Redlights and Redeyes

Just added a new batch of signed art prints (available in 8×10, 11×14, 16×20, and 20×30) on my Photoshelter site – give your walls some love from Chip Litherland Photography!

Here!

Old prints still up (here).

Well, it is Florida.

I never really understood why Florida attracts these huge random news stories that seem to take on a life of their own – drawing every Nancy Grace, live truck, and iphonarazzi™ to our neck of the woods.  I’ve covered a more than a few of these.  The abduction and murder of Carlie Brucia, Terry Jones, the pastor who hosted Burn a Koran Day, and Terry Schiavo.  All three were elevated by the media and, yes, I include me in the “media.”  I could try to feel better about it because I can see the bigger picture, but I didn’t have to accept an assignment to go shoot the morning Casey Anthony was sentenced for lesser crimes after being found not-guilty of the larger murder charge, but I did.  There’s something almost gravitational about the circus surrounding these stories that I can’t put my finger on.  I alway say I’m going to cover the circus, but in the end I end up juggling knives next to the person taming the lion.  I have obligations to wonderful clients who keep my kids fed and my dogs happy.

The sentencing was uneventful at best.  There were less protesters than media.  In fact, you could count on two hands the number of people inside the little free speech zone taped off in front of the courthouse in Orlando.  In the end, we end up taking photos of ourselves, in some sense, that actually makes sense now that I write it.  These stories are indicative of where we are at in journalism.  Headlines.  24/7.  140 characters.  Stay tuned.  Exclusive.  Team Coverage. That’s all the time we have.  I wish the energy were put into covering an actual issue – perhaps doing long form journalism.  Documentaries.  Investigative journalism.  Actual reporting on actual issues that affect tens of millions of people instead of the effect of ten people watched by millions.

Alas, this is the world we live in, so what do we do?  We document and the cycle continues.  Over and over and over.  Until the next one.

News of the World.

I’m always amazed that I have spent a decade in Florida, and have never witnessed a Space Shuttle launch.  That changed today – too bad it was the last one.

Beng a part of the Reuters team that was sent to cover the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-135 was a wonderful experience on a few levels – obviously feeding the geek from my childhood is always fun to revisit.  There’s a lot of geek to revisit.  Secondly, there is a small part of me that misses being in the newsroom, but only for the fact that I miss being part of a team of photographers daily.  It’s that desire to cover a story well mixed with that friendly competition we all strive for in pushing our work and our visual selves.  These guys know their stuff covering a launch – overly-organized, well-prepared, and willing to take the risks to get a different kind of photo from an event covered by anyone with a shutter.

When there are 12 photographers with 2-3 cameras each and just as many remotes, there is a very deliberate plan to where everyone is and what everyone is shooting.  I was given the Visitors Center, where people won tickets in a lottery to be on-ste for the launch among old retired spacecraft on display.  I didn’t count it but I think I had just under 20 seconds to make a frame with the actual shuttle piercing the thick clouds that threatened its departure.

Seven-year-old Chip was thrilled.

Now I’m off to reorganize my Star Wars action figures by their home planet.

Ah, red…how I missed thee.

I don’t hang my camera around my shoulder everywhere I go anymore.  It’s not the fact that I don’t enjoy shooting, because I love it more than anything other vice I have, but I just don’t feel like everything needs to be photographed at every moment.  There’s too much of that going on right now.  I have an iPhone like everyone else just in case a Pulitzer happens to fall in my lap.  I want the times I do break out a 5D and a 50mm to be unique and random as my life is right now.  I’ve been rockin’ a 50mm almost exclusively now – I’ve fallen back in love with it.

I found myself in Washington D.C. a couple weeks ago to teach a couple break-out sessions at the National Press Photographers Association Business Blitz workshop, which has several stops in the next six months.  I highly recommend going if not just to throw things at the speakers, but there was really a wealth of information on our business available on the cheap.  I found myself sitting in the audience of John Harrington and Allen Murabayashi when I wasn’t waxing about the business and learning a lot myself about everything from SEO and marketing to invoicing and contracts.  Do yourself a favor and go if you can…well worth it and they are rotating speakers out at every stop so you don’t have to listen to me go on and on about red.

Alas, I didn’t take any time see the sites, because I want to bring my girls up and have that be our time to experience it.  What I did do is a lot of eating and drinking. So, the one time I decided to actually bring a camera with me was on a little trip to Chinatown, only because, well I figured there might be some red. These were literally shot on a stroll up and stroll down on one block in about 10 minutes.  That’s it.  I think I shot 12 frames the whole time I was there, and these are a quarter of them.

I don’t know why I even share them, but for me the search for red is more a personal endeavor…athletes will toss a ball around, firefighters wash their trucks, etc. Me? I make rectangles and play with primary colors.

I’ll throw one of the only frames I made in South Beach during an unrelated shoot a couple weeks ago, only because there isn’t really other place for it than right here in the most random of blog posts ever.

Well, it was go to the beach and be the only dude wearing jeans in nearly 100 degree weather day.

Life as a Florida photojournalist could be rougher, I guess, but for a simple story about new F.D.A. regulations for the marketing of sunscreen (running in tomorrow’s New York Times) you would think finding someone doing just that would be easier.  It was either run around with a telephoto and look like a creep or get up close and run out of time explaining yourself before they were done putting it on.  I decided to abandon that awkwardness altogether and just make pictures of people baking themselves on Siesta Public Beach and if sunscreen came into the mix, then sweet.

On deadline without much time, I came away a few which pretty much say what they needed to say.  That’s a victory in my book, and met some cool cats along the way.  If you guys read this, thanks for letting me block your sun for a bit.

For more photos visit my Photoshelter site.  Here.

Behind the scenes at Cirque du Soleil?  Yes, please.

My only complaint wasn’t having more days to shoot.  It was visual overload, but even in one full day, the crew literally worked on only a few real seconds of the actual production.  There is that much attention to detail.

The New York Times sent me to Orlando to meet up with Cirque du Soleil, who took over the old Amway Arena to prepare their newest show, Zarkana, which opens this week at Radio City Music Hall in New York.  The hallways that used run the blood of basketball were turned into the veins of oddity, performance, and athleticism – just a different type of athleticism.

It truly is one of the best things about our job – getting access to see worlds that very few get to glimpse – and pay a lot of cash to glimpse.

For more photos, please visit my Photoshelter site:  Here.