle…love it.

For a team that wears red all season long, I seem to get hired by the Bucs when they throwback or go pink, but I’ll take it.  I always love shooting for public relations in these situations, because I’m generally given the (paraphrasing) “Here’s the images we need, but otherwise have fun” job.  I’ve covered dozens of games at this stadium over the years, but always try to find a few new things to shoot.  It’s the thrill of the hunt – even if it means shooting sunflower seeds in front of me smashed into the grass this past Sunday against the Carolina Panthers.

If I walk away with the same pictures I’ve made before I feel like a complete failure.

I need an intervention.  I went to land of red – Super Target – and converted everything to black-and-white.  I must be in a post-turkey, up all night haze.

For as much of a color junkie I am, you would think that an assignment to shoot the 12 a.m. Black Friday shopping at Super Target would be like heaven.  In fact, there may be such a thing as too much color.  I said it.  First step is admitting I have a problem.

I don’t think I ever covered Black Friday as a staffer, at least that I can remember.  I always managed to dodge it – but I went in with the idea of making all sorts of crazy graphic images oversaturated with color, but when I arrived and started navigating the craziness, it turned into a hunt for faces.  It’s a departure for me, as I normally seek extremely anal (retentive) backgrounds and color first and let everything else fall where they may, but to be honest, that workflow practically was practically a dream once those doors opened at midnight.

All that being said, covering Black Friday is a claustrophobic soup of chaos and clutter.  Black-and-white seemed like the only way to contain it.

For more BLACK FRIDAY PHOTOS – in color – please visit my Photoshelter Archive.

Red, Yellow, Blue, Green…any possible color you can think of.  Everywhere.  Literally.

I can’t think of really a better place to feed my addiction to color than LEGOLAND Florida, and luckily I get to call them a regular client.  The gig, which I haven’t really talked much about out here in Socialmedialand, fell in my lap from a great recommendation from another photographer in LA who called me to cover their initial press conference (last photo).  The historic, but defunct, Cypress Gardens park was bought and for the last year-and-a-half I’ve been documenting the construction and restoration several times a month for LEGOLAND Florida and their parent company.

It’s been quite the switch from being on the other side of this coin for so long as a newspaper photographer – often being sent to cover press conferences and events and trying to avoid anything pr-like.  I switched teams for this gig often covering the media covering the park for the wonderful marketing team I work with in Winter Haven.  It’s been truly eye-opening as to what former newspaper photographers can do when they find themselves in the freelance world with a question of “Ok, now what?”  Well, pr, marketing, and advertising isn’t a dirty word anymore for me.  It’s another way of thinking, another way of seeing, and a whole new set of rules.  With that, though, there is a lot of freedom and a lot of fun.

My main objective is to make compelling imagery that tells the story…sound familiar?  I’m just telling it from a different point-of-view, ironically ending up on the same pages where my photojournalism used to appear.

Newspaper photographers finding themselves at a crossroads in their career, deciding to whether to jump ship – before being pushed off – can take this with them as a life preserver.  Your skills are needed out there.  It just may not be for the pages of newspapers anymore.