The mighty power of photography

Yesterday's front page of the New York Times is stirring some debate about the power of photography. And it looks like the Times is winning that debate.


Tuesday's front page of the Times ran a photo of a starving, emaciated child from famine-plagued Somalia. The child is so thin that his skin seems to drape on his bones. The haunting and devastating photograph by Tyler Hicks sent shockwaves around the world, especially here in the United States, a country that has largely ignored the suffering of the people of Somalia in favor of a petty squabble by our political elite. We won't be raising our taxes on the rich while children starve in other countries. That's not political commentary; that's fact.

The photo might be remembered alongside Kevin Carter's famous 1993 photo from Sudan that featured a skeletal child doubled over in the dirt while a vulture, menacing and evil, loomed in the background. That vivid photo, which would contribute to Carter's unbearable memories and eventual suicide, brought international attention to the Sudan.  It seems like Hicks' photo might do the same for Somalia. The photographs speak to the horrific conditions on the other side of the lens. The cameras aren't just tools, but witnesses. While the photographs are sickening and sad, they jolt us from our relaxed states. They wake us up and force us to consider the issue, because there it is right in front  of us glaring back in horror.

Read more on the issue here and here.

Copyright goes to the photographer ... or monkey

 

I heard a rather interesting tidbit on one of NPR's media-on-media Sunday programs. (It was either On the Media or On Point, I forget.) Photographer David Slater was in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, when he either gave a camera to a black macaque monkey or the monkey stole it — I've read several different accounts. Slater ended up getting the camera back, but not before the monkey snapped off a number of accidental self-portraits, including one where the monkey is grinning like a mischievous little ... well, monkey.


The photos quickly went viral and a number of people started posting them on blogs and news feeds. About 8 minutes into the photos' 15 minutes of fame, someone involved with the photos started hounding bloggers who reposted the photo. The issue cited was copyright infringement. A number of sites have pulled the photos after being issued take-down letters. Not so fast, said the NPR guest.


Copyright law has an interesting rule: unless contracted otherwise, photograph copyrights automatically go back to the original photographer. So even if Bazooka Joe uses my camera to take a picture, Joe still retains the copyright to anything he took. So in the case of the monkey photos, the monkey is technically the copyright holder of the photos. But since animals can't enter into a contract or own copyright, there's an argument out there that the monkey images are now in the public domain. It's an interesting idea, and one that I like because it means I get to post the photos (for now at least). What do you think?

Photo Essay: A day at the gun range

It was a surreal experience going to a shooting range with Maricopa County Board of Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox. She was visiting the Joe Foss Shooting Complex in Buckeye to check in on the county-run facility. Toward the end of the tour, several visitors were asked if they wanted to blast a couple rounds off at the range. Wilcox, without hesitation, volunteered and later admitted it was her first time shooting a handgun — though, she has shot rifles before. The reason it was surreal was because Wilcox has a history with firearms, most notably when she was shot by one in 1997 after a board meeting. She recovered and obviously remained in politics. And she's not afraid of guns. It reminded me a lot of President Reagan speaking to the NRA after he survived an assassin's bullet. 

Here are some of my images from my day at the range.

Photo Essay: A day at the public library

With temperatures rising, rising, rising fewer people are spending time outside. Some are taking refuge inside the many libraries within the West Valley. I spent part of Tuesday at the Avondale Civic Center Library, where I found all kinds of people escaping the heat inside the library's vast collection of resources.

Photo Essay: Cattle at Bill Kerr Dairy in Buckeye

It's hard to imagine, but at one point within the last century there were more cows in the Valley than people. The old timers will remember a number of long-forgotten pastures, ranches and dairies, or maybe the famous Cow Palace in central Phoenix. I was born in Phoenix in the early ’80s and even I can remember corners that once had mooing cattle — those same corners now have Walgreens and QTs, and within them $3.29 gallons of milk.

The cows have all been pushed out by development and by the urbanization of our desert frontier. Go west, my friend, and you will see where they have all gone. To Buckeye. To Palo Verde. To Gila Bend. To places where the air smells like cattle, but it least it smells fresh. 

View photographer Ray Thomas spent an afternoon following around the workers at the Bill Kerr Dairy in Buckeye, where the cattle are still king of the Old West.

There's a photoblog for everything, including experimental levitation

Proving that there is a photoblog for everything, check out Yowayowa, a Japanese photoblog by Natsumi. She takes pictures of her cats and of people levitating out of her camera frame. It's strange and quirky, and altogether silly, but it's a hoot. It's message to audiences is clear: Find something you're interested in and start taking pictures. Natsumi has her niche; what's yours? Once you have it, take your shots to the Web and share them across the world. It's easier than you think. 

Have a photo link you like, or maybe have one of your own, then send it my way so we can all share.

Beware of Stock Photography, or: The Devil Horns Made Me Do It

Stock photo sites can be a real boon to designers tasked with creating materials without the benefit of a photographer. Of course, in the wrong hands stock photography can be hilariously awful. In fact there are whole web sites devoted to their awfulness. (Try here for starters. Or here.) I always get a chuckle out of these kinds of things when I see them, especially the photos that are heavily edited. The ones where a model's arm is removed so another arm can be added holding Dove soap, or Vidal Sassoon hairspray, or a Sony laptop. 

Rarely, though, do these disasters arrive gift wrapped on my doorstep. Last week I received an announcement in the mail for a local worship group. To be fair, I won't name the group since this post is not really about their design skills but about the practice in general. The ad features a number of different elements, but one really stuck out.

Notice the above shot of a "Praise Party," which features, at first glance, some God-fearing Christians rockin' out to some Christian rock at a concert. Look closer, though, and you'll see one of those silhouettes is throwing up some devil horns, the universal symbol for metal. Go to any metal show and you'll witness a sea of the raised gesture. I've covered hundreds of metal shows — from wimpy metal like Disturbed and Korn to full-blown metal devastation like Slayer, Sepultura, Suffocation (and that's just the "S" bands) — and most metal fans know the sign is for legit metal only, the metal with evil titles and the 666 hidden in the liner notes and the intensity that will make your ears bleed. Some lighter bands have some uninformed fans, though, which is probably why I've seen devil horns at Incubus and Blink-182. To be fair, though, the gesture has been hijacked by almost every "loud guitar band" even though metal purists would cringe. But never by Christians. At least, not that I know of.

Even stranger, the man throwing up the devil horns is also throwing up the sign language sign for "I love you." Devil horns = pinkie and index finger up, thumb tucked in. "I love you" = pinkie and index finger up, and thumb out. So apparently Mr. Christian Concert man is really confused: love on one hand, hate on the other. It's like Night of the Hunter, but without Robert Mitchum in that creepy performance.

In any case, there are many pitfalls and traps with pulling stock photos and manipulating them for purposes which they were not designed. See any good ones, be sure to send them my way.

One for the dogs: Luke Air Force Base's "green" K9 facility

Defying all expectations, these dog demonstrations are quite popular. Even stranger: children love them. I guess there's something about watching a dog desperately trying to tear a man's arm off. Something for the whole family. Bring grandma.

I've photographed these events — where a dog and its trainer demonstrate K9 tactics — at flea markets, city events, high schools and elementary schools (though never at a preschool), parades, concerts and at carnivals. Everyone loves a simulated mauling.

Most recently I photographed a K9 demo at Luke Air Force Base's new eco-friendly dog training facility. There were no children present, but there were a whole bunch of Air Force cadets who were eager to slip on the bite suit and let a German shepherd gnaw around their limbs. Before they could, though, the dog handlers did some quick demonstrations. The photo above was from a scenario where a suspect might overwhelm an airman who might not be able to issue commands to the dog. Through intense training the dog knows when his handler is in trouble and responds without any command to do so. 

I positioned myself on what I thought would be the most advantageous angle, though the dogs tend to ignore photographic angles when they attack. I lucked out, though, and got a nice shot (from a series of shots) of Rex laying a bite down on an airman's covered arm. Moments before, the airman wearing the bite suit was being handcuffed by the camouflaged airman, who was then pushed out of the way in a mock attack. Without any commands or signals, Rex leaped up and tried to subdue the suspect.

You can't really see it in the photo, but Rex's harness answers two questions: "Yes I do," and "No you can't."

The unasked questions: "Does he bite?" and "Can I pet him?"

Why we don't run groundbreaking photos

Every couple of years, View editor Jim Painter runs a piece on reader-submitted photos we don't publish. He categorizes them with clever names: Me & My Prop, the Grip-n-Grin, the Execution at Dawn, the Check Passing. They refer to a vast collection of horrible photos readers send to the View expecting we'll run them. The Check Passing, you can imagine, is usually two people trading a check and a handshake. They almost always look as though they'd rather be anywhere else but in front of the camera. That's one example.

Another example of photos we don't usually run is the groundbreaking — specifically the shot of a bunch of suits putting their expensive loafers on gold plated shovels and turning dirt in a symbolic gesture that work has begun on their big project. If you've ever been to a big groundbreaking then you know these things can be serious business: the elite executives get hard hats and shovels, everyone else has to settle for croissants and orange juice from the buffet table, dust is everywhere and you always get a seat just outside the one piece of shade, PR people show photographers where to stand to get the best dirt-shovel ratio, elected leaders schmooze, other photographers scurry about for better angles. It's all kind of silly. As soon as shovels stab the ground everyone looks to me, the photographer, to take the picture. Rather than explain to everyone we don't run these kinds of photos, it's grown easier to just take the shots and smile, knowing of course they'll probably never be seen by our readership. 

But why won't they be seen? For starters, the photos are boring. If you've seen one groundbreaking then you've seen them all. Occasionally a groundbreaking — or its sister, the ribbon cutting — will attempt something clever that might be photogenic, but mostly it's all the same. In fact, I could put five or six different groundbreaking shots up and you wouldn't be able to identify them from a fire station in Buckeye to a hospital in Goodyear. 

Second, these photos usually service the people in them more than anyone else. A long time ago, groundbreakings were single shovels and two or three people. Nowadays these events have more shovels than will be on the actual job site. The purpose for that is so the organization that initiated the building can thank those who contributed: people like the architect, the finance guy, the the construction guy, the mayor, the city council, the city council's children and their children's pets, the town manager's dentist. I'm exaggerating slightly, but the point is that most of the people in the photograph aren't important to anyone outside of that shovel club. What's really sad is that there are so many people with shovels that it's almost more of an honor to not have a shovel — remember the saying, "When everyone is special, that's the same as saying no one is special."

Lastly, these overly posed, highly orchestrated photos will never top shots of actual construction workers building the project. Or of the mayor taking a tour of the site with the construction foreman. Or of the building itself. There are just more interesting photos available, which is why resorting to the shovels-in-the-ground shot is our last option. And even if we don't run them in the newspaper, the groundbreaking shot is good to have for a historical record of the West Valley. Imagine the historical value of groundbreakings at the Wigwam, Luke Air Force Base or the Cardinal stadium. Those photos are more newsworthy 100 years after they were taken than on Day 1. 

More Memorial Day shots from Avondale, Palo Verde services

My favorite shots from big events like Memorial Day are always the less obvious ones. The hands with the camera is a good example. The photo is of a woman's hands holding a camera. You can tell by the screen on her camera that she's taking picture of a soldier laying a wreath. You can also see she's holding a lit candle (that's talent, by the way) and and you can see her fingernails are painted in patriotic colors. Nothing in the photo screams Memorial Day, but it somehow conveys the spirit of the holiday. Here is that photo as well as several others from the View's Memorial Day coverage.